Anderson 1
Collin Anderson ENG 505 Dr. Mary Kennedy 8 December 2010
Fortunetelling and Archetyping: A Genre Study in the One-Act Play
I. In Defense of the Genre Study Adolescent students crave context. They want to know how the things they learn fit into the real world; they need assurance that school isn’t just elaborate babysitting or meaningless toil. Their knee-jerk question is “so what?” and this bothers teachers for good reasons. I’m convinced that acontextuality is a large part of the reason that students tend to be so put off by an ELA writing curriculum that declares its singular intention to make them “better writers.” All writing—with the likely exception of what Bomer calls “school-based inauthentic nongenres” (118)—has an audience that wants to read it for some reason or another, hopes to be surprised, entertained or informed, and situates itself accordingly. Bomer, citing parking tickets and pamphlets (117), suggests that genre is one of the first things we assess about a text, long before we start to read it. Furthermore, written English itself is only one “genre” within a much broader array of “texts” that we “read” in day-to-day life. Genre, therefore, makes much more sense than topic as a structural unit in the ELA classroom. For my part, having volunteered to adapt The Wizard of Oz from memory for my own 5th-grade class production, and having won a playwriting award two years later after a particularly successful class genre study, I am understandably indebted to dramatic writing. Writing my own work and seeing it performed has forever altered the way I read and witness plays. The demand of developing characters who are not ourselves, and seeing these characters through their goals and struggles, cultivates versatile minds and personalities in playwrights. The process also helps students “read” their own lives for dramatic content—subtext, anyone?—and assess their own struggles. Writing drama is about creating and resolving issues using words rather than actions. More than anything, however, the one-act play is the genre that is most evidently “about” other people. Lev Vygotsky argues that students are most inclined to learn socially; reading dead poets, students easily forget that the poet is actually communicating with them, and writing dead essays, they forget that they themselves are communicating. Compared to the intricate inner worlds students must develop in writing short fiction, memoir, or poetry, the one-act play signifies something refreshingly external and tangible. The buzz of a collaborative classroom enhances, rather than distracts from, the writing process, and the introduction of others in revision is less an invasion than a step towards realization. Cooper introduces eight elements of a good genre study, to which I have loosely adhered: reading models, listing basic features, choosing topics, inventing and researching, planning, revising, reflecting and assembling a portfolio (47-49). There is perhaps an overemphasis on the order in which Cooper presents these elements, Anderson 2 especially that reading models precede writing itself. Bomer suggests that moving flexibly between reading and writing is the only way that students can understand that one can only learn to write by reading—and that writing changes how one reads! We cannot, therefore, present the reading of one-act plays and the writing of one-act plays as separate acts. Students should be aware from the outset that they will be writing a one-act play. If students don’t already have a personalized writer’s notebook, establish one early in the unit. They should try to write or brainstorm at least half a page daily if they don’t have another writing assignment for the class. I would encourage these notebooks to be graded randomly or holistically, so that students almost always have access to them. Students who are fans of serialized television shows might be interested to know that even those with less dense plots often have “Bibles” that include a huge amount of easy- access information about the characters and their backstories. The writing journal will encourage not only consistency (how many siblings a character has, etc.) but will hopefully ensure that students write far more than ends up in their plays. Instead of a two-step process in which the teachers model and then the students imitate the teacher, I recommend simply completing all the assignments at the same time as the students. Yes: this means that you will be producing your own one-act play every time you do the genre study. You should make it clear to students that you’re doing all the same work that they are. Students will not take risks unless they see teachers taking risks as well. The following genre study in one-act playwriting is designed for 11th grade ELA students. It fulfills the following national Core standards for ELA: Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin or end a story, the choice to provide a comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact. Write narratives to develop real […] experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences. . Engage and orient the reader by setting out a problem, situation, or observation and its significance, establishing one or multiple point(s) of view, and introducing a narrator and/or characters; create a smooth progression of experiences or events. . Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, description, reflection, and multiple plot lines, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters. . Use a variety of techniques to sequence events so that they build on one another to create a coherent whole and build toward a particular tone and outcome (e.g., a sense of mystery, suspense, growth, or resolution). Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products in response to ongoing feedback, including new arguments or information. Write routinely over extended time frames (time for reflection and revision) It also fulfills the following New York State ELA Standards: Standard 2: Students will read, write, listen, and speak for literary response and expression. . write original pieces in a variety of literary forms, correctly using the conventions of the genre and using structure and vocabulary to achieve an effect . use standard English skillfully and with an individual style . identify the distinguishing features of different literary genres, periods and traditions and use those features to interpret the work Standard 4: Students will read, write, listen, and speak for social interaction. . make effective use of language and style to connect the message with the audience and context
Anderson 3
II. Playwriting as Social Empowerment Homework: “The Most Massive Woman Wins” Response I would suggest starting the one-act play “marinating” with reading and responding independently outside of class, possibly while finishing up another unit in class. Madeleine George is an extremely successful student-playwright, an alumna of the 1993 and 1994 Young Playwrights Festivals. You don’t have to tell students that she was only eighteen when she wrote “The Most Massive Woman Wins” until after they’ve read it (you can give them the option of watching the Greely High School performance on Youtube instead, though make sure they all have copies)1. In my classroom, students will have set up blogs early in the year for reading responses, to enhance their sense of their classmates as an audience; if students are still writing paper responses that only the teacher sees, they may feel better about being insensitive or “not caring” about what the play has to say. Ask students to respond to the play, with social empowerment in mind. Start a list of different things this might mean to students (if anything at all!). Hopefully, you can sculpt their responses into something along the lines of: “society has problems that seem inevitable, but by helping all people to acknowledge these problems, we will be able to combat them.” Acknowledgement is the first step to empowerment, and that’s where art might come in. Art often seems to be about humor and entertainment for its own sake, but it can use that appeal to talk about more important things. Students’ responses should be twofold: a) how does “The Most Massive Woman Wins” deal with social issues and encourage social empowerment? and b) if you [the student] were to write a play that dealt with a social issue, what would that issue be? ARTSsmart provides extensive lesson plan for the play; obviously, although its role in this genre study is abridged, it is a play that both rewards extensive unpacking and (as the “important note to educators” emphasizes) demands that a teacher is sensitive to “teachable moments”: Use protective interrupting if necessary when working with students on these issues. If a student does disclose something personal or distressing or if you need to interrupt them from disclosure, ensure that you follow up with them on a one to one basis as soon as possible after this has occurred. (3; emphasis mine) An effective class discussion about this play will not reveal every student to be sensitive to the topic, but rather will demonstrate to some students the response that a powerful play can elicit. In short, responding to this play will motivate those kids who need “real- issue” impetus while other students work in a lower-stakes framework. Do not require that students’ plays be about the social issue they wrote about; as we’ll see in Zagone, not all plays need to be socially-themed. Madeleine George’s concise 2005 speech, “On Playwriting, Lying, and Learning the Difference” provides both a good foil for the “reality” of her own play and an excellent introduction to playwriting. Assign students to read it at the end of class. “All writing is lying” should prove a roguish mantra for the unit. Homework: Respond to “Lying” or Peers If students posted their responses on their blogs, they should reread them and comment on their own if necessary (to “revise”
1 Even though this play was written by a student, it has what some parents might consider “mature” content. Depending on the school district, it may be necessary to send a letter home to parents outlining why this is a Anderson 4 their opinions). They then have two choices: either read and comment on two peers’ responses, or write a new post about George’s speech. Although I believe that all students should be required to read this play, this allows those that need it to “opt out” after a single day of discussion.
III. Fortune and the Function of an Act Solicit two lively students—one male; one female—to independently read Nick Zagone’s “I Can’t Think of It Right Now” the night before class for some sort of extra credit (or instead of the regular assignment). Hand out copies of the text to everyone and allow the two students to perform it rapidly at the beginning of the period to introduce the unit. You can read the stage directions. Start by asking how “I Can’t Think of It Right Now” is different from any other “full” play that you’ve read this semester (Shakespeare, Ibsen, etc.). Although students probably won’t know him by name, they will probably at least allude to Gustav Freytag’s (1863) breakdown of the play, which is well-engrained into many creative writing curricula: Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, Resolution/Denouement.2 Note that Freytag was analyzing the Aristotlean well-made play as well as Shakespeare’s revival of it. Discuss how fully if at all Zagone incorporates each of Freytag’s elements in “I Can’t Think of It Right Now.” Exposition, falling action, and resolution are all there, but extremely brief. Ask students for good popular examples of exposition and falling action/resolution and if possible locate them on YouTube—Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums3 and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amelie have humorously overdone expositions; Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is a classic example of an excessive denouement, the tail on Freytag’s diagram that often barely exists at all. What students will hopefully start to notice is that even though Freytag presents the diagram in a manner that suggested all the elements have equal length/weight, a playwright usually favors certain elements over others. Trick question: why did Shakespeare4 have five acts? Students will want to say one act per Freytag-element, but Shakespeare also usually eschewed denouements (to name one counterexample) of more than a couple of pages. His plays were long enough to almost always have all five elements, but the elements are never of equal length. So Shakespeare’s use of five acts is actually much less rigid: since his plots were complicated, he wanted to signal major shifts to the audience. Letwin, Stockdale & Stockdale argue that the most important structural shifts in a play represent changes in fortune (25). These structures fall in three major categories (write them on the board, maybe using a bracket { or branches between): Acts, which each include several scenes, which each include several beats—more on this later. Acts, in particular, are easy to assess in terms of “fortune”: in Hamlet, for example, Act II begins after Hamlet finds out from the ghost about the murder (he is now lucky to know the truth, but perhaps unlucky
2 See Appendix A. 3 I have done my best to briefly explicate as many specific terms or texts herein as possible. However, just as students need to be challenged to utilize the incredible number of tools at their disposal (but really Google alone is at least half the battle, as I’ll continue to hint), teachers who read this paper should feel free to familiarize themselves with the unfamiliar using the same resources. 4 Shakespeare is the only specific yearly content required by the NCTE Core; therefore, we can assume that it is an adequate reference point. Anderson 5 to be responsible for revenge); Act V begins after Hamlet announces his (lucky) return and Ophelia (unluckily) drowns. Ask students to think back to the last play that they saw, if any. (It would help if, earlier in the year, students were actually assigned to see a school play and discuss it). More concretely than “fortune,” what usually happens between contemporary acts? An intermission. Brainstorm on the board why plays might have acts, and therefore intermissions. Responses will range from “to give the audience a break from intense action” to “to allow audience members to discuss what happened” to “so the audience doesn’t starve” or “so their bladders don’t explode.” Wilde says that it “supplies a brief period during which the mimicry of life on the stage is brought into cogent relation with the reality of life in the audience” (39). The take-home point is that an intermission throws a wrench into the audience’s suspension of disbelief (a phrase worth introducing) by letting them get a glimpse of the real world. If students are not experienced enough with plays to develop these observations and inferences on their own, it might help to allude to television, which they’ll be more familiar with. See if you can draw out from them an analogy for an Intermission/Act, with emphasis on the intermission as a break. Lest TiVo technology develop too much in the next few years, students will probably have at least passing familiarity with commercial breaks. You can show any inoffensive sitcom5 to demonstrate that these breaks are often signaled by cliffhangers, which are the same sort of fortune-changes (albeit less earth-shaking) that divide up Acts. The functions of a scene are, perhaps, clearer to students. Scenes are most often organized by location, and a new scene signals a change in both time and space. Mention to students that one-act plays often end up also being one-scene plays, and help them speculate on why. Shakespeare could have written his plays as 20+ scene one-act plays, but what would have been the effect? The scenes would become jumbled and disorganized in the audience’s mind. Have them compare and contrast the reasons a playwright would narrow the number of acts down to one—to emphasize a single “fortune” situation—with the reasons a playwright would narrow the number of scenes also down to one—to emphasize a single spatial or temporal situation. The key idea is that one great way to indicate a static “fortune” situation is with other static elements. As a bit of literary-historical background for “Not I,” Irish playwright Samuel Beckett’s other plays become great examples for talking about how acts, no matter how abstract, still deal with fortune. His staging of Happy Days (draw up photos on a Google search for the class) is simplistic: the protagonist, a woman, is partially buried in a mound of sand. What changes between the two acts are how deeply she’s buried. In the first act she’s buried to her waist, and in the second, though her optimistic attitude remains eerily similar, she’s buried to her neck. In Beckett’s first play, Waiting For Godot, a mysterious figure does not arrive in the first act and, unlike a well-made play, doesn’t arrive in the second act either. What conclusions do you draw? That Godot will never arrive; that they have been waiting for a long, long time; that they will keep waiting despite evidence that Godot won’t show up. Beckett subverts the tradition of the act as “change in fortune” by making the change in fortune the characters’ unchanging fortune.
5 For those who aren’t genre purists, I’ve included the “Chinese Restaurant” episode of Seinfeld as a possible touchstone text – taking place with a few characters in one setting, it’s about as close to a one-act play as television gets. Anderson 6
Even though it may thoroughly weird students out, I think “Not I” is a very important one-act play—specifically, a dramatic monologue—to show students at least in part (the black-and-white Billie Whitelaw version available on YouTube), because it shows that the shorter the play, the fewer the scenes and characters, the narrower the playing field; the less important plot structure is. “Not I” consists of a single mouth on stage speaking nonstop for between ten and twenty minutes, and is said to be one of the most challenging roles for an actress to play. Emphasize that it could not have worked as a two-hour play; audiences would have gotten sick of it and zoned out, possibly even left the theater. Examining beat in the context of both “Not I”6 (which no one, least of all high school students, should be expected to ‘understand’) and the far more accessible “I Can’t Think of It Right Now” helps to explain its significance to writing one-act plays. As Letwine, Stockdale and Stockdale define it, “beat means the smallest unit of a character’s intention with a beginning, middle and end” (18). Beats are new objectives triggered by changes of fortune—for example, if you’re late for a meeting and you’ve just realized that you can’t find your keys, this is a change in fortune that, dramatically, would mark the beginning of a new beat. Beats usually don’t replace one another; instead, they overlap, and can best be described as the objective of the moment. (If it’s possible to have a play with only one act and one scene, is it possible to have a play with only one beat?) Modeling: Beats in “Not I” Look at the first page of “Not I” on an overhead and think aloud—if you dare!—to determine where you might put an asterisk (*). I would say something like the following: “Because this person is talking nonstop and is just a mouth, I’m going to assume that this is just a jumbled bunch of thoughts, or a stream-of-consciousness. We’re inside this character’s mind. So what might it mean when she says ‘what?’ as if she’s being spoken to? In the second line, she says, ‘what?..girl?’ as if she just remembered that she’s a girl. The fact or the memory of being a girl just ‘hit’ her. [Asterisk] She then forgets or decides not to discuss what this ‘godforsaken hole’ is, so when she says ‘no matter’ her goals change. [Asterisk] The same memory thing as with ‘girl’ is true when she remembers what her actual age is several lines down—‘what?..seventy?.. good God!’— which would actually be kind of funny in a normal situation. She had the misfortune of not remembering her age correctly, so that’s a new beat. [Asterisk].” I would stop before going too far with “Not I.” Ask students what it would be like if these beats weren’t there: “mouth” would be able to tell her story unchallenged. The beats create tiny conflicts and, therefore, interest. Remind students that the beats in “Not I” come a lot more quickly than they would in a play that’s paced between two characters in the ‘real world.’ Returning to “I Can’t Think Of It Right Now,” read through and see if students notice where the first beat is. After “Not I,” this play will be crystal-clear; the first instance of the title five lines in represents the moment that Marsha has the bad luck of being unable to remember the movie, and the goal shifts from describing her son to remembering the name of the film.
6 It is important to note that, while “Not I” is hopefully a stimulating text, it is not technically a “touchstone text” in that students will be drawing conclusions about the genre from it. “Not I” is an extreme example of several common elements in one-act plays: few characters, simple stage design, and singular conflict. Unlike some teachers, I do believe a play written by a student in Beckett mode has the potential to be quite fascinating. Anderson 7
In Class With Partners: Identifying Beats Have students look through their copies of “I Can’t Think of It Right Now” and add a star to the places where they think there’s been a new beat introduced. It isn’t an exact science, but since the major changes in fortune in the play are memory-failures, this should provide a structure to what might have seemed linear or chaotic at first. Homework: Locating Beats Circle beat and finally tell students that they will be eventually writing a one-act play, so they should be thinking about how beats work in television, movies and even conversations amongst friends. Over the next few days they should write a paragraph on where they see beats being employed to engage the audience. If they’re stuck, tell them to YouTube Monty Python dialogue, because a lot of their humor (like Zagone’s) comes from shifting beats when the audience doesn’t anticipate it. I have always thought it would be fun to give students (I am a teaching neophyte, so resources and good taste willing) tape recorders to surreptitiously record conversations they, their friends and their family have for structural analysis. Students should share their findings in a class discussion, and you should continue to point out “beats” throughout the unit. Just say “beat” whenever a student forgets what he or she was going to say, misunderstands another student, or comes into contact with information that presents an obstacle.
IV. Building With Archetypes Letwine, Stockdale and Stockdale provide a plot model that will probably be more useful for students in writing than Freytag’s. They break plots down into the following parts: Leading Character, Inciting Incident (sometimes before the beginning!), Objective (through-line vs. beat), Obstacles (Internal and External), Crisis, Climax, and Resolution. I share the belief that plays begin (and often end) with characters rather than events. Plot structure is perhaps overemphasized in creative writing units, and because of this I suggest using character as the guiding force in students’ plays. Kline argues that as you sculpt characters, the characters will eventually “begin to tell you what your play is to contain. They will want to do some things and refuse to do others. You must let them have their way, or you will only end by ruining your play” (86). Having a leading character that is interesting, idiosyncratic (distinctive) and has strong desires—a character that we like watching but can also relate to—is foundational to a good play. Ask how many students brainstormed for homework, and of those how many students thought about plot events versus character traits. If the audience doesn’t care about a character, than the plot—no matter how extravagant—will not be interesting. Interesting characters make interesting plots; interesting plots do not make interesting characters. Compare and contrast Yasmina Reza’s “Art,” which is essentially just three guys arguing about a painting that is almost perfectly flat white, with the film of Battlefield Earth: the former has enough characterization to be interesting despite very bare plot, and the latter’s complex plot can’t save it from its flat, uninteresting characters. Show students clips7 to drive the point home. You can even locate a segment of Battlefield Earth’s screenplay and ask students to revise it for character in groups. Write the word archetype on the board. Whichever student is the “dictionary
7 My continual emphasis on clips is based on the idea that the performance of a one-act play is its final realization. If students see how something plays out on the screen, Anderson 8 person” should look up the word and read the definition aloud. You’ll get something along the lines of, “the original pattern or model of which all things of the same type are representations or copies” (Merriam-Webster). Brainstorm some archetypes and list the characteristics of those archetypes. “Sk8r”; “professor”; “lawyer”; “nerd”—there are plenty to chose from. You can use random photos from Google to motivate them. See who gets the most specific with their characteristics—note that these will be the funniest to students. “Professor”: “always pointing his pipe at people without ever smoking it.” Whether Zagone consciously used archetypes is not clear, but in the performance archetypes will probably emerge. Have students look though “Think” for evidence of what types of characters Marsha and John are. When Marsha says, “I gotta find this out or I’m getting a divorce,” we know that she’s not serious. John makes deliberately irritating comments like, “Once I remember my movie, I’ll think about your movie.” They’re an archetypal young, married couple: happy enough to constantly make tiny jokes all the time without taking any of them too seriously. George’s characters are more clearly built out of archetypes, especially from the “Monologue Notes” at the beginning of the play. Students probably know exactly what George means when she says “Rennie is perpetually panicked and jumpy; it’s as if there’s nothing holding her down to the floor. She laughs a lot to disguise her fear” (5). Challenge students to come up with names for Rennie’s archetype. It will be difficult; archetypes don’t always have names. If students have seen Napoleon Dynamite, there’s no real name for that particular character type, but he’s weirdly familiar, and, crucially, we like how weirdly familiar he is. It doesn’t make watching him less interesting, it makes him more interesting. I had a friend once tell me, “of all my friends, you’re the most likely not to be real,” which I took as a compliment. A great way to think of archetypes is to think of a friend or person from your past with a really distinct personality and imagine that there are more of him/her out there somewhere. But the character cannot just be a friend (especially not someone in the class): they need to be a caricature, whose quirks and tendencies are exaggerated for effect. Since the character’s idiosyncrasies will eventually become the most interesting part, practice as a class how to exaggerate details. “She likes to read” becomes “she never looks up from her book but is somehow able to dance around people and hold conversations without looking.” “He carries a comb around with him” becomes “he carries a comb, tiny mirror and single-serving bottle of hair gel, and makes himself late to every class going to the bathroom to comb his hair.” “She’s always wearing high-heels” becomes “she has so much trouble standing straight that she grabs walls and people’s arms and just sort of swings from one to the next.” In Small Groups: Slideshow Quotations You may notice in discussion an emphasis on the physicality of these characters dominates how we talk about them. This is a natural part of creating archetypal characters. Kline declares that, “the playwright must visualize his characters physically and must sense that character is partly determined by physical nature” (87). The following exercise is an adaptation of one of Kline’s. Using archetypes to figure out what a character is probably saying, and writing speech that enhances character, is an important skill in playwriting. The New Yorker caption contest provides a good context for this (there is even a stimulating board game that has its players come up with their own captions on the fly!) and you can also look at Anderson 9 more absurdist examples like the online cartoon Married To the Sea, which recontextualizes the characters in old-fashioned drawings with dialogue. Married to the Sea (usually) provides a good example of the balance between an audience’s expectations of and audience surprise at character behavior (Kline 84). Kline suggests using artwork such as a painting or a sculpture and acting out the character; I’d recommend assembling as broad a range of images as possible (photos, paintings, drawings, movie stills) from numerous Google image-searches8 into a slideshow. Have students split into groups of three or four and confer, for each slide, on a single caption (quote) for the character. Briefly discuss which seem the most accurate: some of these will be hilarious, some will be idiosyncratic, and many will jump to conclusions. Those that jump to conclusions are to be encouraged. Homework: Character Picture and Caption Students brainstorm more archetypes; once they get one they’re attached to they should move from single characteristics to a paragraph about the character. The homework is to draw or locate a photo (from a magazine, online, etc) that matches their character. Locating an image will help students visualize and flesh out their character. If the character is mentally fleshed out but a student doesn’t want to draw, they can have a friend draw it. Part two of the assignment is to write a 100-200 word caption introducing the character9. Students are to only include details that they themselves would find interesting – date and location of birth in particular are only compelling in some cases. Humor, of course, is a great motivating force in the classroom, but if it’s an end in itself kids might get lazy about their characters. “He likes purple bananas,” etc. Remind students that their characters will want to be taken seriously. The beginning of the next class should be a “gallery viewing” of the character- pictures and captions around the room, and a class discussion of comments.
V. Character Juxtaposition With students well at work developing their own characters, introduce the third “touchstone text”: Edward Albee’s “The Zoo Story.” This play fares best when read in a single sitting; if it is within students’ abilities, assign the reading overnight or require the whole play be read by one particular day. Students will hopefully have a good idea of how plays come alive on stage from the Zagone and George touchstones, and “The Zoo Story” will familiarize them with the text itself. Challenge them with a 10-minute speculative writing response at the beginning of class: “How did Edward Albee think of the characters, and how did he turn this into dialogue?” “Did you know that humans misunderstand or mishear one another sixty-five percent of the time?” “Wow! That’s an amazing number! Sixty percent of the time?” This exchange between my father and I illustrates the main source of dialogue between characters. One of students’ biggest problems in writing dialogue is that their characters tend to perfectly understand each other, agree with each other, and go off to “do” something related to the plot. Ask students to take out their “beat” observations and review the main sources of beats in the media and everyday life—many of them involve misunderstanding.
8 See Appendix B for a few that I quickly assembled by simply typing generic adjectives into Google. 9 See Appendix C for my example. Anderson 10
In Class With Partners: Park Bench Skit The purpose of this exercise is for students to practice writing dialogue before starting straight in on their plays. Students will be paired randomly to write a five-minute skit10. The scenario (write this on the board): “The character you chose for your caption and the character your partner chose are sitting on a park bench. Briefly describe your characters’ physical appearances. Write out whatever dialogue occurs between you. You will have one day to write. When you perform it tomorrow, everyone will play his or her PARTNER’s character.” Since there isn’t a whole lot of time to write this dialogue, the emphasis must be on speed, which will hopefully help students visualize the real-time component of dialogue. Suggest reading through the first page of dialogue after it’s written to get a sense of how pages translate into time (it will be wildly different from student to student depending on factors such as spacing, handwriting and depth of stage directions). If your class sizes are sufficiently small (sixteen or fewer) and you are strict about the five-minute limit, you may be able to get through this with one period of writing and one day of performance; otherwise, performances will probably take two days. After the performance, ask students to reflect on whether his or her partner accurately portrayed the character, that is, whether the character is an accessible “type.” Homework: Through-Line Write about the following: what does your character want, and what are some possible significant obstacles (difficult to overcome, but not impossible) a not-so-benevolent God might put in his or her way? The obstacle does not have to be original (how many plays have been simple tales of infidelity, death or debts?); the characters will make the obstacles original. The following day, introduce the ideas of economy to them—if they recognize the word, their definition may strictly involve money. Wilde believes that, along with unity, economy is the definitive element of a one-act play. In his words, “desiring an effect, what are the least means with which you can produce it?” (38). The logic is simply that, the narrower the field of vision, the easier it is to pay attention to individual elements. There are a few simple exercises you can use to demonstrate this principle. Bring up a picture of Waldo and ask students to list observations about him. At the end, you can pick any page from a Where’s Waldo book to show how much harder it would be to notice anything about him with everyone else there. If Where’s Waldo were a play, it would be impossible to know what was happening and why. The idea of economy is that everything is in the play for a reason. How does economy translate to character? (Sample answers: “There are only two or three characters” or “There isn’t a messenger who comes on stage for a second and then leaves”). What about setting? If you’re ambitious you can introduce the idea of Brechtian theater, which was so simplistic in its sets that audiences never forgot they were in a theater. This is perhaps the element of the one-act play that students will be most likely to have picked up on as generalized from the three touchstone texts: of particular note is that “The Most Massive Woman Wins” is located entirely in the waiting room of a
10 It is worth noting that, while Creative Dramatics remains an indispensable set of activities in enlivening drama in the classroom (especially in studying older plays like Shakespeare and Sophocles), I have found that its focus on the ephemeral qualities of theater—that all theater always takes place in a single moment in time—poses a challenge to the playwright whose job is to make those moments permanent. In other words, that they are in the middle of developing characters that will be even more important later on should bear repeated emphasis. Anderson 11 liposuction clinic. This narrow vision may prevent the audience from seeing the “whole” story. What about props? You can mention Chekhov’s Gun—if a gun is introduced early in the play, it will go off before the end, and the same is true of other objects. Jerry’s knife in “The Zoo Story” is an excellent variation on Chekhov’s Gun, while Peter’s book is used symbolically to represent his character. Harder to understand, perhaps, is economy of conflict: because the play is shorter, small misfortunes like dropping a plate feel way more significant. “I Can’t Think of It Right Now” makes simple forgetfulness a national emergency. Economy of conflict explains why beats are particularly important in one-act plays. Have students vote on which beat in the skits presented was the most memorable and effective. You can also introduce the notion of subtext here. Students should write this down and circle it: your characters cannot say everything that they are thinking and feeling. This will guide their editing process. Subtext is what characters mean by what they say. It’s very complex: Kline has a clever subtext exercise that involves each character filling out the following form: I feel ______about myself I feel ______about you I feel that you feel ______about me I feel that you feel ______about yourself. I feel that you perceive that I feel ______about myself. I feel that you perceive that I feel ______about you. (89) Use this model to have students briefly talk to their “Park Bench” partners about whether there was any subtext involved. Kline also suggests that introducing the idea of supertext, or the general nature of the characters, will help students see that the text or dialogue in a play is only a “cross section” of reality. Students should return to their list of their character’s goal and possible obstacles that their characters face. They should make a Pro-and-Con chart for each of their possible conflicts, and think about which is most conducive to economic treatment. Would it require elaborate changes of scenery? Would it require audiences to read a character’s mind? Would it require a huge supporting cast?
VI. The “Stage Direction Spectrum” Make students aware that, while they the playwrights must determine exactly what characters say, they have many choices concerning how to determine what their characters should do. Set this up as a visual spectrum from minimalist stage directions to “maximalist” stage directions. A strong example of minimalist stage directions are Shakespeare’s plays, with which students will probably be familiar. These rarely give sentences longer than a few words (a noise within; he strikes him) and most of the directions are simply entrances and exits. In fact, even these were more than Shakespeare usually specified. After his scripts were approved by the Master of Revels, the company themselves gained ownership and wrote in the necessary stage directions (Cummings). This is why Shakespeare’s dialogue is full of implicit stage directions (“see, it stalks away”) and also why performances of Shakespeare’s plays vary wildly. Arguably, minimalist stage directions account for the number of contemporary filmic adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays. Modern drama—inform students that “modern” is actually a relatively antiquated time bracket, between 70 and 120 years ago—brought as much emphasis to the study and Anderson 12 reading of plays as to the performance. Stage directions began to read like novels. As just one example, Irish playwright Sean O’Casey pads out characters’ entrances with physical descriptions and even hypothetical scenarios: He opens [the door], and Joxer, followed by Mrs Madigan, enters. Mrs Madigan is a strong, dapper little woman of about forty-five; h er face is almost always a widespread smile of complacency. She is a woman who, in manner at least, can mourn with them that mourn, and rejoice with them that do rejoice. When she is feeling comfortable, she is inclined to be reminiscent; when others say anything, or following a statement made by herself, she has a habit of putting her head a little to one side, and nodding it rapidly several times in succession, like a bird pecking at a hard berry. Indeed, she has a good deal of the bird in her, but the bird instinct is by no means a melodious one. She is ignorant, vulgar and forward, but her heart is generous withal. For instance, she would help a neighbor’s sick child; she would probably kill the child, but her intention would be to cure it; she would be more at home helping a drayman to lift a fallen horse. She is dressed in a rather soiled grey dress and a vivid purple blouse; in her hair is a huge comb, ornamented with huge colored beads. She enters with a gliding step, beaming smile and nodding head. Boyle receives them effusively. (O’Casey 46-47; emphasis mine) A student should read this aloud (with or without emphasis). The first test of reading comprehension would be: did Mrs. Madigan kill a child? The answer, of course, is no. Remind students that not much is actually happening during these stage directions; if it were a Shakespeare play, it would simply say “Enter JOXER and MRS MADIGAN.” Why does O’Casey include this hypothetical (dictionary person should define hypothetical) scenario? Some students might say that O’Casey is trying to help out the actor. A more cynical student would say that O’Casey is trying to have as much control over the production as possible. It’s worth spending some class time listing the pros and cons of minimalist and maximalist stage directions. Which would be more fun to direct? It’s worth mentioning that the screenwriting tradition generally favors extremely copious, literal, precise but basically pragmatic language, which might be drawn as a third point on a triangle11. Even within screenwriting, however, there are writers who direct their own films and use liberal language because they have a complete vision; the first page of Orson Wells’ Citizen Kane script alone is more like a novel than most screenplays. (“The castle dominates itself” bears particular emphasis.) Review touchstone texts and have students volunteer to explain the stage direction style of each and write an X inside a triangle on the board that represents the spectrum. Interestingly, the text that may be closest to “pragmatic maximalist” is the play with the least specific “meaning”: “Not I.” Beckett had an extremely specific vision of what he wanted to accomplish, and believed that some “Not I” was not a play that could be interpreted very widely. In Class With Partners: Stage Directions Have students work with their “Park Bench” partners once again to insert stage directions with sticky notes. Assign them randomly to different parts of the spectrum. If they have been assigned minimalist stage directions, they should work on paring down the stage directions they already had and making them implicit in their dialogue. (i.e., “why are you making that face at me?”)
11 See Appendix D for a visual approximation of the “Stage Direction Spectrum” Anderson 13
Students will be restless if they don’t get some kind of a verdict on the stage- direction question before they leave class. Tell students that stage-direction style is their choice, however, dialogue is the most important text in a play. Though O’Casey’s hypothetical scenario is interesting for actors and scholars, there’s no way it can be adequately conveyed in a performance. Hypothetical scenarios like Mrs. Madigan’s are best used as disposable exercises to test the strength of a character and enliven dialogue. Homework: Hypothetical Scenario Maintain a running list under the words “Your character…” throughout the day (the more the better), starting with “has to take care of a sick child for the weekend,” from Sean O’Casey. Students to brainstorm a handful of new scenarios. Examples: “is lost in Times Square with no money”; “has just been accepted into the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry”; “has been abducted by aliens.” Obviously, few of these will be contextually appropriate, and that’s part of the point. Students will choose a character from their play and write at least one paragraph describing the scenario and their character’s reaction. How is it different from what the student’s own reaction would be?
VII. Locating and Performing Models Allow students to find their own examples of one-act plays after they’ve done a significant amount of prewriting. This will help them recognize the genre and empower them to add to it. “Having students search for model texts not only ensures that our choice of genre will indeed be authentic,” says Bomer, “but it also demonstrates that [real-world] authenticity” (124). Split students into groups of two or three—here, they will probably get the most out of working with friends, though remind them that it may be easier to find plays if there’s someone of the opposite gender on the team—to collaboratively locate and read a one-act play. They do not need to memorize lines, and they will perform for only three minutes before stopping (this doubles as a lesson on hooks). Internet access, or at least a trip to the local library, is a must for this assignment. Ask students beforehand how they hope to find plays. Google is fine12—but how will they know if they’re being lied to? How will they know if it’s not a one-act play? Draw a line on the board and label it “DEFINITELY IS,” “PROBABLY IS,” “MIGHT BE,” “PROBABLY ISN’T,” and “DEFINITELY ISN’T.” There are relatively few definite qualifiers here—if it says “Act One,” then it isn’t a one-act play. If it uses the word “says,” (i.e., “Clarissa says, ‘go to bed’”) then it isn’t a one-act play. Students may draw conclusions from the models about what must be in a one-act play, i.e., “character’s names in all capitals,” but plays have slightly varying formatting rules—the best way to know that it’s professional is that its formatting is consistent. Students should spend a full day looking for possibilities and deciding by consensus which possibility they want, and another day reading through it with their partners/groups. Remind students that they will need to determine the blocking for the
12 “10 Minute Plays” has consistently been my favorite source in compiling this genre study (it even allows you to sort by number of actors of each gender). However, I adamantly believe that if you tell every student which site they should go to, very few students will go anywhere else and, therefore, find unusual or surprising plays. Being able to navigate the internet is a fundamental literacy skill for students; therefore, I recommend only assisting the students who are having trouble and mostly encouraging a laissez-faire locating process. Anderson 14 beginning of the play, that is, who is standing or sitting where at what time. Clearly define which part of the room is to be a stage and where the audience is going to be. Again (see minimalist stage directions) just because a playwright doesn’t say exactly where every character should stand, it doesn’t mean that the characters are totally stationary for the whole play. Homework: Performance Decisions Write about the character you’re playing tomorrow in your journal. How do you read your character? What decisions is the playwright demanding that you make about your character? What’s your character’s body language like? What are your character’s relationships with other characters? In Class With Small Groups: Performance Since groups are slightly larger on average than they were for the Park Bench Skit, it may be more likely that students can finish their performances in a single period. Although it’s not fully necessary that the Park Bench Skit be exactly five minutes, here I encourage you to crack down after three minutes. Encourage students not to rush; we’re not trying to get through as much as possible, only see how plays tend to initiate themselves. Ask students in the audience to take good notes on each performance and make connections between similar beginnings for discussion later. What might be the best way for them to introduce their own through- line in the first three minutes? Homework: Literary Analysis Essay (optional) If you think that it would be helpful for students to examine the construction of the plays analytically, immediately before full-blown writing might be a good time to assign a “quickie” analytical essay on one of the text that they’ve read so far. I recommend making economy the basis of the prompt, since every one-act play has some sort of economical element.13
VIII. Processual Editing It’s probably best to keep the possibility of a performance with classmates as actors a secret, lest the students write their characters around classmates. For the time being, the written play is an end in and of itself.14 Give students about a week to write independently in and out of class (if you can attain a computer lab, their work will be easier to transfer, read and edit). Schedule one-on-one conferences throughout the week (let students pick a date and time based on a lottery), and ask students to email you their progress the night before and, if they wish, a description of the challenges they’re facing and the questions they’ll have. Collecting a set of “completed” drafts all at once throws a wrench into the continual process of writing and, worse yet, encourages students to think of editing as “polishing” or “proofreading” rather than demanding major structural rethinking. As a teacher, it’s worth the versatility to assess students’ progress at different points. Kline makes an effective argument against the idea that genres have a strict set of “rules”: Choose any general statement you like about plays, and you will find some good play that has been written in defiance of it. Plot, character, conflict, theme, dialogue, unity of action, scenery – all are considered
13 See Appendix E for a handout. 14 The local theater’s competition in my seventh grade, however, was an excellent incentive; the extent to which students will, as playwrights, have to cede control over the production is the extent to which they will think about accessibility and audience. Anderson 15
more or less naturally to be ingredients of good drama, and all have been effectively done without. (14) Elsewhere, Kline asserts that “it is impossible to suggest any rules for determining when a character is […] out of focus” (87). The “you have to know the rules before you can break them” mindset is helpful, but if taken too far it precludes the pursuit of common goals in a diverse and interactive classroom—students are working to replicate a model rather than build from it. Creative writing involves so much choice—how can educators hope both to guide students and liberate them from formulaic storytelling? The only way that we can resolve this tension is by shifting peer review from a singular “editing moment” to a constant conversation that involves as many different voices as possible. Reserve the first fifteen minutes of every class for a one-on-one peer check-in. Students will get the most out of this if partnerships are completely randomized every day; it will make each of them aware of the diversity of audiences, and reveal if they are being too obtuse, juvenile, abstract, clichéd, esoteric, etc. The central questions will always be “why?” and “so what?” However, it helps to give students a daily focus (order doesn’t necessarily matter; select/combine at your discretion): CHARACTER: Are characters both believable and surprising? Do they change over the course of the play? CONFLICT: Does the character clearly have goal(s) and obstacle(s) to overcome? Is the action and dialogue unified around changes in fortune? THEME: Does the action apply to the lives of the audience? ECONOMY: Are any characters, scene changes, exchanges or plot events unnecessary? BEGINNING: Does the play “hook” the audience? Does the audience recognize the situation? RESOLUTION: Does it have to end the way that it does? How will the audience feel at the end of the play? SCENE: Is the scene a sufficiently limited space? Is it appropriate to the conflict? The attached peer review sheet15 can act as a guide for students’ peer reviews. They should write alone for five minutes at the beginning of class with an emphasis on positive and negative examples from their current draft. The idea is not that students need to answer yes to every question; rather, the idea is that students will have considered each of these elements in the context of their goals for the play, even if they are deliberately undeveloped. They will then spend five minutes talking to their assigned peer about their own piece (from what they just wrote) and five minutes talking about the peer’s piece. They should write down their partner’s questions and advice for their play. Their task for that day is to respond to each of the pieces of advice, both on the peer review sheet and in their plays themselves. Again, this will be most successful if it’s not seen as “classwork.” Students should always have access to the play to work on during study halls and during evenings. Personally, I believe Gmail accounts make excellent “removable hard drives” to do work from any computer that happens to be around. One week of class time is not enough to complete the assignment well.
15 Appendix F. Anderson 16
IX. Networking and Publication At the end of the processual week, hand out My Top Ten Most Significant Changes/Edits16 and tell them that it is due with the final copy. Tell them that changes/edits can be anything from “eliminating such-and-such character to “taking out the last word in the line, ‘I hate you!’” These are ranked based on how important they are to the final play. Establish a social networking site such at a message board (Ning) or a wiki (PBworks) and email students the URL. Assign students to come up with a completed draft over the weekend and post it to the site by Sunday evening. The following week in class will be spent reading one another’s drafts and commenting on the message board. If multiple classes are involved in the same unit, this is a great opportunity to open the classroom’s insular walls to a much broader audience. Students must read and comment on five students’ plays over the next five days, and at least one that they comment on from Tuesday onward must be a play that hasn’t been commented on yet. (If even this doesn’t work out, you may have to resort to assigning students on Friday). Ask students to write at least 300 words per post, moving beyond “I liked…” and “I disliked…” toward more accurate words: “I was confused by…” or “I wasn’t surprised when...” They should also list three to five questions. These can be basic questions about the character (“why did John say that to Mary?”) or can be tactful advice (“could the play end right after the bug dies?”). Submitting plays to playwriting competitions (they are easy to locate online) is a popular way to define “publication” for students, as is a class anthology. However, students will feel most in touch with the amount of interpretation and wiggle-room between text and performance if their plays are directed and performed by others. Because of the sheer amount of material, performing every student’s play individually with the class is not a realistic option—so long as you don’t ambitiously decide to spread the play performances throughout the rest of the year! If a larger competition is not possible, see if you can arrange a micro-competition. If your school has an active drama department, they might be interested in the possibility of judging the plays for a student-written one-act play night. Students can also vote on their favorite one-act plays written in other classes and arrange to perform them—this can start as a class discussion and move into an official nomination process. It can be as elaborate as you’d like—the more so, the better! If students are “hooked,” then subsequent years could balloon into a school-wide competition.
16 Appendix G. Anderson 17
Touchstone Texts Albee, Edward. “The Zoo Story.” Southeast Missouri State University Department of English. Web. 13 November 2010.
Other Works Cited Atwell, Nancie. In the Middle: New Understandings About Writing, Reading and Learning. 2nd ed. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1998. Bomer, Randy. Time For Meaning: Crafting Literate Lives in Middle & High School. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1995. Cooper, Charles R. “What We Know about Genres, and How It Can Help Us Assign and Evaluate Writing” in Cooper, Charles R. and Lee Odell, eds. Evaluating Writing: The Role of Teachers’ Knowledge about Text, Learning and Culture. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1999. Cummings, Michael J. “How Shakespeare Prepared Manuscripts.” Cummings Study Guides. 2003. Web. 13 November 2010.
Supplementary Resources Lesson Plans for One-Act Plays
Appendices
A. Adaptation of Freytag’s Diagram B. Possible Slideshow Images C. Sample Character Picture and Caption D. The Stage-Direction Spectrum Visual E. Handout: Literary Analysis Assignment F. Handout: Peer Review Sheet G. Handout: My Top Ten Most Significant Changes/Edits H. Handout: Write Your Own One Act Play Anderson 19
A. Adaptation of Freytag’s Diagram
Source: http://elireader.blogspot.com/2010/06/freytag-revisited.html Anderson 20
B. Possible Slideshow Images
Anderson 21
C. Sample Character Picture and Caption
This is LIAM DOMMAGE
Liam emigrated from France to New York City when he was seven years old. He has spent his life developing machines to do humans’ work. His parents worked in the same meat-packing factory and died in the same accident when he was nine. He was in the lobby of the factory waiting after school, as he did every day, when he was informed by the manager of the accident. Though he lived in an orphanage growing up, he studied hard and went to school for Engineering, making a fortune at a young age developing technology to pack meat. This put thousands out of work. Pictured above, Mr. Dommage is representing himself during a lawsuit from the factory workers’ union of New York (his finger represents a meathook). He is currently developing a computer that will represent him in court. Anderson 22
D. The Stage-Direction Spectrum Visual
MAXIMALIST (PRAGMATIC) Abrupt medium close -up of Alvy Singer doing a comedy monologue. He is wearing a crumbled sports jacket and tieless shirt; the background is stark.
MINIMALIST MAXIMALIST (ARTISTIC) [Enter HORATIO.] …but her heart is generous withal. For instance, she would help a neighbor’s sick child; she would probably kill the child, but her intention would be to cure it… Anderson 23
E. Writing Assignment: LITERARY ANALYSIS ESSAY Name ______Due Date ______
Topic Select a one-act play that you have read—either on your own, with the entire class, or with your performance group.
Purpose Explain how the playwright uses economy in one or more aspects of the play (character, setting, etc.) to achieve a certain effect or make a certain point.
Audience You and your family are going to see this play next week, and you’re concerned that they will think it is “pointless” or “unrealistic.” You need something you will be able to read aloud to them while the play is fresh in their minds. In other words, you can “point” to certain pieces of dialogue assuming that your family members will remember the characters saying that without necessarily having thought about why.
Length and Format About 500 words—this is a short assignment, and should be modeled after a NYS Regents Exam essay—typed, double spaced, Times New Roman size 12.
Requirements The following are conventionally employed and/or seen in literary analysis:
T.A.G. (Title, Author, Genre) Proper MLA citations. Google it. Indented (longer) quotes should imitate the format of the play itself as closely as possible. Context: The purpose of your writing; why the play is important and why your writing is important. A thesis statement that summarizes your essay’s meaning. It should probably appear in the first paragraph. You want readers to know where you’re going, but still want to read your essay; therefore, do not a) simply restate the question or b) answer the question too fully. You need to strike a balance. It often helps to start a thesis statement with “although,” “despite,” etc. to acknowledge the complexity of the issue. Unity around your thesis statement. In other words, everything you say connects to your thesis statement and, after rereading your paper, your thesis statement still makes sense. All specific terms defined! You will need to explain, in your own words, what economy means to you. Don’t use a dictionary unless there’s something about the dictionary definition that makes particular sense to you. Both opinions and textual evidence for every claim you make. One without the other causes problems—either you’re just making bland observations or you’re making personal judgments that won’t convince anyone. A logical flow of ideas. Paragraphs build upon each other. Employ good transitions, yes, but more importantly move from more obvious and Anderson 24
broad points to more detailed, specific ones. If someone scrambled the order of paragraphs, your essay wouldn’t make its point as well. It helps to plan with a cluster, and see which points will be more complex. Quotations from reviews of other productions of your play (or other literary analysis of the play itself, if you can find it!), so long as they relate to your point—you can agree or disagree with them. It’s best to use these quotations if they’re either unique or particularly well-worded. A conclusion that is interesting and satisfies you. Don’t restate the introduction or your thesis. Talk about why the ground you’ve covered matters, or what someone else could write about.
Grading In addition to the above checklist, your grade will be derived from a check-plus, check, or check-minus in each of the following areas: Meaning: Is there a thesis statement, and is it the consistent goal of the paper to explicate it? Development: Are the points backed by sufficient evidence? Has the writer interpreted the evidence sufficiently? Organization: Are unrelated points kept separate from one another? Does the order in which points are introduced matter? Language: Do sentences suggest a coherent understanding of the play? Are interpretations vivid? Does the writer maintain an accessible and lively voice? Conventions: Is the paper proofread for grammar, spelling, mechanics, complete sentences, etc.? Do all citations follow MLA guidelines?
Rewrite I strongly encourage you to put your best effort into the first copy that you hand in. However, if you are unsatisfied with your grade, I will allow one rewrite before the end of the semester. Rewrites will be given a grade of 1-5. A top grade will earn you half the lost points back (i.e, an 80 becomes a 90); if you turn in exactly the same paper twice, your grade will ultimately go down as much (an 80 becomes a 70). Anderson 25
F. PEER REVIEW SHEET – MONDAY
YOUR NAME ______
YOUR PARTNER’S NAME ______
CHARACTER: Are characters both believable and surprising? Do they change over the course of the play? Step 1: YOUR response, in reference to good, bad and ambiguous parts (sections, quotations, scenes, etc.) of your play so far.
Step 2: YOUR notes on YOUR Step 3: YOUR response to each part of PARTNER’S advice and questions. your partner’s advice. (What you will do about it) Anderson 26
G. MY TOP TEN MOST SIGNIFICANT CHANGES/EDITS
10)
9)
8)
7)
6)
5)
4)
3)
2)
1) Anderson 27
H. WRITE YOUR OWN ONE-ACT PLAY Characteristics A one-act play is a piece of writing that is intended to be performed without intermission or elaborate scene changes. Because it is a play, dialogue does not have quotation marks and is set adjacent to a character’s name without the word “says,” or anything that’s synonymous with “says.” Characters’ actions are easy to distinguish from the dialogue on the page. Characters’ thoughts and feelings are not written into the play except as they come through in dialogue.
Audience Your audience is anyone that would attend a one-act play by a young playwright, which includes quite a few different types of people: parents, teachers, classmates, quite a few complete strangers. They all want to see your play, and they also want to want to see it. In other words, your task is to make them glad (if not happy) that they witnessed your play.
Format Your play must be typed, with a heading on every page that includes your name, the name of the play, and page number. Use either “I Can’t Think of It Right Now,” one of the class’ other touchstone texts, or your group’s model and imitate its format as closely as you can. This means paying attention to capitalization, italics, indentation, punctuation and so on. Consistency of format is more important than exactly which format you choose. (For example, you will lose points if characters’ names are capitalized in some places and not in others).
A few important terms: SL (Stage Left) – Your left when you are standing on stage SR: (Stage Right) – Your right when you are standing on stage DS: (Downstage) – Toward the audience. US: (Upstage) – Toward the back of the stage. (These can be combined, i.e., USL)
Length Your one-act play should be between 10 and 30 minutes in performance. You can approximate number of minutes with number of pages (using Times New Roman size 12 and “I Can’t Think of It Right Now”’s formatting). However, depending on how much your actors tend to be saying at one time and the number of stage directions, this might be skewed. I would suggest a steady read- through with an early typed draft to get an idea.
Time Frame We will be doing in-class activities and prewriting for two week, writing in the computer lab for one week and editing for one week.
Grading Five (5) Peer Review Sheets: (5 each x 5 days) 25 points Your (Apparent) Advice on Five Peers’ Sheets (constructive, interested, honest; graded holistically): 10 points Reasonable Progress and Conference With Me: 15 points Five (5) Substantive Message Board Posts: 5 points List of Top 10 Most Significant Changes and Edits: 5 points Final Draft: 40 points Anderson 28
Meaning √+ : Conflict has significance for a varied audience; events and characters’ reactions to them are complex and engaging; setting, number of characters and props are all carefully selected √ : Conflict may rely on audience’s prior knowledge or interests; events are significant, but may be easy to predict; goals, obstacles or lack of obstacles unrealistic √- : Conflict is nonsensical or superficial; events seem random; setting(s), number of characters and prop necessities are excessive or showy Development √+ : Characters create certain expectations in the audience but are also somewhat surprising; characters have clearly changed over the course of the play √ : Characters are realistic overall but occasionally may act as “mouthpieces” for the playwright, or may act in ways that they wouldn’t; whether they have changed over the course of the play is dubious √- : Characters are undifferentiated from one another and/or static Organization √+ : Good hook and introduction of characters; beats are overlapping but distinct; events well-spaced and emphasized based on importance; play follows a unified trajectory √ : Beginning may not reveal important information about characters or conflict; beats are unrealistically distinct or too overt; reason for ending the play where it does may be unclear √- : The beginning and end of the play are arbitrary; some events or conversations are tangential and unrelated while others are underemphasized; beats are cluttered or indistinct Language √+ : Characters’ speaking patterns are distinctive but understandable; the degree to which they articulate themselves √ : Characters speak clearly but similarly to one another and/or similarly to the stage directions √- : Dialogue is rushed and/or incoherent Conventions √+ : Formatting is consistent and easy to read; spelling and grammar either correct or consistently indicative of a character’s dialect; punctuation and emphasis assists reading aloud √ : Some inconsistencies in formatting; spelling and grammar errors appear unlinked to character; √- : Untyped; spelling or grammatical errors make the play difficult to read; unclear who is speaking; setting is unspecified; spelling of characters’ names change