Prompt 8: Buried Child

                Buried Child is seemingly realistic, showing a piece of everyday life for a pretty regular, albeit incredibly crazy, dysfunctional, farming family. On the outside, you’d expect it to be fairly true to life since it deals with everyday events, and horrible, but still possible, secrets. The problem with this play, however, is that through closer inspection, there are things that just don’t make since in the lifelike setting. There’s mysterious corn, for example, that none of the characters have planted. At first we think they are crops that Tilden stole from the neighbors, but at the end we hear Halie exclaim that there are all sorts of crops growing outside. This is left completely unexplained, and ambiguous. Another thing that does not seem to fit into the realism of the play is Vince’s speech about running away. He says that he was driving, but then he saw the reflections of his family members, even people he hasn’t ever seen before. Now, until this point, Vince has been a fairly normal guy, but this incident changes him drastically. He becomes like a new Dodge. Finally, there is the fact that upon Vince’s first arrival with Shelly, no one recognizes him except Halie. It leaves many questions. Why does his own father not recognize him and why is Halie the only one that does? These strange occurrences that don’t exactly fit into the illusion of realism blur the lines between the family’s insanity, and the physical world of the play. The audience is left uncertain of what was and wasn’t “real”.

Prompt 7: Noises Off

A motif that I found while reading Noises Off would definitely be sardines. Not only are there many references in the story about sardines, but the characters and the characters they play all running amok create a sense of crowdedness like a can of sardines. The appearance of sardines throughout the craziness of the play seems to enhance the action and affect the relationships.

For a tag like, I’d like to repeat one of Lloyd’s lines, “…and curtain, perhaps?” I love this line and I feel like it describes the craziness of this show. There are so many points in the script when things are going wrong when I’d literally yell at the script telling them to just bring down the curtain and go home. The fact that the tag line is a little uncertain makes it a reaction to everything that happens in the story, almost like they don’t even know what to do to end the chaos.

Prompt 6: Glass of Water

In most plays, the audience can easily determine which character the protagonist is. This is the playwright’s intention, so that the character’s goals and objectives are better understood. For plays such as Glass of Water, however, the fact that there is not a clear protagonist is also intentional. Scribe does not want the audience to focus their attention on the struggles of a single character. He wants the audience to sympathize with Abigail and Masham’s love story, but he also makes Bolingbroke equally important, for the story is motivated the most through his actions.

If I were to choose which of these three characters the protagonist is, I would have to go with Bolingbroke simply because of how much the other character’s stories depend upon his presence. The plot is driven by his ambition and the manipulation he uses to gain political power. He helps his friends along the way, but it isn’t clear whether or not this was intentional. The point is, that without Bolingbroke’s influence, Abigail and Masham’s story would be stuck and they would not have fulfilled their goals. A protagonist moves the story forward so that they can eventually attain their objectives. All three characters do this, but Abigail and Masham could not without Bolingbroke.

I honestly don’t feel that finding the protagonist is necessary in this story. Abigail and Masham’s love and Bolingbroke’s quest for power are equally important, and Scribe meant for the audience to focus on all of the characters’ desires and how they achieve them.

Prompt 5: Hornby

Hornby believed that motifs are meant to fortell and support the plot of a story. They are repeated often throughtout the text so that they are hard to miss. If an audience can pick out the motifs that are put into a play, they can gain a better understanding of the story.

1)      A motif from Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive is driving instructions. Driving instructions are repeated all throughout the play, especially between scenes. The driving lessons seem to direct Lil Bit’s memories. “You and the Reverse Gear”, for example, means that we are heading into a flashback. The use of this motif helps the audience understand the sequence of the play.

2)      The other day, I was watching my favorite Disney movie, “Sleeping Beauty” with a few of my friends. I noticed a reoccuring element in the film is dreams. When Aurora is a baby, the fairies bestow gifts upon the princess. They display these gifts with dream like visions. Later, she sings the song, “Once Upon a Dream” as she describes her meeting with Philip. Vision- like dreams are also used when Milificent puts visions of Aurora in Philip’s head. This movie is all about sleep, and when we sleep, dreams come naturally. This movie shows that they go hand in hand

Show and Tell Post.. The Nerd: by Larry Shue

For my show and tell post, I read The Nerd by Larry Shue. If any of you have read his plays before, you could have guessed that THIS WAS THE MOST HILARIOUS PLAY THAT I HAVE EVER READ. There was not one point where I was bored while reading this play, and I don’t think that I have ever laughed as much as I did at Shue’s crazy characters and situations. This play premiered at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater in April 1981, and Shue actually starred in this production. It later ran on Broadway in 1987. It was also produced overseas in 1982 by the Royal Exchange Theatre Company in Manchester, England, and later had a run on West End.  (http://nouveau.home.comcast.net/~nouveau/shue/) You can purchase a copy of the script online. http://www.amazon.com/The-Nerd-Larry-Shue/dp/0822208113

The play opens on the Birthday of Willum Cubbert, an architect living in Terra Haute, Indiana. The first act comprises of William’s birthday dinner, and his guest list makes for an interesting mix of people. First, is Willum’s on and off again girlfriend, Tansy, who tries to make the whole special and fun for him. Then there’s his best friend, Axel, who is an extremely sarcastic play critic who likes to make fun of everyone he meets. The Waldegrave family is also in attendance. Warnock Waldegrave (aka Ticky) is Willum’s meand and easily angered boss. His wife, Clelia, is a sweet, but easily stressed woman who carries dishes with her to break whenever she gets too upset. Their son, Thor is a kid as mean as his father, and spends most of the first act locking himself in either Willum’s room or the hall closet. The party seems to be going well until the arrival of Rick Steadman, the man who saved Willum’s life in Vietnam. Rick continuously ruins the evening whether by saying innapropriate things, unintentionally insulting people, or even causing physical harm. After the party is ruined, he literally moved in with Willum who doesn’t want to say anything because the man saved his life. Finally, however, after Rick causes Willum to lose his job, the architect and his best friends try to coerce Rick into leaving with their crazy, fabricated traditions. This doesn’t work, however, and Willum loses control and kicks Rick out. Willum decides to follow Tansy as she moves to Washington, and we learn that the whole ordeal was a plot set up by axel and his friend (who pretended to be the real Rick S.) to keep Willum and Tansy together.

Shue makes really brilliant Dramaturgical choices in regards to this play. The first is his choice to use crazy characters. Every person that Shue creates for this play is so over-the-top, that it is almost hard for the audience to believe that they are real. They are crazy, but they are so fun and entertaining, that the audience willingly accepts them completely. Shue over-exaggerates the small quirks that everyone has, and everyone can see a bit of themselves in these characters. If the audience did not relate to the characters, then they would not appreciate the situations created in this play as much.
A second dramaturgical choice that Shue makes is his use of slapstick comedy. This show is very physical, and a lot of the actions performed by the characters are detailed in the script. Shue knew exactly how he wanted something to be acted. This show is full of people spinning, bumping into each other, and even poking each other in the eye. Shue was very descriptive about how he wanted his vision portrayed.

Prompt 4: How I Leaned to Drive

Dr. Fletcher was right. I loved this play way more than I liked The Conduct of Life. How I Learned to Drive had a greater effect on me than the other. I could really feel with Vogel’s characters, and that is something that I had trouble doing with the characters created by Fornes. I don’t know what it is about plays like this, but I find them really interesting and thought provoking. For me, a great play will leave my mind reeling.

I actually really loved Vogel’s use of the chorus members. I did a play once that had a very similar character set up: two main characters and a “greek chorus” that take on the various filler characters that are still a part of the story. These characters weren’t important enough to the plot to need their own actor. Having a few people playing the many superfluous characters eliminates the complexity of having too many people on stage. The audience is able to focus on the characters that are really important, while the other characters can fade into the story.

Something else about this play that I found really interesting was Vogel’s use of pantomime. When I first began to read the play and the stage directions described the interaction in the car between Lil Bit and Peck, I considered that Vogel chose to make the action less appalling to general audiences. As I continued reading, however I noticed that I was starting to wonder if peck was so bad after all. I thought that if the audience had seen his pedophilic more directly, it would keep us from having sympathy for him. Vogel does this for a reason. We almost get to see peck through Lil Bit’s eyes. She really does care for him. We can hear it in the words she says, and we can see it in times like the dance where she only has eyes for him. The audience begins to see the man beneath the monster. This compassion that we develop makes our shock even more intense when we see the scene of their first encounter, and the action is no longer pantomime. It is meant to remind us that what Peck did was bad, even though he may not have been a bad person.

Prompt 3: Conduct of Life

It is obvious that Fornes chooses to strip away at his scenes until they are sharp and jarring to the audience. Unlike Trifles and Overtones which are both detailed in their own way, The Conduct of Life purposely lacks the details that create a fulfilled world. Fornes wanted to leave his audience dissatisfied and curious. It’s like people watching in a way. You get a small glimpse of someone’s behavior, but the rest of their existence is left to the imagination.

I found myself almost entranced with these characters. Fornes places a huge emphasis on the social environment of the play, and she makes the Dramaturgical choice to create two opposing psychological levels in each character. First we have Orlando, who speaks often of the problems in his government, yet he never seems to notice his own personal problems. His wife, Letitia has this big speech about how she could never stand to hurt a deer, and when she sees a poor girl who is obviously suffering, she does absolutely nothing to help her and even forces the child to take her blame when she murders her husband. Then we have Nena, herself, who doesn’t speak at all in the play until almost the end, when she voices the most eloquent and beautiful monologue in the script. Finally there is dear Olympia. All throughout the story, it is hinted that she has some sort of mental handicap, yet she turns out to be wiser and more kind-hearted than any of the other characters. These distinct, double personalities were specifically chosen to make the audience reflect upon themselves and how they truly are.

One of the definitions of conduct is the direction or management of something (how it is executed). At first I thought that the play’s title reflected Orlando’s conduct (as in personal behavior), but after closer thought, I concluded that the title reflects the actual conduct of the character’s lives. In this play, we see how these characters choose to manage both themselves and their surroundings. It is not titled after the characters behaviors but more how they choose to live based on the people around them.