Graduate Play Analysis F09

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Weekly Response

Some suggestions for submitting your response:

Compose your response off line.

Go to the appropriate weekly response link.

Click the "discussion" tab above the page.

Click "edit."

Create a header using your first and last name.

- Type your first and last name

- Select your first and last name and hit the header button (BIG A) two equal signs (==) should appear on either side of your name.

Copy and paste your response into the field. No more than 250 words please.

You may read, but please don't mess with, others' responses. Thanks.

Week 1 Response - Your Difficult play, novel, artwork, or theatrical group

Week 1 GPA F09 Wiki Assignment

Please post the play, novel, artwork or theatrical group that you shared in the first class.

Week 2 Response - Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov. Version by Jean-Claude van Itallie

Week 2 GPA F09 Wiki Assignment

REQUIRED READINGS for Week 2:

Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov, translated by Jean-Claude van Itallie
Notes by Paul Schmidt (from his version of the play)
Essay on “Three Sisters” by Laurence Senelick from Anton Chekhov (Grove Press Modern Dramatists)
From The Russian Mind by Ronald Hingely (part of Chapter 1: Foreground and Background, pp.3-18)
Article by John Freedman: “Olga Mukhina on Anton Chekhov” from The Moscow Times
Prince Gremin’s aria from the opera “Eugene Onegin” by Tchaikovsky/Shilovsky

There is also ancillary material on reserve in the library which is optional reading.

Then Respond to one of the following questions. Your response needs to be at minimum 250 words and is due by 12pm on Tuesday, September 22.

1. How does the Prozorov's house function as a symbol of the life of the family and their transitions and transformations?

2. Choose one act and discuss the "special event" or circumstance in that act in terms of how it articulates and amplifies the emotional journey of the characters (please focus on 2-3 characters).

3. Choose one scene and discuss how the act or process of either remembering or forgetting functions; what happens to the characters through the process/act of remembering or forgetting?

Week 3 - Field Trip Info

Carpool Sign Up

Week 3 - Culture Clash Readings & Postings

Week 3 GPA F09 Wiki Assignment

REQUIRED READING for Week 3:

1. PEACE - The translation of PEACE available online (not a laugh riot, we know, but more proof that some plays need to be performed and adapted)

2. File:CastingThemselves CultClash.pdf - Article by Antonia Nakano Glenn “Casting Themselves” Culture Clash and the Comedy of Resistance” (Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol 15(4), 2005, 413-426)--gives an overview of the origins and philosophy of the ensemble and explores two of their productions.

3. Sedano - La Bloga review by Michael Sedano, of Culture Clash’s adaptation of Aristophanes’ “The Birds” performed at the Getty Villa in 2007

4. Martinez - LA Stage blog by Julio Martinez, about Culture Clash’s adaptation of Aristophanes’ “Peace” currently playing at the Getty Villa.

5. Chou - EGPNews article “Chicanos Meet Greeks! Must Be a ‘Culture Clash’” by Elizabeth Hsing-Huei Chou, Gloria Angelina Castillo about the current Culture Clash production of Aristophanes’ “Peace” at the Getty Villa.

OPTIONAL READINGS (also on reserve in the library):

1. File:ChavezRavine CultClash.pdf

2. File:GhostsOfLA.pdf

Then Respond to one of the following questions. Your response needs to be at minimum 250 words and is due by 12pm on Tuesday, September 29.

1. Write a short treatment of an adaptation for a contemporary audience. Make this as real for yourself as possible, i.e. consider venue, demographics, etc.

2. Write a piece of dialogue, an excerpt from your adaptation of PEACE for a contemporary audience.

3. Which theme in PEACE resonates most? Identify at least two moments where this theme manifests most clearly in the action of the play and explain what thoughts/questions it provokes for you.

Week 4 - Zoot Suit by Luis Valdez

Week 4 GPA F09 Wiki Assignment

Reading Assignment:

First read: Introduction to Zoot Suit and Other Plays

Next read: Zoot Suit by Luis Valdez

Then read: Excerpt from Chicano Theater: Themes and Forms by Jorge Huerta

Please respond to one of the following questions. Your response needs to be at minimum 250 words and is due by noon on Tuesday, October 6.

1. How does Valdez explore the intersection of Los Angeles history and Chicano culture in this play?

2. How does Valdez explore theatricality in terms of language and structure in this play?

3. How does the character of El Pachuco function in this play?

Week 5 - "Play", "Rockaby", and "Catastrophe" by Samuel Beckett

File:Havel to Beckett.pdf

Week 5 GPA F09 Wiki Assignment

Reading Assignment:

Required readings for October 14 (all included in your hand-out):

––Play

––“‘On Play and Other Plays’: Lecture by Alan Schneider”

––Rockaby

––Catastrophe

––“Beckett on Beckett" (compiled by M.H.)

––"The Body in Beckett's Theatre" by Pierre Chabert

Recommended readings (the first three are included in your hand-out):

––Beckett. Krapp’s Last Tape (This is a great play to look at for another example of the interaction between taped and live voice. It is also very interesting to read the play in conjunction with Jonathan Kalb’s essay.)

––Beckett’s Quad and Breath

––Bert States, “The Pleasure of Pain” (Chapter 12 of Bert O. States’ The Pleasure of the Play (Cornell Univ. Press, 1994) I would recommend that you do some of your own writing on Catastrophe before reading this essay. After writing a page or two, analyze your own writing in relation to States’: What does the critical writing illuminate/uncover? How does each writer structure his/her arguments? How can you engage States’ arguments to deepen your own response to the work? What, if anything, in States’ article sparks ideas for production, or: How can you make critical/analytical writing productive for yourself as a theater artist?

––Pilling, John (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Beckett, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994.

––Knowlson, James, S.E, Gontarski and Dougald McMillan (eds.), The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett, London: Faber and Faber, 1992.

––O'Brien, Eoin, The Beckett Country, London: Faber and Faber/Black Cat Press, 1986.

––Gontarski, S.E. (ed.), On Beckett: Essays and Criticisms, New York: Grove Press, 1986.

––As no other dare fail: a tribute on Samuel Beckett's 80th birthday by his friends and admirers, London: John Calder, 1986.

––Kalb, Jonathan, Beckett in Performance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Esp.Chapter 2, “Rockaby or the Art of Inadvertent Interpretation,” which analyzes how Billie Whitelaw, an actress who closely collaborated with Beckett, approached the text. You can watch a video of Whitelaw’s performance of Rockaby in our library.

––Oppenheim, Lois. Directing Beckett: Interviews with and essays by twenty-two prominent directors of Samuel Beckett’s work. (The University of Michigan Press, 1997).

––You may want to watch Beckett’s Film on video in the library. It stars Buster Keaton and is directed by Alan Schneider. The screen play is part of The Collected Shorter Plays. It’s very interesting to consider Film in relation to Krapp’s Last Tape, specifically how both works reflect on the nature of identity (eye/I).

Marvin Carlson, “Theatrical Performance: Illustration, Translation, Fulfillment, or Supplement?” in Theater Journal, March 1985, pp.5 to 11 (on reserve in the library)

Your response needs to be at minimum 250 words and is due by noon on Tuesday, October 13.

Some questions:

––What is the relationship between the taped voice and the live voice in Rockaby and/or Krapp’s Last Tape?

––Take a look at Beckett’s writing on laughter from Watt (p.3 of the “Beckett on Beckett” section of your hand-out). Examining Play, ask yourself which moments might be examples of the “bitter, the hollow, and the mirthless” laugh.

––What is the significance of the light in Krapp's Last Tape and/or Play? Consider the last two quotes from "Beckett on Beckett" in this context.

––What is the significance of the costume choices in Rockaby and/or Krapp's Last Tape and/or Catastrophe?

––How would you realize the interaction between Krapp and the tape recorder ? Should the sound be controlled by the actor, or from the booth? What difference would it make?

––Beckett specifies for Rockaby, “Rock: Slight. Slow. Controlled mechanically without assistance from W.” What do you make of this stage direction? How would you rehearse the “Rock”? How would you build the mechanism, figure out the timing?

–– Research the love triangle in French comedy (Feydeau, Labiche). How does Play relate to this dramatic motif or other stories containing ‘love triangles’ that you know about?

––Beckett in his note to Play calls for a “single mobile spot” because it is “expressive of a unique inquisitor.” In which way does the light functions as a character (in the Aristotelian sense)? Discuss in this context how Aristotle defines character and then share your thoughts on how the light in Play conforms to or differs from this notion of character . . .

––Beckett dedicated Catastrophe to Vaclav Havel. Research Vaclav Havel, especially his life leading up to the moment the play was written (1982)? How does Havel’s life/work expand your reading of Catastophe?

––What is your understanding of Beckett's quote, "To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail"? What does this idea mean to you, concretely, as a designer, actor, director, dramaturg, stage manager, scenic artist, props artist, technical director, producer?

––What do you think is the function of performance in relation to text? What, to your mind, are the responsibilities of theater artists who produce a writer’s work? How would you answer this question in relation to Beckett’s plays? (Marvin Carlson’s essay--listed above--provides a useful vocabulary for discussing this question . . .)

––View the version of Catastrophe from Beckett on Film (directed by David Mamet, starring Harold Pinter as the director and John Gielgud, in his last public performance, as the Protagonist. Discuss this adaptation of the play: How does the film function? How do you think the text is designed t o function in performance? Ground your discussion in specific moments/lines . . .

––Pierre Chabert writes: “The immobility peculiar to the Beckettian stage is, then, paradoxical: in eliminating all the customary properties pertaining to the body Beckett reaffirms the irreducibility of the body, and reminds us that it remains an agent of disclosure.” How do you see this observation manifest concretely in Play, Catastrophe, or Rockaby?

Week 6 - "The America Play" by Suzan-Lori Parks and "Funnyhouse of a Negro" by Adrienne Kennedy

Week 6 GPA F09 Wiki Assignment

Your response needs to be at minimum 250 words and is due by noon on Tuesday, October 20.

1. What is "the Great Hole?" How does this idea grow and take on meaning throughout the play?

2. In her article, Shawn-Marie Garrett quotes Suzan-Lori Parks as saying about the Foundling Father: "(he) falls in love with the wrong person, falls in love with the wropng dream." What are these "wrong loves" and what are the consequences of this for the characters?

3. Explore how you would translate the idea of the setting for "The America Play," as it is described in the text: "A great hole. In the middle of nowhere. The hole is an exact replica of the great hole of history." What kind of scenic environment could you make for the play to live in?

4. How are the scenes from "Our American Cousin" used? How do thiey function in the action, and how do they resonate thematically?

5. What are the most powerful resonances for you, personally and artistically, in either Parks' "The America Play," or Kennedy's "Funnyhouse of a Negro?" Explore in imagistic, linguistic and sensory terms.

Week 7 - "The Other Shore" by Gao Xingjian

Week 7 GPA F09 Wiki Assignment

Your response needs to be at minimum 250 words and is due by noon on Tuesday, October 27.

1. How specifically does Gao Xingjian explore issues surrounding the collective versus the individual in The Other Shore? Choose a scene from the play and comment on Xingjian’s particular textual choices and performative strategies used to explore the dynamics surrounding the collective versus the individual.

2. Gao Xingjian stated, “The Other Shore is different from conventional drama. One of the differences is that the play does not attempt to put together a coherent plot. I only intend it to be a revelation, to portray some of life’s experiences and feelings in a pure dramatic form, i.e. in the same way as music is pure.” What does Xingjian reveal in this play and how does he do so in a “pure form”? Please provide at least one specific example from a scene in the play to elucidate your response.

3. Choose one image from Funnyhouse of a Negro as well as The Other Shore which seem to resonate with each other. How does each image function within a particular scene of its respective play? How does each image contribute in similar or divergent ways to the overall world of its respective play?

Week 8 - Heiner Müller

Week 8 GPA F09 Wiki Assignment

File:Müller quotes 11 4 09 notes.doc

Required reading for November 4 (all part of hand-out):

Heiner Müller’s Despoiled Shore, Medeamaterial, and Landscape with Argonauts. In Hamletmachine and other texts for the stage by Heiner Müller. Edited and translated by Carl Weber. (pp. 122 – 135). New York : Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1984.

“Literature Must Offer Resistance to the Theatre” A discourse between Heiner Müller and Horst Laube. In The Battle: Plays, Prose, and Poems by Heiner Müller. Edited and translated by Carl Weber (pp. 154 – 172). New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1989.

“Exploration Through Imagery: Gregory Gunter Talks about Working with Anne Bogart” by Gregory Gunter (pp. 176 – 179) in Dramaturgy in American Theater: A Source Book, edited by Susan Jonas, Geoff Proehl, Michael Lupu. Orlando, Florida: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1997.

“An Anatomy Lesson: Looking at Rembrandt between sessions of the Yugoslav war-crimes tribunal in The Hague” by Lawrence Weschler (pp. 82 – 84) in The Atlantic Monthly, October 1997.

Recommended reading and other contextualizing material:

You may want to look at Euripides’ Medea, preferably in the translation by Rex Warner. Another very good translation by Frederic Raphael and Kenneth McLeish has appeared in the “Drama Classic” series by Nick Hern Books.

If you are interested in other treatments of the Medea myth, go to Medea: Essays in Myth, Literature, Philosophy, and Art, edited by James Clauss and Sarah Iles Johnston (Princeton University Press, 1997).

If you would like to know more about Heiner Müller, read the introduction to Hamletmachine and Other Texts for the Stage (NY: PAJ, 1984).

In terms of secondary literature, I recommend the studies by Arlene Teraoka and Jonathan Kalb’s The Theater of Heiner Müller (Cambridge University Press, 1998) PT2673.U29 Z725 1998.

The Lives of Others DVD 2489. On reserve in the film library. Life of theater artists in the former German Democratic Republic. What does it mean to be an artist in a totalitarian state? What’s political?

Exploration Through Imagery Assignment, due in class, November 4:

Following your reading of the plays and Gregory Gunter’s “Exploration Through Imagery,” make lists––in writing––of what you know and what you don’t know about the play(s).

Go to the library or other visual resources and find images that, in your mind, correspond with the play. You may start out with defining for yourself what you know about the play, and then select images around these motifs; or you may want to start with a set of questions that you consider especially important in relation to the play and choose images that open up an exploration of these questions. Don't illustrate the play, but keep in mind Gunter's remark, "I use my imagination to find connections and dichotomies where perhaps they didn't exist before."

A note: Try to go beyond images that you look at everyday (advertising/fashion). Don’t leave it at one magazine/book, however amazing it may be.

When you have found a set of images (5 minimum), re-read the play and look at how your images correspond with it.

Read Lawrence Weschler’s “An Anatomy Lesson” to get a sense of the wealth of ideas generated by an in-depth contemplation of an image.

IMPORTANT: Bring your set of images to class. Keep in mind, that we will look at all of the images together, i.e. bring Xeroxed copies, rather than books or your computers, so that we can hang your images on the wall. If anyone feels compelled to bring sounds/objects, feel free . . .

Wiki post, due November 3:

Please write on one of the two following topics:

I. Choose any small section from Despoiled Shore, Medeamaterial, or Landscape with Argonauts (not more than 10 lines, can be as short as one line) and analyze in detail.

II. Explore how the various images you chose relate to your interpretation of the plays. Go beyond describing your images and/or explaining why you chose a certain image, but use the images as a jumping-off point for a deeper investigation of the texts. To use the Boal exercise (standing opposite your partner, touching hands, feeling the pressure . . .) as a metaphor: Your post is the result of you facing the text with the weight of the images behind you.

Week 9 - Twelfth Night by Shakespeare

To view a Word Document of the assignment: File:F09 Twelfth Night Fable assignmt.doc

Week 9 GPA F09 Wiki Assignment

REQUIRED READINGS FOR TWELFTH NIGHT (all in handout—please note that the first article in the handout is the bonus Chekhov reading, which is not required) :

--Chapter 7, “The Realm of Emotion: As You Like It and Twelfth Night” from Shakespeare’s --Division of Experience by Marilyn French;

--“Signs of Identity: The Dramatic Character as ‘Name’ and ‘Body’” from The Show and the Gaze of Theatre: A Euorpean Perspective by Erika Fischer-Lichte;

--“The Entire Body is a Mask” from an interview with Ariane Mnouchkine by Odette Aslan from Collaborative Theatre: The Theatre du Soleil Sourcebook, David Williams, Editor/Compiler

--Read Craig Kinzer’s excerpt from “Brecht, the ‘Fable,’ and the Teaching of Directing.” File:Kinzer on Fable.pdf

ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDED READING

--If you’d like to expand your understanding of “action,” read as much of Aristotle’s Poetics, as you can handle, especially the comments on ‘imitation.’ You can find the Poetics online (Butcher’s translation) by using the following link:

Poetics

Chapters VI, VII, and IX are especially relevant. In addition, we recommend I, II, X, XI, XIII, XV, XXII and XXIV.

--Eugenio Barba’s “The Nature of Dramaturgy: Describing Actions at Work.” File:Barba Dramaturgy.pdf

WIKI ASSIGNMENT This is a fairly involved assignment which will take time to complete. Please allow yourself the appropriate amount of time in order to gain full benefits!

250-word wiki assignment on Twelfth Night, due Tuesday, 11/10, noon:

Write the fable of the play (see below) in three sentences.

Share one question from your list (see below), preferably the one you care most about . . .

Following suggestions on how to approach the readings, as well as exercises that can be useful––both in your production work and in preparing for written assignments. Note: This is a fairly structured approach. We recommend that you follow it closely this first time around. Later on, there will be opportunities to adapt it . . .

1. Begin with the play, i.e. skip any introductions or other critical texts you may have on the play. (And, although we don’t like to write this, but unfortunately there is reason: Don’t use Cliff Notes or some other publication of that nature . . .)

2. Take 20 to 30 minutes to write down at least ten questions the play raised for you. Make sure to articulate the questions that matter most to you. What are the questions you wouldn’t want to miss asking, if you were spending months working on this play?

3. Read Craig Kinzer’s excerpt from “Brecht, the ‘Fable,’ and the Teaching of Directing.” File:Kinzer on Fable.pdf

4. Take 30 minutes to write the ‘fable’ of the play in three sentences. This is neither just a summary nor an analysis, but it is writing as a means to discover the play. Convey how the play unfolds in time. Accommodate the action from beginning to end. Choose words that reflect what you find unique about the play; let your language be as evocative as possible. You have only three sentences, more reason to make every word count.

5. Read the materials in the hand-out for the Twelfth Night session and any other critical writing you feel compelled to look at.

REQUIRED READINGS FOR TWELFTH NIGHT (all in handout) : --Chapter 7, “The Realm of Emotion: As You Like It and Twelfth Night” from Shakespeare’s --Division of Experience by Marilyn French; --“Signs of Identity: The Dramatic Character as ‘Name’ and ‘Body’” from The Show and the Gaze of Theatre: A Euorpean Perspective by Erika Fischer-Lichte; --“The Entire Body is a Mask” from an interview with Ariane Mnouchkine by Odette Aslan from Collaborative Theatre: The Theatre du Soleil Sourcebook, David Williams, Editor/Compiler --If you’d like to expand your understanding of “action,” read as much of Aristotle’s Poetics, as you can handle, especially the comments on ‘imitation.’ You can find the Poetics online (Butcher’s translation) by using the following link:

Poetics

Chapters VI, VII, and IX are especially relevant. In addition, we recommend I, II, X, XI, XIII, XV, XXII and XXIV.

6. We also recommend to you Eugenio Barba’s “The Nature of Dramaturgy: Describing Actions at Work.” File:Barba Dramaturgy.pdf

7. Go to your list of questions and add any questions that may have come up.

8. Look at your ‘fable’ and re-write it.

9. Share your fable with a colleague and interrogate each other’s work: What did we emphasize? What did we leave out? What do our fables share? How do they differ?

10. Re-read the play.

We look forward to reading your fables. Remember, this writing is not the end, but a step in the process––no pressure to present certainties; feel free to reflect on dichotomies, to explore questions. There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to do this.

We will use your writing as a starting point for the work on 11/11. PLEASE BRING HARD COPIES OF ALL YOUR QUESTIONS AND YOUR FABLE TO CLASS.

Week 10 - Information for Foreigners by Griselda Gambaro

Week 10 GPA F09 Wiki Assignment

Required reading:

Information for Foreigners by Griselda Gambaro

Crisis, Terror and Disappearance: The Theater of Griselda Gambaro by Marguerite Feitlowitz

When Good People Do Evil by Philip Zimbardo

As a preface to your wiki post, please consider the following quotation regarding those disappeared during Argentina's Dirty War.

"People taken off the streets were driven to one of the many detention centers established by each of the military services, and sometimes transferred from one of these to another. Their houses were looted and their property stolen. Most of them lived the rest of their lives in the detention centers – hooded or blinded, forbidden to talk to one another, hungry, living in filth. The center of their lives – dominating the memories of those who survived – was torture. They were tortured – almost without exception, methodically, sadistically, sexually, with electric shocks and near-drownings and constant beatings in the most humiliating possible way not to discover information – very few had information to give – but just to break them spiritually and physically and to give pleasure to their torturers.""

- Ronald Dworkin, introduction to Nunca Mas, The Report of the Argentine National Commission on the Disappeared.

Choose one of the following for your wiki post, due Tuesday, November 17 at noon::

1. Marguerite Feitlowitz writes, "The piece should be performed in a house or warehouse, calling up the spaces used for detention and torture."

How does Gambaro use space in this play and how does this use of space compare to other works we've studied this semester?

2. Gambaro has written, "Everything in this play happens through theatricality, or artifice. That is to say, through a cover or wrapping, that transcends the action itself, but nonetheless leaves the meaning intact. The work must be 'acted,' 'represented,' 'disguised.' Only this will make it tolerable; otherwise no one would have the strength to watch."

How does Gambaro theatricalize the realities of the Argentinian Dirty War in her play and how does this quote impact the performativity of the text?

3. In Scene Four, Gambaro explores the Milgrim experiment. Zimbardo's article chronicles the history of the Milgram experiment.

How does Gambaro theatricalize the Milgrim experiment as a means to explore the Argentinian Dirty War? How does the entire play function in terms of audience as witness in relation to the findings of the Milgrim experiment?

Further recommended reading:

Dworkin, Ronald. Nunca Mas, The Report of the Argentine National Commission on the Disappeared. Ciudad de Buenos Aires : Eudeba, 2006.

Nino, Carlos Santiano. Radical Evil on Trial. New Haven : Yale University Press, 1996.

Taylor, Diana. Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina's Dirty War. Durham: Duke University Press. 1997.

Week 11 - Brecht's GOOD PERSON OF SZECHUAN

To view a Word Document of the assignment: File:GPA 12 1 wiki Good Person.doc

To view a Word Document of the readings: File:GPAF09 readings Good Person.doc

Week 11 GPA F09 Wiki Assignment

Required readings for December 2nd:

Read Bertolt Brecht’s Good Person of Szechuan, translated by Tony Kushner (copies were distributed last week)).

Read the various attached texts by Brecht, minimally:

––From ”Notes on the Opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny” (1930)

––"The Street Scene: A Basic Model for an Epic Theatre" (1938)

––From “Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction” (c. 1935)

––”Emphasis on Sport” (1926)

I highly recommend reading the more discipline-specific texts, as well.

Wiki assignment for December 1st:

Write the “fable” of the play (see below) in three sentences.

Share one or more question from your list (see below), preferably the one(s) you care most about . . .

1. Begin with the play.

2. Read Mira Rafalowicz’s “Dramaturgy in Collaboration with Joseph Chaikin” File:Rafalowicz.pdf

3. Take 20 to 30 minutes to write down at least ten questions the play raised for you. Make sure to articulate the questions that matter most to you (cf. Rafalowicz’s “what has value for us to attempt to express, personally, theatrically, socially, politically?”). What are the questions you wouldn’t want to miss asking, if you were spending months working on this play?

4. Read Craig Kinzer’s excerpt from “Brecht, the ‘Fable,’ and the Teaching of Directing.” File:Kinzer on Fable.pdf

5. Take 30 minutes to write the ‘fable’ of the play in three sentences. This is neither merely a summary nor an analysis, but it is writing as a means to discover the play. Convey how the play unfolds in time. Try to accommodate the action from beginning to end. Choose words that reflect what you find unique about the play.

6. Read the theoretical texts on Brecht.

7. Go to your list of questions and add any questions that the secondary readings may have raised for you.

8. Look at your ‘fable’ and re-write it.

If you have time:

9. Share your fable with a colleague and interrogate each other’s work: What did we emphasize? What did we leave out? What do our fables share? How do they differ?

10. Re-read the play.

I look forward to reading your fables. Remember, this writing is not the end, but a step in the process––no pressure to present certainties; feel free to reflect on dichotomies, to explore questions. There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to do this.

We will use your writing as a starting point for the work on 12/2.

PLEASE BRING HARD COPIES OF YOUR QUESTIONS AND YOUR FABLE TO CLASS.

Week 12 - Wrap-Up Posting

Week 12 GPA F09 Wiki Assignment

We often began our discussion with questions, and we would like to end it--for this semester--in the same way. For your final post create a list of questions that have arisen out of your work in class which you feel motivated to pursue independently. Focus on questions that have some real importance for you, inspired by the writers/works we discussed and/or by analytical strategies in which we engaged.

Please read all of your peers' posts and be prepared to share a question that resonated with you, and why.

Graduate Play Analysis F09

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