July 2012 – Lit Bits

Local Theatre

Although many do not recognize it, local theatre is the cornerstone of the dramatic arts. (By local theatre, I mean what people watch in their own towns.) While metropolitan centers like New York City exert influence, what really counts is the theatre that people see. A theatrical production is often unavailable either in print, film, or other media: it is experienced only by those who gather to see it; and, since most individuals stay close to home, close to home matters. While famous plays have impact, the effect is diffuse when compared to print-centered writing or to film. The effect of non-local theatre works only along the lines of a “trickle-down” influence, rather than the direct impact of other forms: people read a story, but read about a theatrical production.

Given the importance of local theatre, one would think that such performance would be thriving — unfortunately, it is not. This is especially true for local playwriting. Because local theatres have no obligation to present new, local work, they typically turn to renditions of familiar plays that audiences have seen before. While productions of such plays may be comfortable for audiences and for the theatre makers involved, they create minimal opportunities for local dramatists. Though most regions of the country — even far-out, rural places — have some local theatre, they do not often have local dramatic writing. Such a situation hurts local writers and theatre as a whole by inhibiting regional diversity in a form that, of necessity, must be regional. Continue reading “Local Theatre”

Shakespeare in Another Form

I am not a purist when it comes to film adaptations of Shakespeare. I love Orson Welles’ truncated versions of plays; I love Akira Kurosawa’s loose adaptations of Macbeth and Lear; and I cannot recommend highly enough the dark comedy of Scotland, PA (four words: Christopher Walken as Macduff). I’ve written before about my use of the president’s speech in Independence Day and Peter Sellers’ Richard III speaking “Hard Day’s Night.” I think that it’s important to share some of these films with students – not just for the experience of seeing the work of great filmmakers, but also for the opportunity to discuss Shakespeare’s central role in much of our culture.

The last time I taught my Shakespeare course, I developed a movie night assignment for my students. I offered six movie nights over the course of the semester, and students were required to attend one movie and write a commentary on it. (They could earn extra credit for an additional movie – and several of the students enjoyed the films so much that they attended all of the screenings, which were also open to the whole student body.)

On the assignment sheet, I explained that the assignment had three primary objectives:

to encourage students to consider the implications of viewing a Shakespearean play, rather than reading it
to encourage students to consider the assumptions underlying directors’ interpretations of plays, either through a fairly straightforward rendering of the text or a radical reinterpretation of the text
to encourage students to appreciate that at the core of the study of drama is the need to recognize the role that performance plays in our interpretation of a play as an audience

Continue reading “Shakespeare in Another Form”

Film in the Classroom

Many of us use film clips in the classroom when we teach plays, especially when we teach Shakespeare. This makes a great deal of sense, as we’re teaching something that’s meant to be seen. But how do we actually use these clips? Or even full films? And why are we doing this, from a pedagogical standpoint?

I’ve used portions of films so that students understand what’s happening in the play. For example, watching the ending of A Doll’s House has more emotional impact on students than only reading it, which increases their appreciation for the play. So, there’s utility there. But sometimes this method feels almost like a cop-out to me. I worry that I’m showing students a lengthy (30 minute) clip just to avoid having to actually lead discussion.

So I’ve been working on using film in other ways – beyond simply making sure that students understand the plot.

Plays are, of course, highly collaborative in nature. That collaboration continues well after the playwright is dead, since the plays continue to be performed and re-imagined by various and varied directors. This is especially true in Shakespearean plays; each director imagines a different version of Shakespeare, each actor brings something different to the role, and the filming can draw our attention to different aspects of a scene or soliloquy. I’ve found it useful to compare these collaborations, and thus far I’ve attempted this sort of comparative work with Hamlet (in intro to lit) and King Lear (in my senior-level Shakespeare course). Continue reading “Film in the Classroom”

Teaching with Aristotle’s Poetics

The past few semesters, I have used Aristotle more and more in the playwriting classroom. His writing, I believe, has a place even with beginners. After all, it is difficult to talk about theatre in the Western world without mentioning this great thinker. Western drama shows a great reliance—some might say, too great—on this ancient Greek.

The Poetics, thankfully, is a short book. But it’s also very obtuse. I ask the students to approach it “scripturally.” By comparing the Poetics to holy writ, I suggest that it deserves constant study and re-reading. Also, much can be skimmed—for example, discussions of specific Greek word choice or authors no longer extant. These sections can be treated like the genealogies and census reports in the Hebrew scriptures—skimmed over without worry. This comparison works extremely well in Bible Belt Arkansas, where I teach, though it would likely work elsewhere.

The Poetics is filled with valuable lessons. I usually focus on one Aristotelian insight in particular: his six dramatic elements, I find, are especially useful for teaching different dramatic approaches. Aristotle divided drama into six components, often translated as Plot, Character, Thought, Diction, Song, and Spectacle. While Aristotle prioritizes Plot above all else, he sees these elements as necessary cogs in the mechanics of scriptwriting. I use the elements, not to suggest commonalities among plays, but rather to show how different authors use different approaches. Continue reading “Teaching with Aristotle’s Poetics”

Listening In

Young writers often get the advice—and sometimes the assignment—to eavesdrop. I’ve always found this a little funny, since after all, don’t most of us spend large portions of our lives in conversation? Why do we need to listen in on somebody else’s conversation in order to learn about conversation? I wasn’t sure of the particular value of being outside of the conversation. So I decided to try it.

Like many a writer, I often find myself in coffee shops. But I also happen to live in a town that is a prime destination for people in recovery programs, who also naturally find themselves in coffee shops. And so one of the first things I heard was one highly caffeinated young guy saying to another, “It was a tell-tale sign when we did free hugs and Ted wouldn’t hug anybody.”

A few days later, walking out of the gym behind a young woman and her probably four-year-old son, I heard this exchange:

Toddler: I want a snack.

Mom: I have something in the car for you.

Toddler: What is it?

Mom: Juice.

Toddler: What kind of juice?

Mom: Orange juice.

Toddler, with outright exuberance: Hallelujah, baby!

Later, sitting in a Barnes and Noble café near the customer service counter, I heard this:

Female customer, probably sixty-something, brandishing the bondage bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey: Do you think this would make a good gift?

Customer Service Rep: Well, I wouldn’t give it to someone you didn’t know well.

Next customer, a very thin woman around seventy in a denim mini skirt and high-heeled sandals: I need a ride home.

Customer Service Rep: But we’re a bookstore.

Continue reading “Listening In”

Shock Value

I have to confess that I take a great deal of delight in teaching “A Rose for Emily” to my introduction to literature students. It’s a wonderful story to talk about sequence versus chronology, foreshadowing, and concepts of time. But it’s getting to the shocking ending that’s most fun for me.

It’s one of the few stories where I walk students through everything piece-by-piece, mapping out the major plot points on the board. I do this, in part, because it’s helpful to have all those disparate plot points in visual form (the students figure out that the arsenic and the smell are connected once they see everything written up on the board). I also do this because I typically teach the story at a time in the semester when the students are worn out and class participation has dropped off.

We walk through the sequence of the story, and then we read the final section of the story aloud (okay, I read it). I love to pause at the line “The man himself lay in the bed.” And we get to that closing sentence about the iron gray hair. Continue reading “Shock Value”

What I Want My Students to Find When They Google “How to Comment on a Poem”

I teach a lot of poetry workshops; this summer I’m teaching one at Harvard Summer School. Today was the first day of class and students developed ideas and assignments for their first poems. On Wednesday, we’ll discuss those poems and have our first workshop.

This means it’s time to talk to the students about how to comment on their classmates’ poems. I want this conversation to give the first workshop a useful structure and I want the students to take away a model for how to comment on classmates’ poems outside of workshop.

I do this differently every semester — different groups of students have different levels of comfort and anxiety with one another. This group seems particularly thoughtful and charming. But invariably someone will worry that they aren’t qualified to comment on someone else’s poem, so I like to start with the basics. I’m going to give my students this handout on Wednesday:

9 Things to Consider When You Comment on a Classmate’s Poem: A Checklist

(click here for a PDF version of the checklist!)

Continue reading “What I Want My Students to Find When They Google “How to Comment on a Poem””