For this project, you will work together with a partner to conduct the kind of dramaturgical study necessary to perform one of our plays. Each team will work with one specific play. The team members should analyze the script and consider the play's original social and theatrical context. They should then ask the fundamental question: Why do we want to produce this play at this time for our audience? This question should lead the team to develop an approach to producing the play today. The team’s artistic approach may incorporate any theatrical style or styles, but must reflect a careful analysis of the text and a clear vision of how specific production choices relate to the team’s interpretation of the script. Each team will be assigned one class period to present its ideas to the rest of the class.
The purpose of this assignment is to ask questions of the play and provide the kind of resources that will lead to relevant and stage-worthy production ideas.
Each team’s presentation should address the following three areas:
I. Script analysis: The group should use analytical tools that will help them determine how the play works in production. Group members may consider the following questions raised by the staging of the play as suggested by dramaturg, Mark Bly:
What draws you to this play? What images or sounds did you encounter reading the play? How do you think these sensory elements will feed or inform your staging? What questions does the play raise for you about our culture about our society today? As an audience encounters your production, what might lodge in their brains? What would be so essential in your staging of this play that if an audience missed it you would be disappointed? (50)
II. Research: The group members should consult a range of resources necessary to explore the possibilities of the play in production and discuss how the information they found has informed their understanding of the play. The presentation of this research must clarify the source of all information.
Bly recommends that such resources might include, but not be limited to the following:
(1) pertinent cultural, historical, and social background of the play; (2) significant biographical information on the playwright that may help to illuminate critical issues in the play; (3) commentary by the playwright in the form of interviews, letters, or passages from other works by the writer; (4) relevant criticism or commentary by other artists or critics, (5) images from painters, sculptors, and photographers that can feed, complement, and challenge the work of the director and other artists on the project; (6) a listing and brief commentary on related films and music and their direct or associative value for the stage production; and (7) a highly selective production history of the play. (Bly 50)
III. Production ideas to communicate the group’s reading of the play to an audience:
Specific areas might include, casting, design, directorial approach, performance and production style, location and context of performance, related audience outreach activities, etc.
You should clearly communicate how your research, script analysis and critical thinking informed your production choices. In other words, support your artistic ideas with specific evidence from the play and other sources. You are strongly encouraged to use your skills as theatre artists as part of your presentation. This means that you may compose music, create designs, perform scenes or choreograph movement to help demonstrate your ideas.
Each group must submit a written 1 - 2 page summary of its answers to these questions one week before the date of the presentation through the assignments section of the class Blackboard site. The summary must include the names of all group members. This summary must also be accompanied by a bibliography of research used in preparing the presentation.
Every member of the group must have an assigned role in the proposed production process. Roles may be delegated according to contemporary conventions (i.e. director, designer, dramaturg, etc.) or according to an alternative model (i.e. collaborative ensemble). In any case, each member of the group must participate in the presentation. Students will be graded on their analysis, research, and relevant production ideas as well as the quality of the presentation itself. The presentation of the group’s ideas should be well organized, clear, engaging and persuasive. Under ordinary circumstances, students will receive a group grade for this project. However, any student who fails to attend class on the day of his or her group presentation will receive a zero for the assignment and will not be permitted to make up the assignment.
Additional Resources for this project:
Bly, Mark. “Bristling with Multiple Possibilities.” Dramaturgy in American Theatre: A Sourcebook. Eds. Susan Jonas, Geoff Proehl and Michael Lupu. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1997.
Cattaneo, Anne. “Dramaturgy: An Overview.” Dramaturgy in American Theatre: A Sourcebook. Eds. Susan Jonas, Geoff Proehl and Michael Lupu. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1997.
Quick, Robyn. The Quick Guide to Dramaturgical Research. pages.towson.edu/quick/dramaturgresearch.html
---. The Quick Guide to Visual Research: A Dramaturgical Resource. pages.towson.edu/quick/visualresearchTU.html