Naturalism: Miss Julie

In order to avoid a class revolt by watching another Ibsen play (I felt your attention to Hedda Gabler was excellent...but attempting The Wild Duck would be tempting fate...) that we would forego watching anything on a screen as this week you are probably going to be bombarded by videos in various classes as we move into Thanksgiving Day recess.

So, let's learn a little about August Strindberg and his best known play: "Miss Julie"

More about August Strindberg, playwright, can be found here and on eLearning in lesson 02.09.
Clips of Miss Julie:

• Opening Scene from Miss Julie (1987 television production clip, with Janet McTeer as Miss Julie--you may watch the entire television production from the sidebar on Youtube, if you'd prefer)
• Miss Julie (Helen Mirren as Miss Julie, clip from 1972 production)

The play has only 3 main characters:

Miss Julie: a 25 year-old upper class lady. True to naturalism's style of focusing on heredity and environment and how our environment affects our true nature, Julie, being upper class, raised by a "feminist" mother, Julie has just broken off an engagement to an appropriate suitor from her own economic class level because she attempted to "master" her fiance. Her behavior is shocking because she is also has tendencies of a sado-masochist. 

Jean: a 30-year old valet, favored by Miss Julie on this Midsummer Night's Eve (a night meant traditionally for lovin'). He is working class (not of the same station as Miss Julie) and must "obey" Miss Julie's orders, thus making him a likely target in the battle between men and women. He both dislikes and desires Julie because of her social status. 

Christine: A 35-year old cook. She is Jean's fiance and a gossip. From her we learn a lot about Miss Julie before she arrives on the scene. Christine believes in social structure: the working class should only involve themselves with the working class, the rich only should hob-nob with the rich, etc.

Naturalism (1865-1900) attempts to go further from realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment affects human behavior. Plots often revolve around social problems, characters are often drawn from lower classes and the poor, perhaps in an attempt to explain their behavior.

Get into groups of 1-4. Read Miss Julie today during class. When you have finished reading the play, please take the quiz on Miss Julie. This may be today or during next class if you do not finish reading the play today.

HOMEWORK: None--although many of you are very far behind and can get caught up. The end of the marking period is Dec. 6. Please complete eLearning lessons 02.08, 02.09, and 02.10. Apart from the quiz for 02.08, there are no writing assignments that go with these lessons--just pure learning stuff for the sake of being smart.

If you did not finish Miss Julie, please do so and be prepared to take the quiz on the play.

Ibsen's Hedda Gabler

First published in 1890 and produced in 1891 to negative reviews, Hedda Gabler has become one of Henrik Ibsen's most remembered plays apart from A Doll's House, An Enemy of the People, The Wild Duck, Ghosts, and the Master Builder. This is primarily due to the rigor of the acting role of Hedda Gabler. As a character, Hedda is at once a romantic feminist but also a manipulative, conniving villain. Hedda is neurotic, a child with a stormy ego. Her superego (represented by society and her married life) clashes with her id (her impulses and desires) in Freud's psychology. She is a tempest of a character, full of contradictions and subtext that makes playing her onstage a joy for any serious actress. In the play Hedda is the wife of Jorgen Tesman, but has had an earlier love affair with her husband's rival, Lovborg. In a gentler, simpler age this sort of behavior was considered shocking and inappropriate.

Other characters in the play include:

• Jørgen Tesman, the husband of Hedda; an academic
• Miss Juliane Tesman, Jørgen's aunt
• Mrs. Thea Elvsted, Jørgen's friend and Hedda's school rival
• Judge Brack, friend of the Tesmans; a judge
• Ejlert Løvborg, Jørgen's academic rival whom Hedda previously loved
• Berte, servant to the Tesmans and to Jørgen as a child

The setting takes place in the interior of a reception room (like a living room, it was meant to accommodate guests)

There are four acts: each act has only one scene. The set does not change, so it's just lights up and down to indicate time passing.

The Seagull

We will complete this play today.

HOMEWORK: None.

The Seagull; Deadlines: Script Draft & eLearning Module 2

This morning, we will start off in room 238 and continue reading Act 1 of The Seagull. Afterward, we will move to the lab to complete our script drafts (these are due today) and our last chance for eLearning module 2 (lessons 0-7).

Short Play Script Project; Chekhov's The Seagull (class reading)

Period 1: Continue writing your short play scripts. These drafts are due next class. If you finish and have not yet completed lessons: 2.00, 2.01, 2.02, 2.03, 2.04, 2.05, or 2.06, please complete these assignments in eLearning. These are also way past due and I'm closing the gradebook on them today. You may always resubmit your work before the end of the marking period, but I've got to move on.

During period 2, please check out the play: The Seagull from the library and return to room 238 to read the play together.

Russian Playwright and short story writer, Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull is the first of what are generally considered to be his four major plays (The Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya, The Cherry Orchard are the others). The Seagull was written in 1895 and produced in 1896. It dramatizes the romantic and artistic conflicts between four characters: the fading leading lady Irina Arkadina, her son the experimental playwright Constantin Treplyov, the ingénue Nina, and the author Trigorin.

Similar to Chekhov's other full-length plays, The Seagull relies upon an ensemble cast of fully-developed (and quirky) characters. An ENSEMBLE cast refers to a cast where there is no distinct or specific protagonist. Many actors tend to prefer ensemble roles. In contrast to the melodrama of the mainstream theatre of the 19th century, actions (for example: Constantin's suicide attempts) are not always shown onstage. Remember Sarcey's principle of offstage action!  

Melodrama is defined as a style of play or novel writing that is often sensational, sentimental, and/or centering on exciting life changing events intended to appeal to an audience's emotions.

Characters in this play (and in most Chekhov plays) tend to speak in ways that skirt around issues rather than addressing them directly, a dramatic practice known as subtext. In fact, it is this failure to communicate that creates much of the conflict in Chekhov’s work. For actors, subtext is an important element in any realistic drama. An actor spends a lot of time deciphering the subtext for any character you write and allow to speak on stage.

The play alludes to Shakespeare's Hamlet. Arkadina and Treplyov quote lines from it before the play-within-a-play (and even the play-within-a-play is a device used in Hamlet!) Treplyov seeks to win his mother’s favor back from Trigorin, much as Hamlet tries to win Gertrude back from his uncle Claudius.

The opening night of the first production was a failure. “Vera Komissarzhevskaya, playing Nina, was so intimidated by the hostility of the audience that she lost her voice. Chekhov left the audience and spent the last two acts behind the scenes. When supporters wrote to him that the production later became a success, he assumed they were just trying to be kind.” When Constantin Stanislavski (a famous director and acting teacher) directed the Seagull in 1898 for the Moscow Art Theatre, the play was successful and well regarded. "Stanislavski's production of The Seagull became one of the greatest events in the history of Russian theatre and one of the greatest new developments in the history of world drama."

HOMEWORK: Please complete your short script drafts. These are due next class. You will have 1 period to work on putting the finishing touches on your script, but some of you may need more time due to wasting time in the lab. If this is your case, please work on your script between now and next class. For details about the project, see previous posts. 

Please bring your Seagull scripts with you to class Friday.

Short Script Draft Project

Work with a partner or alone. Write a short play (up to 10 pages in length, but at least 1 full page in length):

Consider using Google Docs if you are working with a partner so that you both can work and revise your play script.

Work together to:

1. Brainstorm a theme and a message. If you could leave the world with some bit of advice about living, what would it be? What is important for the world to hear from your pen? Remember that plays occur on a stage with live actors and a live audience. There's a lot of flexibility here, but you should consider the limitations of this kind of art form.
2. Write a short premise. A 1-sentence statement about what your play is about. Complete this line: "My (our) play is about ... "
3. Create a title page with a cast of characters. Have no more than 5 characters in your short play. You should have more than 1. For each character, write a short 1-2 sentence description, or choose the WHO from the exercises you wrote in module 0 & 1 or in your journal. You may add to this instead of planning it all out in advance. You should at least know your protagonist and antagonist.
4. Create a setting. Indicate TIME and PLACE.
5. Writing in play script format, please write a short 1-10 minute play with your partner. Help each other get unstuck. Help each other come up with ideas. Help each other with grammar and format. Help each other to keep writing and staying on task.
6. You should consider the concepts we have been discussing in class about play structure. For example, consider your own play's: Major dramatic question, complication, crisis or turning point, your protagonist(s) dark moment and enlightenment, the climax and resolution of your play/scene.
7. When you have completed your work, please title and proofread your work. Then turn it in. Your play script is due FRIDAY, NOV. 15. (Next week!)

You can write anything you want. Just write. Tell a story. If you complete this assignment you will receive a passing score of at least 70% for it. If you are lacking motivation or inspiration, take a look back at the materials in MODULE 0 on eLearning.

HOMEWORK: MODULE 2: Lessons 2.01-2.07.

Come to the Water...; Short Play Project

Let's chat a moment about our progress during the first few minutes of class.

After our chat and jigsaw of an article on Realism, please use 1st period to complete your assignments in eLearning. Try to FINISH these lessons by Wednesday, Nov. 13. Anything not completed in class today, should be done as homework and completed on your own time for this class. Working at our own pace has only slowed us down so much that I have to step in and change tactics.

During period 2, please work with a partner or alone. Write a short play (up to 10 pages in length, but at least 1 full page in length):

Consider using Google Docs if you are working with a partner so that you both can work and revise your play script.

Work together to:

1. Brainstorm a theme and a message. If you could leave the world with some bit of advice about living, what would it be? What is important for the world to hear from your pen? Remember that plays occur on a stage with live actors and a live audience. There's a lot of flexibility here, but you should consider the limitations of this kind of art form.
2. Write a short premise. A 1-sentence statement about what your play is about. Complete this line: "My (our) play is about ... "
3. Create a title page with a cast of characters. Have no more than 5 characters in your short play. You should have more than 1. For each character, write a short 1-2 sentence description, or choose the WHO from the exercises you wrote in module 0 & 1 or in your journal. You may add to this instead of planning it all out in advance. You should at least know your protagonist and antagonist.
4. Create a setting. Indicate TIME and PLACE.
5. Writing in play script format, please write a short 1-10 minute play with your partner. Help each other get unstuck. Help each other come up with ideas. Help each other with grammar and format. Help each other to keep writing and staying on task.
6. You should consider the concepts we have been discussing in class about play structure. For example, consider your own play's: Major dramatic question, complication, crisis or turning point, your protagonist(s) dark moment and enlightenment, the climax and resolution of your play/scene.
7. When you have completed your work, please title and proofread your work. Then turn it in. Your play script is due FRIDAY, NOV. 15.

You can write anything you want. Just write. Tell a story. If you complete this assignment you will receive a passing score of at least 70% for it.

HOMEWORK: Reminder that we are meeting in the Commons at 9:30 sharp tomorrow for our field trip. Those of you who have turned in your permission slip at this point (deadline today) are cleared to attend. If you did not complete your paperwork for the field trip, I'm sorry, I cannot take you.

If you are going to the play, please read the handout on the play. Bring a bagged lunch tomorrow and weather appropriate clothing for walking to the theater.

Titus Andronicus; eLearning & Strucutral Types for Plays

Today we will complete our viewing of Titus Andronicus. Please turn in your handout questions at the end of the film for credit.

In the lab, please continue to work on the eLearning lessons in Module 2: Theater History.

Contemporary plays come in the following structural types:

• Two-Act (full length) plays
• Full length One-Act play (usually shorter than two act plays, they clock in around an hour and a half or less).
• Short one-act plays (these are usually about 45 minutes or less in length)
• 10-minute plays (these are--shocker!--about 10 minutes or less)

These forms are so last century. They have typically fallen out of favor in the theater (although are alive and well in other places...)

• The three-act play was popular in the late Victorian to the end of the modern period, but you will occasionally see it around. MOVIES and television are generally written in the 3-act format.
• The four-act play was popular in Russia in the 19 to early 20th century--particularly in the works of Chekhov. 
• The five-act play was popular in the Elizabethan (Shakespeare) period. 

HOMEWORK: Complete lessons 02.03, 02.04, and 02.05 if you have not already done so. Please turn in your permission slips to see Geva's The 39 Steps on Thursday. If you do not have your permission slip by next class, you cannot attend the field trip. Period. No exceptions.