Term paper

Pick TWO of the following questions. Answer each in a well-organized, 1-2 pages essay.

Please incorporate specific examples to support your points and draw from the terms on the exam review sheet, where relevant, in your writing. You may go back to your class notes, the textbook, plays we have read, and the class PowerPoints posted online with their embedded video links, in formulating your responses.

• Consider the events covered in the NY Times article “Religious Rite Takes Hamlet Back in Time Every Seven Years” (September 11, 2017). These take place in the Italian town of Guardia Sanframondi every seven years, and include scenes from the Bible and penitential acts. Are these events theatre? Ritual? What is your view and what argument and evidence support it? How does your answer express your understanding of what is theatre? What challenges does this event present to notions of theatre and ritual? (You can find the article here https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/10/world/europe/italy-religious-rite-guardia-sanframondi-.html )

• You have seen The Hunter Theatre Project production of Mac Beth and written about the performance. But a huge amount of work took place offstage to get this play on stage, to bring you into the theatre, and to maintain the production during the run. Going back to your notes from Brad Krumholz’s lecture and the material in your book, describe how you imagine the production process to have taken place from the moment of deciding to stage the play until closing. Which personnel were involved? What were their roles? How did they work together? What unique challenges might this production have presented to them?

• What is the difference between the story and plot of a play? What are the basic elements of the climactic play structure that create dramatic action? What are the main differences between episodic and climactic structure? Analyze one of the plays we have looked at this semester (Macbeth, Sweat, Fires in the Mirror) applying these concepts. How does this view of dramatic structure inform the process of bringing a play from the page to the stage?

• Compare the work of an actor trained in the Stanisvlaski system to an actor trained in one of the following: Suzuki method, or commedia dell’arte, or the work of Anna Deavere Smith in Fires in the Mirror. What does the training of each actor consist of and why? What is each actor’s process in creating a performance? What is their relationship to a theatrical text? What differences do we see in the styles or ways each actor appears and expresses themselves onstage because of their training and approach to acting? What does each style emphasize for performance?