dramat

the structure of drama

• plot

• setting/stage directions

• characters

• dialogue

what does it mean to read a play?

• meaning produced by speech, space, bodies, movement, voice

• no narrator

• minimal description

Drama

written text

theatre

performance

Post-WW2 realism (1950s-60s)

• representation of family

• american dream

• realistic setting

• natural dialogue

• Tennessee Williams/Arthur Miller

postmodern crisis and formal experimentation (60s-80s)

• social issues

• diversity of voices and perspectives (gender/ethnicity)

• individualism and subjectivity

• minimalism and linguistic intensity

• Edward Albee

Politics and identity 60s-present

• race, gender, sexuality shape the dramatic conflict

• reclaiming erased or silenced narratives

• questioning national myths

• plays respond directly to social injustice

• the stage becomes a space of public debate

• Ntozake Shange/Tony Kushner

Arthur Miller - death of a salesman

• plays generally address social issues

• tragedy of a common man - argued that a common man is as apt as a subject for a tragedy as a king

Willy Loman

• protagonist

• believes that success is a result of being liked

• issues with mental health - hallucinations, flashbacks

• slowly loses the ability to seperate illusions from reality

• avoids facing his failure, nostalgia protects his ego

• Willy kills himself falsely believing that life insurance will ensure that his family will be well off

• his work is unimportant - we don’t know what he sells

• the past is seen as he remembers it, not how it really happened

the antagonist in death of a salesman

american society

Biff in Boston scene

• he realizes that Willy is not a role model - collapse of father/authority figure

• also realizes that Willy’s moral code is false

reality in death of a salesman

failing salesman, family conflict

memory in death of a salesman

successful past, admired brother (Ben)

key themes in death of a salesman

• american dream - the play critiques the notion that anyone can achieve success through hard work

• reality vs illusion - willy’s inability to distinguish past and present, truth and fantasy

• father-son relationships - Willy and Biff

• identity and self-worth - connection between personal worth and professional success

• legacy and success - the pressure to leave a meaningful mark on the world

Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? - Edward Albee

• absurd theatre (bizarre scenarios)

act 3 (virginia woolf) “the exorcism”

• removing the false idea and facing the truth

• “are you getting angry?” scene - destabilises realism by making the conversation a competition, they use language as a weapon

parody of who’s afraid of the big bad wolf

childish tone vs serious meaning creates irony, educated adults behave like children

the child in virginia

• coping mechanism

• burying the child - end of the illusion = the first real moment of truth in their marriage, Martha admits to being afraid of the truth

language in Albee’s plays

• language can create things that feel real, but can also destroy them

• characters talk a lot, but don’t communicate

American theatre in the 50s vs now

realism to questioning reality (postmodernism)

For colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange

• exploration of how misogyny and racism shaped the experience of black women

choreopoem

• poetry - raw, lyrical, fragmented

• drama - with monologues and performance

• music - rhythm, repetition, call-and-response

• dance - the body as a part of the storytelling

characters in for colored girls

• each one has her own colour of the rainbow

• different backgrounds, experiences

• angry, pushed to despair

• they turn to music and dance

“colored” and “enuf”

colored - outdated

enuf - to break the rules of white grammar (language can be a tool of oppression)

why is Shange work radical

• about intimite lives

• sexuality

• anger

• mental health

• sisterhood

Angels in America - Tony Kushner

• 1980s NYC

• deeply social and political

• ideology power discussed more than health

• AIDS not only as a disease, reveals the truth about society

• exclusion, lack of medical and social support

How Angels in America moves between realism and fantasy

• by breaking the fourth wall - angels speak to the characters

• by using the same actors for normal people and angels

• shared hallucinations

Prior Walter

• “prophet”

• comes from a typical family

Louis Ironson

• believes in justice, but leaves Prior when he finds out that Prior has AIDS

Harper Pitt

• addicted to Valium to escape reality of failing marriage

• hallucinations that reflect broader issues and fears

Joe Pitt

• mormon lawyer torn between religon and homosexuality

Roy Cohn

• lawyer

• power over truth

• power works by refusing uncomfortable truth

Angels in America breaks:

• the body (Prior)

• social norms (Joe and Harper)

• power (Roy Cohn)

“the melting polt where nothing ever melted”

differences persist, they don’t disappear

What are Prior, Joe, Roy, Louis marked by?

• Prior - illness

• Joe - religion

• Roy - power

• Louis - ideology

Magic realism

• exposes destability

• unclear boundary between realism and fantasy

• not an escape from reality - a way of representing events in a way that realism can’t portray

meaning of the angels

• excess of meanings

• connected with the anxieties of the world ending

• fear of the future

the Laramie Project - Moises Kaufman

• based on 200 real interviews conducted after the murder of Matthew Shepard

• example of documentary theatre/verbatim theatre

Laramie Project - reality

theatre doesn’t reproduce reality, actors interpret emotions, actions and translate them into a theatrical performance

Angels in America vs the Laramie Project

• Angels - difficult to understand, spectacle, fantasy, excess of meaning

• Laramie - fragmentation of meaning, documentary, reduced form

• Both show that realism is not enough

Sweat - Lynn Notage

• working class

• american dream

• race

• based on real people and events

Themes of Sweat

• Collapse of working class stability = collapse of solidarity

• Deindustrialisation and systemic failure

• economic precarity and trauma

• race and labour division

• fractured togetherness