Dramatic Literature and Playwriting Workshop Notes: Queer Dramaturgies, Structural Craft, and Performance Analysis

Course Logistics, Field Trips, and Academic Deadlines

• Final Play Performance Assignment:

  • Due Date: December 3, which is the day before the final class meeting of the semester.
  • Scheduling Context: The due date falls on the Friday immediately following Thanksgiving break. Because students are away from campus the prior week, students have the opportunity to see productions in their hometowns (such as local high school plays or community theater).
  • Alternative Options: Students relying on local options must attend productions on campus or within New Brunswick prior to the break.
  • Milestone Timeline:
    • Early October: Initial planning phase.
    • Early November Check-in: The class assesses who has already attended a performance, who has secured tickets/plans, and who still requires assistance selecting a show.

• Class Field Trip: Choral Performance at Nicholas Music Center:

  • Date: November 7 (held during class time on Friday).
  • Venue: Nicholas Music Center.
  • Ensemble: Kirkpatrick Choir alongside guest instrumentalists.
  • Historical and Institutional Context:
    • The event occurs 16 years following the death of Tyler Clementi at Rutgers.
    • Contextualizes the founding of the Tyler Clementi Center, created to support tertiary and queer students navigating the university transition.
    • The performance explores how artists memorialize fraught, high-profile tragedies when a deceased individual is posthumously converted into a widespread public and media symbol.
  • Musical Structure:
    • Collaborative score co-written by a team of 6 to 7 composers.
    • Entirely sung-through musical composition with continuous lyrics rather than a traditional spoken play.
    • Has received international stagings, but this performance marks its campus premiere at Rutgers.

Critical Literary and Theatrical Analysis: "Challenging Every Memory" and "The Devil Between Us"

• Article Analysis Framework:

  • Text under study: Critical essay co-authored by Kyle and Razadjani titled "Challenging Every Memory": Manifesting Futurity in The Devil Between Us.
  • Analytical focus points: Paragraph structure, rhetorical phrasing, deployment of primary and secondary evidence, syntactic complexity, and ideological implications.

• Title Deconstruction:

  • "Manifesting Futurity": Directs focus toward speculative possibility—actively constructing an envisioned reality rather than solely diagnosing present trauma or dwelling retrospectively on haunting past experiences.
  • "Challenging Every Memory": Derives directly from Act II of the play, wherein characters hold irreconcilable perspectives on shared past traumas due to asymmetrical knowledge.
  • Humanities Title Conventions: Approximately $90\%$ of academic humanities titles follow a bipartite formula separated by a colon: a provocative, figurative, or pop-culture hook followed by an explanatory, thesis-driven subtitle.

• The Emerging Canon of Revisionist Southern Drama:

  • Defines a modern lineage of Southern playwrights dedicated to centering and uplifting queer and transgender women of color.
  • Contrasts with historic mid-twentieth-century Southern drama, which often flattened racial and sexual dynamics into archetypes of white bigotry versus passive victimization.
  • Contemporary contextual figures include Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatists such as Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.

• Methodological Distinctions in Performance Criticism:

  • Synopsis vs. Summary: A summary provides a static narrative recap, whereas an academic synopsis maps dramatic trajectories, active choices, and scene beats to scaffold subsequent textual analysis.
  • Biographical vs. Formalist Criticism: While formalist schools reject the authorial persona, biographical analysis is critical when playwrights write personal material drawn from lived marginalization (e.g., navigating strict Muslim upbringings and finding trans community at the Actors Theatre of Louisville).
  • Actors Theatre of Louisville: A regional institution that pioneered the modern American ten-minute and short one-act play genres through dedicated development programs and published anthologies.

Intersectional Frameworks: Homonationalism, MENA Representation, and Dramaturgies of Shame

• Homonationalism and Imperialist Discourse:

  • Critique of Western liberal frameworks that weaponize LGBTQ+ civil rights to justify Islamophobia and ongoing US military interventions across the Middle East.
  • Western exceptionalism positions Islamic cultures as monolithically regressive, obscuring indigenous complexities of gender and sexuality.

• Linguistic and Geopolitical Nuances of MENA:

  • The regional acronym MENA (Middle East and North Africa) is preferred over "Middle East."
  • "Middle East" is an Anglo- and Euro-centric designation predicated on imperial cartography ("middle of what?").
  • North Africa is recognized globally as an independent cultural and geographic designation, making "MENA" a more rigorous demographic descriptor.

• Subversion of Religious Archetypes:

  • The play resists the trope that devout religious families are invariably and irredeemably homophobic.
  • Key dramatic reversal: Latifa discovers that her deceased, deeply religious father kept a framed photograph of her, shattering her assumption that he wholly rejected her.

• The Dual Dynamics of Pride and Shame:

  • Western Liberation Paradigm: Pride is conceptualized as externalized visibility, public parades, and celebratory disclosure developed over the past 40 years.
  • MENA and Southern Familial Paradigms: Honor, filial obligation, and private preservation operate under distinct cultural codes where pride and shame cannot be mapped onto Western binaries.
  • Dramaturgical Function: Shame operates not merely as an emotional state, but as a playable obstacle, an offensive interpersonal tactic, or an objective to be transcended.

• Lineage of Tennessee Williams:

  • Mid-twentieth-century dramatist known for exaggerated, fragile female protagonists (e.g., Cat on a Hot Tin Roof).
  • Theorized as closeted homosexual avatars through which a gay dramatist displaced mid-century queer trauma into Southern domestic dramas.

Core Playwriting Mechanics and Peer Review Methodology

• Script In-Class Reading Protocol:

  • Playwright states the title and casts readers for character roles and stage directions.
  • Readings begin from the earliest posted draft on the forum and proceed upward.
  • Audience members must react organically (audible laughter, gasps) to provide acoustic feedback on comedic and dramatic timing.
  • Enthusiastic peer applause is mandatory (indifference is penalized with a $9/100$ grade on peer review participation).

• Key Dramatic Metrics for Evaluation:

  • Queer Thematic Integration: Determining whether queerness drives the primary conflict or exists as an incidental trait within an unrelated dramatic premise.
  • Characterization and Objectives: Grounded in Stuart Spencer's mechanics of internal/external conflict: characters must possess clear objectives met by obstacles, prompting active tactical choices.
  • Dialogue and Rhythm: Tracking sibilance, vowel length, rhythmic flow, subtext, and the removal of clunky exposition dumps.
  • Externalization: Translating unstageable internal prose or literary thoughts into visible physical behavior.
  • Structural Concision: Trimming redundant affirmations and agreement beats (compressing "ping-pong" dialogue) to heighten tension and pace.
  • Constructive Critique Formulation: Vague evaluations like "I liked it" or "it was nice" offer zero utility; feedback must provide specific, analytical justifications starting with "because…"

Workshop Play 1 Analysis: Identity, Tropes, and the Subversion of the "Gaydar"

• Play Details:

  • Cast: Simon, Theresa, Tatum, Bianca, Justin, Stage Directions.
  • Setting: Northwood boarding school gym bleachers under stage spotlights.
  • Plot: Friends observe a student named Justin playing basketball and attempt to determine his sexual orientation using a checklist of physical and behavioral stereotypes (mustache vs. full beard, athletic skill, Greek life affiliation in Delta Phi, physical features). Simon approaches Justin directly using a basketball-themed pickup line. Justin reveals he is aromantic and asexual ("ace"), citing an unfulfilling past relationship with Amy before coming to understand his identity.

• Dramaturgical Feedback and Recommendations:

  • Thematic Payoff: Satirizes the historical trope of "gaydar" while holding characters accountable for sexually objectifying and misidentifying an asexual/aromantic peer.
  • Pacing and Structural Shape: The current three-part structure (Group $\rightarrow$ Private 1-on-1 $\rightarrow$ Group debrief) is successful, but could be tested in an alternate arrangement where the entire group confronts Justin directly, forcing collective accountability.
  • Prop Modernization: While a physical No. 2 pencil and notebook provide kinetic stage business, replacing or pairing them with smartphones and social media surveillance reflects contemporary student interactions.
  • Character Agency: Justin's direct and generous disclosure can be expanded to allow more time exploring his personal journey.

Workshop Play 2 Analysis: Interpersonal Conflict, Spatial Staging, and the Mechanics of Apology

• Play Details:

  • Cast: Charlotte, Casey, Stage Directions.
  • Setting: A cluttered college dorm room.
  • Plot: Casey is urgently packing to leave the dorm while Charlotte demands accountability for a series of relational betrayals, including a disastrous dinner with parents, an abandoned academic presentation, and desertion at a party. The conflict escalates around emotional abandonment linked to Charlotte's parents' divorce, while a camera functions as the central physical objective.

• Dramaturgical Feedback and Recommendations:

  • Spatial Dynamics: The physical action—moving between desks, organizing papers, and crossing toward the exit—animates the psychological friction.
  • The Nature of Apology: The script contrasts superficial verbal apologies ("I'm sorry") with meaningful emotional reparation, establishing a dynamic where one character treats apologies as checked boxes while the other demands systemic repair.
  • Environmental Stakes: The scene could be transposed to a public liminal space (e.g., an academic hallway immediately prior to a presentation) to raise immediate temporal urgency.

Workshop Play 3 Analysis: "Telling the Truth" – Intersex Representation and Family Realism

• Play Details:

  • Cast: Ruth, Jude / June, Mom (voiceover), Stage Directions.
  • Setting: An apartment/dorm with a pullout couch and luggage.
  • Plot: June visits Ruth before an upcoming flight home. Ruth handles incessant phone calls from her alcoholic father, while June reveals she is intersex. Ruth reacts with defensiveness, hurt that June concealed this during their six-year friendship. June's mother calls, demanding June "act normal" for an upcoming catered family and club dinner. June departs in a private car, leaving Ruth to confront another incoming call from her father.

• Dramaturgical Feedback and Recommendations:

  • Medical and Experiential Nuance: Intersex discoveries frequently occur through incidental clinical interventions (e.g., pelvic CT scans revealing internal gonadal tissue, such as a testicle alongside functioning reproductive organs) rather than abstract self-realization; the script should clarify June's specific discovery process.
  • Staging Inefficiencies: Having June exit to change into pajamas in a separate bathroom creates dead stage time; the scene should either begin in loungewear or assign Ruth active onstage business during the absence.
  • Coming-Out Psychology: Ruth shifting focus to her own hurt feelings over non-disclosure reflects a common relational response, but could be staged later in the scene to allow initial space for June's vulnerability.
  • Theatricality and Temporal Unity: The lights-down multi-hour time jump could be compressed into a single continuous real-time scene. Alternatively, a non-realist convention could place both parents physically on the stage perimeter to deliver their invasive voicemails live.

Workshop Play 4 Analysis: Temporal Collisions, Ballroom Culture, and Linguistic Appropriation

• Play Details:

  • Cast: Jenna, Elena, Muse, Pepper.
  • Setting: A diner in New York City spanning discontinuous time periods.
  • Plot: Contemporary college students (Jenna and Elena) use modern slang derived from drag subcultures ("serving," "clocking"). Their timeline intersects with two 1980s ballroom figures (Muse and Pepper), who are debating RuPaul's transition from John Waters camp films to mainstream media and Madonna's presence in drag balls. The collision ends when Jenna looks at Muse and declares her "the ugliest girl I've ever seen."

• Dramaturgical Feedback and Recommendations:

  • Geography and Gentrification: Locating the setting in Greenwich Village, Chelsea, or Hell's Kitchen contextualizes the historical migration of ballroom culture from the Bronx and Harlem downtown, mirroring the gentrification of these neighborhoods by affluent institutions like NYU.
  • The Commodification of Vernacular: Sharpens the contrast between historical queer survival vocabularies and their hollowed-out appropriation by modern digital culture.
  • Duality of "Ugliness": Explores two forms of ugliness: Jenna's transphobic snap judgment based on normative aesthetic standards, versus Muse's moral revulsion at cultural extraction and identity theft.
  • Ending Visuals: The ending should not rest solely on Jenna's perspective; it requires a unified physical tableau anchoring Muse and Pepper's reactions to the temporal breach.

Workshop Play 5 Analysis: "Baby Steps" – Grief, Religious Trauma, and Textual Compression

• Play Details:

  • Cast: Owen, Amelia, Carl Ramirez, Stage Directions.
  • Setting: The vestibule and pews of St. Joseph's Church.
  • Plot: Owen Adams stands anxiously near the side exit of a church, constantly adjusting a tight red tie. Carl Ramirez and his granddaughter Amelia arrive early due to a Facebook schedule error. Carl recognizes Owen from childhood recitals and steps out to use the restroom. Amelia questions Owen about returning from New York; Owen reveals his male partner, Daniel, died, that Daniel harbored deep trauma from religious rejection, and that Owen fears community scrutiny. Amelia promises discretion, invites him to sit beside her, and Owen loosens his necktie as service begins.

• Dramaturgical Feedback and Recommendations:

  • Minimalist Scenography: The script relies on a simple church pew, pamphlet, and lighting changes, making it staging-efficient.
  • Subverting the Promise Trope: Rather than executing a standard comedic reversal where Amelia immediately reveals Owen's secret upon Carl's return, honoring the promise creates a poignant resolution.
  • Techniques of Textual Compression: Demonstrates trimming conversational filler (removing lines like "pretty much," "yeah, I get that," or "can't resist") to turn six lines into two or three, driving dramatic velocity without sacrificing meaning.

Workshop Play 6 Analysis: Gender Labeling, Socioeconomic Pressures, and Athletic Institutions

• Play Details:

  • Cast: Laura (17), Alina (17).
  • Setting: High school athletic locker room / soccer facility.
  • Plot: Laura campaigns to officially re-designate the high school boys' athletic team as "boys soccer" to achieve parity with "girls soccer," resulting in her suspension from the team. Alina rejects Laura's moralizing campaign, pointing out that she relies on an athletic scholarship because her family cannot afford $\$90{,}000$ a year in tuition. Alina reveals she is non-binary/agender, explaining that Laura's obsessive focus on binary team labels caused her intense dysphoria within her only athletic sanctuary. The two reconcile and leave together for ice cream.

• Dramaturgical Feedback and Recommendations:

  • Socioeconomic Reality vs. Activism: Juxtaposes well-intentioned symbolic institutional reform against pressing financial realities ($\$90{,}000$ annual tuition requirements).
  • Character Casting Nomenclature: Cast lists should explicitly designate gender identity (e.g., substituting binary markers with "nb" or "agender") when a character's journey centers on non-binary self-determination.
  • Refining the Final Beat: Replacing blunt closing lines with a nuanced thematic beat balances the emotional weight of Alina's disclosure with their long-standing friendship.

Questions & Discussion

• Student Inquiries Regarding Course Playwriting Assignments:

  • Question: How does the selection process work for peer playwriting readings?
  • Response: Readings are assigned directly from the discussion board submissions, beginning with the earliest post and moving forward; writers provide a cast list for their peers.
  • Question: Are peer review critiques expected to focus exclusively on positive reinforcement?
  • Response: Peer feedback must identify what works and explain the exact mechanical reasons why (such as character objective, comic timing, or word choice), while pinpointing specific pages that require compression or cutting.

• Class Exchange on Homonationalism and Cultural Nuance:

  • Prompt: In what ways does advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights intersect with global geopolitics in the Kyle and Razadjani reading?
  • Discussion Point: Advocacy can be co-opted by imperialist institutions to justify military aggression against Middle Eastern populations under the pretext of cultural superiority, obscuring the nuanced, non-monolithic realities of MENA communities.

• Student Dialogue on Ticket Costs and Production Attendance:

  • Exchange: Discussion regarding required class theater trips, ticket costs ($\$15$ student pricing vs. free campus options), and scheduling parameters around October and December deadlines.