Paul E. Turtola
After hours of television viewing, it seems that teenagers are attuned to the visual and acoustic elements of whatever it is that they are watching: students usually produce answers to a play’s basic who, what, where and when questions. But few respond critically and many fail to answer the more important questions of how and why. Such shortcomings produce the absence of proper thematic understanding of the artist’s work.
This course, through a number of projects, will strengthen students’ powers of observation and, in time, they will think more critically about many things they see and hear. It will be a fun way to learn about the worlds of theater, literature, acting and film, and will help young people develop a sense of personal growth along the way. It will attempt to reach young peoples’ desires to know more about themselves and learn about new, interesting things in the theater and film world that they couldn’t learn in any other class at school.
The course offers three approaches to drama: the literary work of the playwright, the theatrical work of the actor, and the cinematic work of the director. It will delve into the reasons why a play is written by spending time understanding the writer’s personal experiences and beliefs. It will explore the work of the actor, challenged to portray a character from the play and, finally, it will give students insight into how a director interprets and presents the drama as a living theatrical or film event.
The Literary Work of The Playwright
Students may become interested in drama if they take the opportunity to discover the author’s reasons for writing a play. Political, historical and economic aspects of the writer’s work can help the student understand how people live and behave at various periods in history. After reading a play and knowing its background, the individual can form an opinion based on an observation of the material, learn a previously unknown aspect of history, or be influenced by a particular style or philosophy.
The main focus in a student’s research on the literary work of the playwright will be to take the writer’s personal reasons for writing the work as the central idea. Did the playwright write the play as an autobiographical account, or choose to write biographically about someone important? Is the writer making a statement about someone or something in particular? What were the events that enabled the author to write the play?
With the playwright as the focus of the literary aspect of drama, the classroom’s library will need to include an array of plays from many theater styles. Plays ranging from the Greek and Roman tragedies, medieval pageant plays, “commedia dell’arte”, Elizabethan and Jacobean Ages, early modern drama, and to the present should be represented with as many copies as needed for each student in the class. If it is not possible to have so many scripts available, then many styles need to be shown through performance events and film to provide an adequate sense of theater history.
Strategies for Literary Work
The following research materials are samples of the teaching of a playwright’s work(s) to a high school theater class. A number of renowned playwrights who span the early classical periods to drama as we know it today, should be studied throughout the course. This unit focuses on two modern American playwrights, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, with commentary on a sample of their work. The instructor should limit the amount of time spent in the classroom lecturing on these writers, and students should work on this material outside class and concentrate primarily on scene work during class. The point is to make class time the most enjoyable part of the course by working on scenes from plays. Using this acting approach at the start of the course will make students want to find out more about the character they are portraying. By reading the play on their own, students can work and develop at a pace that is comfortable and productive.
Students will develop a discipline of their own towards researching playwrights outside class and periodically will need to show their work to receive proper credit for the course. Combined with watching plays at local theaters and reviewing films watched in class or at other movie theaters, the course should be interesting and diverse enough to keeping even a teenager satisfied.
