Tis Pity She's A Whore

If I was in charge of creating some poster ideas for 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, the first idea I came up with would be the image of a dark colored red Mardi Gras like mask on top of a lightly colored grey backdrop with a quote written in the design of the mask. I have thought about three different quotes that show characters wearing masks to hide their true identity in the play. The first one is in Act I, Scene 2: 83-84, Giovanni is talking to the friar and saying he will hide his true feeling for his sister because he knows it’s wrong.  He says, " All this I’ll do, to free me from the rod of vengence; else I’ll swear my fate’s my god.”

My second quote is Vasques hiding himself to get information out of Hippolita. He says, “And that’s villainous fault in him” (Act III, Scene 8: 13), Here we see him hiding under a mask of hate towards Soranzo when in reality he is loyal to his master and is using Hippolita to turn against her. 

My third quote would be in Act V, Scene 6:149-150. This is the last scene of the play when Richardetto says, “Your grace’s pardon! Thus long I lived disguised,” here it is revealed that richardetto was not dead but hidden under a mask. He finally reveals himself after seeing the effects of lust and pride resulting in a blood bath. 

House of Trials

After reading House of Trials many things stood out to me that could be looked at as conventions of Spanish Golden Age comedia’s. For example the character’s asides, the poetic verse, long monologues, characters driven by honor and knowledge that the characters are in a play. Not reading any other Spanish Golden Age plays I would assume that these are convention that these plays would have in common. Though these are all important, I will go into further detail of the two I believe are more cructial. 

One convention would be the characters’ asides to the audience. This concept is different than the well-made plays we have read in class. In The Glass of Water, for example, the characters stay within the world of the play and only speak to each other.  However in House of Trials, the characters often break the fourth wall to tell the audience what they are thinking. The characters’ asides are done in order for the playwright is able to let the audience know the characters’ true thoughts since there is such deceit in this play. 

Another important convention of the comedia would be the poetic dialogue written in verse. In The Glass of Water, the characters speak in a normal way that dialogue would take place if it was being lived. However in The House of Trials, the characters speak in poetry. The words flow and are often wordy in order to fit the context of a verse. This heightened language creates a different feeling for the audience than natural speaking patterns, like Shakespearian verse does. 

Show and Tell Post Two

Basic Information 

The People by Susan Glaspell is a one act play published in 1918. It now is in the public domain and can be performed without royalties. I found it from the following website: http://www.one-act-plays.com/dramas/people.html. This play was most likely first performed at the Provincetown Playhouse, in its first season of the theatre after moving to New York City around 1916-1917. Many plays have been produced here since its opening, it is still running today producing plays mostly for New York University’s educational theatre department. More about the production done here can be found at this website: http://www.provincetownplayhouse.com/thepeople.html

Outline of Plot

The play starts as staff members of The People: A Journal of the Social Revolution wait for their editor Ed to get back from a trip that will determine the fate of the newspaper. The characters discuss what is wrong with the paper and each person proclaims what should be done in order to “fix” the paper. As the staff is losing hope a women, a boy, and a man walk into the office and explain how the paper has changed their lives for the better. The women talks to the editor and gets him to believe in his words again like she believes in them. In the end, Ed decided to keep the paper running and let the truth be open for the public. 

Dramaturgical Choice 1 

          Looking at this play one of the first dramaturgical choices we notice is Glaspell’s decision to only have four of the twelve characters have proper names. The other names given tell us either where they are from like the Boy from Georgia, or give their status of how they work with the paper like the Artist or the Earnest Approach. I find this choice notable because these characters are more than a single person but more of representatives of smaller communities of thinking. I believe because each of their titles represent a larger scale, they themselves are The People that the paper was first established for. 

Dramaturgical Choice 2

       Another significant dramaturgical choice is Glaspell’s decision to have the point of attack and the inciting incident all be in the first few lines of the script. Within three short lines the plot begins and we find out the major conflict in the play. I think this choice kicks off the play quickly and lets the readers know exactly what the play is about and what major conflicts the characters are facing in just a short moment. I like plays that take this approach because then more time is spent on the rising action when tension is growing and keeping the readers interested. I believe it works for especially well for this play because we get a taste of what is going on and then in the rising action everything becomes more intriguing as more conflicts arise. 

Eurydice

If I were to design posters after just two quotes of this play, the following quotes would have to be my basis for the best possible designs in my eyes. 

The first quote have chosen is found on page 215 when Orpheus asks Eurydice “How will you remember?” I chose this quote because I believe the questioning of Eurydice by Orpheus is prominent and does foreshadow that she will forget him in some aspect in the play.  If I were creating a design based on this quote it would take a the production on a road more focused on the issues of rememberance throughout the play. This choice would make the senses in the beginning more meaningful and would have to be stressed in order to understand later memory problems that the characters go through more fully. I think the poster design would be cool if it were an image that was repeated behind itself slowly fading into nothing like when you forget a memory and it fades away gradually. 

The second quote I would chose, is found on page 234 when the stones say, “DEAD PEOPLE CANT SING!” I chose this quote because singing was an important part of the play, considering that Orpheus was able to travel to the underworld by singing. In this quote we see how urgent the stones want them to stop singing; we get a sense that singing has powers and high stakes attached to it. A concept based off of this would makes the choice between Orpheus and her father a much tougher one. A cool poster based on this quote would be Eurydice with her mouth open as if she was singing but nothing coming out, and then in the reflection of her eyeball an image of the stones yelling at her. 

Comments: Part Two

Comment 1:   http://jstaff6.blogspot.com/2013/10/glass-of-water.html?showComment=1383686230100#c9017125262060135580

Comment 2:  http://purplesummer2130.blogspot.com/2013/10/love-valour-compassion.html?showComment=1383686507227#c4956423091161099315

Comment 3:  http://purplesummer2130.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-childrens-hour.html?showComment=1383686819200#c5934405818360058634

Comment 4:  http://icesk8prosue2130.blogspot.com/2013/10/love-valour-compassion.html?showComment=1383687151967#c4161866139717244057

Comment 5:  http://2130michaelguillot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-childrens-hour.html?showComment=1383687536186#c724619716152584515

Love!Valor!Compassion!

I would like to say that at first I did not like this play, but after reading is multiple times and getting a better grasp on understanding this play, I actually have come to really enjoy it.  Though it is quite different than a well-made play, that doesn’t mean that this type of play is any less entertaining or valuable to society. Structurally, this play is non-linear and the characters are consistantly talking at the same time to different people and even addressing the audience at some points. Dramaturgically, this play says a lot yet a little at the same time. By this I mean, they characters have a lot of dialogue but have far less action than speaking of what has happened or what will happen in the future. All of these factors make this play quite different than others we have read. I think if a historian was reading this play, they might get the sense that america in the 1990’s was disjointed and confused. The whole play has a sense of disjointed-ness just by looking at the title: Love!Valor!Compassion! It does not seem to roll of the tongue, but rather it is broken and not one complete sentence, instead it is three different sentences. Also adding to the disjointed-ness of this play, the characters  braking of the fourth wall from time to time makes the reader think of the disjointed view of what theatre is “suppose to be” at this time. We get that maybe a capital T- truth could be seen differently by whoever is viewing it. For example when the characters talk of how they die, they each say when they go or how they believe they go. Ramon says, “I don’t die. I’m fucking immortal. I live forever” (McNolly 138) Here we see that Ramon’s belief of death is that it didn’t happen, as opposed to Perry who has his death counted down to the second. They view is different as what the Truth of death is and who controls death (human or God) is based on a person’s point of view. 

Children's Hour

The biggest departure from a well-made play form is the choice to not have a resolution with a nice tied up ending, instead we are left we more of an unraveling of characters and left with more questions. This is significantly different than a well made play because a well made play would have had an ending that was tied with a nice bow on it and all unanswered questions being answered. However, in Children's Hour we are left with Martha dead, Karen leaving Joe, Mary finally confessing it was all a lie too late, and her grandma never being able to really punish her for the mess she has made. Essentially we are left with a bigger mess then at the beginning of Act III when we see that Karen and Martha have lost the court case and now have to live with a stigma over their heads. 

I think this play should be done today. I understand why most people would say that it shouldn't be done because we like to think that our society has advanced and are more accepting of the LGBTQ community. However after seeing Five Flights, I don't think the majority of our society has truly accepted this community. I could not believe the amount of people at the production who were grossed out when either Tom and Ed makeout and even when Olivia and Adele kiss. I heard gasps and even people say "eww." I was appaulled that people thought that those relationships were "unnatural" in some way to say or react in such a way. For this reason I believe this play should be done ,and then maybe these people who react like this to a modern play will realize how ridiculous they are acting in today's world when we like to think we have progressed so far from when Children's Hour was written.