Looking At Plays

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Adapting for Student Work

The following process* is concerned with students as formal audience. It recommends students be encouraged to approach plays thoughtfully and discriminatingly by withholding their judgments until they have enough information to respond in an informed manner. It enables students to go beyond their initial reactions to understanding what it is they've seen and how it was done. It provides them with the opportunity to express and support their personal responses and encourages discussion through which they learn that the same play can well mean different things to different people. The process is designed to help teachers guide their students to create more significance and derive greater enjoyment out of their experiences as playgoers.

This suggested process for looking at plays is described in seven steps:

• preparation
• first impressions
• description
• analysis
• interpretation
• gathering information
• informed judgment

* This process was adapted from the following sources: Anderson; 1988, Clark, 1960; Feldman, 1987 and Mahon Jones, 1986.

Step One
Preparation

As students anticipate the day when they will see a play, you may choose to prepare them for the experience.

Depending on the particular play and the level of interest and experience of students, some topics for investigation and discussion might include:

• brief biographical information about the artists involved
• a brief look at the dramatic structure of plays
• some historical and cultural insights into the play and the times during which it was written and originally produced
• questions of audience responsibility ranging from basic points of etiquette to the more complex issues of the individual's recognition of his or her personal biases and cultural perspectives.

The purpose in encouraging some preliminary reflection is to whet students' appetites for the play and to provide them with some valuable "hooks" to take into the performance. The discussion should not spoil any surprises that the play and the performance hold in store for them. Later, they'll have an opportunity to pursue these and other related topics in greater depth.

Step Two
First Impressions

When students have just seen a play, their comments are usually what you would call a "First Impression." The teacher should encourage them to share the following:

• what moment in the play they liked best
• how a particular character made them feel
• personal associations with characters or situations
• what the funniest (saddest) moment in the play was
• which costumes they liked
• any symbolism they found interesting
• that they didn't understand a thing!

Step Three
Description

Being in an audience for a play is different from viewing an art object or listening to a piece of recorded music. Whereas the more tangible art pieces or piece of music can be looked at or listened to again and again, the elusive work of dramatic art exists only in the time and space that it is performed.

Before expecting students to respond thoughtfully to the play they have seen, provide them with the opportunity to recall and recreate the experience in their mind's eye.

Invite the students to describe their experience as audience. Ask them for facts, not opinions. Ask them to describe simply what they saw and what they heard. List their responses on chart paper. Such a list might look like this:

• the costumes were all from Victorian days
• the father spoke with an English accent
• the sound effects of the battle were done with some kind of synthesizer
• the young man walked in an unusual way
• whenever the eerie voice was heard most of the lights changed their colour
• the clown said the same rhyme over and over but sometimes he said it so fast that we couldn't understand it
• when the actors were moving and making sounds it gave us the impression of a machine
• some actors acted more than one role but we knew which part was which because they used masks
• the audience could see the person, who was an actor sometimes, operating the tape system with the music and sounds for the play
• they gave each of us a small instrument to play -- there must have been hundreds of them.

Choose one item from the list to lead the discussion; for example, "When the actors were moving and making sounds it gave us the impression of a machine". The students may point out the impracticality of using a "real" machine on stage. They may marvel that the body movements, gestures and sounds made by the actors really were, for them as audience, an acceptable representation of a machine. They may remark that when the actors were making the machine they were more like dancers than actors.

By the time each item on the list has been considered, the students will have made some discoveries about the nature of dramatic art. They will have:

• heard and used such terms as director, playwright, designer, script, lighting technician, set, actor, props, sound board, make-up artist, etc.
• achieved some deeper understanding of how plays are made
• taken a step toward knowing that theatre is a synthesis of the arts
• recognized their own willingness to suspend disbelief
• accepted their responsibilities as audience.

Step Four
Analysis

As you approach analysis of the play with students, it will be beneficial to refer to the list from Step Three. They had begun to organize their thinking about the play by recognizing that many different artists, each with unique concerns, were instrumental in the making of the performance. They reached some understanding that only by the artists working together and developing relationships among their various areas of responsibility could there be a play for our enjoyment. Each artist involved in the making of a play understands and uses the following elements:

Focus Knowing what the play is about and how to transmit this meaning most effectively to the audience. Tension The "pressure for response"; this can take the form of a conflict, a challenge, a surprise, a time restraint or the suspense of not knowing. Tension is what works in a play to ensure the audience's desire to know what will happen. Contrasts Dynamic use of movement/stillness, sound/silence, light/darkness, etc. Symbol Something that stands for or represents something else. Broadly defined, plays are symbolic or metaphoric representations of human experience. Within works of dramatic art, links can be made between the concrete experiences of those involved and abstract ideas and themes. An idea or object can hold several layers of both individual and collective meaning. For example, a black cat might simply be symbolic of bad luck or superstition; it may signify that the play is constructed around a mystery or that suspicion pervades the relationship between the two main characters; it may personify the darker side of the antagonist's character or abstractly represent a sub-plot or the overall theme of the play.

Students should consider:

• how these elements were organized in the play
• how these elements functioned to connect each of the parts
• how the artistic purpose of each artist was served by the use of the elements.

Step Five
Interpretation

Provide the students with the opportunity to express what the play means to each of them. They must understand that they are being asked to express an interpretation beyond that of their first reaction; one which weighs the description and analysis of the two preceding steps. Ask them to consider such questions as:

• What was the focus of the play?
• Did tension work effectively in this performance to engage our desire to know what would happen next? How?
• How did the director use contrasts in the play? The light designer? The sound technician? The actors?
• What was the basic motivation of particular characters in the play?
• What other choices could particular characters in the play have made?
• Why do you think this play was written?
• Why do you think this group of dramatic artists chose to produce this play now?
• What does the play tell us about the playwright's view of the world?
• What does the play mean to you?
• How does this differ from your initial reaction?

While a guided discussion may initially provide students with a forum in which to approach the above questions, there are other means that may allow them to express their various interpretations more effectively. Since they are seeking to clarify and share their understanding of a piece of theatre, it makes good sense to use drama strategies to aid them in exploring, expressing and sharing their different ideas. The use of tableau is one such effective strategy.

Ask a small group of students to discuss and reach a consensus as to the focus of the play. Ask them to choose a moment in the play that they feel clearly communicated the focus. Ask them to re-create that moment in a tableau. Have them present the tableau to their classmates. Repeat with a different group of students.

Through careful analysis of this tableau and related ones, the students will have opportunities to:

• explore the various interpretations of the play
• recognize some of the reasons for the range of responses to both the play and the tableaux
• clarify aspects of their own interpretation and deepen their understanding of the play
• broaden their frames of reference about their world as well as about the play in question and the workings of the theatre
• recognize the complex processes involved in mounting a play.

• how dramatic stage pictures are composed
• how emotion, relationships and tension can be communicated through body shape, gesture, facial expression and the actors' use of space
• how minute changes in body shape, gesture, facial expression and use of space can significantly alter meaning
• an effective dramatic technique by which they may clearly express ideas that they may not otherwise be skilled enough to communicate.

Throughout this process you have been attempting to persuade students to withhold their opinions about the play until they have accumulated enough information to render their response a thoughtfully considered one. As they approach the last step in the process -- informed judgment -- there is one other body of information to which they should be directed.

No one will disagree that throughout the ages, theatre has reflected the social, political, and cultural climate of the times. To fully realize the worth of a piece of theatre, a knowledge of the following would be useful:

• an historical glimpse into the social, political and cultural climate of the times in which the play was written and performed
• biographical information about the playwright
• a reading of this and other plays by the playwright
• a reading of other plays written at the same time
• a look at the expectations and moods of audiences during the years of the play's existence
• a reading of critics' reviews of the play
• biographical information about the artists involved in the performance they've just seen
• a comparison between the social and political climate of the current time in which the play was produced (that is, now) and those of the times in which the play was first written and produced.

Step Seven
Informed Judgment

Reflection upon the theatre experience will often temper that usually honest initial reaction.

In the latter part of the eighteenth century, the following three principles were put forth by German philosopher, playwright and critic J. W. von Goethe as a basis for dramatic criticism. They have provided the model for much dramatic criticism since.

What is each artist trying to do?
How well has she or he done it?
Was it worth the doing?

If students have been guided successfully through the six preceding steps of the process for looking at plays, they will be able to ponder these three principles and respond with confidence to the questions they pose. And as they become more experienced as audience, the process will ensure them fuller, richer and more gratifying theatre experiences.

Summary of Looking at Plays

1. Preparation