Comments

Overtones 
Trifles
'Night, Mother
Judith
4000 Miles
Show and Tell Post

Show and Tell Post #1

For Show and Tell, I read a play called Hot Stuff by Eulalie Spence. It was written and published in 1927 during the Harlem Renaissance. You can find this play on the North American Women’s Drama database which is available on LSU library’s website, and it is also published in Wines In the Wilderness: Plays by African American Women from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present. There are no records of productions.
The play has six characters that all interact with one of the characters and that is a Fanny. The first character Fanny interacts with is Mary Green, who is her friend. At the start of the play Fanny is going through a stack of slips. The conversation starts out with Fanny talking about numbers, and as the conversation goes on we found out that Fanny sells dresses, Mary is a doctor, and Mary is a not faithful as well. Mary leaves and we found out from her call with that she is unfaithful also. Then there is a knock on the door and it’s a John, who is “a number addict”, trying to figure out Fanny lost his numbers. And we see that fanny is a “number agent” and John accuses her for taking his money. John leaves and his girlfriend Jennie takes a visit to Fanny and Fanny doesn’t recognize her and Jennie reveals herself and threatens with “squealing” to her husband, Walter King.” Then a Jew named Isadore come to the door to sell Fanny an ermine wrap. She agrees to buy it from Isadore after some sexual convincing from him, and as she goes to get the money out her bedroom and Isadore has followed her in there, Walter King walks in and throws Isadore out. Walter goes back to the bed room to what we can hear a beating. And fanny comes out “in a most dishevelled condition” and continues with her admiring her coat and taking a phone call from her secret lover to cancel for tonight and meet tomorrow.

 The choice of having Mary say, “guess nobuddy can put anything over on you, Fanny,” sets up the play to be about this women who maybe is clever and hides things from others but her friend Mary. And looks like Fanny and Mary are running the same game. We know Mary is by Fanny asking her about , “that six foot sheik you was with at Craig’s last night,” then Fanny later goes on to ask, “what you done with Jack this last week?” Also the play unreels the ways we see Fanny get caught up with what she is known to get away with the “secrets of the trade.” First we see her getting accused of stealing which she denies it, “see here! I know you're excited an' all that, but I won't stand fer no funny talk! You gotta have your money! What money! You ain't got no money! You ain't got no winnings!” The Jennie, John’s girlfriend, come by and threaten her and she give in, “I'll give you the money. I can't afford to have you squeal. How do I know you won't tell no how?” Then her husband comes and set her straight.

The next choice that stood out to me was the ending when we hear Fanny get beat by her husband Walter King and Fanny comes out, “in a most dishevelled condition,” and she goes on to say,” The dirty brute! Glad he didn't scratch my face none.” This line alone says that Fanny is a “dirty brute” herself and she is an addict as well. After, “she smooths her hair. She turns around and around,” and she says, “Some bargain,” which refers to her wrap that she did not buy. And she walks over to the phone which sounds like she is answering the phone according to the text, “Bradhurst 2400. Hello! Jim? Jim, this is Fanny. Yes, I'm home. Can't make it tonight, kid. Of course, it's Walter. Tomorrow night, same time. OK. Say, honey, I just bought some coat. It's a peach! You'll see me strut tomorrow night, all right. I don't mean maybe.” Goodbye, honey. Goodnight.” Overall Fanny is obsessed with her things and what makes her happy even if she has to get beaten and harassed and she still would deny all she has done because she even told her husband, “I didn't do nuthin.”                   

4000 Miles

The motif or pattern/line/image that I see in this play is the image of a wall with reality on one side and the image of a wall on the other side of this wall with three other walls surrounding you. The first example of this image is when Leo and Bec are meeting at Vera's. We see that Leo is not on the same page as Bec and he tries to but he gets angry with Bec that she wants to break up. At this point Leo starts to put up a wall of well it's your fault that your breaking up with me and he is blinded by the reality that Bec went through and focuses on what he went instead of realizing what he did to not only Bec but to his whole family. Which we see the image of Leo putting up four walls to contain himself in is world. Another life event in Leo's life that he see totally denial of is the result of kissing his sister Lily. Leo takes it as not a big deal and she is in therapy for it. And Leo goes to blame something and someone for the problem. Once again we see Leo denying what he has done and hiding in his four walls again while reality is knocking on the other side. We also see an another motif of passive aggressiveness from Vera where she wants to accuse Leo of breaking the faucet but then she likes it's find  but you just could  tell me. I can also see this in Leo as well through out the play. At the end  of the play we see the an image of a guy who was afraid or weirded out by the reality of life and as Leo reads the eulogy and it merges in him and Vera talking about  Ginny and the avacado this to me represent the struggle of the hard reality of life and how you grow through it into a adult. Which takes note of the age where young people face the meaning of reality.

Judith by Howard Barker

Major Dramatic Question to answer in this play would be "Does Judith have complete power over her mind?" Through out the play there are instance where we can question the choices that Judith makes.
Judith seems like a woman to herself and quiet at the start of the play. The Servant is speaking for her as if Judith is mute but then Judith speaks to defend The Servant. Judith asks to speak and she nearly gave her cleverness away. The Servant is bate for the real weapon, but Judith still play as the shy woman who can seem to get it together. She starts to converse with Holofernes and Judith and The Servant's front for being in the tent is to be Holofernes' harlots. Judith gets naked and after she stars to converse with Holofernes with talk of battle, death, and cleaverness. As the talk carries on we see Holofernes fall for Judith and Judith doing the same. The Servant plays as a commentator for all these events. Then Judith and Holofernes nestles together. Then we find out the real truth behind Judith and The Servant's visit. This is when we question if Judith has complete power over her emotions. At the end we see her with raging power over The Servant and at this point I wonder at one or many moments did it go through her mind to not kill Holofernes. After Judith kills him she gets on top of his headless body and caress him as if he was alive, which gives me thought did she handle her emotions and feeling properly and appropriately. The next thing that questions her power in the vile situation is The Servant who is the ideologist convince her that she has the choice of being weak or being a great influence. At the end we see that she does gain power and control. 
Another thought that interest me is how the The Servant enjoyed Judith controlling her, which was like The Servant was experimenting on the power of killing can have on a person especially with cleverness to get back at their enemies. Judith and Holofernes sort of mirrored each other but the woman won at the end. Overall, I see this play about a woman's body over her mind.                    

'Night, Mother by Marsha Norman

The major dramatic question  "Will Jessie kill herself" is a valid one but I wouldn't choose this one because it is a simple question to think about and to explain. The question "Was Jessie really Mama's?" is a major dramatic question that I would like to answer and give an explanation about. This question is derived for one of the last lines Mama says, "I thought you were mine." She thought she knew Jessie because "they have lived together for so long there is very rarely any reason for one to ask what the other was about to do." Mama saw Jessie go through so much that she would be the one to convince her of not going through with this act. Mama wanted to be to the last hope for Jessie. She thought that she was protecting Jessie from her sickness but she came short at the end. And to add, Jessie was really the only person in Mama's life that Mama felt loved by. 

This would be a great question, I think because it's not only about feeling sorry for Jessie and what she went through but for her mother because she feels completely responsible for leaving out a extremely important detail to Jessie's life which was one major cause in her death.  The answer to that question would be no that Jessie was not Mama's. Jessie was convince that she was committing suicide and her reason behind. Mama didn't know and that is where she loses all knowing and control of her child. This mirrors when Jessie was a child and Mama didn't tell her about her fits. This results to bad communication through time in which one end of the line gets lost.   

Trifles

Trifles by Susan Glaspell as a minimal production can be a possibility, but the set with all the props and the world to support the text would satisfy the production. Going back to the minimal production, this can be a beneficial setting in certain aspects. One aspect is if you make the important props contrast enough with the bare background there can be a good emphasis on the props which are one of the important visual properties. Another aspect that can make the stripped down version of the play work is the text. The text explains enough of what is taking place in the world to give us a sort of clear visual setting of the production and with the actors supporting the actions and emotions well enough can possibly work as far as text. Another that can enhance the world the minimal set is sound even though there is a bare set we can get the visual juices going with sound. The blank/abstract idea for Trifles can be one way of approaching this play. 
The thing that this minimal set would be missing would be the full visual environment. It was lose the messy, incomplete, and earthy farmhouse world. It would also lose the rich earthy colors in a farmhouse. On the other hand the production would gain a challenge of getting the full world across through a bare set. But, after examining the possible ways that the minimal world could work, I wouldn't mind see this approach on stage. It would be  a challenge but maybe a successful challenge. The naturalist production would be fun and challenging as well with the choices you can make but there are more complicated choices in the theatrical production because there is not much to work with. In my opinion it can go either way.   
          

Overtones

I  would agree that the inner selves see and hear each other with different elements in mind. The way I think the inner selves can see each other is by the way  the outer selves act towards each, body language, and facial expressions . The way the inner selves can hear each other is by the language used towards each other, tones of each others voices. The pattern to when the inner selves hear, see, or speak to each other fall on the type of relationship the outer selves have with each other. These relationships can be close, falling out relationships, awkward relationships, and so on. Also, most common inner selves like to chime in when we do not know much about the person we are conversing with. This idea sums up as judging before getting to know the person.  From the script you can see that the two women have a subtle  relationship based on there inner selves at the beginning. The inner selves have an alternative motive than just a little conversation and tea. As I read along the inner selves start to battle the outer selves and we see a instance where only the outer selves are in control and they have a good feel for each other. This concludes that the inner selves interact with each other with out knowing it. The inner selves mirror your conscience. As humans, we natural judge others by the way they talk, act, and dress and as we get to know a person our harsh inner selves seem to disappear and  look at the person as a whole and not what we think , see, and hear. I think the script did a good job in pointing out the inner and outer selves, and making it little funny and dramatic at the same time.