discussion-MonNov14-FriNov18

Discussion questions for Monday, November 14 through Friday, November 18

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 * 1) We are using //Assassins// in this class as a textbook example of late-20th-century American anti-illusionist theater. But how, specifically, does this play work to disrupt the "reality effect" that is so much a part of an audience's expectations about what a play is supposed to do? In other words, how does it use elements such as design, plot, dialogue, gesture, or blocking to "disillusion" (or "alienate") its audience and remind then that they are NOT seeing a slice of real life taken directly from the outside world but are IN FACT in a theater watching a play? Be sure to quote particular examples from the play in your answer.
 * 1) //Dead End//, //Fifteen Strings of Cash//, and //Assassins// all show the seamy underbelly of the time and place they portray; all three stage tense encounters between the powerful and the powerless; and all three show the difficulty of rising about an environment that its characters experience as corrupt and corrosive. And yet the three plays take very different approaches in terms of how they go about staging these thematic concerns: //Dead End'//s "illusory" realism, //Fifteen Strings//'s highly conventionalized expressionism (at least to U.S. theater audience eyes), and //Assassins// variety revue approach. How important is //Assassins//'s anti-illusionism -- of design, of plot, of acting, of music -- to what the play is trying to do for its audience and what the play is trying to show about the world it puts on stage? And if //Assassins// were to be re-staged in a more realist or expressionist style, then how would the "how" of the saying change the "what" of what is said? Be sure to quote particular examples from the play in your answer.
 * 1) Despite the textbook anti-illusionism used by //Assassins//, Mordecai Gorelik would argue that no play totally avoids making use of elements of realism as a way of making sense and making connections for its audiences. Simply by virtue of having human beings on a stage, there's a certain amount of investment that actors and audience will bring to assuming the humanity of the characters (as though they were flesh-and-blood people with backstories). What elements of realism stand out in //Assassins//? To what extent do these elements take away from the effect of the play, and to what extent might they add to it? BONUS QUESTION: Does the fact that the characters here are actual historical figures contribute more to the realism or to the anti-illusionism of the play. Be sure to quote particular examples from the play in your answers.