discussion-MonNov7-FriNov11

Discussion questions for Monday, November 7 through Friday, November 11

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 * 1) We are using Sidney Kingsley's //Dead End// in this class as a classic example of mid-20th-century American stage realism. (It is, in fact, the play that serves Mordecai Gorelik as his exhibit A for the "illusory" approach to scenic design in the piece we read from //New Theatres for Old//.) But how, specifically, does this play create its "reality effect"? In other words, how does it use elements such as design, plot, or dialogue to create the illusion of having staged a slice of real life taken directly from the outside, non-theater world? Be sure to quote particular examples from the play in your answer.
 * 1) Both //Dead End// and //Fifteen Strings of Cash// show the seamy underbelly of the worlds they portray; both stage tense encounters between the powerful and the powerless; and both show the difficulty of struggling against a corrupt and corrosive environment. And yet the two plays couldn't be more different in terms of how they go about staging these thematic concerns: in Gorelik's terms, if //Dead End// represents the "illusory" approach, then //Fifteen Strings// represents the "conventional" approach. How important is //Dead End'//s realism -- of design, of plot, of dialogue -- 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 //Dead End// were to be re-staged in a more highly conventionalized 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 stage realism used by Kingsley's //Dead End//, Mordecai Gorelik would argue that no play totally avoids making use of conventions in widespread use in the theater of its time and accepted as part of the game by its audiences. Simply by starting and ending, as Huizinga might note, a "play" marks itself off as something distinct from the "real" world it portrays. What things could you point to in //Dead End// that might suggest the influence of dramatic or theatrical conventions? To what extent do these conventional bits disrupt the "slice of life" effect of the play as a whole? To what extent might they be necessary to the play? Be sure to quote particular examples from the play in your answer.