Assignment:
1. Performance Elements: Drama is different in many ways from other literary forms because it has major components that cannot be clearly experienced when it is read, but which instead can only be experienced when one watches a play performed. For this forum's main post, compare Reed's The C Above the C Above High C and Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. Is one of the two plays more reliant on performance elements than the other? How does this affect your experience of the play as a written text? If you were able to watch the YouTube video of The Importance of Being Earnest, you are welcome to discuss that as well. Give specific examples from each play to support your response, and be sure explain those examples.
2. Class and Social Mobility: The Importance of Being Earnest is set in a period of English history where social class is important. What issues about class does Wilde raise in the play, and what do you think he is trying to say about those issues? Give specific examples from the play to support your response, and be sure explain those examples.
3. Out of Time: The C Above the C Above High C is a play that is set in the 1950s, but was written in the 1990s. Would the play come across differently if it had been written in the 1950s as well? Choose one character or scene in the play that sticks out to you, and explain how you think that character or scene would have been similar or different it it had been written in the time in which the play is set. Give specific examples from the play to support your response, and be sure explain those examples.