Discussion: Staging: You're the Director! - LIT
For this discussion, you're the director! Choose one scene from Trifles by Susan Glaspell (pp. 1258-1270), or Tea Party by Betty Keller (pp. 1271-1275), and describe how you would stage it. Take staging cues, both direct and indirect, from the play you choose, and explain how you, as a potential director of the play, would present them on stage. How would you handle symbolism in this one scene? How would you set the play, as far as time and place? Why? What would be important to you, as a director, to explore culturally and historically in the scene? Why? Consider how you would insert a personal nuance to the production. What would it be; why did you choose to include that; how would you incorporate it?
In your responses to your peers, try to diplomatically critique your peers' staging choices and how you might approach it instead. The goal is to share personal meanings of what we've read as a class.
This will be a student-led activity. Use the time to encourage each other, let each other know where more clarity is needed, and provide any other feedback that might be useful. I will be monitoring the discussions, and will focus on supplying comments to students who don't have very many from you and your peers.