Project : Reader's Theater-Reshaping the Discourse
"Art is art because it is not nature." Goethe
Language from Syllabus
Working with a small group of collaborators, you will compose a short dramatic dialogue script about topics related to sustainability. Most of the language in the script will not be your own, but taken instead from other writers/sources and put together as a collage or montage that creates the effect of a dialogue between characters that you designate (the writers themselves, public figures, class members, or others-it's up to you. This is a kind of creative, authorized plagiarism (oh, you will include an accurate bibliography of sources with your script. After composing your script, your group will perform it (perhaps with the help of other class members) "reader's theater" style, reading theatrically from the scripts with parts divided among readers, without the need of memorization, costumes, blocking, or special lighting-just the language and your own theatricality (4-5 pages, 1500-1800 words, or ten minute reading time minimum).
Discussion of the Project
One of the highlights of the course, we hope, will be student-written and performed dramatic readers' theater-style "burlesque parody" pieces based on the readings we have looked at so far. All of you will have the chance to participate, and these short dramas will be performed outside in the quad for a live audience as "street theater."
Let's first understand the genre of readers' theater. This is a dramatic performance of a written work in script or dialogue form. Parts are divided among readers, and performers read from a script they hold without memorization, costumes, blocking, or special lighting. The goal is to focus on verbally performing the text using the tools of voice, facial expression, and gesture to make the text meaningful to the audience.
Our readers' theater performances will discuss and display the topic of sustainability and themes associated with it in the specific genre of the "burlesque parody." As we think of it, a "burlesque parody" is a work of literature, in this case a short dialogue or play, that undertakes to ridicule certain attitudes, styles, or subject matters in other works of literature or a genre of literature, in this case, writings about the subject of sustainability. A burlesque parody does this usually by either treating an "elevated" or dignified or "high culture" subject in a trivial manner or a "low" or "common" subject with mock or insincere dignity.
Your burlesque parody should manifest a keen understanding of identifiable themes, issues, or aesthetics we have encountered in our examination of sustainability and utilize parody as a way of representing, analyzing, and critiquing them using a pastiche of sources yoked by violence into a dramatic form roughly and in some way resembling a short dialogue between characters.
Your performance may also be video recorded for the sustainable benefit of future generations, and to, as the modernists put it, to make the "past usable."
Your Project should include the following:
•??The composition of a short script, including a descriptive title, uploaded to the Moodle page
•??The inclusion in the script of a comprehensive reference page including all published sources used.
•??Scripts should draw upon at least 4 assigned readings from the course
•??A short, ten minute performance of the script, using effective text, voice, expression, and gesture to make meaning
•??The participation of all students as readers--all students should take a speaking part
•??Consider using one reader as a narrator, to help knit the dialogue together
•??Assume an audience that is not part of the course and has only a general knowledge of or interest in sustainability
•??Performances should demonstrate creativity, showmanship, concern for audience, and attention to detail