December 16, 2002

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Strangers On Stage
How Female Gender is Performed in High School
Theatre

• By, Laura Beth Berman
• December 16, 2002

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Presentation Overview

• Most frequently produced high schools plays
• Reasons why high schools are performing the same
  plays each year
• Possible benefits of performing Our Town and You
  Cant Take it With You
• Drawbacks in performing Our Town and You Cant
  Take it With You in terms of gender
• Ensemble theatre as an alternative
• How Educational Psychology plays a role

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Most Frequently Produced Plays of(Dramatics
Magazine and Jennifer Chapman)
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Most Frequently Produced Plays of(Dramatics
Magazine and Jennifer Chapman)
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Most Frequently Produced Plays of(Dramatics
Magazine and Jennifer Chapman)
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Why Are High Schools Performing the Same
Plays?(Ph.d. Student Jennifer Chapman)

• Directors may choose plays based on large casts
  (more boys/girls depending on the student
  population)
• Perform plays that parents and younger siblings
  can attend
• Rules about appropriate content
• Parent groups may have a say
• In 1947, Wilhelmina P. Brown writes in
  Hints for the High School Director
• The fact remains that in a public school we of
  the teaching staff must cater, or at least defer,
  to the religious and moral sense of our parents
  and patrons. We must not permit any of the
  student actors to smoke on the school stage. We
  must not show the effects of, or indicate the
  drinking of alcohol. We must not use profanity.
  These are the unwritten requirements that a high
  school production must abide byRarely will you
  find a parent who is proud to see his offspring
  caricature a drunk (Dramatics 12).

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Synopsis of Our Town

• Written by Thorton Wilder in 1938
• Three act play
• Chronicles typical episodes in the life of
  Grovers Corners, New Hampshire
• First act entitled The Daily Life
• George Gibbs and Emily Webb
• The second act called Love and Marriage
• Final act entitled Death
• Final scene takes place at Emilys funeral
• Dead speak about how troubled the living - Emily
  relives one day of her life
• She returns back to the world of the dead -- she
  laments, Oh Earth, youre too wonderful for
  anybody to realize (p.124).

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Synopsis of You Cant Take it With You

• Written by George Kaufman and Moss Hart in 1937.
  
• Set in New York City in the Sycamore household
• The family made up of several loveable yet
  eccentric characters
• The exception is Alice
• Alice worried what Tonys high-class family will
  think of her family - meeting is the comic climax
  of the play
• Story ends with her reuniting with Tony and the
  wealthy Mr. Kirby realizing that perhaps
  happiness is more important than wealth

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Reasons to Perform

• I am NOT arguing that Our Town and You Cant Take
  it With You should cease to be done altogether
• Our Town
• Actor oriented - minimalist set
• Convention of Stage Manager
• Deals with death - many audience members find it
  moving
• Director Ray Jivoff explained that, my lead
  girls mother had died of cancer several years
  before the show and she told me that it changed
  her life to play Emily.
• You Cant Take it With You
• Just plain funny!
• Juicy roles for actors
• I am arguing that these plays should not be done
  every year

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How Female Gender is presented in Our Town and
You Cant Take it With You

• Concerning Results
• Female characters in You Cant Take it With You
• Mother decides to be a playwright simply
  because a typewriter mistakenly showed up in the
  mail one day
• Daughter ballet dances around the house
  thinking she is quite talented while her dance
  teacher admits,She stinks (p.105)
• Alice the typical sweet and love-struck
  ingenue.
• Female characters in Our Town
• Image of women set in 1901 cooking, cleaning,
  and gossiping to the dismay of their husbands
• Mrs. Gibbs confesses to her neighbor Mrs. Webb
  that she has always wanted to see Paris, but
  quickly adds, I suppose Im Crazy (p.24).
• Emily shes smart - perhaps even smarter than
  her husband George who she once helped get
  through algebra. Yet, she ends up like every
  other woman in Grovers Corners- being defined
  not by her own dreams and aspirations, but rather
  by those of her husband, children, and the town.
• Plays like Our Town and You Cant Take it With
  You present women in the past - not relevant to
  the lives of modern teenage girls

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Definition of Ensemble Theatre

• A group of actors who come together with a
  director to create a performance piece without
  beginning with a script, but by improvising and
  writing around theatre exercises and dramatic
  structures.
• Usually based around one theme or central concept
  
• Example Esther Room
• Used metaphor of a museum to explore the theme of
  Jewish American women.
• This was done through song, dance,
  autobiographical monologues, and references to
  both classical texts and pop culture.

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History of Ensemble Theatre(Aronsons American
Avant-garde Theatre and Steve Feffer)

• 60s
• About the collective voice - ensemble and
  audience were sharing in the experience
• Theatre of ecstasy - performances often
  culminated with members of audience having
  sex/groping performers
• Big themes such as death and birth
• Representative performances include the Open
  Theatres performance of The Serpent which
  explored the notions of rebirth and death and
  included everything from Genesis to the Kennedy
  assassination

• 70s and 80s
• Shift away from exploring the group to the
  group exploring individual
• consciousness
• Ensemble work in this period heavily influenced
  by the performance art scene which was all about
  feminism and homosexuality identity performances.
• That performance art scene emerged out of
  groups feeling like scripted plays were not
  expressing their voices.
• Wooster Group - developed ensemble play
  Rumstick Road in order to explore the suicide of
  member Spalding Grays mother

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Current Trend of The Ensemble Theatre

• About multiple narratives (group,
  autobiographical, classical, and silenced
  stories)
• Uses narrative thread
• To See or Not to See ( Next Act Theatre -
  developed by playwright Steve Feffer)
• Theme of invisibility
• Multiple narratives included
• 1) narrative thread - invisible gas leaked into
  the school - why people were feeling alienated
• 2) autobiographical monologues performed as
  themselves and characters
• 3) Personal monologues stand along side classical
  or popular cultural texts of invisibility (B
  movie The Invisible Man and Ralph Ellisons The
  Invisible Man)

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Interview With Ray Jivoff

• Question Do you see any advantages as a high
  school teacher in directing ensemble plays vs.
  scripted plays? If so, what are they?
• Answer Yes, there are many advantages. Often
  high school teachers forget its supposed to be
  educational theatre, not show business. Putting
  on good shows is important, but keeping goals in
  mind, what are the kids going to learn from
  participating in theatre, leads to ensemble work.
  Show business theatre is a star system. Its
  all about big roles and stars. What the kids can
  learn from theatre is skills, team work, body and
  voice awareness, solving problems, and gaining
  perspective on being someone else. Developmental
  theatre also challenges the kids and the
  teacher/director to create the work themselves.
  They have ownership over the writing. They learn
  about PROCESS over PRODUCT. Also, often in high
  school theatre, the rehearsals are long, drawn
  out bore and the performances are where it all
  happens and everyone forgets about all the time
  spent in rehearsal

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Interview With Ray Jivoff Contd

• Question In terms of the students, how have you
  perceived their experiences to be different being
  a part of an ensemble play vs. a scripted play?
• Answer Involvement. Through the developmental
  process, kids feel a part of the whole. They
  know theyve contributed something. In a
  scripted play, its hard to keep everyone
  connected and involved and feeling like theyre
  contributing something. Scripted show can be
  really boring, for the audience as well as the
  kids. Ensemble pieces are generally more
  involving, more exciting for everyone because the
  whole cast is involved and the sense of ownership
  and harmony is palpable to the audience. They
  see everyone working together and it makes them
  feel something, theres an energy from the force
  of the group.

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How the Learning Sciences Play A Role(Estep Web
Knowledge Theories)

• According to the Sociocultural theory of
  motivation

• An individual will be motivated to participate
  only in so far as the activities and school
  community as a whole are seen as valuable

• Motivation is the desire to belong and identify
  with the community

• However, if the community is boring, redundant,
  uninteresting, and meaningless
• to everyday life, it will not be a community
  that a child would want to identify with

• In this view then, to capture a students
  motivation, the culture of school must find
• a way to be valuable, relevant, interesting, and
  challenging in the eyes of a child

• This may mean engaging the students in authentic
  activities of the larger society

• It also means challenging them with tasks that
  are meaningful to the larger culture and are
  relevant to their lives outside of the school
  environment

• Not an easy task, but one that teachers must
  consider if their goal is to get students
• genuinely interested in becoming a member of the
  culture of school

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Teenagers have a lot to say... Give them an
outlet to say it!