Show and Tell #3

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds was written by Paul Zindel in 1964. The play has won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1971) and a New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award. It was first performed in 1964 at the Alley Theatre in Houston.

                The plot of the story takes place in the fifties following the launch of sputnik. The protagonist of the show is Tillie, a young girl who is constantly abused by her mother, teased by her classmates and bullied by her sister. Her mother is an alcoholic hospice nurse and her sister has mental issues after seeing one of her mother’s patients die. The inciting incident of the play is when Tillie enters the science fair after being approached about it by her science teacher. Her project is focused on the effect of gamma rays on the growth of marigolds. Tillie’s mother, Beatrice, hates the idea and eventually goes on a drunken rampage, and kills the girls’ rabbit. This sends Tillie’s sister, Ruth, into a seizure. The entire incident is followed by Tillie presenting a final monologue about her hope for the future.

                The first dramaturgical choice that I noticed in the play was the choice to have three different test subjects for Tillie’s experiment. The three different man-in-the-moon marigolds each received different levels of radiation, and each had different results. The flower which received the most radiation was decrepit and dead, the one that received little radiation had slight mutations and the one that received a moderate dosage of radiation had beautiful mutations. The flowers can be viewed as symbols for Tillie’s family. Beatrice constantly drinks and is like the most radioactive flower and is wilting away. Ruth, who is praised by her mother and isn’t as abused, has mental issues but is otherwise okay. Tillie, who receives a lot of abuse from her mother, has a beautiful mind and a positive outlook on the future.

                A second dramaturgical choice in the play was the death of the rabbit. The rabbit represented a bond between the two young girls, Tillie and Ruth. In the scene where Tillie gets home from the science fair, Ruth is really excited that she won and it appears as if the sisters now have a new bond that they can build upon. The rabbit is then found dead and this sends Ruth into convulsions. In the following scene, Tillie speaks about her hopes for the future and seems to be a much stronger individual than she was at the start of the play. I believe that through her new bond with Ruth, she is more confident and much happier, and when the rabbit died, she wasn’t as shaken as she might’ve been before.

                The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds is full of parallel symbols that reflect the changing relationships of the characters in the plot. This was really rushed and terrible. So, this is the conclusion I suppose.

Fire in the Mirror Response

The inclusion of the first few monologues that don’t really relate to the riots themselves is crucial to the development of Fire in the Mirror’s illusionistic world. The first several monologues help to set the almost hyper-realistic tone of the play. The characters presented in these monologues establish strong racial and religious identities, especially the Anonymous Lubavitcher Woman (whose religious identity is established through an incident with a radio during Shabbas) and the Reverend Al Sharpton (who talks about being raised by James Brown and not wearing his hair a certain way in reaction to white people). These monologues, along with others, help to create a certain image of the city at the time of the riots and engage the audience in the world of the play. Without this engaging setting, the later monologues about the riots themselves wouldn’t be quite as powerful. It is through the realism that the powerful messages of the monologues can be properly conveyed.

Comments for third checkpoint

Numero Uno

The Second One

The one after 2 but before 4

Fo'

V

Three Viewings Response

In the play Three Viewings, I think that the interesting factor that connects all three monologues isn’t that the characters are all loosely connected, nor the fact that all three characters are at funerals. No, what interests me is the fact that each of the three characters seem indifferent to the fact that they are at a funeral. They are all at the funerals for different reasons, but none of them seem to be experiencing the emotions or thought processes that one would normally associate with funerals. For instance, Emil is a funeral director, and for that reason he is always at the funerals, but he is also trying to get Tessie to fall in love with him. At the funerals, he is nervous and anxious because he is trying to make his feelings for her known and trying to win her heart. In the second monologue, Mac is directly related to the deceased, but she isn’t upset about her grandmother’s death, at least not at first. She intends to steal a ring that she thought was rightfully hers, and has a vengeful, unremorseful attitude. This shifts, however, when she experiences a strange moment in which she believes her grandmother grabs her in the casket and gets angry at her for stealing the ring. In the end of her monologue, she is no longer vengeful, but still not necessarily saddened by the death of her grandmother. The third character, Virginia, is at her husband’s funeral, but she doesn’t seem sad either. She is being swallowed by her husband’s debt and upset that she can’t recall how she met him, but not sad that he is dead. She seems so preoccupied with everything surrounding his death that she doesn’t even really focus on the death itself. In the end of her monologue, she is relieved of all debt and finds out when and how she met her husband, but she still doesn’t seem sad about it.

The Drowsy Chaperone Response

The Drowsy Chaperone follows an unusual action pattern that separates it from the show-within-the-show world of Drowsy Chaperone. One of the biggest factors in support of this is the heavy irony created by the character of Man. The play opens in darkness, and immediately there is a strong sense of irony as the Man states how he hates waiting in the darkness for plays to begin. He breaks the fourth wall of his show and creates a humorous situation by his heavy ironic comments. This continues throughout the show, as he continues to interrupt the flow of the meta play and break the fourth wall, while the characters within the meta play never break the fourth wall or create any dramatic irony, apart from when the man joins them for the final number of the play, when both worlds seem to combine. The second element that differs greatly between the play and the meta play is the tempo. The play itself sort of meanders along, as the man is just tending to nightly chores and listening to a record, but the play within a play has a much different tempo. It is lively and upbeat and almost whimsical, a stark contrast to the dreary world of the Man in the chair. The meta play is also subject to tempo changes according to how the man feels about certain scenes, or the record player. The record player skips along at one point, and the characters within the meta play are stuck in a single point. During the “intermission,” the man puts on a different a record and the tempo of the meta play stops entirely as a different musical is performed. Yet another tempo shit comes in the resolution of the meta play’s plot, during the scene where Janet asks the Chaperone for honest advice. The Man keeps skipping back to one particular line to reiterate its importance to him, all the while halting the tempo of the meta play. The final instance of tempo alteration of the meta play is when the power goes out, effectively stopping the meta play altogether. This also shifts the tempo of the play itself, because The Man is suddenly lost and trying desperately to return to the meta world of the play within a play. The tempo of both plays become one as the man joins the meta play and sings the big final number.

Show and Tell 2 (All the King's Men)

For my second show and tell post, I chose to write about All the King’s Men by Adrian Hall. The play is based around Louisiana governor Huey P. Long’s rise to power and ultimate downfall and the situations surrounding it. This play is currently being produced by Swine Palace. The play follows the story of Willie Stark through the eyes of Jack Burden, a newspaper reporter who becomes Stark’s right hand man and witnesses his descent into political and personal corruption. The play also takes a look at the relationship between Jack and Anne Stanton, daughter of the former governor of Louisiana, Joel Stanton. Jack’s relationship with Anne is strained as he discovers that she and Governor Stark are having an affair at the end of the first act. Following this revelation, Jack drives to California and develops a very existential and nihilistic perspective, claiming that nobody is responsible for anything they do since life is just a great “twitch.” As Jack returns from his trip, he is forced to blackmail his mentor, Judge Irwin, for governor Stark. The Judge commits suicide and it is revealed that he was Jack’s true father. Following this event, Willie tries to reconcile with his wife after an football accident leaves their son paralyzed. By going back to his wife, Willie angers Sadie Burke, a woman with whom he carried on an affair, and she proceeds to help plot an assassination. After the governor is killed, Jack realizes that there is more to life than the great twitch, and he weds Anne. The play resolves with a message that there is no way to change the past, but you can change the future, or something along those lines.

The playwright’s choice to include a prologue that takes place years after Jack has met Governor Stark intrigued me because, at first glance, it seems very confusing. It introduces the characters to the audience but at the same time, it shows them after they’ve had a significant amount of growth and development. The following scene jumps back in time to when the characters first meet. It is from this contrast that a lot of the intrigue in the play is derived. The audience goes from seeing this well-oiled political presence to a nervous man who doesn’t drink for fear of his wife getting angry. The characters are all introduced to each other at this point in the show as well, so the audience gets to see the real beginnings of all the relationships within the play.

A second choice that I found rather interesting is the way the playwright uses tableau in certain scenes. One of the major examples is during the “Kingfish” sequence. Willie is upstage delivering a speech, but everyone goes into tableau as Jack and Anne carry on a sequence that depicts their entire relationship. The tableau ends as Willie finishes his speech and Jack screams at Anne and the ensemble sings. The effect is chaotic and ordered at the same time, just like the relationships of Willie, Jack and Anne.

Buried Child Prompt

The world of Shepard's Buried Child is an example of illusionism to a certain degree. The dialogue is very realistic in the way the characters go back and forth at one another, but there are certain elements that bring the world into a less realistic setting. One of the major factors that detracts from the illusionistic portrayal of the world is the ambiguity of the situations the characters are placed. The ambiguity derives from several moments in the plot, such as Tilden bringing in vegetables periodically throughout the play, or when Tilden covers Dodge in corn husks. Further ambiguity and confusion occurs when Bradley puts his fingers in Shelly's mouth wafter just meeting her, and the way that the characters seem to have forgotten or at least don't seem to care about everything that happens during the first night after the sun rises. To further detract from the illusion, there is a genuine since of black and white or right and wrong in the play. The entire family has problems and aren't necessarily good people, apart from Tilden who isn't mentally stable. The only character who seems to not have some sort of craziness going on is Shelly. After Shelly leaves, the family seems to go completely crazy. The characters all seem to speak cryptically as well, not necessarily saying what they mean. There are many problems that are addressed through the context and mood of the play but not the dialogue, further adding to the complexity and ambiguity of the play.