4,000 Miles

A couple of notable motifs in 4000 Miles are death and Leo's grin. I choose Leo's grin because he uses it as a defense mechanism, almost. He grins at Bec trying to win her over, he grins when he is frustrated with Vera and he "smiles genuinely" over a video chat with Lily, who he truly loves. Whether that love for his adopted sister is familial or romantic is ambiguous.

Somewhat of a pattern in Leo's life is the crappy events he walks through. There is putting his sister into therapy, his strained relationship with his mother, screwing up a relationship with Bec, his best friend dying and then finding his grandma's neighbor dead in her apartment. Not all of this happens during the play, though, and I think his habit of grinning in difficult situations says a lot about his character. Elements of character and how characters interact are basically what drive the plot. Leo may be on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but he evidently knows how to bounce back from these tragedies and make the best of anything.

Also, death occurs before and during the play. Leo is hurting from Micah passing away on their bike trip. He opens up and tells the whole story, which is a very intense, sad scene that is more for the audience than for communication between characters, because Vera could only half-listen. Then, right after his conversation with Lily, Leo hears Ginny fall across the hall and in the next scene we discover that was her death. His little eulogy points out that her presence there made the family feel better about Vera.
In theatre, death and any permanent ending, such as to a relationship, are similar situations. In real life, a permanent end to something is like a death. People experience both as loss. The poem Leo reads about the field is another intimate moment the audience gets with Leo. He clearly wants another shot with Bec, and she declines. Ouch. So the end of his and Bec's romance was a loss, also. It affected Leo.

4000 Miles is a pretty serious play. The last line about Ginny helping things grow confuses me. I'm not sure why Herzog chooses the plot points that she does, but I think her purpose was writing a play about human responses and emotions.

Judith

Ah, Judith. I dislike this script. I think a play like this represents why some people don't see plays.

However, as a theatrical telling of a story, there are choices made by the playwright, Howard Barker, that are open to interpretation. The first few pages of this one scene play are a little confusing because we don't know what Judith is really there for until Holofernes is asleep -- or pretends to sleep.
It seems like a lot of philosophical flirtation - the best kind - between a couple people who want something from each other but are secretive about what it is they want. Why would a cruel war general allow a couple of strangers in his room, just to chat? Why is this widow woman suddenly empathizing with this contemplative killer? Why does the servant seem to be encouraging their common ground?

We realize later that Judith must kill Holofernes for her home country. She ran into trouble when Holofernes proved to be an honest man. A scrawny, well-read nerd with an inferiority complex. Or was it that he proved to be a liar? Anyway, he was honest in stating that he was a liar and she liked that. The climax is in Judith hesitating with the sword over the man's neck and the servant is pleading with her to strike him. Holofernes is awake, almost giving in to the ten-minute love affair and allowing her to murder him. For me as a reader, Holofernes' resignation was more strange than her wanting to fuck after the fact!

So the major dramatic question has more to do with Judith overcoming something than whether or not she kills him. Holofernes says, "When a woman loves a man, it is not his manliness she loves... It is the pity he enables her to feel by showing... his loneliness... it creeps like blood under a door."
I particularly enjoy this line because it's truth, and also I believe something clicks with Judith right there. They are both broken-hearted. She begins to either really pity him or give in to the possibility that she loves him.
The MDQ is "Will Judith fall in love with Holofernes?"
She cannot even move from the bed once he is dead (and unsexable), but her thirst for power and even sadism drives her to turn on the love that grew in such a short time. So the play is able to end when Judith decides she completed her mission and would rather retain her status as a hero.

Night, Mother

Suppose you're the dramaturg for a production of 'Night, Mother and the conversation turns to the play's Major Dramatic Question (MDQ). As you'll know from Friday's class, the MDQ is a  question that drives the script. Once the MDQ gets answered, the script ends. Often (but not always) the MDQ is the same as the protagonist's central objective. As we noted, the MDQ is a tool that can help unpack the workings of some scripts; it's not a law that every script has to follow. Some plays benefit from MDQ conversations; some don't.

In our hypothetical production scenario, though, let's imagine that the director is convinced that (1) 'Night, Mother is one of those plays that can benefit from an MDQ conversation; and (2) that the major dramatic question for 'Night, Mother is "Will Jesse kill herself?" 

Now, on one level, this question "works." The script ends soon after that question gets answered (i.e., yes, Jessee kills herself). But, over and above being a workable question, I want you to consider whether "Will Jesse kill herself?" is the most productive or interesting major dramatic question. I mean, if the whole goal was for Jesse to kill herself, then I'd expect the script to go something like this:

The lights come up. Jesse goes into a back room while Mama putters around. We hear a shot. Mama jumps, startled. She asks, "What was that?" End of play.

In other words, there's a whole lot of script here, and only a bit of it really has to do directly with the question of whether or not Jesse will commit suicide. What else is going on? Is there another possible MDQ at work in 'Night, Mother?

For this post, then, I want you to respond (as dramaturg) to this hypothetical director. You can agree with her MDQ, supporting why you think this is the case. Or you can disagree with her by offering a different MDQ, explaining how and why your alternative is superior.

Trifles

Trifles, written by Susan Glaspell in 1916, is a play about women protecting each other in a time and place where women were expected to follow their husbands' instruction and submit to their authority.
The world of this play may be described as cold, not because it is snowing and not because the characters look chilled, although they do, but because it is a crime scene and there is a noticeable lack of understanding between the men and the women. The majority of the play, which is one scene, is the two women, Mrs. Peters, the sheriff's wife, and Mrs. Hale, Minnie's neighbor, speaking privately.

They are first uncomfortable being there, having been asked to grab some stuff for Minnie, who is in jail as a suspect for the murder of her husband, John Wright. The men are pretty condescending about the duties of the women throughout the whole play. In the beginning, learning that Minnie was worried about her jarred fruit in a freeze, the neighbor Hale commented that "women are used to worrying over trifles." The sheriff comments how the women wonder about Minnie's quilting method, and the men share a laugh.

The dramatic irony in Trifles is that the women hold the power in the form of knowing the truth. The men discount learning about the situation from the women's findings, but Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale inexplicitly came to the conclusion that Minnie killed her husband because he was stifling and hard, and perhaps abusive. They can surmise this after finding the strangled bird, which is the climactic point because it changes the insight we have into the situation.

Overtones

 Before purchasing the course reader, I picked up a hardback copy of the 3-act version at the library. I will tell what I liked about each version. The first of the 3 acts gave a more thorough characterization of the husbands (one even went by a different name), and especially more detail of John and Harriet's affections. The one-act version, which is the original by Gerstenberg , dwelt more on the women's inner and outter selves. I found the whole concept very interesting. After all, doesn't every human have a primitive and a cultured side to them? Aren't most of us usually involved in a day-to-day struggle between what we want/need and what would be the appropriate way to act in order to get it?

I felt that this was a perfect script to read first, since a principle element of acting is knowing your objective and having each action follow as accordingly as possible. (I would say that, concentrating in performance). But themes aside, the dramaturgical choice in restructuring the plot into a three-act sequence was an interesting change. Gerstenberg's script leaves the reader with a different parting gift than the one I got from the library. The longer one is still about that most primitive of all traits: hunger. That undeniable hunger for food or financial security. However, Hetty's and Jack's (John's true self) inner selves contributed much more fodder for romantic ambivalence.