Presentation Guide

History and Literature of the Theatre 1 Presentations

This is just a guideline. For Pete’s sake, please be a little more creative than this. The points with the astericks after them seem to me to be the most important, what you should spend the most time on. But you may feel differently.

You will create a casebook, out of which you will fashion your presentation. This is a folder or notebook of essentially dramaturgical research, meaning it will include both factual research and analytical work. It should include:

a list of primary resources about the play - articles and books written on it, good web sites, etc.
images about the play, both relevant historical images (contextual or production-related) and imagistic (images that communicate the feeling of the play for you - these don't have to be agreed on by the whole group, but images are a helpful aid to class discussion).
a list of 10 possible exam questions.
a timeline of relevant events surrounding the play
written documentation of any other presentation work you do; i.e. the structure of any debate or game you set up, written sets of questions if you do discussion groups, etc. Another suggestion would be having each group member take a production position and discuss how that person would have approached working on this particular play (in other words, contextualizing the production aspects of the play)
1 written page from each presentation member on your thoughts about the play in light of your discussion. In other words, if you all decided to hold a debate, which side are you on and why? If you talked about the production aspects and the relevancy to today, what are your personal thoughts on that? Write a page of your personal thoughts on whatever is most relevant.

Let me make this very clear - I don't want to see any printed out web pages in your casebook. You should put together the information you're going to present yourself. Don't just print out someone else's work and then circle what you plan to use. That's lazy and dishonest. Unless you've printed out a web page because you want to include images you're going to show the class in your casebook, I don't want to see a single web page.

The presentation itself:

Give us some context (this may take a small amount of research). How important was this play at the time period? Was it controversial? How representative is it? Did it break new ground? In other words, why did I choose it for us to read in this class, and why was it chosen to go in the anthology? **

Themes - what are the main themes? Get some of this from the class - it’s a good way to spur discussion. How many of these themes are relevant to us today? Which themes stand the test of time?

Would we benefit from hearing certain parts read out loud? Is the play very different when read than when heard? Has the playwright used a verse form or literary style (e.g. alliteration, simile, etc.) that will be more interesting when read out loud?

What is the production history of this play? We’re interested in this class in how different productions throughout time reinterpret texts. Is there information on what different productions have emphasized or changed? If the play is recent, do we know how the playwright feels about that? **

Be creative! If you can surprise us with something interesting and fun it will give the class somewhere to go with discussion. Have a debate, give a quiz, have the class come up with an alternate ending more appropriate to the time period, or the genre, etc. Make us think! And give me something to use on the exam.

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