Cliff, Cliff, Cliff. . . . Hornets? I? To paraphrase Simon Grey's Butley,
who says, ``You know how it tires me to teach books I haven't read,''
``You know how it will tire REEDers for me to debate disciplines I haven't
kept up in.'' I can only thank you for your extensive comments, tell
the class that what I WOULD have said (a la Capt'n Andy in SHOWBOAT)
had there not been REED-L, and then to read your comments and those of
Allen Frantzen.
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Allen's comments came to me directly (is this list set up so that automatic
replies go only to originators? I don't like that, because it means that
subject line associated with threads of discussion don't get carried
along, so that it's hard to reconstruct the thread later.) ...anyway,
Allen Frantzen wrote the following, which -- since he told me later he
intended these to be distributed -- I shall insert here.
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Date: Thu, 29 Nov 90 08:52 CST
From: FRANTZEN <[log in to unmask]>
To: Patrick W. Conner <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Teaching drama
_
1. Drama offers an opportunity to discuss how the textual overwhelms
the material in the classroom. Anything one can do to offset this--e.g.
films, recordings, impromptu stagings--reminds students that drama as
text is social text, material, political, not just ideas on paper.
2. Students seem to know that drama was a way of teaching those who
could not write the fundamentals of religion. Drama taught everybody,
of course, not just what a student once called the lower crust, and it
taught more than the beauties of religion. Take the end of 2nd Shep
as a case in point: material conditions for the downtrodden have not
improved, but they've learned to give to the Church and accept be thank-
ful. --So there, soft-line, marxy, gets things moving in class.
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BACK TO PAT CONNER AGAIN:
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Cliff and Allen are saying related things, I think.
the important thing is to contextualize the drama within the culture
it obviously sought to serve (wrong verb, but I'm in a hurry), and
in the late middle ages, that wasn't Latin monastic culture, even in
the way the Regularis Concordia represented as special Latin or latinized
culture. So those students who can't sing the Quem quaeritis won't
be disadvantaged. Good. Because....
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...that lets me tell them about the time I played Mak in 2nd Shep.
(If you haven't ever memorized a dramatic role, rehearsed it for three
weeks, and performed it --even badly-- then you can't really understand
--I think-- how dramatic text and drama are related.) For lack of
actors, we made what theatre people call a `discovery': Not only CAN
Mary and Joseph be played by the actors who play Mak & Gyll (as we did),
but they SHOULD be played by those actors. And recognizably so.
When the participants in the parodic nativity are seen as the participants
in the Nativity, transformed from thieves (the thief hung with Christ
on the cross, is in the eighth circle of Hell, etc.) to the powerful
images of the Holy family, then the purpose of God on earth is revealed,
and the Angels' Gloria is not a transition device, but a comment on
the mystic moment. (& there are its ties with the liturgy, but you don't
have to look beyond the parish Mass to find them.)
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Have any of the folk who've read the great REED database come across
information about actors being double-cast for such purposes? Is it
a commonplace to talk about 2nd Shep as double-cast in this fashion.
(I don't mean double-cast; that's when you have two actors for one
role, I think. What is the term?)
I remember teachers telling me that the Nativity at the end of 2nd Shep
is a tableau, and I always assumed that it was thus formally separated
in some way from the play. We assumed that when we produced the play,
but were forced to rethink it, and the effect of the way we handled it
was tremendous. I should also add that I was amazed at how good that
script makes very amateur actors look. I assume that there is some
recent commentary on such things, and I shall have to look it up. Thanks
Cliff and Allen for references and comments.
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--Pat
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