Inclusive Character Analysis

Putting Theory into Practice for the 21st Century Theatre Classroom

Jennifer Thomas, Robert J. Vrtis

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000296761
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Media & Performing Arts
• Categoria: Acting & Auditioning

Inclusive Character Analysis foregrounds representations of race, gender, class, ability, and sexual orientation by blending script analysis with a variety of critical theories in order to create a more inclusive performance practice for the classroom and the stage.

This book merges a traditional Stanislavski-based script analysis with multiple theoretical frameworks, such as gender theory, standpoint theory, and critical race theory, to give students in early level theatre courses foundational skills for analyzing a play, while also introducing them to contemporary thought about race, gender, and identity.

Inclusive Character Analysis is a valuable resource for beginning acting courses, script analysis courses, the directing classroom, early design curriculum, dramaturgical explorations, the playwriting classroom, and introduction to performance studies classes. Additionally, the book offers a reader-style background on theoretical frames for performance faculty and practitioners who may need assistance to integrate non-performance centered theory into their classrooms.

Chapter 1

Reading the Language of the Play

This chapter introduces the reader to foundational script reading tactics. Additionally, this chapter reminds readers to check in on their own expectations and assumptions about the script. Finally, the first step in analysis is to engage the playwright’s language for basic understanding as well as historical or cultural context, and social awareness.

Words are our entry point into analyzing the play. In each chapter, we will build our understanding of the play and its characters by exploring different concepts which illuminate one facet or another about the play. These concepts always use the raw material of the play’s text, its words. For example, in Chapter 3, we will learn given circumstances (or the facts of the play) from the text, which can then point us to research. Additionally, we can deduce the characters’ desires and subsequent actions based on the words they speak, as we will explore in Chapter 5. As both of these examples suggest, language is our entry point to a character’s inner life; their ideas, values, beliefs, and feelings are suggested if not outright stated through their words. Because so much rests on our interpretation of what is spoken by characters, it’s important to begin with a special focus on words. Subsequent chapters will deepen the work begun here.

This chapter will challenge you to recognize and investigate the assumptions and biases you bring to play reading and will provide new ways to think about analyzing and understanding plays. Sure, you’ve read a hundred plays (or a thousand if you are faculty), but who taught you to read a play and what assumptions or biases were embedded in those teachings? This chapter creates space to investigate the habits you have developed or new ways to think about reading plays.

The Title

Before you even open the script (or swipe the screen), take some time to think about the title. The title isn’t something to skip over or to ignore. It is our first introduction to the world of the play, the author’s first word(s) to the reader/viewer, and the first place for us to check in on assumptions. What are you bringing to the table before you even crack open the spine? The first rule—there are no rules and there are no wrong answers. What you are doing is checking in with your gut, your connections (social or cultural), and your preconceived knowledge of the script.

Exercise 1.1: A Title is Intentional

Before you start reading any script, make sure you take five minutes to reflect and freewrite on the title. Here are a few questions to get you started.

• What image or actions does the title evoke?
• Are there hints to a theme or major idea?
• Does the title create an emotional or physical response for you?
• Have you heard of the title before?
• What assumptions or associations with the title do you bring to this reading?

As an example, here are some questions to explore using A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. What does the title sound like or look like? Do you like raisins? Has it been gloomy and dark out for the last 10 days and you are longing for sunshine? Have you read “Harlem” by Langston Hughes and that phrase recalls memories of a high school classroom?

All of these things may seem small and arbitrary, but taking even a few minutes to jot down a few connections or associations with the title connects you to your own biases or expectations as you open the script.

The Character List

Exploring the character list can be a treasure trove of information. Take the time to read the character list and think about the hints and keys the playwright is offering to the reader. Who is this script about? What relationships can you make out? What other facts or assumptions can you discern from the list?

Exercise 1.2: What’s in a Name?

As we did with the title, take five minutes to reflect and freewrite on the character list. Here are a few questions to get you started.

• Are the names familiar to you? Why or why not?
• Is there any indication of relationships?
• Are there any historical markers or indications?
• Are there names that seem connected and/or names that indicate a “difference”?
• Are there any characters that are diminished or elevated in any way? What does that indicate about them in the play?
• Do you know anyone with any of these names? If so, how do you feel about that name?
• What other cultural, social, or personal responses do you have to the list of characters?

Sticking with Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun as an example, what can we gather from the list of characters?

• Ruth Younger
• Travis Younger
• Walter Lee Younger (Brother)
• Beneatha Younger
• Lena Younger (Mama)
• Joseph Asagai
• George Murchison
• Bobo
• Karl Lindner
• Two Moving Men

At first glance, there are several “observations” we can make about the characters in the play. First, several individuals have the same surname and two of those are referenced as being related, which might mean we can assume the others are related as well. Next, Bobo doesn’t have a last name, which may indicate something about his social standing. We may also have a response to a character with a name like Bobo. The indication that there are “unnamed” characters who are identified solely as “moving men” may give us an indication of potential action in the play.

Taking the time to familiarize yourself with potential relationships and/or responses or reactions to character names, identities, or relationships is an important way to make sure you are allowing the characters to freely introduce themselves to you.

Stage Directions

Many of us have a bad habit of jumping right into the text of a script and bypassing the vital italics of stage directions or setting that include important nuggets of information for us to take into the opening lines of dialogue. A Raisin in the Sun begins with:

Time: The early 1950s

Place: Chicago’s Southside

Even before we go into the specifics of what the interior of the Younger’s house looks like, Hansberry gives us information to think about and reflect on. What do we know about the 1950s? What are our assumptions about the time period, the look, and the experiences? What do we know about Chicago’s Southside either contemporarily or from the 1950s? Think about how this knowledge or lack of knowledge can impact how you begin to read the play.

If you are only reading the play once, take the time now to go and look up the background information that you need to understand the context of the play. For this play, what are the demographics of Chicago’s Southside? What do you need to know about the 1950s and its relationship to the area? If you know you are going to read the play more than once, sometimes it is good to read the play without doing this research and jump directly to the next step outlined below.

Elements of Plot

Typically, plots are structured linearly (meaning the action moves forward and sequentially in time) and causally (meaning one action causes another action). In these structures, there are several elements that contribute to the structure, and thus, the meaning of the play. The primary elements include exposition, inciting incident, rising action, and climax.

Exposition is the background information the playwright offers the readers about the characters, their lives, their dwelling, and their world. Exposition helps us understand the world of the play. Look for this information in the opening stage directions or in the first few scenes. This is typically not dramatized action, but instead clues that help us understand relationships, histories, and contexts.

The inciting incident is the moment that sets the play’s conflict into motion. You can check to see if you have identified the inciting incident by removing the moment from the script. Removing the inciting incident removes the conflict, which is central to any story, and results in little meaningful action left in the script.

Rising actions are the moments that continue to build up tension and emotional intensity in the world of the play. These incremental actions are smaller obstacles or discoveries that raise the stakes for the characters.

As the rising actions build, they lead to the climax of the play, which is the emotional high point, when the conflict is decided or resolved.

Understanding how the elements of plot work together to create the structure of the play is important; this is the map or framework the playwright provides to understand the world of the play. Your understanding and identification of these moments will impact how you interpret the meaning of the play.

Reading the Play

We offer a few tips to help you engage fully with the script as you sit down to read. Before we start, here are some general notes to consider about space and time.

• Prepare a comfortable space to read. Preferably sit up with access to a writing space.
• Eliminate or minimize distractions. This means noise-cancelling headphones, no television or music playing in the background, etc.
• Allow yourself enough time to read the play in a single sitting.

Remember that you aren’t reading for pleasure or entertainment. It is a different kind of reading. You are a detective or researcher exploring the text for clues, contexts, and history.

Next, try to read, imagine, and enter the world that has been offered to you by the playwright. Engage, ask questions, feel and respond to the work in your hands. Check in with yourself if you are resistant to a character or relationship or a way a character speaks. This resistance is a good moment to check in on your expectations or biases. Is there a personal connection or discomfort clouding your experience of the play? This is often unavoidable, but we must be aware of how our own experiences or expectations are framing our understanding and interpretation of the script.

Finally, as you read, make sure you are either taking the time to look up words or situations you don’t know or understand or write down questions to research following the first read. This seems obvious, but don’t just ignore words you are unfamiliar with, places you couldn’t identify on a map, or phrases that feel foreign to you. Take the time to make notes (along with page number) or to do the research as you read.

Exercise 1.3: The No-Shame, Personal Glossary

No one’s understanding of their own langu...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Reading the Language of the Play
• Chapter 2: Standpoint Theory and If
• Chapter 3: Place Theory and Given Circumstances
• Chapter 4: Gender Theory and Relationships
• Chapter 5: Class Privilege and Desire
• Chapter 6: Critical Race Theory and Beats
• Chapter 7: Disability Studies and Internal/External Adjustments
• Conclusion: Wrapping It Up
• Index