Show and Tell Post # 1

For my show and tell I chose the play, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (hope this was acceptable). Anyway, the play is a  British drama based on the novel of the same name written by Muriel Spark in 1961. Which was later adapted into a play by Jay Pressen Allen. Since then the play has been interpreted into a film which debuted in 1969 with Dame Maggie Smith playing the main role of Jean Brodie for which she won the Academy Award.  All three iterations of the story shared international acclaim and continued to be successful even enjoying a stint on Broadway in 1966 in which Zoe Caldwell starred in the main role and went on to win the Tony Award for her performance. More recently the play has been making a bit of a comeback and in 2005, the novel was chosen by Time magazine as one of the one hundred best English-language novels from 1923 to present. In 1998, the ranked The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie #76 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

So the play takes place in Edinborough Scotland in the early 1930's and focuses on a teacher named Jean Brodie who is as she would say, "In her Prime". Miss Brodie is in her early 40's and has a over active sex drive that projects itself into her everyday teachings and personality. She is also an admirer of the fascist dictators Benito Mussolini and Francesco Franco in which she romanticizes their actions to her students. This becomes projected out to her pre-pubescent students as well, becoming a part of her everyday teachings essentially affecting the girls lives as well. There are four girls in particular that Ms. Brodie goes out of her way to "groom" them up into being little carbon copies of herself, making them emulate her actions and thoughts. This quickly becomes a problem when the school's head mistress Mrs. Mackay starts to pick up on the negative impact that Miss Brodie is having on her students. Eventually we come to find out that Miss Brodie is involved with a married man named Teddy Lloyd, who is her ex-lover and an art teacher in the senior section of the school. Mr. Lloyd is still very much obsessed with Miss Brodie, so much so that he paints portraits of her constantly in order to keep his passion at bay. Also, Jean catches the eye of music teacher/church choirmaster Gordon Lowther, in which she and the wind up spending a lot of time at his home in Cramond, a seaside village on the outskirts of Edinburgh. Throughout the whole affair Miss Brodie will sometimes spend the night with Mr. Lowther and keeps it a secret to everyone else. Mr. Lowther wants them to get married, but Brodie will not commit to him, this will eventually cause Mr. Lowther to leave her and marry the chemistry teacher Miss Lockheart. As the girls get older into their teenage years we see Miss Brodie starting to manipulate the girls into doing her will, in order to live out her own fantasies vicariously through them. Later in the play Miss Brodie trys to set events in motion that will entice Mr. Lloyd into  having an affair with one of her more "mature" students, named Jenny. Throughout this time she uses another student named Sandy to spy on  Jenny and Mr. Lloyd in order to eventually catch them in the act. However, it is actually Sandy, who has become very increasing spiteful towards Miss Brodie and Jenny (for her beauty), who eventually incites an affair with Mr. Lloyd. Eventually Sandy calls off the affair when she discovers Mr. Lloyds obsession with Miss Brodie is still intact. In the end we see that Miss Brodie's impact on her girls has basically started to claim lives when her most incorrigible student Mary Macgregor goes of to Spain in order to become involved in the Fascist uprising and gets killed on a train that is bombed by rebel forces. This leads to Miss Mackay's termination of Miss Brodie in which Brodie puts all the blame on poor Sandy by the end of the play calling her an "assassin" and storming out of the room. The play ends as it begins with a nun who we now know is an adult Sandy speaking with an American journalist recalling her memories of Miss Jean Brodie in her prime.

I honestly chose this play because I just saw the performance at the Shaver Theatre Weds night and I wanted to support our theatre department's production by saying some positive words about the play, that and well, it's the first play I've seen in quite a while :). Anyway, the performances were wonderful but honestly, I am kind of on the fence about this play. The subject matter is morally questionable, I'm not a prude, but I also don't agree with underage sexual abuse, consensual or not, it's not something I take lightly. So I find it hard to stomach a play about a character that instigates these actions amongst her highly impressionable female students. Anyway, that being said, I do think that it is important to note that Spark specifically chose to make these students very young to begin with because it sets up the creepy/morally wrong vibe throughout the show and it definitely gives the audience a strong idea of how twisted the adult characters both Jean Brodie and Teddy Lloyd are. I find this interesting because Spark could have strayed away from being controversial but instead opted to take the route that he know would affect the reader(eventually the audience) more personally and that shows how strong of an impact a dramaturgical choice can have.
Sequence is also important in this play because again, it establishes a time frame in which these events are happening. It's important to know when the interactions with Mr. Lloyd are happening with both Jenny and Sandy due to the fact that they were nine years old when the play begins. If the audience or reader is unsure of the age of these girls when he begins painting them and making sexual advances towards them then society might revolt against the play. It's interesting that just due to the fact that time passes and the girls are older, it becomes slightly more acceptable that they are being painted nude by an older man. Whereas had these events taken place only a few years earlier this book/show might have been deemed unsuitable for society consumption. This just confirms how important a writer's or playwright's choice to establish a time frame/sequence of events makes a huge difference in a play, especially when dealing with such strong subject matter.

Hornsby Patterns/Foreshadowing

In regard to Hornsby and how his idea of motif relates to Conduct of Life one of the blaring instances for me was the consistant character contradictions that make up the character of Leticia. This is a pattern that reoccurs throughout the play and I think this depiction of character is implemented by Fornes in order to establish a pattern of conflicting emotion and personality of this character to the audience. The reason I chose this to represent the idea of motif is because Fornes's choice to depict her characters this way sets the tone of the play so well and within itself creates a distance between the audience and the character that establishes the character as someone we can't invest our trust in.
Orlando is harder to figure out because we see many layers to his volitile personality and that is precisely why I chose to focus on Leticia in relation to motif and patterns. From the very start we hear Leticia making claims that she can't stand deer hunting and that she would save the innocent deer by stepping in front of a bullet for it. Later in the play she also claims that if she had money she would give back to the community and help those in need. This is another instance in which she contradicts her words when later we see her refusing to give her house maid money to buy a new cooking pot. Fornes establishes early on that Leticia's weaknesses outweigh her strenghts and this pattern repeats throughout the play. Fornes creates an interest in the character that makes the audience want to see where the story will take them. The pattern of character depiction resonates througout the play,  raises questions, will Leticia stand up to Orlando in the end?; Will Leticia make good on her word and protect this child from her abusive husband? This is why I chose character motif in response to our blog question.

As far as motif is concerned in other dramatic productions I've chosen to focus on Christopher Nolan's strategic use of foreshadowing at the end of the film Batman Begins. There are several films I could have chosen and honestly there are far better examples im sure, but I ultimately chose Batman Begins because there is a clear cut moment in the film that foreshadows events on the horizon. As an audience member watching the film for the first time, we've just sat down and have experienced a great comic book character origin story unfold before us and just as we reach the point of denouement the film and we think things couldn't get any better we're given a glimpse of something quite unexpected and an idea of things to come. Batman has just defeated the films antagonist and we come to a final scene between the Batman and Commissioner Gordon. The two exchange words and discuss things to come atop the Police Headquarters. As the conversation continues we see Commissioner Gordon hand Batman a new piece of evidence in regard to a new criminal menace in Gotham City. Turns out it's none other than the Joker who has left his calling card for the police. Granted this is a pretty straight forward example of foreshadowing, but I can't help to admire it because it just sets up so many possibilities for things to come.

How I Learned To Drive: The Post

Ok so, I'll jump on the, " I liked, How I Learned to Drive more, compared to Conduct of Life" bandwagon. Because honestly, even though the subject matter is very similar in both, Conduct of Life is so much harder to stomach in comparison to How I Learned to Drive. So in regard to Dr. Fletcher's first question(which we touched on in class today): I think it is absolutely paramount for a playwright to at times, remind the audience that indeed the overall message the reality is, we're still an audience in a theater watching a play. This is especially important when your subject matter contains characters that exhibit a socially unacceptable behavior. I might even be so bold and assume that this is why such a dramaturgical choice was made to depict a chorus that serves as a reminder of the theaters of old. This element of familiarity creates a general reassurance amongst the populace that even though the subject material is socially unacceptable (and for good reason) it opens the audience up to accepting the characters for who they are and not judge them souly on their actions. The addition of the chorus also sets the tone of the play right from the begginning and show the audience that it is ok to enjoy elements of the play, even when some of the character's actions are very inappropriate.
In response to Question 2: If I had to pick a moment in the play that seemed juxtaposed to the pattern established in the rest of the play; it would have to be the scene in which Peck takes cousin Bobby to go fishing. The reason I chose this scene in particular is because Vogel makes an interesting dramaturgical choice to stick this monologe within the play, just as the audience begins to get a sense of what the character of Peck is all about. After this scene you get the impression that he may not be an "ok" guy after all and you start to question why you had any empathy towards him to begin with(at least for me). Vogal creates a very powerful sense of dramatic irony in this scene leaving the audience to question what Peck's true intentions are and the result is a very subtle yet ambiguously tense situation. I think it's also important to note that Vogal chooses to take the chorus out of the picture(for the most part) in order to keep focus on the character of Peck in this scene. I think this choice puts the audience back into a more grounded mindset by taking the "play element" out of the scene and makes the mood slightly unnerving, especially towards the end in which we're given the impression that Peck may be planning to molest the boy. Obviously the subject matter here is cringeworthy, but I think it speaks to Vogel's writing talent that this play is more well received than oh, say, Conduct of Life for instance.