US History Drama Writing Instruction
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Teaching US History Drama Writing Instruction |
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Contact Me Résumé My Teachers Cycling Reading |
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 What does this painting have to do with American History, Drama, or Music? The short answer is, we make history from little pieces, and it takes our imagination to bring it to life. More Alive Everything we do this year will reflect the technique of this painting. We will collect the pieces all jumbled together, and we will use our imaginations to compose something satisfying from them. Musical Play based on the Painting Art and "Forever"An odd thing happens in the theatre whenever the play reaches this climax: all over the room, people cry. My student Katie Friedgen, age fourteen, laughed through her tears, asking "Why am I doing this?" Letters to the New York Times from audience members asked the same question. At the end of act one, no one dies, the lovers already split up several scenes before, and the words of the stately, hymn-like song are as detached and cool and odd as the painting itself: Art and FaithSondheim has no faith in any religion of the world, but this show is a religious statement. It expresses what's at the core of every religious person's belief: nothing in this world lasts, but what we do matters. We're all "just passing through," like the people in that painting on that perfect Sunday. Yet what we create (be it art, or understanding, or family) gives those passing moments meaning to others. Novelist John Updike, who does accept the Christian creed, says that art for him is an act of worship, to honor with his creation what God has created. Sondheim says something like this in non-religious terms, when his artist sings: When I ask students to observe all that they can about it, they soon discover the single most important thing I can teach: how much there is to notice about any small subject, and how little we notice of the objects around us. When students must keep making new observations, their answers typically break into these three categories:
I am grateful to Professor Irving B. Holley who put me through a similar exercise at Duke in 1979. Up to that afternoon, I thought I knew pretty much all I needed to know. After then, I understood how superficial most knowledge is, and I learned to seek depth. Read my tribute to Professor Holley and other teachers. |
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