Below is a YouTube link for the documentary Broadway Idiot (2013), which is about turning the Green Day album American Idiot into a stage musical. I’d like you to watch the documentry can write a two-page paper that covers the following:
-What about the process stood out to you? What did you learn/discover?
-What were two quotes that you can highlight and why? Who said them and why did they stand out to you?
-What was something about the thearical creative process that you learned and/or stood out to you from the documentry and why?
-What do you feel would be hard and/or easy about taking something that is well known and transforming it for the theatre?
This paper must be Two Full Pages, Times New Roman, 12 Point Font, and Double Spaced.
Category: Play
Your final ‘project’ for the semester is a more or less open assignment. It is not specifically about drama. Think of it, instead, as a kind of ‘student choice’ thing. You can write about a story (or two), a poem (or two), a play. Heck, I even invite you to write about a film, musical, or opera if you want to. Your choice. But please make your choice of text(s) this week and enter it into the Week 16 forum by the end of the day of Apr 26th, just to let us know what you’re up to. The text(s) you choose do not have to be from our textbook, but they certainly can be. They just can’t be something we’ve already studied together.
Once you select your text(s), spend some time reading pp. 2000-12 in our textbook – “The Literature Essay.” You might also take a look at the “Sample Research Essay” beginning on p. 2074.
A couple things I want to draw your attention to:
First, you should write an interpretive essay; that is, your essay should show the reader how to interpret the text(s) you choose. It should not simply summarize or ‘review’ the text(s).
Second, you must engage at least one other interpretation of your text. This will require a small amount of research using our LCC databases. If you are unsure how to go about this, please contact an LCC librarian here. They are extremely helpful and will be delighted to help you find a source or two.
Use your writing process to help you figure out how you want us to understand your text(s). Use your research to inform yourself about what others have said about your text and how those views either confirm or differ from your interpretation. One great use of the “Sample Research Essay” on p. 2074 would be to see how that writer interacts with other scholarly voices in their interpretation of Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls.” Use that as a guide as you see fit.
So, this may seem like a lot. But keep in mind that it’s not due until the end of the last day of class – May 6th. This gives you two weeks to get it together.
Other technical details:
5-7 pp., double-spaced, and in MLA style.
Pay attention to this style, particularly as it applies to 1) heading, 2) in-text citations, 3) works cited page. Your essay must have all three.
For Colored Girls
This particular play that I chose is identified as a “choreopoem”. This combines poetic monologues with music and movement. Throughout the play the “colored girls” have no identity. They are idenitifed as Lady in Red, Lady in Brown and Lady in Yellow. The playwright is known as Ntozake Shange. She began her work on the play in 1974 while living in the Bay area. The play became successful in 1976. Unfortunately long after the play was released Ntozake died at the age 70. The play was also produced for the first time in New York City in July 1975 at Studio Rivbea. Leah C. Gardiner was the director of the play and still talks about the play and how warm and inspiring this play was for young women. The play was very successful when it opened Off Broadway in 1974. For Colored Girls was considered to be a landmark piece in African American literature and black feminist writing and 20th-century drama.