LIT 3001: ESSAY 2
Assignment: As a theatre director, propose a production of one of the texts we have or will study in the course. This proposal should make direct reference to the play text and to other productions of your chosen text.
Your options include: Long Days Journey Into Night, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Fences, Buried Child, The Clean House, TopDog/Underdog, and The Aliens.
For assignments like this, your essay still needs to be argumentative. It should still have a clear claim at or near the end of your introduction in which you state your intent as a director.
For example: “As director of Long Days Journey into Night, one should emphasize the historical importance of the work (name what you think that is) and pursue this through the acting/casting, set design, costume design, lighting, and/or audio design by (provide an explanation).
Strong analytical arguments also grow out of relevant secondary sources. RESEARCH IS REQUIRED FOR THIS PAPER. ALL SOURCES MUST BE FROM A LIBRARY OR LIBRARY DATABASE. YOU CANNOT USE THE WORLD WIDE WEB (other than newspaper web pages if you cannot access them through library databases for some reason).
Good secondary resources include, but are not limited to:
-production reviews of the play or opera you’re writing about - try The New York Times Theatre section, The Guardian Stage section, the TimeOut New York Theatre section among many others. See library database Lexis Nexus Academic for newspaper access.
-peer-reviewed journal articles found in the library databases.
-books about the play or playwright, choreographer, director, composer, etc. Many full-text books can be found using the library databases. See EBRARY Academic Complete & EBSCO E-book Academic Collection or a public library.
Remember that you must must first establish the historical context and relevance of the play when it first appeared BEFORE you can argue how you will approach the performance of the work in a 21st century (or simply 2017) context. You will need to include WHY you think this play is still relevant in 2017 and argue HOW your production will address this. This will require you to discuss prior performances and what worked, and didn't work, before proposing your own approach to your 2017 production.
When proposing some of your artistic choices for your production, you may wish to refer to this link:
When discussing acting/casting, write a description of the type of actor that you are looking for and then identify a specific actor you would like to hire for the role and why. Provide specific details.
Purpose
To argue how your planned production emphasizes what you see as the historical importance of the work and translates that through your artistic choices for a 2017 audience.
Audience
Your audience is made up of academics, scholars, theatre critics, professors, and students (who are academics, scholars, and theatre critics in training much like yourselves).
Because your audience is a scholarly one, your paper must be presented in a formal manner. You should use high diction and avoid first person, personal pronouns, and contractions.
Format
•Your essay should have a title. It should also be typed, double-spaced, with one inch margins all around, Times New Roman Font, & 12 pt. See http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/ for other questions about format. Your essay should be a minimum of 5 FULL pages and no more than 7 .
Your grade for this assignment will be determined as follows:
Total Possible Points: 80/
Final Draft, evaluated on the following criteria:
Focus (22 points): Does essay have a clear purpose? Overall claim stated in intro and restated in conclusion? Focus on a single idea or aspect of the literature? Is it clear how examples in body are related to the overall claim? Does the writer explain the broader implications of this claim to the text as a whole? Are the subclaims clearly related to the claim? When read together, do the intro and conclusion form one idea?
Development (22 points): Does writer support interpretation with evidence from text? Avoid giving a plot summary? Does writer explain for the reader how the evidence supports interpretation (and as a result the claim)?
Organization (22 points): Do first few sentences arouse the reader’s interest and focus their attention on the subject? Are readers expectations set and clearly met? Do paragraphs have clear focus, unity and coherence? Effective transitions? Does the writer guide the reader from beginning to end?
Style (7 points): Is language clear direct and readable? Are sentences clear, concise, and easily read by intended audience? Is word choice appropriate for audience? Do sentences reveal and sustain appropriate voice and tone? Does writer use the literary present tense to describe events in the story?
Mechanics (7 points): Are there obvious errors in spelling, punctuation, and grammar? Are there patterns of error?
NO PEER CRITQUE (-7 POINTS)
NO 1ST DRAFT ON DUE DATE (-7 POINTS)
NO REFLECTION (-7 POINTS)
Grading scale:
A 72-80
B 64-71
C 56-63
D 48-55
F 0-47
