Major Play Wrights

Susan Glaspell , Circa ,1915

Susan Glaspell, circa 1915
Born	July 1, 1876 Davenport, Iowa, USA
Died	July 27, 1948 (aged 72) Provincetown, Massachusetts, USA
Education	Davenport High School Drake University University of Chicago
Spouse	Norman Matson (1925-1932) George Cram Cook (1913-1924†)
Information
Debut works	The Glory of the Conquered (1909)Suppressed Desires (1915)
Notable work(s)	Alison's House; Trifles ("A Jury of Her Peers"); Fidelity; The Verge;Inheritors
Works with	George Cram Cook
Awards	Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1931)

wHaT iS DrAmA !!

Drama

Drama is a unique tool to explore and express human feeling.
Drama is an essential form of behaviour in all cultures, it is a fundamental human activity.

•  Drama has the potential, as a diverse medium, to enhance cognitive, affective and motor development.
• A high degree of thinking, feeling and moving is involved and subsequently aids in the development of skills for all other learning within and outside of schools (transfer of learning).
• Drama is a discrete skill in itself (acting, theatre, refined skill), and therefore it is offered as a 'subject' in secondary school. However Drama is also a tool which is flexible, versatile and applicable among all areas of the curriculum. Through its application as a tool in the primary classroom, Drama can be experienced by all children.

Drama assists in the development of :

• the use of imagination
• powers of creative self expression
• decision making and problem solving skills
• and understanding of self and the world
• self confidence, asense of worth and respect and consideration for others.

The SACSA Framework defines Drama as:
'the enactment of real and imagined events through role-play, play making and performances, enabling individuals and groups to explore, shape and represent ideas, feelings and their consequences in symbolic or dramatic form.'


Types of Drama
There are many forms of Drama. Here is a non-exhaustive list with a simple explanation of each:

Improvisation / Let's Pretend
A scene is set, either by the teacher or the children, and then with little or no time to prepare a script the students perform before the class.

Role Plays
Students are given a particular role in a scripted play. After rehearsal the play is performed for the class, school or parents.

Mime
Children use only facial expressions and body language to pass on a message script to the rest of the class.

Masked Drama
The main props are masks. Children then feel less inhibited to perform and overact while participating in this form of drama.
Children are given specific parts to play with a formal script. Using only their voices they must create the full picture for the rest of the class. Interpreting content and expressing it using only the voice.

Puppet Plays
Children use puppets to say and do things that they may feel too inhibited to say or do themselves.

Performance Poetry
While reciting a poem the children are encourage to act out the story from the poem.

Radio Drama
Similar to script reading with the addition of other sound affects, The painting of the mental picture is important.

source from :http://ehlt.flinders.edu.au/education/DLiT/2001/drama/whatdram.htm

WhAt Is PoEtrY !!

Poetry

Poetry (ancient Greek: ποιεω (poieo) = I create)

is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. It consists largely of oral or literary works in which language is used in a manner that is felt by its user and audience to differ from ordinary prose.

It may use condensed or compressed form to convey emotion or ideas to the reader's or listener's mind or ear; it may also use devices such as assonance and repetition to achieve musical or incantatory effects. Poems frequently rely for their effect on imagery, word association, and the musical qualities of the language used. The interactive layering of all these effects to generate meaning is what marks poetry.

Because of its nature of emphasizing linguistic form rather than using language purely for its content, poetry is notoriously difficult to translate from one language into another: a possible exception to this might be the Hebrew Psalms, where the beauty is found more in the balance of ideas than in specific vocabulary. In most poetry, it is the connotations and the "baggage" that words carry (the weight of words) that are most important. These shades and nuances of meaning can be difficult to interpret and can cause different readers to "hear" a particular piece of poetry differently. While there are reasonable interpretations, there can never be a definitive interpretation.

source from :http://www.poetry.org/whatis.htm

Turtle Soup by Marilyn Chin

soure from : http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Turtle_soup_chinese.jpg

Turtle Soup 

by : Marilyn Chin  

You go home one evening tired from work, 
and your mother boils you turtle soup. 
Twelve hours hunched over the hearth 
(who knows what else is in that cauldron). 

You say, "Ma, you've poached the symbol of long life; 
that turtle lived four thousand years, swam 
the Wet, up the Yellow, over the Yangtze. 
Witnessed the Bronze Age, the High Tang, 
grazed on splendid sericulture." 
(So, she boils the life out of him.) 

"All our ancestors have been fools. 
Remember Uncle Wu who rode ten thousand miles 
to kill a famous Manchu and ended up 
with his head on a pole? Eat, child, 
its liver will make you strong." 

"Sometimes you're the life, sometimes the sacrifice." 
Her sobbing is inconsolable. 
So, you spread that gentle napkin 
over your lap in decorous Pasadena. 

Baby, some high priestess has got it wrong. 
The golden decal on the green underbelly 
says "Made in Hong Kong." 

Is there nothing left but the shell 
and humanity's strange inscriptions, 
the songs, the rites, the oracles?

source from : http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120223144136AAE3yGy

source from : http://www.amiribaraka.com/images/amiribw.jpg

"Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note"

by : Amiri Baraka (1934-   )

Lately, I've become accustomed to the way

The ground opens up and envelopes me

Each time I go out to walk the dog.

Or the broad edged silly music the wind

Makes when I run for a bus...

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars.

And each night I get the same number.

And when they will not come to be counted,

I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

And then last night I tiptoed up

To my daughter's room and heard her

Talking to someone, and when I opened

The door, there was no one there...

Only she on her knees, peeking into

Her own clasped hands

source from: http://michaelpotts.livejournal.com/5585.html

Countee Cullen

Incident

BY COUNTEE CULLEN

Once riding in old Baltimore,   

   Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,   

I saw a Baltimorean

   Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,

   And he was no whit bigger,

And so I smiled, but he poked out

   His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”

I saw the whole of Baltimore

   From May until December;

Of all the things that happened there

   That’s all that I remember.

Exploration Of The Text

1.    The nature of the interactions between both of them is mutually felt awkward with each other. this is due the differences of skin color has been applied to them since childhood. This is called Racism. 
2.    The speaker remember nothing because he was only a little kid which is age only eight years old and the speaker also stayed at there for a short period which is from May until December.

The Reading / Writing Connection

1.    When I was in Secondary school , I was experienced prejudice in netball team election. They were biased to their ex- teammate rather than new players. They were always  see their ex - teammate advanced more than us which is the new players. Fortunately , I was selected and be their teammate until now.

Ideas For Writing

1.   The form and Rhyme add to this poem is ABCB. A figurative language that was used was foreshadowing.  Example: The title of the poem tells us that something is going to happen during the poem that was not positive.

All Things Not Considered
By Naomi Shihab Nye

You cannot stitch the breath
back into this boy.

A brother and sister were playing with toys
when their room exploded.

In what language
is this holy?

The Jewish boys killed in the cave
were skipping school, having an adventure.

Asel Asleh, Palestinian, age 17, believed in the field
beyond right and wrong where people came together

to talk. He kneeled to help someone else
stand up before he was shot.

If this is holy,
could we have some new religions please?

Mohammed al-Durra huddled against his father
in the street, terrified. The whole world saw him die.

An Arab father on crutches burying his 4 month girl weeps,
“I spit in the face of this ugly world.”

*

Most of us would take our children over land.
We would walk in the fields forever homeless
with our children,
huddle under cliffs, eat crumbs and berries,
to keep our children.
This is what we say from a distance
because we can say whatever we want.

*

No one was right.
Everyone was wrong.
What if they’d get together
and say that?
At a certain point
the flawed narrator wins.

People made mistakes for decades.
Everyone hurt in similar ways
at different times.
Some picked up guns because guns were given.
If they were holy it was okay to use guns.
Some picked up stones because they had them.
They had millions of them.
They might have picked up turnip roots
or olive pits.
Picking up things to throw and shoot:
at the same time people were studying history,
going to school.

*

The curl of a baby’s graceful ear.

The calm of a bucket
waiting for water.

Orchards of the old Arab men
who knew each tree.

Jewish and Arab women
standing silently together.

Generations of black.

Are people the only holy land?

First Explication and notes

When I first read “All Things Not Considered”, one verse stood out from the rest. I find it addresses the issue of viewing conflicts from both sides very well and more to explores the flaws of religion. The poem starts out by asking “In what language is this holy?” after describing the death of innocent children when it presents the image of children playing and having their room blown up.. How each person interprets religion or the words of a holy script can lead to argument and conflict. Eventually, religions get so caught up in the conflict they forget what the point of their religion is. Death seems natural. A martyr, someone who dies in the name of God, is holy in many religions, but when is death ever holy? Naomi Shihab Nye is questioning when death ever became the norm, or the right thing to do. My favorite line is “if this is holy, can we have some new religions please?” I agree with this point. We, as humans, have found a way to turn our faith and religion into war and hatred. We must find a way to relate to each other in faithful and not violent ways. The religions indirectly teach and reference violence and why would this happen?.

Main theme

• Violence
• Death of innocent people and children
• Inhumanity 
• The religions
• Sacrifice