Show and Tell; Fuddy Meers true miscommunication

Fuddy Meers by David Lindsay-Abaire can be looked at very similar to one of the plays we analyzed so far, 4000 miles by Amy Herzog.  Through our analysis of plays this semester we have looked closer into mis-communication when Leo and Vera never cleared up until the end of the play.  The major differences that you do not see in 4000 miles that is presence of the lack of reality.

Fuddy Meers brings a cast of characters that all have very unique qualities that they bring to the play and each of the characters tries to tell thier story.  The question to readers is who is telling the truth?

Claire suffers from amnesia every day and must be told or explained her life by her husband every time.

Richard is Claires current husband and the past is not told correctly we find later in the play because he has written himself into Claire's life and lies about everything he can to maintain the relationship.

Kenny curses his way through the entire play and if he wasn't high he may be able to clear his relationship with his mother and really become the family they always wanted.

The play begins like every other day with a binder of Claire's life explained by Richard.  Kenny is high, and Claire is clueless to her surroundings.  Everything seems like a normal everyday dysfunctional family.  The first twist that is thrown into the story is that there are things in the book that have been left out.  Including the fact that Claire was married before?

Limping Man(or lisping man) a lisp is difficult to communicate the story especially when you are trying to deceive everyone you talk to.

Millet is two characters, or two parts of his mind.  He has a hand puppet that does most of all his talking and creates the real life dialogue.  While the human is more of a puppet.

Gertie Claire's mother had suffered a stroke after Claire's amnesia and speaks in Stroke tongues.  Though the real classy ideal of this play is that she is the only one who knows the truth and she can not clearly explain it.

The limping man and millet escape prison, kidnap Claire and head off to Gertie's house.  Thinking that she will not be able to communicate the truth to Claire the limping man plots to trick Claire into his reality.  We find in the play that Claire's amnesia was caused by the Limping man's own abuse.

Lastly we are left in the script with an ending of the day and wondering whether or not she will remember all the new information that she received through the day.

So just like Leo, she has a choice to make her life right or not.  Though her condition is what is going to change her idea but the playwright still leaves it up to our interpretation.

Trifles...What we don't see.

Trifles is a play that we can expect the unexpected.  One point I would like to bring up revolves around the term forsaken. The text tells us, “I wish I’d come over here once in a while! That was a crime!”  (pg.5). Socially these women had to come to a decision to hide and ultimately protect their fellow woman.  The guilt of Mrs. Hale and the way that the women explain that Mr. Wright was a hard man made for the character Minnie to feel forsaken in that she had nowhere to turn her problems to.   The murder is even forsaken when Hale and the Attorney confirm, “Well, women are used to worrying about trifles” (pg. 2). Though who is worrying about her?  The men are not concerned with who the really villain may be. Villainy  has made the play a clear representation of the unseen.

In the opening stage directions it reads, “The kitchen in a now abandoned farmhouse” (pg.1). The world is tight, private, and begins with nothing but what everyone comes in with. The sense of something has gone wrong sets the mood of mystery and intrigue that is not happy.  When we finally are told the exposition where John Wright is, Minnie was narrated to say, “He’s Dead” “She just pointed upstairs” (pg.1). What could be upstairs? The world we found out throughout the play is not vacant of information, trifles, but physical space. 

Night Mother...shot!

     In many ways I can see where the director ways coming from and instilling that the Major dramatic question "Will Jessie kill herself?" is valid, but if the dramatic question was to bring the audience into the world we need to evaluate less obvious cues and move in the text and see what really caused this choice.  In my opinion as a human being, suicide is selfish and a quick resolution to give up.  There are many reasons to "give up", but the question that I would like to explore is did she have to commit suicide?  

      People have to build up and plan to choose to die we see Jessie explain, "I got it on the schedule, There's more coming tomorrow."  (Norman pg. 2) here she refers to planning for her Mama items that she can do when she is gone.  She shows that she cares about her mother enough to try to provide for her.  Many people who are suicidal feel remorse for others, but do not take their feelings into account.  She also tries to provide for Ricky with a watch that mama says "He'll sell it!" for drugs. Jessie is trying to make mends with others in her life, and again we see that her choice will not really benefit Ricky at all.   Jessie has other people in her life, like her brother Dawson another unseen character, but she again chooses to be selfish.  

      The key reason why most people feel suicidal ideations is that they feel they are alone and no one in the world would be hurt by their lose.  Mama, has  some interesting remarks when they are going back in forth about where the gun is.  We are implied that the shoe box contains the gun, "Which shoe box, Mama: Black, Jessie: The box was black? Mama: the shoes were black." (Norman pg. 2) Mama supports her daughter, but leads her to the gun? Dawson knew about the gun as well when Jessie asked about the bullets. Though these characters can not be blamed for anything but trusting the one they loved Jessie.  

      So why would she want to die?  Cecil her husband left her, and so she left her house.  She though chooses not to use his gun even though she had it in her room. (Norman pg. 3).  "If Dawson comes over he will make me feel stupid for not doing it 10 years ago" Jessie has thought about it before.  There is another topic that comes up a few times that Jessie seems to value for a reason of her suicide, Mama " why do you read the newspaper?" (Norman pg. 11).  Jessie just explains she feels sad by the way the world is going.  Again another ideation that the world is not any better with them in it.  Feeling that she can not fix the worlds problems, and especially not her own.  We find out later in the text that the epilepsy was a factor of her divorce to Cecil.  Mama says, " I think your daddy had fits too." Jessie, "Daddy would have known if he had fits."  (Norman pg. 13).  Jessie then has her Mama explain how she looks when she is having an epileptic fit.  She is projected her pain to her mom and her Mama just keeps talking.  

       So, of course in the end she ends her life.  My opinion on suicide is still the same and so that is what I took from this story.  Not will she kill herself, but why a human choose to end their life.  No one wins when a suicide occurs and that realization is what we find more about throughout the text and that is what brings the readers in more.  That is a very good dramatic question; why did Jessie come to the idea of suicide?  

Fair warning: this prompt contains SPOILERS for the play.

OK?

Here goes: Suppose you're the dramaturg for a production of 'Night, Mother and the conversation turns to the play's Major Dramatic Question (MDQ). As you'll know from Friday's class, the MDQ is a  question that drives the script. Once the MDQ gets answered, the script ends. Often (but not always) the MDQ is the same as the protagonist's central objective. As we noted, the MDQ is a tool that can help unpack the workings of some scripts; it's not a law that every script has to follow. Some plays benefit from MDQ conversations; some don't.

In our hypothetical production scenario, though, let's imagine that the director is convinced that (1) 'Night, Mother is one of those plays that can benefit from an MDQ conversation; and (2) that the major dramatic question for 'Night, Mother is "Will Jesse kill herself?"

Now, on one level, this question "works." The script ends soon after that question gets answered (i.e., yes, Jessee kills herself). But, over and above being a workable question, I want you to consider whether "Will Jesse kill herself?" is the most productive or interesting major dramatic question. I mean, if the whole goal was for Jesse to kill herself, then I'd expect the script to go something like this:

The lights come up. Jesse goes into a back room while Mama putters around. We hear a shot. Mama jumps, startled. She asks, "What was that?" End of play.

In other words, there's a whole lot of script here, and only a bit of it really has to do directly with the question of whether or not Jesse will commit suicide. What else is going on? Is there another possible MDQ at work in 'Night, Mother?

For this post, then, I want you to respond (as dramaturg) to this hypothetical director. You can agree with her MDQ, supporting why you think this is the case. Or you can disagree with her by offering a different MDQ, explaining how and why your alternative is superior.

As always, contact Addie or me if you have questions or concerns.

Jenny

Whaddayacallit! Oh, yeah 4000 Miles by Herzog

         In following with good terms of our statements from our professor Jenny Ballard how can you clearly locate a Major dramatic question in this play?  Throughout most of this play I was looking for some main theme, phrase, anything that would tie everything together and have meaning.  As for a motif all I could think of is; whaddayacallit!  

       The plot of this play was try to keep up.  With things jumping from, incest, to best friends dying, to ex-girlfriends that aren't fat!  The only key term was what we all consider a good word to use when you have no clear way to explain something in a way that would satisfy the person you are trying to convey the message..  Vera; uses the term from page one till the end.  The playwright has made the choice of characters fit her play to convey the message of the points they would like to bring to the audience.  Each thought does not really get resolved though and we feel we are left as readers to look for the next word to take us to a clear end.  

Why did the playwright choose to write an ending about an avocado?  

         The motif changes slightly with the way it is brought up by Vera. She is often looking for a word to clear up a moment of text that we may have not understood, or maybe even wanted to stress by saying it again and louder.  She is 91, surrounded by 20 year olds.  I understand her pain.  We can analyze the moments surrounding this term and see that at each moment the term is introduced there seems to be a slight change in the dynamic of the scene.  First when Vera wants to talk about Rebecca and her "weight problem" though it brings on a new character that we had not previously seen.  We see it later in the text when Vera brings up plot points like the sensitive subjects of Leo's mother and his incest with his sister Lily.  Vera seems to be showing her age to Leo, but we as readers might be able to look at this in a different pattern.  In fact Vera is clearly driving the action and placing her age and two sense in just when we may need some clarification to what is really going on in the play.   

Overtone's Response Analysis

Overtones by Alice Gerstenberg
THTR 2130 Script Analysis

I. World of the play

• Space; Living room of Harriet/Hetty.  Two overlapping worlds taking up the same space for the duration of the entire play.  
• Time; Present day
• Climate; Indoors, well regulated.
• Mood; Tense, focused, desperation, and despair.
• Unseen; Characters Charles Goodrich (Husband to Harriet) and John Caldwell (Husband to Margaret).  

II.  Social World

• Private conversations in a living room.
• Groups, small 2 women, but can be larger with the two primitive selves taking up space in the world as influences. 
• Interactions; There are a large amount of interactions between the 4 characters real or primitive.  Mostly very full of emotion and conflict. Not alot of compassion. 
• Dress; Upper class gowns with the primitive selves in very similar attire but slight alterations making the primitive distinction. 
• Language; Class determined by status of the characters. Very quick and impulsive speech, tone is very harsh and mixed. 

III. What Changes

• Initial Image; Lights up on a Harriet taking to herself (primitive self Hetty) about the meeting with an old friend that she hasn't seen in a very long time, but is married to an old love of hers that she didn't marry due to fact that at the time he was poor.  We are told that he has since, made a large amount of money as an artist in Paris and looks very desirable to Harriet and mostly her primitive self Hetty who blames Harriet for never staying with John.  
• Striking Image; We are told throughout the story that John has money we find out through Margaret and Maggie that they are poor and John is not the accomplished artist as Harriet may have thought.  
• Resolution; Everyone gets their way when the ruse is played through by Margaret and she schedules a portrait by her husband John to make some money for them.  Harriet is also resolved when she knows she will have another chance to take her love for John forward.  Questions are left unanswered though, since we do not know what will happen next.  

IV. Don't Forget Yourself

• I was looking for a resolution and think the play leaves you with something untold.  
• I am still asking myself what I should be rooting for Margaret or Harriet, both characters just are unappealing to me and unrelatable.  
• Ethically both of the characters have hidden agendas and that is one thing that brings you in to hear the story.  

V.  Theatrical Mirrors

• I did not see any clear mirrors present in the play.  

VI. The Characters fit the Pattern.

• Harriet is aware that she married the wrong man and for the wrong reasons and Hetty acts as the very abrupt conscience, that help to clear the thoughts that are not conveyed by Harriet herself. 
• Margaret is very fake and presents herself that way very well enough to fool Harriet and Margaret seems to be much more of a realistic conscience and tries to bring her back to reality. 
• The play writes the characters intentions well and we can see who is who from the beginning.