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Published: October 28th 2011
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It's plays week in my classes again. Last week we discussed what a play is and what components are necessary to write one. We also talked about how a play is different from a novel in its form and function. Then I had the students get into groups and write plays for a different group in the class.
This week is production week and it's my favorite week of the term. As usual, my students' ideas have spanned from a bit dull to creative in ways I would have never imagined. Here are a sampling, listed by class:
They went hiking at the Mississippi River and one was eaten eaten by tigers, another bit by a snake, then another hungry tiger came along, and then the last one died of loneliness. Another group did a slightly different Titanic story having Rose pushed into the ocean when she's standing on the front of the ship with Jack (you know the scene). Yet another had King Kong battling it out with another man over the beautiful woman, finally surrendering and encouraging them to eat him to prove his love for her.
Upon my not so subtle reminder that certain four-letter words are not allowed in class, my students began bleeping out their own swear words. Another actor died and landed on top of his friend, while his friend was so enthusiastic about his own death that he nearly ran into the wall while spinning around. The next play starred a man falling in love with a girl and discovering she's his sister--and so is the other girl he liked, and so is the other girl. The last play featured a Matrix-like Kung Fu battle scene.
If your secretary of many years and you have a special relationship outside of work, and she sees you with your wife, you should just pretend that you're meeting for the first time, right? Yes. There was also a case of revenge death, and a storyline with a car crash where the widow and girlfriend (the other driver, of course) fought over the dying man...while he lay dying and begging for help. He died before they could decide whose he was.
A take-off of Brokeback Mountain was written that started with two couples meeting up and discussing their favorite movies, only to discover that both men liked Brokeback Mountain, thus beginning their love affair. One play was so dull that the students who hated their script (it was written by another group) and they performed it as robots instead of taking it seriously. There was a love triangle gone wrong (as is known to happen) with people pushed and jumping out of twelfth floor windows, with lots of melodrama in between. The last play in the class featured two lesbian lovers discovering they have the same father.
Two particularly intense moments were in my night class. The first one had one actress getting completely into her role and and spouting her lines perfectly. Just as she was finishing up her mini-monologue about her boyfriend, she yelled dramatically, "She is terrible!" This was followed by an immediate look of horror and she and the class realized what she'd done. (In Chinese, he and she are the same sound but different characters.) Another beautiful dialogue went like this:
Person one: Hi there! How are you?
Person two: Yes.
That remained the joke of the day for the rest of the class.
In one play, I was cast and portrayed as the beautiful girlfriend (played by a male, naturally) and I was first dating the bad guy and later the "Nothing to see here!" police officer. What good taste I have! After a fight one girl tried to jump into the ocean but her friends stopped her in time. Another boy was pushed into the lake out of jealousy by his lover. This class had two of the best lines ever written in the two years I've been doing this:
"Why did you do the nausea thing?"
"Ugh, I hate him. Let's go get a cup of noodles!"
Clearly, none of these will be showing on the big screen near you anytime soon, but they certainly did bring some joy and laughter to my week and that of my students.
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