FINAL
Please read the entire assignment FIRST. Then go back to complete the work.
For this final, you will outline an entire One Act play comprised of six scenes. Thematically, your play should fit into at least one of the areas of study that we engaged in this semester, listed below as âAreas of Focus.â In addition to the outline, you will answer the questions included in each section.
AREAS OF FOCUS
EX: If I choose to focus my play on the âRace in Our Lives: Living Racial Identity as a Performanceâ area of focus, I may write a play about a young Black man from South Philadelphia. In my play, the young Black man will get a full ride to attend Harvard Law School, and find himself in a hotbed of racial discrimination and challenges. This play will explore how he navigates his evolving identity/ self of self.
Race in America: Learning Another Side of the Story. (Global Genocide, Eugenics Movement and Scientific Racism, Baconâs Rebellion, etc.)
Race in Our Lives: Living Racial Identify as a Performance (Interpellation, Racial Socialization, Forming a Racial Habitus)
Race on the Stage: A History (Erasure of Indigenous Theatrical Traditions, Spanish Speaking Theater Traditions, Blackface, Yellow face, etc.)
Race and Casting Legality: The Final Frontier of Discrimination? (Casting practices, Representation, Theatrical Funding and Production, etc.)
Artistic Impact: Theater as Activism (Changing hearts and minds with theater, art as a meant to change laws/ government, etc.)
THE OUTLINE
To complete the outline portion of the final, answer all questions and use the âscene outline templateâ six times to outline all six of your scenes, filling in the scene number for each.
In order to tell your story, your scenes must be organized, and have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Each scene should provide information to move the story forward. Using Sunset Baby as an example, if we broke the story down into six scenes, each can be broken down as follows:
SCENE 1. Establish the normal life for your play: We learn that Nina is a drug dealer and thief. We meet her estranged father who is now out of prison. He wants letters from Ninaâs dead mother that Nina is not willing to part with.
SCENE 2. Establish the protagonistâs need/ desire/ conflict: We meet Ninaâs boyfriend, we learn that he and Nina run the operation together and that they want to travel the world and really need to save money in order to do so. Nina wants to leave and be happy but canât figure out how to do it.
SCENE 3. Complicate it: The boyfriend and the Dad meet up in the apartment and plot, behind Ninaâs back, to steal the letters from Nina, so that the Dad can finally have them, and he and Nina can have the money to see the world.
SCENE 4. Give a little hope/ Complicate it further: Nina arrives home and sees that her boyfriend has found the box (not letters, her money). When her boyfriend comes back, they argue and afterwards he gets Nina to agree to give the letters to her Dad. We also learn that Ninaâs dreams are not actually to travel the world, but to have a simple life. Damon promises to love her and take care of her.
SCENE 5. Climax: Nina and her father meet again. Nina is prepared to rob him. She has decided not to give him the letters. They argue. Her Dad is not able to tell her that he loves her. She indeed robs him and kicks him out. He leaves her with $10,000, pictures of her and her mom, and video tapes that he has been making for her. Nina is left alone.
SCENE 6. Resolution: Nina decides to give the letters to her father. She also decides to pack up, leave her boyfriend, and start a new life on her own terms.
PLEASE NOTE: This is a grossly oversimplified telling of the events in Sunset Baby, used only to illustrate a sample plot structure for a linear play. You may decide if you want to use this set up for the scenes in your play, or not. You have the option of writing a choreopoem, a non-linear story, etc. Whatever you decide, please make sure it has a clear beginning, middle, and end.
Also note, the purpose of this final is NOT to teach you how to outline or write a play. It is to have you think critically about the topics we have discussed in class, form a concrete opinion, and creatively apply them to the medium of theater, using the show examples we have seen and read as inspiration.
To complete the final, please copy and paste everything below the line into the âreplyâ section for the final, and type your answers directly into the document.
REMEMBER: This is an outline. When you begin to write about each scene, I am not looking for character dialogue, or a play-by-play of the scene. I am looking for the brief description of the events, so that I can understand the story you are trying to tell. You also must answer the questions included in the outline for each scene.
Which area of focus have you chosen?
Race in America: Learning Another Side of the Story. (Global Genocide, Eugenics Movement and Scientific Racism, Baconâs Rebellion, etc.)
Race in Our Lives: Living Racial Identify as a Performance (Interpellation, Racial Socialization, Forming a Racial Habitus)
Race on the Stage: A History (Erasure of Indigenous Theatrical Traditions, Spanish Speaking Theater Traditions, Blackface, Yellow face, etc.)
Race and Casting Legality: The Final Frontier of Discrimination? (Casting practices, Representation, Theatrical Funding and Production, etc.)
Artistic Impact: Theater as Activism (Changing hearts and minds with theater, art verses government, etc.)
Please write a paragraph about your artistic intent for your play.
Who is the target audience for your play? Why?
Do you consider your play to be a piece of artist activism? Why or why not?
Discuss the ways that you could possibly use stereotypes (intentionally, unintentionally), exhibit bias, and meet limitations in the telling of your story based on who you are as the playwright.(EX: In my play referenced above, I may decide to consciously use stereotypes to prove a point about the Ivy League University. I may subconsciously use them because I may have difficulty truthfully writing the White Ivy League characters, as that is not a part of my lived experience. I would be sure to discuss these points in detail in order to answer this question fully.)
TITLE OF SHOW:
THEMES:
SETTINGS:
CHARACTERS and DESCRIPTIONS: (Refer to the plays you have read for ways to describe your characters. Also, consider how the race of the bodies is shaping the story.)
For each character description, please include a note on how necessary or unnecessary this characterâs race is to the storytelling and explain why.
PLOT SYNOPSIS: (Description of entire play, and Major Conflict/Event. This should be about a paragraph long and I should have a solid idea of what the play is about from reading this paragraph alone.)
SCENE OUTLINE TEMPLATE (copied and pasted 6 times for each scene)
SCENE _____
What characters do we meet in this scene?
What happens in this scene/ what is the major event?
How does this scene help tell the story/ why is it in the play?
What do we learn about the characters and story in this scene?
How does this scene move the plot forward?
