Living Offstage: April 24, 2018

Focus: What does it mean to be offstage?

1. Warming up: Close reading a passage from yesterday

PLAYER: We keep to our usual stuff, more or less, only inside out.  We do on stage the things that are supposed to happen off.  Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else.  (28)

• In your lives, how would you define living "offstage" to living "onstage"?  In other words, when are you are offstage, and when are you onstage? For example, is your school life offstage or onstage, and why? Is there such a thing as "offstage"?

• What is the player revealing about his acting troupe's intentions?  Why is there integrity in this?

• What does he mean when he says that every exit is entrance somewhere else?

• How is this an example of metatheatre?  In other words, how is this a play about plays/theatre? CHALLENGE: Try to find one other line that's metatheatrical...

2. Enjoying the rest of Act 1 in R & G, the film version (start at 18ish minutes) with a big fat Venn diagram connecting this play to Waiting for Godot

3. Wrapping up by breaking down today's focus question in small groups:

• How are Rosencrantz's and Guildenstern's onstage lives (when they're in Hamlet) different from their offstage lives?

• Is being onstage more or less authentic than being offstage? Where do they have a greater sense of purpose? Where do they have more power?

HW:
Continue finalizing your culminating essay. You have about two days left, and there will not be time to revise. Make your final draft a true final draft, and one that you're proud of. Click HERE for the Wednesday night checklist.

Final draft due Thursday, April 26 by 3:00 pm.

We will have one more in-class editing day on Wednesday; aim to finish your rough draft by then.