HUMOR: Language Specific, Local and Contextual

New Releases

Because students now are familiar with Shakespeare, they can appreciate contemporary humor derived from the intersection of what is currently popular in today's America and Shakespeare's plays. One important example of this type of humor is the work done by The Reduced Shakespeare Company in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)

Shakespeare: Beyond the Stories

Berkeley Shakespeare Program

The students reviewed the plots of the plays discussed in class in order to go beyond the actual story and delve deeper into the context, meaning and relevance of the scenarios presented by English playwright William Shakespeare. 

Main Points Discussed

The Merchant of Venice

The profound antisemitic connotation of The Merchant of Venice is seen in the way Jews are portrait.

Shylock plays the stereotypical greedy Jew, who is spat upon by his Christian enemies, and constantly insulted by them. 

His daughter runs away with a Christian and abandons her Jewish heritage. 

After being outsmarted by the gentiles, Shylock is forced to convert to Christianity— at which point, he simply disappears from the play, never to be heard of again.

Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night’s Dream fits into four acts all of the material that would normally occupy a five-act play; the main story, climax, and even a period of falling action are capped by a happy turn of events that would seem to mark the play’s end. 

Shakespeare includes a fifth act. Since he has already resolved the tensions of the main plot, he treats Act V as a joyful comic epilogue. 

Except for a short closing scene, the act is committed wholly to the craftsmen’s performance of Pyramus and Thisbe. 

In wrapping up the conflict before the last act, Shakespeare affords himself the opportunity to give the audience one act of pure, uncomplicated comedy. 

He offers a play-within-a-play whose comical rendition caps the cheerful mood of the Athenians watching the play.

Taming of the Shrew

Disguise in The Taming of the Shrew enables characters to temporarily change their social positions. 

By donning a disguise, Lucentio transforms himself in the eyes of everyone around him from a young gentleman into a scholar, and Tranio transforms himself from a servant into an aristocrat. 

Clothing facilitates this effect because outward appearance controls the perceptions of others: because Tranio appears to be a gentleman, people treat him as a gentleman. However, as Petruchio says, no matter what a person wears, his inner self will eventually shine through—Lucentio, for instance, may appear to be a tutor, but as soon as the courtship with Bianca develops, he must revert to himself again. 

Additionally, one cannot escape one’s past simply by changing one’s clothes. 

People are bound together in intricate webs and, interwoven as such, cannot escape their identity. 

The webs tend to reveal true selves regardless of attire or intent—a point that Shakespeare illustrates when Vincentio encounters Tranio in disguise.

The Tempest

“Toward the History of Caliban” and “Our Symbol, in relation to Shakespeare's play The Tempest,  Roberto Fernandez Retamar traces the dialectics of the Caliban versus Ariel—both as symbols of barbaric versus civilized America—and their conflicting links with Prospero, the character who represents the colonizer. 

Tracing the evolution of the Caliban’s symbolism, Retamar argues that even as European colonizers have sought to degrade America by assigning it the negative identity of the Caliban, American culture must be derived from its Caliban [cannibalistic] characteristics, which basically means resistance to European colonizing views of the American subject.

Source:

Caliban: Notes Toward a Discussion of Culture in Our America / Roberto Fernández. Retamarhttps://icaadocs.mfah.org/icaadocs/THEARCHIVE/FullRecord/tabid/88/doc/1056617/language/en-US/Default.aspx

Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night, the holiday after which the play is named, was celebrated as a festival in which everything was turned topsy-turvy, with traditional social roles and behavior temporarily suspended. Are things similarly turned upside down in Illyria?

Normal situations are turned upside down in Illyria in several ways:

First, there is the prevalence of disguise and the ambiguity of gender roles. The central character in this regard is the protagonist, Viola. 

After she arrives on Illyrian shores, she takes on the disguise of a young man, thus at once concealing her identity and reversing her normal gender role. 

This reversal leads to a most confusing love life, in which she winds up loving a man and being loved by a woman who do not realize that she is a woman.

Meanwhile, the play also depicts attempts to alter the established systems of class and authority. Malvolio, for instance, dreams of marrying Olivia and gaining authority over his social superiors, such as Sir Toby. 

The servants, whom Malvolio does command, get authority over Malvolio himself by being able to lock him in the dark room as a madman. 

Meanwhile, Malvolio’s antagonist, Maria, succeeds where he fails by managing to marry Sir Toby and thereby rising from her common birth to a noble rank. Indeed, Malvolio’s difficulties seem to stem from his unwillingness to be abnormal enough. He dreams of escaping the rigid class system that makes him a servant, but otherwise he is a paragon of respectability and proper behavior. 

These qualities, in the topsy-turvy world of the play, cause his downfall, because they earn him the enmity of Sir Toby and Maria. 

Finally, all these events take place within a setting in which madness and anarchy are everywhere—Sir Toby’s drunkenness and disruptive behavior, Malvolio’s supposed insanity, Feste’s clowning, and the general perplexity caused by the doubling of Viola and Sebastian. 

All in all, the play is permeated with a sense of joyful confusion, in which nothing can be taken for granted. Thus, as expressed by Veronica in class, Twelfth Night is about self-deception

The Winter's Tale

The abrupt shift in mood after Time announces the passage of sixteen years, and the action shifts to Bohemia. 

Winter comes to an end, and spring enters, bringing with it the promise of rebirth—and as the seasons change, so the story shifts away from tragedy and into the realm of fairy tale and romantic comedy. 

The imagery of Act IV is dominated by the flowers that Perdita wears and dispenses as hostess of the sheep shearing, and the mood of the act is found in the cheerful songs of Autolycus. 

This spirit is eventually brought back to Sicilia, where Act V undoes much of what seemed so tragic in Act III—Perdita is restored to her rightful home, Hermione is restored to life, and even Paulina is given a new husband. 

The Winter's Tale, then, ends the way all winters end—by giving its characters the promise of forgiveness and a fresh start.

As Christian Zevallos suggested, fate restored Leontes' and Polixenes' fridneship, and brought  Florizel and Perdita, Camillo and Paulina together.

Henry V

Shakespeare provides us with plenty of clues that Henry is self-consciously performing the part of the good king, but he doesn’t necessarily give us the sense that Henry is in fact bad. 

Henry V, explores the idea that the qualities that make one a great king are not necessarily morally admirable ones—what makes a good king is not what makes a good person. 

Henry is willing to kill his former friends coldly and slaughter thousands of French people in the heat of battle to satisfy the demands of his throne; he must put his personal feelings second to the requirements of rulership and achieve the result he desires at any cost. 

Henry’s act of placing responsibility for the war on others helps him to achieve his goals, as it burdens others with the moral pressure of stopping the war. 

This behavior may make Henry seem unlikable, but it also makes him a great leader and leads directly to the triumph at Agincourt in Act IV. 

Ultimately, the answer to the question may be that there are no good kings—just effective ones.

Henry II

Most of the characters in the play agree that Richard is a bad leader, and we can see why: he mismanages his country's budget, is out of touch with the common people, creates friction among his relatives, and leaves the country at exactly the wrong moment.

On the other hand, Bolingbroke succeeds in returning from exile, building good foreign relations, obtaining the loyalty of Richard's noblemen, and winning the love of the common folk. 

He is also a plain-spoken man of action, in comparison to Richard's poetic virtuosity and ineffectiveness in practical matters. 

We see them explicitly contrasted in several scenes: for example, when York recounts the ride into the city of London, during which the people cheered Bolingbroke but dumped dust and rubbish on Richard's head (V.ii.4-40). 

It is, of course, ironic that the two are first cousins.

Julius Ceasar

The conspirators manage to kill Caesar, the physically infirm man, who is deaf in one ear, probably epileptic, and aging; indeed, it may be Caesar’s delusions about his own immortality as a man that allow the conspirators to catch him off guard and bring about his death. 

In many ways, however, Caesar’s faith in his permanence proves valid: the conspirators fail to destroy Caesar’s public image, and Antony's words to the crowd serve to burnish Caesar’s image. 

Additionally, the conspirators fail to annihilate the idea that Caesar incarnated: that of a single supreme leader of Rome.

Death does not diminish Caesar’s influence on matters or his presence in the minds of those who loved him. 

Caesar seems to speak from the grave when Antony reads his will, stirring the people to rebellion. Cassius and Brutus attribute their deaths to Caesar when they fall in battle. 

Perhaps most important, Antony begins to call Octavius “Caesar” when Octavius starts to display an undeniable authority in military strategizing. 

This appellation has a double significance: it reveals both Octavius’s future as the bearer of Caesar’s personal legacy and the metamorphosis of Caesar the man into Caesar the institution. 

Even with his death, Caesar has initiated a line of Roman emperors, ending the era of Brutus’s beloved republic

Romeo and Juliet

The attraction between Romeo and Juliet is immediate and overwhelming, and neither of the young lovers comments on or pretends to understand its cause. 

Each mentions the other’s beauty, but it seems that destiny, rather than any particular character trait, has drawn them together. 

Their love for one another is so undeniable that neither they nor the audience feels the need to question or explain it.

As Alessandro D'Avina would say, the heart in not controllable....

Renaissance Theater: Shakespeare's Plays

In class students read, analysed and discussed the main aspects of these plays. The plays highlighted in red, were the plays we discussed in class. They shared with the group the plots and also interesting points addressed in the introductions of the Signet Classical Shakespeare Series edition. Interestingly, reading from an actual book was a rarity they are no longer as used to as previous generations.

COMEDIES

All's Well That Ends Well

As You Like It

Comedy of Errors

Love's Labour's Lost

Measure for Measure

Merchant of Venice
Merry Wives of Windsor

Midsummer Night's Dream

Much Ado about Nothing

Taming of the Shrew

The Tempest

Twelfth Night

Two Gentlemen of Verona

Winter's Tale

HISTORIES

Henry IV, Part I

Henry IV, Part II

Henry V

Henry VI, Part I

Henry VI, Part II

Henry VI, Part III

Henry VIII

King John

Pericles

Henry II

Richard III

TRAGEDIES

Antony and Cleopatra

Coriolanus

Cymbeline

Julius Ceasar

King Lear

Macbeth

Othello

Romeo and Juliet

Timon of Athens

Titus Andronicus

Troilus and Cressida

Medieval Theater: Mystery, Miracle, Morality

Everyman

The students read scenes from Medieval plays and in some cases found texts adapted to contemporary English that were easier to understand and comprehend. Most of the groups chose (The Summoning of Everyman) or simply Everyman, a late 15th-century morality play that uses allegorical characters to bring attention to Christian salvation and what it means to be saved based on Christian faith. 

Bellow, more about Everyman:

Accounting in Everyman

Good Deeds and Everyman

Portland Community College's Everyman - PCC

Everyman Script pdf

Roman Theater: From Plautus and Terence to Seneca

Roman Comedy

Although both tragedies and comedies were written during the period of the Republic (500-27 BCE), the work of only two comedy playwrights has survived -- Titus Plautus (254 to 184 BCE) and Publius Terentius Afer, better known in English as Terence (185 to 159 BCE). 

Plautus is remembered for his farcical comedies. We have 21 of the more than 100 plays he may have written. On the other hand, Terence's six plays, because of their simple style and high moral tone, were used as the literary models by the colleges and universities of the Renaissance.

Seven Stock Characters Plautus Used in His Comedies .

An old man, probably a miser. A young man, possibly the miser's son, who rebels against authority. Usually a pair of slaves. One smart, the other less smart. The two slaves are the source of most of the humor. The parasite. The eternal brother in law, he comes for a visit, and stays forever. The courtesan. The live in maid who knows how to "put out." The slave dealer. Often trades in women. Today we would call him a pimp. Miles Gloriosus, the braggart soldier. He talks a mighty battle, but runs at the first sign of conflict.

Roman Tragedy

Lucius Seneca (ca. 5 BCE - 65 CE), a tutor and advisor to Nero (37-68 CE), was the major playwright of the Roman Empire (27 BCE - 476 CE). Nine of his tragedies have survived. His plays were based primarily on Euripides' plays, but he also "borrowed" from Aeschylus and Sophocles.

Six Major Characteristics of Seneca's Dramas.

1.     He divided his plays into five acts with choral interludes. The interludes were not part of the play's action.

2.     He used elaborate rhetorical speeches. His characters debated, they didn't converse.

3.     He was a moral philosopher. He believed that drama should preach a moral lesson.

4.     His tragedies involved much violent action. They were filled with murder, torture, dismemberment...

5.     His tragedies respected the unity of time (plays action unfolds within 24 hours) and place (the plays actions unfolds at one location).

6.     Each of his characters was dominated by one passion (love, revenge, ambition, etc.) which brought about their downfall.

Class Discussion

The students read some of the nine plays written by Seneca. His plays were never meant to be performed. Some students were able to compare and contrast how the stories changed from a Greek playwright to a Roman one. The plays discussed by the different groups opened a window to Roman theater. These plays were: The Trojan Women, Agamemnon, Hercules Furens, The Phoenician Women and Medea.

The Trojan Women 

"Hecuba, the former queen of Troy, rolled up after they left and was completely dumb-founded on how her hood was looking." (Jackie and Daniel)

Agamemnon

"The wife get away with murder and then murders the only witness who is Agamemnon's mistress."
(Sabrina, Mirtha, Carlos, Christian Z.)

Hercules Furens

"When the curse wears off, he realizes what he has done and tries to die by suicide, but his friend Theseus convinces him not to." (Tiffany, Ashley, Anthony, Carolina).

The Phoenician Women

"Basically, Oedipus wants to die after wondering in exile from power fall, but his daughter Antigone won't let him die; she never wants to leave him." (Emmanuel, Sophia)

Medea

"With her madness consuming her, she sacrifices her sons to hurt Jason; she then throws the bodies of her kids to Jason and flies away on a dragon chariot." (Yoandy, Michelle, Wanda, Maylen, Medea).

Ancient Greek Scripts: City Dionysia Festival

ALTOS DE CHAVÓN AMPHITHEATER

A replica 16th century Mediterranean village in the Dominican Republic.

 Designed by Dominican architect, Jose Antonio Caro, 

and Italian master designer and cinematographer, Roberto Coppa.

Handcrafted by local artisans.

There are 33 Greek plays, 36 Roman plays and more than 400 Greco-Roman Theaters in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, anywhere the Roman Empire established a protectorate.  There were four major celebrations, in honor of the Greek god Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, fertility and revelry. 

Three of these celebrations, the City Dionysia, in the early spring (March), at Athens, and the Lenaia and Rural Dionysia in the winter, would involve drama. One of the elements of these celebrations was the dithyramb, a choral ode song to the Dionysus, which was sung by a chorus of fifty men. Aristotle tell us that Greek tragedy grew out of the dithyramb. 

Greek mythology is the legends and stories behind the Greek gods. The earliest Greek dramas, especially those by Aeschylus (525-456 BCE), drew their plots and characters from these myths.

Aeschylus (525-456 BCE) won thirteen Tragic Contests. There have been found seven of the approximately 80 plays he wrote, including the only complete trilogy: Oresteia (458 BCE): Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, and Eumenides. He added the second actor, creating the possibility of dramatic dialogue. Thespis' tragedies utilized only one actor and the chorus.

Sophocles wrote Oedipus Tyrannos  (430-425? BCE), also known as Oedipus Rex or Oedipus the King. Sophocles won eighteen Tragic Contests. Like Aeschylus, only seven of the more than 120 plays he wrote have survived. Oedipus is considered one of the great tragedies of all times. Oedipus is known as the Greek king who murdered his father and married his mother. Sophocles' contribution to the art of playwrighting is based on the fact that he added the third actor. Euripides wrote The Trojan Women, among other plays. More plays by Euripides have been kept than those written by both Sophocles and Aeschylus combined.  The Romans, who eventually over throw Greece's Macedonian rulers (168 BCE), considered Euripides (ca. 480-407 BCE) a greater playwright, hence taking better care of his manuscripts. He won only five Contests, but we have seventeen of his approximately 90 tragedies. About 3.5% of the tragedies written during Greece's Golden Age (from 534 to 400 BCE) have survived. All were written by these three playwrights.

Aristophanes (ca. 448 - ca. 380 BCE) is the only Old Greek Comedy playwright whose work has survived.  He wrote political satire and high comedy.  He is best remembered for the four plays titled after the chorus: the The Clouds (423 BCE), The Wasps (422 BCE), The Birds (414 BCE), and The Frogs (405 BCE). Probably his most often revived script is Lysistrata (411 BCE), the story of the women of Athens and Sparta who bring an end to the long war between these two city states through a sex strike.

S   C   R   I   P   T   S

David Oyelowo in Prometheus Bound

Prometheus Bound By Aeschylus

https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/2596054/mod_resource/content/1/PROMETHEUS%20BOUND%20BY%20AESCHYLLUS.pdf

----------------------------------------------------------------------

                                                                                               Steven Weatherbee in "A Particle of Dread,"
                                                                                                               Fresno State, Sept. 19, 2017. 
                                                                                                             (Eric Zamora/The Collegian)

Oedipus the King  By Sophocles

http://abs.kafkas.edu.tr/upload/225/Oedipus_the_King_Full_Text.pdf

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Seymour's Antigone

Antigone By Sophocles

https://mthoyibi.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/antigone_2.pdf

---------------------------------------------------------------------

The Trojan Women 

The Trojan Women By Euripides

http://classics.mit.edu/Euripides/troj_women.html

----------------------------------------------------------------

Company of Lysistrata. Photo by Chris Bennion 

Lysistrata By Aristophanes

https://lcsl.uic.edu/docs/default-source/classics/the-original-ancient-text.pdf?sfvrsn=0

--------------------------------------------

R E A D I N G S

The students clustered in small groups and picked one of the above plays to study their scripts, contextualize them and read them for one another.

The Trojan Women group in the background and the Lysistrata group in the foreground.

Oedipus the King, Prometheus Bound and Antigone groups.

Thespis: Solo Work

Aristotle, in the Poetics, tells us that one of the choral leaders, Thespis (6th Century, BCE), left the chorus, jumped on to the altar, and assumed the role of "the god". Thus, Thespis became the first actor. Thespis was also the first playwright. He won the first Greek tragedy contest in 534 BCE. For theis reason our class honors Thespis by embracing solo work.

------------------------------------------------

We reviewed the process initiated during the previous class. We started with the warm up, then creative shapes, pedestrian movement and ended with the addition of the text.  The process intended to introduce students to solo work.

The Greek Chorus began to play a secondary role once Thespis, the first actor, began to dialogue with it. This idea was further developed in class by focusing on the students' individual creative shapes, a mix of abstract movement and classic text.

We also alluded to movement expression in reference to pantomime, an art developed by the Ancient Romans. Once the students established their own movement vocabulary, they worked in partners. One partner was supposed to have a conversation with the other through just movement.

Key Words:

Thespis: Thespis of Icaria, according to certain Ancient Greek sources and especially Aristotle, was the first person ever to appear on stage as an actor playing a character in a play. 

Pantomime: this word derives from the Latin word patomimus, which derives from Greek, consisting of  (panto-) meaning "all", and (mimos), meaning a dancer who acted all the roles or all the story.

Ancient Greek Chorus: Movement and Voice

The students explored the characteristics of the Ancient Greek Chorus. The class started with a warm-up in a circle. Then the group explored some pedestrian movement focusing on directions and pathways. We stressed the playful nature of the exercise and how it correlates with the overall playful nature of theater art (play, player, playhouse).  Then, we worked on creating random body shapes by calling one shape at a time, from one to eight, until the students had a whole movement phrase.

The next part of the process required for them to work in groups. As a group, they selected a classical Greek play and chose a paragraph from it. For this task, the students used their own phones, google and one of the Greek plays which script can be read on line. They familiarized themselves with the context and language of the play.  Then, they worked on integrating the text with the body shapes they had created as they also worked on ensemble aspect of the chorus.

Group 1: Maylen, Wanda, Milagro, Michelle

Group 2: Alexander, Damian, Emmanuel 

Spoken Stories & Written Stories

Michelle, Yoandy, Wanda, Milagro, Cynthia, Sophia, Jacqueline, Veronica, Alex, Damian, 

Emmanuel, Victor, Anthony, Carolina, Michelle, Ashley, Dhrov, Christian Z. Tiffany

 C    O    M    M    U    N     I      C      A      T     I     N     G 

The students engaged in the process of creating a random collective story woven out of the input each one in the circle gave to the group. The exchange of sound bites lasted approximately thirty minutes. They made eye contact, they smiled and laughed, they challenged each other and created a sense of community grown out of the story itself.

                                                            W     R    I    T    I    N    G

Then, they wrote their own individual short stories from childhood. They were asked to write a fun story to tell; the aim was not to reveal any traumatic memories, but to reminisce on good childhood experiences.

Michelle, Yoandy, Wanda, Milagro, Cynthia, Sophia, Jacqueline, Veronica, Alex, Damian, 

Emmanuel, Victor, Anthony, Carolina, Michelle, Ashley, Dhrov, Christian Z. Tiffany

S     T     O     R    Y    T   E    L    L    I    N    G 

They broke into smaller groups and shared their stories with each other. This time they had the opportunity to make each other's stories more intimate. They were able to get to know each other better since now they had shared stories buried in their past that probably no one had ever heard before.

Montage with the students' written stories