Hedda Gabler. Ibsen's great social drama of a caged woman in the late nineteenth century explores her tormented desire for escape and her yearning for individual and spiritual freedom.
Hairy Ape. The play tells the story of a brutish, unthinking laborer known as Yank, as he searches for a sense of belonging in a world controlled by the rich. At first Yank feels secure as he stokes the engines of an oceanliner, and is highly confident in his physical power over the ship's engines. However, when the weak but rich daughter of an industrialist in the steel business refers to him as a "filthy beast," Yank undergoes a crisis of identity.
Plays by Bernard Shaw
The Adding Machine - Elmer L. Rice. This constantly interesting play shows in outline the life history and, in its later scenes, the death history of Mr. Zero, a cog in the vast machine of modern business.
Our Town - Thornton Wilder. Described by Edward Albee as “…the greatest American play ever written,” the story follows the small town of Grover’s Corners through three acts: “Daily Life,” “Love and Marriage,” and “Death and Eternity.” Narrated by a stage manager and performed with minimal props and sets, audiences follow the Webb and Gibbs families as their children fall in love, marry, and eventually—in one of the most famous scenes in American theatre—die.
Streetcar Named Desire - T. Williams. Widely considered a landmark play, A Streetcar Named Desire deals with a culture clash between two iconic characters, Blanche DuBois, a relic of the Old South,[5] and Stanley Kowalski,[6] a rising member of the industrial, urban working class. The play presents Blanche DuBois, a fading but still-attractive Southern belle whose pretensions to virtue and culture only thinly mask alcoholism and delusions of grandeur. Her poise is an illusion she presents to shield others (but most of all, herself) from her reality, and an attempt to make herself still attractive to new male suitors.
Glass Menagerie – Tennessee Williams. The Glass Menagerie is a memory play, and its action is drawn from the memories of the narrator, Tom Wingfield. Tom is a character in the play, which is set in St. Louis in 1937. He is an aspiring poet who toils in a shoe warehouse to support his mother, Amanda, and sister, Laura. Mr. Wingfield, Tom and Laura’s father, ran off years ago and, except for one postcard, has not been heard from since.
Death of a Salesman – A. Miller. Death of a Salesman made both Arthur Miller and the character Willy Loman household names. The play endeavors to raise a counterexample to Aristotle's characterization of tragedy as the downfall of a great man: though Loman certainly has Hamartia, a tragic flaw or error, his downfall is that of an ordinary man (a "low man"). Like Sophocles' Oedipus in Oedipus the King, Loman's flaw comes down to a lack of self-knowledge; unlike Oedipus, Loman's downfall threatens not the city but only a single household.
Oresteia Trilogy (only need to read one play)
Desire under the Elms – O’Neill. A fiercely energetic drama of Oedipal lust and yearning involving a rebellious farm boy, his tyrannical father, and the father's slatternly new wife.
Strange Interlude – O’Neill. O'Neill forges a theatrical vehicle for the discoveries of modern psychology, giving outward form to his characters' inexpressible thoughts and feelings.
Mourning Becomes Electra – O’Neill. The Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist transplants the themes of Aeschylus's ORESTEIA into Civil War-era New England.
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Drew M.
The genius behind the novel
As you know we have been reading novels as part of our finals. I read the novel The Adding Machine. It was written by a man named Elmer L. Rice. As I started to read this novel I was very confused because every ones names were numbers. I was also confused because the climax of the story seems to happen in the beginning of the book. It took the process of writing and analyzing the story through these papers to finally understand what Elmer L. Rice was trying to convey. He wrote the story in a period of transition. It was not long after WWI and technology was rapidly advancing. HE saw in the world around him people being fired because a machine could do a job much faster and quicker than any human could. I think he was very concerned by the fact that no one really stood up to this technology. It seemed like no one cared that people were losing their jobs to machines. The average person of the time might have said that the technological advances were good for America and the economy. Elmer L. Rice saw something different. HE saw that the people were conforming to the ways of corporate America. By slowly firing people and replacing them with machines the Machine of American business made worker replacement common place. Elmer L. Rice I think viewed this as a sort of slavery. People who were working for American businesses had no control over their future. They had to slave away every day trying to get a step ahead. The problem was that they were stuck under the thumb of the system. When a system tricks people into conformity and takes away their control over their lives it becomes slavery. The slaves of America were tricked into believing that they were worse than the white people. Mr. Zero was tricked into believing if he worked hard enough that he would get a raise and a promotion. The slaves had no control of what happed to them in the future. Mr. Zero had no control of his future in the company. The slaves were controlled by higher up people. Mr. Zero's life was controlled by his boss who was controlled by his boss and the rest of the business system. Laws made slavery legal. Laws allowed companies to replace long time hard working people. The similarities are endless. I think that Elmer's goal was to show the people of America how their own lives were being controlled by the system. That is why the character is called Mr. Zero. He is just a number and could be anyone. The traits that he is given are basic average characteristics that allow the audience to connect and see themselves in Mr. Zeros position. The real genius of this Author is shown through history. Elmer L. Rice probably never imagined the connections that his story could make for the next 88 years. The hippies during the 70's preached non conformity. They realized the same thing that Elmer L. Rice had realized. They tried to break away from the system. The band Rage against the Machine was also formed on the principle that the machine was controlling the people of America. The story written in 1922 still fits easily with the culture and world today. I don't know if Elmer L. Rice wanted to break away from the system or if he just wanted people to realize that it was there. Either way his vision of an America aware of the system does not yet exist. Where and when will the next connection to this timeless play occur? You tell me.
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