• DreamLink

Once you have arrived at the opening menu, select "dreams." Select a dream that particularly fascinates you, and interpret the dream, using one or more plays that we have read this semester to help back up your interpretation.

By the way, oftentimes, the "Technique of the week" is a good resource to consult for developing ideas, and figuring out creative interpretive approaches. Go to the following for an archive of the weekly techniques. Review the following, depending upon whether your approach happens to be Jungian or Freudian:

• Jungian interpretative notes

• Freudian interpretative notes

Take a look at the: Generation X Interest Group, which is one of the many web sites devoted to this topic. An interesting article to check out is: An Opinion: The Myth of Generation X:. Or take a look at the an interesting article and site called, Myth or Reality: Distinquishing Elements of the Slacker Generation. For a site that lists over twenty or so Generation X links go to Gen X, 13th Generation, Slackers, Post-Baby Boomers Links By the time you read this, some of these links might be dead, but I think you've got the picture--a quick search on the web can bring lots of potentially valuable information.

• Article #1: The American Dream
  
• Article #2: The American Dream is for People who Can't Afford It.
  
• Article #3: Rethinking the American Dream
  
• Article #4: Redreaming the American Dream

Two Paper possibilties:

1. Compare and contrast how two or three different plays we have read this semester have dealt with the concept of the American Dream.

2. Or pick a play to write about which in your opinion has effectively dramatized a particular way of thinking about or relating to the American Dream. You may very likely opt to discuss only a particular facet of the American Dream, rather than attempt to encompass all its many associative issues. Although your discussion should be focused on a single play, feel free to bring into discussion other plays that we have read this semester to support your ideas.

MODERATELY RECOMMENDED
(because as exciting as some of these suggestions might be to you, they do not automatically draw upon the Web; they are potentially great topics, but you'll have to work a bit harder to create a "web-eye" view with these topics)

1. Can Ya Dig It. The arts are fundamental to our history and to our culture. From the art left by our ancestors, the stories of all of us unfold. Keeping this in mind, imagine that one of the plays we have read this semester is literally dug up by an archeologist in the year 3000. The newly found play happens to be the only extant example of what used to be called "modern theatre." The find of this text is particularly significant because it is well known that the history of all earlier periods had been wiped out by a series of unforseen nuclear disasters occuring late in the year 1999. Given all this, what is this play going to tell our inquisitive archeologist about what life and people were like when this play was written? Or is the period of the play different from when the play was written? In any case, the central question is what is the archeologist apt to discover about life in the past? What, if anything, will still be relevant, and what will not? A variation of this kind of paper is to have a play be discovered by an "alien." For an example of just how strange the conventions of theatre would be to an extraterrestial, read An Alien's Eye View of Theatre.

2. RethinkingDeath of a Salesman: Miller's Death of a Salesman  has the distinction of being the American play most stuidied at the university level. Here are two paper topics that might help prove why many feel this play is a quintessential American masterpiece:

   • Miller's Mindscape: A Scenic Approach to Death of a Salesman
     

   • Beyond the Male Locker Room: Death of a Salesman  from a Feminist Perspective.

   Here some web sites to start your research:

   • What Happened in Boston, Willy?"
     

   • Arthur Miller .

3. Wartegg Project 1: Contrasting Characters
   • The first phase of this project is to:
     • Take the Wartegg Drawing Test, and analyze the results.
     • Ask me for a finished test of an anonymous person, and analyze these results.
     • Take the test as a character from one of the plays we've read this semester, and analyze the results.

   • The second phase is to write a paper comparing and contrasting the three test results.

4. Wartegg Project 2: Eight Parts
   • First Phase:
     • Divide one of plays we read this semester into 8 parts. These eight parts can be beats, tactics, sequences, or any divisions which happen to be meaningful to you. The eight parts may or may not comprise a totality; for example, if they happened to be eight consecutive beats, there is a high probablity that there are more than eight beats to the play, so in this sense, they would not comprise a totality. All that's essential is that in your mind there is a meaningful reason for focusing on these eight parts. How you decide to delineate the eight parts is the major creative challenge of this first phase. Interpret the eight divisions in any way you like; maybe, for instance, you find a scene with seven major beats, and the eighth part represents the overall theme or superobjective of the play.

     • Using the Wartegg Drawing Test Grid, draw pictures that represent each of the eight parts.

   • Second Phase:
     • Write a paper in which you justify your choices re:
       • the eight parts (and)
       • the eight individual pictures

     • In justifying your picture choices, tell how they interrelate to each other, and to the play at large.

5. When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Pick two or three plays that support or reject this now famous book title.

6. Life dramatized as a metaphorical prison: Your paper might discuss how two or three plays we have read this semester vividly dramatize one or more of the various categories of imprisonment below.

   • Individuals trapped by love and marriage

   • Men and women imprisoned by the dictates of society

   • Human beings trapped by the demands of art and morality

   • Persons paralyzed by the fear of the supernatural

For the most part dramatic texts are not narratives (or "stories") that can be conveniently distilled into a short paragraph that conveys the flavor of the play or the author's intent. In drama, it's usually not what happens that is important but how it happens--when, and in what order, in what context, and with what degree of detail and revelation. The "how" is much more important than the "what."