The museum
Activity
Answer the questions below in your logbook.
- What is humour?
- Are there degrees of amusement?
- Why might you snigger at something and your teacher finds nothing funny about it?
- Have you ever seen a play, film or television program that you would categorise as Black Comedy, why?
- What type of stories do Black Comic plays tell?
- What are the ingredients that make a Black Comedy play?
- Are there degrees of a Black Comedy play?
- Does Black Comedy always mean laughter?
- How does an actor play Black Comedy?
- How does an audience react to a Black comedy play?
The Museum activity
Find a place in the room and imagine you are a young woman named Evelyn, in a museum, who is standing near a stretch of velvet rope. They have a spray can in their hands and are staring up at an enormous human sculpture. They shake their cans, look up at the nude human sculpture; build up nerve, as they are seriously thinking about defacing the sculpture by painting a large penis on it. Seven or eight years ago a censorship committee had put a plaster leaf cluster over the statue's penis and the young woman objects to art that isn't true. Ask the students to size up the sculpture, shake the can, step over the velvet rope, aim and pause; a young man who is dressed as a Museum Guard approaches behind the women, she turns and looks at him, he looks a little bit nervous, but Evelyn smiles in a seductive but subtly way at him... freeze.
Reflect
The opening Museum scene alerts the audience to the multiple meanings in the play such as art, sex, and the possibility of a new moral order. The scene is structured so that the audience meet Evelyn, the art student who wishes to deface a human sculpture and Adam, the nerdy English Literature student, who tries to stop her. It dramatically demonstrates to the audience the seeds from which their relationship will grow. For example, Evelyn is smarter, confident and savvier than the shy but amiable Adam and unknown to the audience she subtly demonstrates that she is setting out to see how far she can change him (Clover, 2004).
Group activity 1
In groups of 4, workshop the first three pages of the play exploring the dramatic hints of what is to come. Two students will become Evelyn and Adam with the other two students in the role of the Director/ Audience.
After the performance, answer the questions below.
- Where are there hints of sexual dominance and manipulation?
- What do you think the two characters' objectives were?
- What were the characters' tactics, both vocally and physically?
Remember - this play is based on realism, so the tone, pacing and timing of the dialogue and their character's physicality adds to the truth of the performance; this 'truth' is very important as it creates the Black Comedy for the audience.
Group activity 2
Pre-workshop questions
- How would a Director direct this segment?
- What do we know about the fundamentals of the character: e.g.
- Who am I?
- What is my objective(s) and what motivates me?
- What obstacle(s) is stopping me gaining my objective(s)?
- How can I overcome my obstacle(s)?
- What should be my tactics?
- What information is the audience receiving from this small segment of the opening scene?
Workshop
In groups of 4, experiment with two further segments of The Museum scene:
- pages 6-9 which explores the nature and meaning of art
- pages 12 and 15 which explores personal identity and sexual intimacy.
Post-workshop questions
- What might be the predominate age of the audience? Why?
- The audience is immediately introduced to the phallic symbol as an art aesthetic and as a precursor to sexual intimacy. How does that make an audience feel?
- There is a hint of Evelyn as the aggressor, is there some humour in this. Why?
- How do you imagine the characters are costumed? What does this add to the overriding impact in The Museum scene?
- How is the stage set out for The Museum scene? How can this sharpen your acting technique and the audience reaction to this scene?