Ducklings: A Summary and An Activity

Synopsis:

Four women compete for the title of “DanceHall Queen of Pittsburgh,” each of them vitally invested in winning. Tensions mount as grudges old and new surface, friends are betrayed, and the credibility of the contest's organizers and judging system is called into question. Ultimately, everyone involved is forced to ask themselves: “what is it I truly value?”

Analysis & Applications:

Ducklings could be used in a unit on gender and sexuality in America to examine sexuality and the way American society deals with, or fails to deal with, sexually liberated women. The lead male character of the play, in his interactions with and treatment of the competing women, embodies the male gaze, and the women of the play all represent strong women in different ways. A class would be able to examine the nuanced women in the play, their circumstances, their relationships to each other, their desires, and their reasons for participating in the DanceHall contest. Students could thus gain an understanding of how these women claim their sexuality and empower themselves in doing so. Ducklings could also be used to examine the effects of internalized and systemic oppression on an individual scale, demonstrating the link between larger societal issues and an individual's circumstances.

Sample Activity:

Ducklings' visceral style provides a great source of inspiration for playwrights seeking to create character interaction that feels genuine in its messiness. After reading Ducklings, the class would review some of the major conflict scenes in the play, as well as the build up to those scenes. Students would then find a partner or work in a group of three and, after receiving some prompts from the teacher (i.e. someone keeps eating the pudding you put in the fridge even though it has your name on it, or this is the second time you've caught them cheating on you, etc.), would begin to have an argument. Each student would be given or would find some reason to be invested in the argument so as to get what they want, raising the stakes as the argument would progress. Arguments should be fast and heated, not lasting too much longer than a minute, though exact timing can vary depending on the group. Time for practice arguments should be set aside if possible. Students should be thinking and speaking urgently, focusing on their intention and goal rather than on making the most well reasoned set of statements. As real arguments do, these should be allowed to get messy, but physical contact should not be permitted. Once time for the arguments is up, students should then immediately stop arguing and start writing a scene, drawing upon as much as they can remember from the argument they just had. Students will then share scenes with each other, preferably with someone they weren’t just arguing with, briefly workshop them, and then present their work. Work-shopping should focus on fleshing out the build up to the argument, or making the dialogue more efficient - students should be using Ducklings as a model or reference during this part of the activity in particular.

Discussion Questions:

So, briefly… what did you think of the play? Likes, dislikes, what excited you, what frustrated you?

Based on your read of the play, which of these contestants deserves to win and why? – Every contestant in the play, to some extent, deserves to win. Winning is vital to each contestant and wrapped up in their identity to such an extent that losing would be catastrophic and utterly crushing. Yet, there can only be one winner. What does the nature of the competition say about the society that puts its contestants in such a position? Is it right that the hopes, desires, and struggles of each contestant are ultimately reduced to dramatic tension for the audience? Is there any that is more deserving than the rest, or does that question simply play into the same culture that put the contestants in the position they’re in?

What does everyone really want? Why? – In some ways, the goals of the contestants seem like an afterthought to winning, with winning for its own sake being their real goal. Yes Bunny has her son, but the way she talks about her son over the phone suggests apathy, and yes Rihanna P wants to start a revolution, though it seems whenever anyone asks her questions about her situation she becomes very defensive and falls back on blind idealism. Donna seem to embrace winning for winning's sake more fully than the other two, though still has her other goals of a house and revenge, and Rihanna T wants to launch her makeup line, but also to win. Yet, when Rihanna T is declared the winner, she finds herself unsatisfied, to say nothing of the other three contestants. In the end, nobody is happy.

Why Dancehall? – How does the framing of the action and the issues via a DanceHall competition affect the way we as audience members receive the play? What does the play seem to say about misogyny, fatphobia, sexuality, fetishization, and desire/greed? Where/how does Tom fit in? Donna? As a director, what elements or themes would I (each of us as our own “I”) choose to emphasize, given the play’s framing?

So, like, what actually happened at the end?

Comprehensive List of Plays

Bibliography

On Ducklings:

Vincentelli, Elisabeth. (2017). “A Dance Contest With Two Rihannas in ‘Ducklings’.” New York Times, NY. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/28/theater/review-ducklings.html

On Pageants and Black Beauty:

Kinloch, Valerie Felita. “The Rhetoric of Black Bodies: Race, Beauty, and Representation.” From: Watson, Elwood; Martin, Darcy. (2004). There She Is, Miss America: The Politics of Sex, Beauty, and Race in America’s Most Famous Pageant. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, Nature America Inc.

Welch, Georgia Paige. (2015). “‘Up Against the Wall Miss America’: Women’s Liberation and Miss Black America in Atlantic City, 1968.” Feminist Formations, Baltimore, Volume 27, Issue 2.

On DanceHall:

Noble, Denise. (2008). “Postcolonial Criticism, Transnational Identifications and the Hegemonies of Dancehall's Academic and Popular Performativities.” Feminist Review. Issue 90. Page 106 - 127.

Niaah, Sonjah Stanley. (2004). “Making Space: Kingston’s Dancehall Culture and its Philosophy of ‘Boundarylessness’.” African Identities. Volume 2, Issue 2. Page 117-132.

Hope, Donna P. (2006). “‘Passa Passa’: Interrogating Cultural Hybridities in Jamaican Dancehall.” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism. Volume 10, Issue 3. Page 125-139.

Ellis, Nadia. (2011). “Out and Bad: Toward a Queer Performance Hermeneutic in Jamaican Dancehall.” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism. Volume 15, Issue 2. Page 7-23.

On “Wall Street:”

Arsenault, Raymond. (1998). “‘Wall Street’ 1987: The Stockbroker’s Son and the Decade of Greed.” Film & History, Cleveland, OK, Volume 28, Issue 1-2.

La Berge, Leigh Claire. (2014). “Scandals and Abstraction: Financial Fiction of the Long 1980s.” (Chapter 2) Oxford University Press, 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016.

On “Rihanna:”

Fleetwood, Nicole R. (2012). “The Case of Rihanna: Erotic Violence and Black Female Desire.” African American Review. Volume 45, Issue 3. Page 419 - 435.