Question: Production Analysis Papers
For each production that you attend, you must save your ticket stub. Use a pen to sign your name across the front of the ticket. Then, take a photograph or scan it and upload the image file at the end of your response paper. Without proof of attendance, you will not receive full credit for this assignment. We will not accept any part of this assignment via email.
Keep your program. We recommend that you keep your program from the show so that you can properly reference artists' names in your paper. Failure to credit properly artists will result in a loss of points. Often the program will contain a note from the director or dramaturg, information that you might find helpful on this assignment.
Instructions-Read Carefully!
Write an analysis that responds to the prompts below with your original analysis and insight about the play and its production. We want to know what you thought about what you experienced and saw on the stage, not what you liked or didn't like.
Your analysis must express a point of view about the production and must be at least 2 full pages but no more than 3 pages long. Assume your reader attended the production. Provide context for your discussion and analysis without retelling the entire plot of the play if a brief synopsis of the story might help you to set up your arguments.
I. Prompts
• A Design Element. Examine the use of ONE design element in the production. (A design element includes scenery, costumes, props, lighting, sound, or media design). Properly credit the artist whose work you are critiquing. How did these specific design choices create meaning and contribute to the world of the play and the storytelling? Use specific moments from the production to support your aesthetic interpretation and analysis. How does this reinforced the setting of the play or the status, class, gender, or relationship of a character;
• Choice of a Staging Moment or a Performance or another Point of Interest. You are free to choose another aspect of the production to analyze; for example, a specific director's choice, an actor's performance, a piece of choreography, or something else that captured your interest. How did this particular specific create meaning? What does this specific piece of the production suggest about the production as a whole?
• Issues of Diversity: Examine the politics of the play by choosing an issue of diversity (such as race,
ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, religion, disability) and evaluating its depiction. How does the play's depiction reinforce or challenge conventional (traditional) understandings of the issue under examination? What does this particular issue under examination suggest about the play as a whole?
Do not let the above prompts limit your response; rather, use them to inspire, expand, and deepen your thinking about the play and its production.