hypothetical situations

Instructions: To successfully complete your final essay exam, you should answer both questions thoroughly. Your answers should be well organized and developed, and each answer should be a minimum of 200 words in length. Please observe the length requirements.

QUESTION 1: To answer this question, you must put yourself in the following hypothetical situation:

You are the director of your local community theatre. Your community leaders have decided to sponsor a community tolerance program, designed to increase respect for others in your community. You are asked to direct a play which emphasizes values and choices for your theatre group. The play will be presented as part of a series of artistic events designed to educate people on topics of awareness, morality, racism, tolerance, and making choices.

Choose your play from the following: Oedipus Rex or Othello. The challenge is this: you need to adapt the setting and characters to a modern scenario set in the year 2014. The audience members should be able to see the relevance of the play to their own lives. How would you make the universal topics in the play come to life for the audience?

Your exam assignment is to choose your play and explain why you chose this particular work. How will you adjust the setting, costumes and characterizations? Will there be any modern events or problems featured in your adaptation?

QUESTION 2: Disguise and the theme of appearance versus reality are concepts that appear frequently in theatre. The idea that we are not the people who we appear to be is a fascinating one. In some plays, this theme is more obvious than in others. Subtle displays of disguise are found when a character does not reveal his / her true self. Extremes of disguise occur when it becomes difficult to distinguish between reality and fiction.

Choose one play from the following 4 plays: Tartuffe, The Importance of Being Earnest, Six Characters in Search of an Author, or A Raisin in the Sun. Discuss the themes of disguise and appearance versus reality as they are used by the playwright in this play.