Download PRE-SHOW PREPARATION AND ACTIVITIES

PRE-SHOW PREPARATION
AND
ACTIVITIES
Created by the McCarter Theatre Education Department. 2012.
PRE-SHOW MATERIALS
PRE-SHOW PREPARATION, QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION, AND ACTIVITIES
Pick and choose among the following assignments, discussion topics, and activities to introduce your students
to The Select and its literary and theatrical origins, context, and themes, as well as to engage their imaginations
and creativity before they see the production.
THE SELECT: WEB SITE BASICS.
Explore the following informational offerings on McCarter’s The Select web site (mccarter.org/ The Select/) with
your students:
 An “Interview with John Collins,” the founding artistic director of the internationally-acclaimed
Elevator Repair Service—the theatre-ensemble creators of The Select—provides insight into why
and how the company created this stage adaptation of Hemingway’s classic of modern American
fiction.
 A “Summary of The Sun Also Rises.”
 Professional biographies of Elevator Repair Service’s cast and creative team
 Photos of and press on The Select.
 Historical contextual information on “Hemingway in Paris and Spain,” “The Lost Generation,” and
“Fiesta: Bull Fighting in Pamplona.”
Investigating these various resources will not only pique student interest, but may also spark and fuel full-class
and small-group discussion before coming to the theater.
READING THE SUN ALSO RISES BEFORE EXPERIENCING THE SELECT
PERFORMANCE.
IN
Although not every educator and his or her class will be able to make curricular room for a complete reading of all
two hundred and fifty-nine pages of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, reading the literary classic in its
entirety before seeing ERS’s creatively contemporary theatrical adaptation affords the greatest perspective from
which to view the company’s approach to adapting the work for the stage. If incorporating a full reading of the book
into curriculum is not possible, then perhaps the opportunity to read the novel for extra credit could be offered as an
option to interested students.
ADAPTING A CLASSIC AMERICAN NOVEL— THE ERS APPROACH
STEPS.
IN
THREE EASY
Elevator Repair Service is “a New York City-based ensemble that creates original theatre pieces” almost
exclusively out of materials that didn’t start out as plays (e.g., interviews, film noir, documentary films, Supreme
Court oral argument transcripts, novels). The Select is ERS’s third play in a trilogy of works adapted from classic
American novels. Their first novel adaptation, Gatz, saw ERS stage every single great word of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
The Great Gatsby. Adapting the first chapter of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, entitled “April Seventh,
1928,” became the second theatrical challenge in ERS’s novel trilogy; the production staged Faulkner’s
experimental, stream-of-consciousness approach to storytelling. The ensemble felt that it was “obvious” and fitting
that a work by Ernest Hemingway should complete the series and knew they had found the right Hemingway novel
when they began reading The Sun Also Rises aloud to one another.
2
Created by the McCarter Theatre Education Department. 2012.
PRE-SHOW MATERIALS
The activities below approximate ERS’s initial artistic approach to adapting The Sun Also Rises for the stage and
are intended to afford students a unique way to encounter Hemingway’s novel, explore the artistic endeavor of
theatrical adaptation through ensemble work, and reflect upon both experiences. Any of these steps can largely
stand alone as separate activities/assignments, although some of the questions for reflection/discussion may have
to be altered accordingly.
Step One: A Personal Experience with The Sun Also Rises as Literature
For those only able to incorporate a partial reading of The Sun Also Rises into your class’ pre-show preparation, we
suggest utilizing Chapter Three as your sample chapter. Ask students reading Chapter Three for homework—or
students reading the whole book on their own—to write responses to the following questions immediately after
reading the chapter/book:

If you had to choose five words to describe the chapter/book and your experience of reading
it, what would those five words be and why?

What most stood out to you about the chapter/book in terms of its story, setting, characters,
or events? Explain your response(s).

Is there anything that stood out to you about the writing itself? Why did you find this aspect of
authorship outstanding or conspicuous?

What features or aspects of the chapter/book and the story it tells seem most suitable to
theatrical adaptation? Explain your response(s).

Were there any aspects of the chapter/book and its story that seem as if they would be
difficult or impossible to stage in a theatrical adaptation? Explain your response(s)
The next day in class ask students to share their experience of reading the chapter/book in a full-class or smallgroups discussion.
Step Two: A Social Experience with The Sun Also Rises as a Spoken and Heard Text
Once students have had the opportunity to read Chapter Three (or the book) and privately, have them embrace the
ERS approach to adapting a novel to the stage, by reading the same chapter aloud to each other; the company
calls this “giving voice to the book.” Ask them to read simply, in the round, taking turns. (And encourage them to
have fun in the reading of it—this, too, is a part of the ERS approach!) After reading, ask students to reflect on the
experience of reading the book aloud. Questions might include:
3

What most stood out to you about this experience with the text? What things did you notice
by “giving voice to the book?”

Was reading/speaking and hearing the chapter aloud different from your experience of
reading it to yourself? How was your experience of the material different?

Did speaking or hearing the book aloud highlight any aspects of the story, characters,
dialogue, setting, tone, etc.?
Created by the McCarter Theatre Education Department. 2012.
PRE-SHOW MATERIALS

What questions do you have about the chapter? Did anything confuse you in terms of
story, dialogue, vocabulary, plot points, characters, character relationships, etc.? (Urge
students to answer one another’s questions about the text in true ensemble fashion, if
possible.)

Were there any features or aspects of the text that you found to be particularly
stageable? Were you to put the text up on its feet what would you be most excited to see
theatricalized?

Are there any parts of the text that could or should be cut either because they are
unnecessary/ inessential to a stage adaptation of the book or impossible to achieve
theatrically? (Can the “classroom ensemble” imagine any theatrical solutions to those
things that seem impossible?)
Step Three: Getting Chapter Three Up On Its Theatrical Feet
Break your class up into mini-ensembles and task each working group with the project of staging a different section of
Chapter Three. If some groups are particularly motivated, and time is abundant, they can attempt to stage the entire
chapter (although they may not get the time to perform it all.) It might be especially interesting and educational to
have more than one group stage the same section, so that ensemble approaches/adaptations can be compared and
contrasted.
Assure all that, according to ERS director John Collins, “there is not one right way to stage a novel.” Students might
be interesting in knowing that ERS’s approach to adapting The Sun Also Rises was “stick to what Hemingway wrote—
just not all of it,” and that the ensemble:




Started with working from dialogue
Stuck to Hemingway’s language only
Assembled their entire play from what was already there
 No rewriting
 No invention of characters
Cut to get to the emotional gist of scenes
Working groups should work as an ensemble to adapt their sections of Chapter Three. They can outline a script or get
it right up on its feet to stage it. They should prepare and rehearse their scenes for a script-in-hand performance for
the class.
Following the performances, lead students in a discussion of their experience adapting, rehearsing, and performing
their section of Chapter Three of The Sun Also Rises. Questions might include:
4

What were the pleasures and challenges of adapting your particular section of Chapter
Three?

What of Hemingway’s original text did you cut, if any, and why?

What insights, if any, regarding the novel and its story, characters, language, style and tone
did you get from adapting your section of Chapter Three and getting it up on its feet?
Created by the McCarter Theatre Education Department. 2012.
PRE-SHOW MATERIALS

Did any of the characters, character relationships, or themes of The Sun Also Rises become
more enhanced or distinct through its theatrical enactment/embodiment?

Is there a specific portion or aspect of Chapter Three that you are most interested in seeing
staged by ERS? Explain your interest.

Do you think there is value in adapting classic literature for the stage? If so, what is that
value? If not, what makes you opposed to such an artistic endeavor?

What were the pleasures and challenges associated with working in an ensemble? How
were artistic decisions made in your ensemble as you worked at adapting and staging
Chapter Three?
CONTEXTUALIZING THE SELECT.
Have your students prepare one another for their shared experience of The Select in performance by exploring
and reporting on the following topics related to the life and literary legacy of Earnest Hemingway, the historical
milieu of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and background information on the experimental theatre ensemble
who adapted the classic American novel:







Ernest Hemingway
 Biographical Overview
 Selected literary works—synopses and historical context/
significance

A Farewell to Arms

To Have and Have Not

For Whom the Bell Tolls

The Old Man and the Sea

Death in the Afternoon

A Moveable Feast
 Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory/Technique
The Sun Also Rises (TSAR)
 Story synopsis
 TSAR as a roman à clef
World War I—The Great War and overview
American expatriates of 1920s Paris
 Historical overview
 Gertrude Stein
 Ezra Pound
 F. Scott Fitzgerald
 Sylvia Beach and Shakespeare and Company
“The Lost Generation” origin, myth and reality
The Festival of San Fermin and bullfighting
Elevator Repair Service (ERS)
 ERS and director John Collins biography
 Gatz
Students may share their discoveries on each topic with the class using visual aids, such as PowerPoint
5
Created by the McCarter Theatre Education Department. 2012.
PRE-SHOW MATERIALS
presentations, film/video clips, collages, storyboards, etc., or, if they are reporting on a book, they might
choose to read an excerpt aloud to their classmates. Following the presentations ask your students to reflect
upon their research process and its joys and challenges.
A THEATER REVIEWER PREPARES.
A theater critic or reviewer is essentially a “professional audience member,” whose job is to report the news, in
detail, of a play’s production and performance through active and descriptive language for a target audience of
readers (e.g., their peers, their community, or those interested in the Arts). To prepare your students to write an
accurate, insightful and compelling theater review following their attendance at the performance of the Elevator
Repair Service’s The Select, prime them for the task by discussing in advance the three basic elements of a
theatrical review: reportage, analysis and judgment.

Reportage is concerned with the basic information of the production, or the journalist’s “four
w’s” (i.e., who, what, where, when), as well as the elements of production, which include the
text, setting, costumes, lighting, sound, acting and directing (see the Theater Reviewer’s
Checklist). When reporting upon these observable phenomena of production, the reviewer’s
approach should be factual, descriptive and objective; any reference to quality or
effectiveness should be reserved for the analysis section of the review.

With analysis the theater reviewer segues into the realm of the subjective and attempts to
interpret the artistic choices made by the director and designers and the effectiveness not of
these choices; specific moments, ideas and images from the production are considered in the
analysis.

Judgment involves the reviewer’s opinion as to whether the director’s and designers’
intentions were realized, and if their collaborative, artistic endeavor was ultimately a
worthwhile one. Theater reviewers always back up their opinions with reasons, evidence and
details.
Remind your students that the goal of a theater reviewer is “to see accurately, describe fully, think clearly, and
then (and only then) to judge fairly the merits of the work” (Thaiss and Davis, Writing for the Theatre,
1999). Proper analytical preparation before the show and active listening and viewing during will result in the
effective writing and crafting of their reviews.
6
Created by the McCarter Theatre Education Department. 2012.