The One-Act Play Genre Study

1

Ella Hungerford

ENG 504

Dr Mary Kennedy

Genre Study – One Act Play

6 November 2008

The One-Act Play Genre Study

What Is A Genre Study and Why Should It Be Taught?

In an age when technology has changed and revolutionized nearly every occupation and industry, education is often accused of being “stuck in the mud” – some teachers unwilling to change familiar teaching methods and school day routines to accommodate new and potentially groundbreaking approaches. Educators are the most stubborn of creatures, refusing to give up their tried and true systems, even when a particularly pioneering technique or idea comes along; Lucy McCormick Calkins defines this phenomenon, saying that teachers “tend to take radical new ideas and stretch, chop, twist, and splice them until they fit into the existing norms of the school day rather than alter those norms” (454). To some teachers, the genre study is one such “radical new idea.” Although neither particularly radical, nor particularly new, it is faced with the same kind of opposition that Calkins describes. There are a multitude of reasons to use genre study in the classroom, from allowing students the opportunity to engage in a meaningful and profound way with an unfamiliar type of text, to giving them the chance to make relevant, authentic connections between their classroom experiences and their lives outside of school.

Lucy Calkins and Charles Cooper, both supporters of the genre study method, emphasize the importance of the broadness of the term “genre.” Whereas students probably assume that “genre” refers only to a type of literature – fiction, for example, or poetry, or even genres within these genres, like science fiction, or haiku – Cooper proposes that genres are “types of writing produced every day in our culture, types of writing that make possible certain kinds of learning and social interaction” (25). By Cooper’s definition, a genre does not need to be a published work of literature – in fact, it doesn’t even need to be considered “literature” at all. A genre includes such writings as recipes, knock-knock jokes, epitaphs, newspaper articles, and word problems in math (Calkins 358 – 59). To teach our students that a genre includes all of these things – all of these writing products that they are so familiar with – is to empower them in the classroom and to open up the possibilities of a genre study to them.

A genre study involves exactly what its name implies – examining and becoming deeply engaged and familiar with a particular genre, and then using this knowledge to create our own texts in the same style. Shortly, I will outline a genre study using the one-act play as a model genre. As mentioned, our new, broad definition of genre can include anything from the text on the backs of cereal boxes to the great, canonical, classical texts. One of the most powerful advantages of the genre study is the opportunity for collaboration that it presents within the classroom. Because the genre study is unlike traditional unit or lesson plans, students and teachers will both reap the benefits. This collaborative element of the one-act play genre study compliments Cooper’s definition perfectly in that it is making possible learning as well as social interaction. The one-act play is an excellent choice for any classroom’s genre study because of its naturally cooperative and performance-based essence, and because most students are likely to have at least limited experience in drama, since most high schoolers are required to read a Shakespearean play. The one-act play genre study can also help teachers tie together and tie in other units of study and certainly other genre studies that they may have done.

Now that we are a little more familiar with what a genre study is and have been briefly introduced to the one-act play, why should we teach the genre study in our classrooms? As previously mentioned, the genre study has the unique ability to connect students’ classroom learning to “the real world” since its relevance is apparent. Students can immediately see the link between English class and math class when we are willing to define word problems as a type of genre. Similarly, they feel immediately comfortable with a lesson that involves knock-knock jokes. Connecting students to classroom material benefits us as teachers twofold: it first interests the students making our job easier and their class time more enjoyable, and secondly, it gives the students a more authentic learning experience, meaning that their learning will be richer and more significant than if we had chosen to read Ethan Frome for the fifth year straight.

The majority of students will be familiar with plays and the theatre, but they are likely to be acquainted with longer, full-length plays with multiple acts. The analogy that Danielle Angie uses and that I find to be quite useful is that the one-act play is to the full-length play what the short story is to the novel. Students should be familiar with both short stories and novels and should therefore be able to identify at least some of the challenges that face authors of these types of writing. In writing a short story, the author must condense the set-up, conflict, and resolution (these are basic components of a narrative arc that students should be familiar with – it is probably helpful to review them to refresh students’ memories and to get students who may be unacquainted with the narrative arc comfortable with its structure), as well as introduce characters and plotlines that interest and engage readers; the author of a novel, on the other hand, has a much different set of challenges. Whereas we would not send our students off to write a novel, we similarly would not send them off to write an entire play. The one-act play is a manageable length and time frame for students, and offers an easy entry point into the world of drama for first time playwrights. There is, nevertheless, justifiable skepticism surrounding the one-act play genre study – many teachers are hesitant to devote a significant amount of teaching time to a form of writing that is not likely to be on state tests, or to be considered immediately “useful” outside of the English classroom. However, the one-act play genre study familiarizes students with several literary elements, such as plot and conflict, sharpens their dialogue writing skills, and requires them to be deeply imaginative. The genre study modeled here asks students to first closely examine the one-act play and become familiar with its inner workings by reading and viewing several exemplary one-act plays (referred to as our “touchstone texts”). Then, working in small groups, students will write, edit, and perform their own one-act play by the conclusion of the unit; although they will have their classmates to bounce ideas off of, each group member will be held accountable for a portion of the group’s work and will therefore be evaluated both individually and collectively. Ultimately, it will be the students’ own imaginations and hard work on display in the end result of the genre study. This genre study will first define some crucial terms and then discuss how the one-act play can be used effectively within the classroom as a means of reaching those goals of authentic engagement, connection, and learning for students.

Defining Drama and the One-Act Play

As we must first understand what a genre is before we can undertake the genre study project, similarly we must first help our students define “drama” and the one-act play before we can ask them to undertake a writing project. Students will be familiar with narrative writing, which is the form of writing that novels, short stories, biographies, and students’ own essays take. In narrative writing, William Packard says, readers are led “step by step through the story line” by the narrator, who will “invariably include a good deal of background material and specific detail… to help develop the exposition of setting and plot and character” (3). This genre study, for example, is a piece of narrative writing. The narrative is a formula that is going to be very comfortable for students – dramatic writing differs from traditional narrative writing (although our genre study does include the narrative arc) and they may have trouble at first writing in this new manner. Dramatic writing emphasizes the strategy “show, don’t tell,” wherein the author “plunges the audience right into the middle of an action” (Packard 3). It asks the writer to allow the audience to do their own information gathering to develop the story’s plot, setting, etc. from what they are being shown through dialogue and character’s actions. This will no doubt be fairly difficult at first for some students, since they are much more accustomed to spelling things out for the audience.

With the concept of drama fresh in our minds, we are ready to begin to introduce the one-act play. Since we used the analogy of what short stories are to novels to compare what one-act plays are to full-length plays, it would be helpful to hand out a page from a short story and a page from a play, one-act or full-length (suggestions are included in Appendix A with the touchstone texts). Read the texts out loud with the class – have students help in reading the page from the play aloud. Have students, either individually or in groups, work to write out ways in which the two texts differ and ways in which the two texts are the same (the format of the play, all dialogue, the short story tells us things about characters, plot, etc). As the class shares out these ideas, begin to write a preliminary list of characteristics of the one-act play that the class is coming up with – that is, essentially, what we’re asking them to do here. This list will be further fleshed out, built upon, and redefined as the genre study continues, and will be valuable to students when they are writing their own one-act plays.

Students would now have a very basic idea of the features of the one-act play, so it is appropriate to introduce one of our touchstone texts. I recommend “Trifles,” by Susan Glaspell, as it is a convenient length for the classroom and offers us the opportunity to discuss using suspense in our plays. There is a list of other touchstone texts and suitable one-act plays for the classroom in Appendix A. It would be most helpful to assign roles to students and to act out the play you have chosen as your main touchstone text (I suggest even rotating so that every student gets a chance to act) – this will help students to connect most closely with the genre and with the format of the genre. After the fun of acting out (hopefully this means actually acting out the play, not just reading out loud from their seats), students should respond to the play, both as readers and as writers. This can be done in either a response journal or a writer’s notebook – students in any English class should utilize a writer’s notebook as a place for storing ideas and potential topics for writing; it can also be used to keep notes regarding frequently encountered literary devices that the students, as authors themselves, will find useful(more on writer’s notebooks in Appendix B).

First, ask students to respond emotionally to the play – did it make them feel anything? If so, what? Respond purely as readers. Then, ask them to respond as writers – what features of the one-act play did they notice this time? What was different from the first play that we read? What was the same? Now, in small groups, students can begin to synthesize the unifying characteristics and features of the one-act play – this step is important, as it gives students a chance to bounce ideas off of each otherwithout being “right” or “wrong” in a small scale setting before having to be “right” or “wrong” in front of the entire class (and the teacher!). Bring the class back together as a whole and have the groups share out what they found – add each group’s contributions to the list of one-act play features you began after reading the page from the short story and the page from the play. The class should feel free to discuss and debate with each other what they feel are the true basic elements of the one-act play. The list should be fairly comprehensive after all the groups have contributed to it, but you may need to add to it in case they’ve missed anything. After the list is complete – with your additions as well – you’ll want to give the students a handout of the characteristics of a one-act play. This list is going to be priceless to them as they begin writing their own one-act plays. A sample handout is included in Appendix C and the list should include the following genre features:

One-act plays and full-length plays (like short stories and novels) share many of the same characteristics, including that they:

• Revolve around a focal event, conflict, or incident. Without an authentic and believable central idea, the play won’t go anywhere and the audience won’t sit through it. The focus of the play will involve the main character and will follow the narrative arc in that it will begin with the set up, where the audience will be introduced to the situation leading up to it, the conflict itself, and then the resolution at the end of the play.

• Have a unique and very specific written form. Students must have the opportunity to practice writing in this format, as it will be new to them and will require them to think in unfamiliar ways.

• Involve a limited number of consistent and well-developed characters. Believable, relatable, interesting, and consistent characters are going to be one of the most important elements in a play. Without characters – particularly a main character – that the audience is interested in and sympathetic to, the play will not work, regardless of how riveting the plot. If the audience doesn’t care about the characters, it is likely that the playwright has not put enough time into developing the characters – this is why it is so important to make sure that students actualize their understanding of every character that they bring into their plays and don’t bring in any character without: a) having a deep understanding of that character’s personality, and b) knowing exactly what purpose that character has in the plot (Ayckbourn).

• Have authentic, organic dialogue. Dialogue is possibly the greatest test of how well an author knows his or her characters – without convincing dialogue we do not have convincing characters. Writing dialogue in a distinct dialect is an excellent way of creating a persona – however, some playwrights prefer to leave dialect and accents up to the actor and director. Similarly, some will include very elaborate and specific stage directions and some will leave stage directions sparse. It is important, however, to note that within stage directions, student playwrights will be able to dictate how a character speaks, using directions for tone of voice, breaks in conversation, placement on stage, etc.

• Take place in a defined setting. Students can have fun with the setting, since where the play is set can be anywhere – the asteroid formerly known as Pluto, in the elevator of the Eiffel Tower, the basement of their grandmother’s house, the penthouse suite of the Palms hotel in Las Vegas. One-act and full-length plays differ here in that full-length plays can afford to have multiple settings, whereas one-act plays, for the sake of time, should generally focus on using one defined and clear setting.

• One difference between the one-act play and the full-length play is running time – for the sake of classroom use, the one-act play should run no longer than 20 minutes and should really be about 10 minutes long. Full-length plays are generally over an hour long and have intermissions. Because of this decrease in running time, the one-act playwright must condense their action.

These characteristics are ones that, in fewer words, the students should have been able to synthesize from the texts. These genre features will be incorporated into the one-act play written assignment, the peer review, and the rubric. It is important that students see this same unified list of characteristics repeatedly to reinforce them.

Using the One-Act Play in the Classroom

As teachers striving to provide our students with the most relevant and valuable instruction possible, it seems contradictory that education would be so slow to adapt to new strategies like the genre study. However, most teachers are probably just uncertain about how to use different genres, such as the one-act play, in the classroom in a practical way. We’ve already helped our students to define drama and the one-act play for themselves, while introducing them to the format and a few touchstone texts. They’re now ready to write their own one-act plays, which will more deeply engage them with the genre and with the format of the texts.