Affirmations:

Once again I’d like to commend you both for facilitating an interesting workshop that required all of the members of our class to invest themselves in the process; I hope that this session was as productive for you as it was for me (in terms of thinking about various dramaturgical exercises).

I enjoyed collaborating on the timeline—an activity the operated both as an act of memory and the construction of memory itself. The questions which emerged when creating the timeline are incredibly telling about possible structures for the play. That is, I was intrigued that there seemed to be so many possibilities for potential chronoloigies. Creating a “simple” linear timeline was incredibly difficult; so many moments appeared to be interchangeable with others (in terms of chronology). Creating the timeline also forced me articulate what I did and did not know about the play, and in this way, proved productive in evoking questions that member s of our classroom had. Some of the questions I have (to be posed below!) surfaced throughout this timeline activity.

The timeline activity was interesting juxtaposed against the “fairy tale” version of the script. Give the very prescriptive formula inherent to fairy tales, the two activities in combination with one another really encouraged me to think about what was inevitable (and what wasn’t) throughout the course of the play.

Question:

1. I think several people voiced this question yesterday, but I’ll do it again! I’m still wondering when Mom met Reverend…did she join his church and then meet him? Vice Versa?
2. How does the reverend feel about being a minister? We get snippets of this during the conversation about his inability to write interesting sermons, but I’m interested in more. Other than our understanding of him as the Reverend who (essentially) is having an affair with one of his parishioners, what does his Reverend-ness look like?
3. Mom has that entire conversation with the Reverend about boys and sleepovers, etc…what is Harriet’s history with boys, pre-Reverend?
4. What is the time gap in between Harriet telling her mother about the molestation and Mom leaving the Reverend?

Opinions:

As I stated in class yesterday—I’m also a huge fan of (as Carrie says), the McDonaldsization of your play, completely saturating the vocabulary, the body, the environment with McDonalds more and more as the play progresses.

In the reading of the new pages yesterday, it became clear that Mom and Harriet have similar fears. Harriet is terrified at the thought of becoming her mother, and Mom doesn’t want Harriet to repeat her mistakes either—there is an overwhelming desire to “improve” upon the mother in Harriet’s maturity. While this was very clear and seemed to crystallize at a particular moment for me, I’m wondering if that’s a thought that might be peppered throughout the play—I’m also now interested in whose histories we are afraid of recycling and repeating, and whose histories we are not.

Great work!