Unit Overview:
The central focus of this unit is to examine divergent themes and innovative forms of three of America's most celebrated playwrights: Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams. The individual lessons in the Unit explore, through comparative analysis, various ways the changed economic, political, sociological and cultural landscapes of the late 19 century and 20th century helped forge the thematic center of these artists' prize-winning plays. The lessons also examine the impact of the psychological and philosophical theories and new patterns in visual arts that took hold in the twentieth century on the shaping of themes and forms of the plays and how these aspects of the plays align with that of other performing arts genres.
Lesson Overviews:
Students will explore Tennessee Williams' classic,The Glass Menagerie, to study the concept of memory from a personal perspective, and then as an element of modern American drama.
This lesson explores the function of memory as a dramatic and structural device in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, and compares it to Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie.
This lesson is an exploration of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, with emphasis on Williams' use of characteraization and dramatic structure, and his techniques for engaging the audience.
This lesson focuses on various ways the content of selections of William Faulkner’s prose and Tennessee Williams’ one-act plays illuminate aspects of the psychological climate of the South following the Civil War.
