The assignment will trace your progress through this course , show what you have learned, how you have changed, and your ability to think about literature and theater in new and interesting ways.
Here are the elements:
1. Title and table of contents
2. Introduction essay (600-800 words) -- see description below.
3. Choose 4 short blog posts or excerpts from blog posts (200-400 words) and revise them (add 50-100 words and polish the posts). The posts should be your favorite or ones that represent your most original work or ones that show how you grew or challenged yourself in your thinking.
4. Choose 2 longer blog posts (500-600 words) and revise them (add 100-150 words and polish the post). The posts should be your favorite or ones that represent your most original work or ones that show how you grew or challenged yourself in your thinking.
5. Choose any play or musical that you would love to direct. Describe your vision for the show (300-400 words + 2 drawings, photos, or images) and say who you would cast in all the parts (you can use famous people or your classmates/CA students).
6. Write a haiku poem (5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables) that sums up this course for you.
7. End with 5 short tips for how to succeed in Lit and Performance. Gear it toward future students. For each tip, include an image.
Introduction essay assignment:
Look back on your experience in Literature and Performance, and reflect on what you have learned. You can talk about your own experience as a reader, writer, thinker, and performer: what challenged you, frustrated you, exhilarated you?
But don't stop there -- also think back to the first day when I asked you the following questions: "What is Literature? What is Performance? How are they related and how can we learn differently about literature through the process of performance?" Revisit those questions. How do you read plot, character, dialogue, poetry, etc. differently now that you have studied it through the lens of performance? What connections have you made throughout the year as we have used literature as a basis for performance and used performance as an enhanced way to study literature?
Use specific details and examples from the course to back up your ideas. (**Go back through your blog posts to get some starting points for this and see how our thinking changed over the year.)
This is a personal piece of writing, but that doesn't mean it should be boring. Be creative, use captivating language, tell a story like a vivid scarf... Above all, be honest in assessing your growth and examining where you still need to go as a reader, writer, thinker, performer.
