Pangdemonium Education Pack - The Glass Menagerie (2022)

11 – 27 MARCH 2022

VICTORIA THEATRE

EDUCATION PACK

THE GLASS MENAGERIE CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES

1.

Introduction

2.

Understanding Character: ‘I Am’ Exercise

3.

Character History and Memory

4.

Allusion Chart

5.

Costume Change

6.

Set Design

7.

Plastic Theatre

8.

Individual Memory

9.

Time Travelling Characters

PANGDEMONIUM

INTRODUCTION In order to facilitate your students in their journey with The Glass Menagerie, we have put together the following classroom activities.

We hope our production has inspired vigorous, healthy discussion among your students about the text and its contexts. As such, these activities are designed to be wide-ranging and varied: some are focused on script and character, others on interpretation and imagination.

Feel free to adapt these exercises to the needs of your own classroom.

Ultimately, we hope that these activities will enrich their experience with the text, make them curious about the play, and formulate rich, well-constructed responses in their own classroom work.

Thank you to the U.S. Embassy Singapore for making this educational prompt pack possible.

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THE GLASS MENAGERIE

‘I AM’ EXERCISE Objective: This activity will help students better understand the characters, their emotions, objectives, and sense of self.

1. Split the class into 4 groups. Each group will play one character from the play: Tom, Laura, Amanda, and Jim. 2. Each group should write down “I Am [Character Name]” followed by listing things about the character. These should be undisputed facts that can be backed up with evidence from the script.

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For example: “I Am Tom Wingfield,” “I am the son of Amanda and the brother of Laura,” “I am currently working in a shoe factory,” “I live in St. Louis,” etc.

3. Then, each group should write down “I feel” followed by listing descriptors for their character’s emotional state. Each character should have multiple “I feel” statements.

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For example: “I feel hopeful for my daughter’s prospects,” “I feel nostalgic for my high school glory days,” “I feel judged” etc.

4. Then, each group should write down, “I want,” and fill out as many descriptors for what the character wants in this play. There can be many wants based on their feelings described earlier.

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For example, “I want Jim to propose to Laura,” “I want to be loved,” “I want to escape from this life”.

5. Finally, each group should write down, “I need.” They should only have one need. The character’s need, or, their super-objective, is the most important goal for the character. Not everybody will decide on the exact same ‘need’ – and this is okay! So long as students can identify why this is their character’s super-objective and point to evidence from the text, their thoughts should be encouraged.

Bonus: This can be done as an acting exercise. One student gets up and inhabits the character.

As the teacher, you should ask them questions about their life such as ‘Who are you?’ ‘How do you feel?’ ‘What do you want?’ and ‘What do you need?’.

Though the conversation should be structured around these four questions, you should allow space for them to respond to you naturally. The goal is to engage the student in an effective conversation as they play the character.

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PANGDEMONIUM

CHARACTER HISTORY & MEMORY Objective: This activity will help students better conceptualise the backstory of their character. It will help them identify and describe textual nuances.

1. Divide the students into groups. Assign each group one of the four characters in the play: Tom, Laura, Amanda, and Jim. 2. Have each group create a list of the ways that memory has influenced the life of their assigned character. Ask the group to discuss how memory is utilised.

3. Let the groups share their findings with the class. Some examples include: Laura

Jim

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Much has changed for Jim since his days as a high school hero.

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In Scene 6, Tom explains that Jim likes him because Tom was “valuable to him as someone who could remember his former glory, who had seen him win basketball games and the silver cup in debating.”

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Laura is almost an “enabler” for people like Amanda and Jim who yearn to recapture their glory days. She encourages Tom to let Amanda talk about her life as a Southern belle; her rapt attention allows Jim to once again be a “star” as he was in high school.

Her memory of Jim impacts her willingness to speak with him, and her memory of herself is contested by Jim. What does this tell us about the fickleness of memory?

Laura herself spends much of her time listening to the old phonograph records that belonged to her father.

She is excruciatingly shy.

In today’s society, she may be diagnosed with a behavioural disorder.

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Even though Jim, of all the characters, has the biggest hold on the present, he is still haunted by his past, which seems much better than his present.

What are his memories of Laura in high school, and how do they differ from his own?

Tom •

As the narrator, Tom uses his memories to frame the play. He tells us this in the opening monologue.

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Why does Tom feel the urge to tell this story?

Even though he has left home, his memories of abandoning his mother and sister continue to haunt him. He seems to feel especially guilty over his desertion of Laura.

Amanda •

Amanda’s attempts to relive her girlhood in Blue Mountain are her means of escaping into memory.

Recapturing her time as a pampered belle is very different compared to her real life struggling to pay the bills as a single mother with children who have turned out different from she had hoped.

THE GLASS MENAGERIE

ALLUSIONS Objective: Identifying and analysing allusion in the play.

1. Explain to the class what allusions are: Tennessee Williams uses allusions throughout The Glass Menagerie to convey themes and motifs. An allusion is a reference to a person, place, thing, event, or idea drawn from history, mythology, the Bible, literature, or works of art. Allusion can be used to imply a tone or to illustrate a comparison or contrast.

2. Allusion can be a powerful literary device to make a connection between the story and another cultural point of contact. The key to interpreting allusion is identifying the reference and then understanding how the reference supports something in the story.

3. Ask students to take a piece of paper and split the page into three separate columns (This can also be done on an excel sheet).

4. Ask students to identify allusions from the play on the left column; they should include the scene and page number.

5. In the middle column, students should write what or who is being referenced (unfamiliar references can be used as jumping off points for further research).

6. In the right column, students should identify their interpretation of the allusion, such as its significance to the story.

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PANGDEMONIUM

COSTUME CHANGE Objective: Inferring character through costuming, reading and interpreting stage directions, imaginative storytelling.

1. Playwrights reveal their characters’ personalities and convey emotion through stage directions and body language. Similarly, costume designers can convey a lot about characters through clothing.

2. In Scene Two, Tennessee Williams describes the facial expressions of Laura and Amanda, how they are dressed, and how they interact.

Review the stage directions at the start of Scene Two. Examine the clothing Laura and Amanda wear and what Tennessee Williams notes about their actions.

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3. Ask students what they can learn from the stage directions that cannot be gleaned from dialogue.

Make a list of these moments, and ask them to interpret how this might impact their interpretation of the characters or the scene.

4. Rewrite Scene Two’s opening passage for modern day. List what kind of clothes you imagine Laura and Amanda could be wearing and what their non-verbal communication would be like.

Be as descriptive as possible to convey a clear image of the scene.

THE GLASS MENAGERIE

SET DESIGN Objective: Interpretation, creating original arguments and responses based on text.

1. At the opening of the play, Tennessee Williams describes the setting in great detail. Ask students to read over the set description and make a list of what these directions tell us.

2. In Pangdemonium’s staging, our scenic designer Eucien Chia has created a set that largely follows the description, yet has a distinctive, unique flair that mixes naturalistic and interpretive styles.

Ask students to identify where Pangdemonium has followed the script and where the set has diverged from what they imagined on the page.

4. Based on a script, the set designer will create a mood and reference board (a visual PowerPoint on which they collect their references and ideas to share with the director).

5. Ask the students to create their own mood and reference board as though they were the set designer.

They should start their research with the location, the period, the architecture, the furniture.

Ask them to consider specific questions. For example, though the story takes place in 1937, it is unlikely that Amanda purchased her furniture that year, but several years prior. How different were the styles in the early 30s?

3. Ask students to research other productions of the play. Some famous ones include the 2017 and 2013 Broadway productions, the 2017 West End production, and other regional American theatre productions. Pay attention to each set: all are different, no two sets are the same. How have each of their designs diverged from, or followed, the script?

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PANGDEMONIUM

PLASTIC THEATRE Objective: Researching the playwright’s philosophies and approaches.

1. Tennessee Williams introduced the concept of “plastic theatre” and selective realism. He argued that theatre should not be 100% realistic.

2. Ask the students to do research into elements of plastic theatre and its strategies. They should be able to define and describe what plastic theatre is.

3. Then, ask students to pick out examples of plastic theatre in The Glass Menagerie. Lead a discussion about what plastic theatre does to the play and our understanding of it.

4. Finally, ask students to dissect elements of plastic theatre that were used in Pangdemonium’s production, as well as elements identified that were not utilised to the degree it is described in the script.

INDIVIDUAL MEMORY Objective: Understanding the role of remembering for the individual, creative license and storytelling.

1. Split the class into groups and ask the students to write a paragraph describing a moment they shared together (for example, a school ceremony, sports day, class trip).

2. Choose different students to read their paragraph out loud.

3. Get the class to analyse the event described. What actually happened? How was the same event remembered differently?

Where do the discrepancies lie?

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4. Highlight poetic licence, exaggeration, details omitted and details included. The purpose here is to understand the nature of a memory and why, although rooted in truth, it is non-realistic in nature.

5. The second part of this exercise is to turn our renewed understanding of memory and truth telling to the play: which parts of the story seem embellished? Why? Which parts may have been misremembered?

THE GLASS MENAGERIE

TIME TRAVELLING CHARACTERS Objective: Students should be able to compare and contrast the cultural differences between 1930s America and present day. Students should also be able to exercise their imaginative and creative writing faculties.

The Glass Menagerie was written in the 1940s and reflects back to the 1930s. The play presents some ideas and circumstances about women that are considered archiac today. Although there always are exceptions, most American women today lead freer lives that Laura and Amanda Wingfield, and many do not have to pin all their hopes on marrying a good working man.

You may choose one of two different approaches to this activity: 1. Ask students to pretend to be Laura Wingfield who has suddenly been projected into the 2020’s and has spent time understanding how life works today.

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Write a letter to Amanda Wingfield, explaining how society’s views on women has changed in the intervening decades. Be sure to discuss what these changes might mean to you.

2. Ask students to pretend to be Jim O’Connor who has been projected into the 2020s and learnt about life today. Then, you travel back in time to St. Louis in the 1930s. You want to share what you have learned about women’s issues in the 2020s with Laura Wingfield.

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Rewrite Scene 6 from the script (Jim and Laura’s section). Now, Jim must explain to Laura how life will change for women in the future. How might Laura react? What would she say?

How would Jim explain the future to her in a manner that makes sense to someone living in 1937?

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The script rewrite can be as short as 2-3 pages, but should have an effective beginning, middle, and end.

Some changes might be appealing, but some might leave you feeling more wary.

Discuss these views in the letter.

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Pangdemonium Theatre Company Ltd is a registered charity with IPC status.

Registration number: 201229915M Pangdemonium Theatre Company Ltd is a recipient of support from the National Arts Council’s Major Company Scheme for the period 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2023