Š Huntington Theatre Company Boston, MA 02115 March 2008 No portion of this Teacher Curriculum Guide may be reproduced without written permission from the Huntington Theatre Company’s Department of Education. Inquiries should be directed to: Donna Glick, Director of Education Huntington Theatre Company 264 Huntington Avenue Boston, MA 02115
Limelight
teacher literary & curriculum guide
Shining City CONOR MCPHERSON BY
DIRECTED BY
ROBERT FALLS
March 7 - April 6, 2008 at the Boston University Theatre 264 Huntington Avenue, Boston
HUNTINGTON THEATRE COMPANY IN RESIDENCE AT BOSTON UNIVERSITY
HUNTINGTON THEATRE COMPANY
Nicholas Martin
IN RESIDENCE AT BOSTON UNIVERSITY
Norma Jean Calderwood Artistic Director
Michael Maso Managing Director
Shining City CONOR MCPHERSON DIRECTED BY ROBERT FALLS
BY
Table of Contents STAFF
Table of Contents 3 Synopsis
This Teacher Literary and Curriculum Guide was prepared for the Huntington Theatre Company by
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Back from the Edge: Conor McPherson So Far
Marisa Jones, Education Consultant 6
The Rise of Falls
With contributions by Donna Glick, Director of Education
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Storytelling, Literature, and the Irish Psyche
Ilana Brownstein, Literary Manager
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Kyle W. Brenton, Former Resident Dramaturg of the Pittsburgh Public Theater
A Shining, Complex Inheritance: Understanding Ireland
10 Audience Etiquette
Chris Brindley, Education Department Intern
10 Characters & Objectives
Amanda Rota, Education Department Manager
11 Preparation for Shining City
Alexandra Smith, Education Department Intern
12 Open Response & Writing Assignments
Melissa Wagner-O’Malley, Layout
13 Mastery Assessment 13 For Further Exploration 14 Media Assessment 15 Questions for After the Performance 16 Related Works and Resources 16 Irishisms 17 Lesson Plans 19 Handout 1: Vocabulary 20 Handout 2: Career Advisor Proud Sponsor
Shining City CONOR MCPHERSON BY
DIRECTED BY
ROBERT FALLS
March 7 - April 6, 2008 at the Boston University Theatre 264 Huntington Avenue, Boston
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Huntington Theatre Company
SYNOPSIS
Shining City I
t was supposed to have been a new beginning. A short time ago, Ian made the most difficult decision of his life — he turned his back on the Church and left the priesthood forever. But, determined to move forward, and supported by the woman he loves, he persevered, and is now ready to begin his life anew as a therapist in Dublin. Ian’s first patient is John, a middle-aged man whose own “new beginning” was thrust upon him when his wife died in a terrible car accident. Now, battered and broken, he has been driven out of the home they shared by a haunting apparition: his wife’s ghost staring at him in silent accusation. If John is ever going to be able to return home, he will have to confront the tragic possibility that his marriage had faded long before the crash that finally ended it. As Ian tries to help John put the pieces back together, it becomes increasingly clear that the two men have more in common than they realize. Like John, Ian has been driven out of the only home he has ever known — the Church. He thought he had found a home with his girlfriend and newborn baby, but now sees himself trapped in his office, unable to move forward. What should have been Ian’s new beginning in Dublin starts to feel more and more like a crushing defeat — he has begun to doubt not only his religion, but himself. As his patient opens up and reveals more of his past, Ian may have one last chance to learn from John’s mistakes, as both men try to surmount the past and embrace the future. – KWB
Limelight Literary & Curriculum Guide 2007-2008
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BACK FROM THE EDGE
Conor McPherson, So Far
Conor McPherson
I
n 2001, Conor McPherson was only thirty and at the top of the theatrical world. He had written more than ten plays, had three films to his credit, won numerous awards, and was a burgeoning star on this side of the Atlantic with his play The Weir enjoying a smash eightmonth run on Broadway. But when Port Authority opened at Dublin’s Gate Theatre on a cold February night, he nearly lost it all. He collapsed and had to be raced to the hospital with a life-threatening case of pancreatitis. And after three weeks of unconsciousness and two months in the hospital, he was forced to face the root cause of his illness: alcoholism.
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“Getting sick was a terrible thing,” he told The New York Times in 2006, “but in a funny way it had to happen. It set me free and gave me a second chance.” He did not squander that chance. After his recovery he came out swinging, and he has since become one of the most prolific and most celebrated Irish playwrights of his generation, standing side-by-side with writers like Frank McGuinness and Martin McDonagh, the inheritors of a proud literary tradition stretching back through Brendan Behan, Samuel Beckett, J.M. Synge, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and many other masters of the stage.
McPherson was born in 1971 to a middle-class family in the northern suburbs of Dublin. As a boy he attended a strict Catholic school, where the beatings he received in payment of his sins convinced him, by the age of 15, to abandon the faith. “Even if I was going to die and go to hell, I would prefer to be free in my life,” he told the Guardian. Although his greatest desire at that time was rock-and-roll fame as a guitarist, his parents sent him to University College, Dublin, where he studied English and philosophy. While philosophy gripped him and led to a master’s program and tutoring, it was English that introduced him to his first great theatrical inspiration: David Mamet. “The day I read Glengarry Glen Ross, that was it,” he told the Guardian. “I knew exactly what I was going to do.” The playwright himself admits that his work in school was self-consciously imitative of Mamet, but McPherson has unquestionably outgrown imitation. The two dramatists’ styles are somewhat similar: McPherson’s characters, like Mamet’s, speak in fits and starts, with stumbling fragments unexpectedly giving way to soaring arias. Also like Mamet, language for McPherson is not solely — or even primarily — an instrument for the conveyance of meaning; it is music in its own right. But McPherson’s dialogue is fundamentally lyrical, and unlike Mamet, McPherson is not always brutally direct — his words leave room for shades of meaning that reverberate beyond the realities of the physical world. While McPherson began by emulating a master, he has since created a distinct voice in his own right. At university, McPherson wrote and directed his own work, and after he left school he co-founded Fly By Night Theatre Company, through which he put up his plays in pubs and small theatres around Dublin. In 1995, his play This Lime Tree Bower (a trio of monologues including a portrait of a degenerate,
drunken academic) was seen by a British theatrical agent who quickly signed the young writer. Interest and commissions from London theatres such as the Royal Court and the Bush quickly followed, and Conor McPherson’s career was off and running. Success followed success. In the early part of his career he wrote primarily long monologues, like Rum & Vodka (a father’s confessional soliloquy about abandoning his family for alcohol), St. Nicholas (a one-man-monologue in which a worldweary theatre critic eventually reveals that he has become a procurer of young boys for a coven of vampires), Dublin Carol (an alcoholic undertaker’s assistant confronts two ghosts), and The Good Thief (a petty thief recounts a caper gone
fifth character, a woman named Valerie who has moved out to the country from Dublin, relates her own torment: unending and interminable ghostly telephone calls from her young daughter, who died years before. Upon its American premiere, Ben Brantley of The New York Times noted that the play “makes a vibrant case ... for the great and essential value of telling stories.” The play was a hit in both London and New York, and it won McPherson England’s most coveted theatre honor — a Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play. But amid this success, McPherson’s personal life was quietly falling apart. By his own estimation, his alcoholism began around 1997. “I was tasting independence and freedom, but I was irresponsible, and
After his collapse in Dublin in 2001, McPherson turned his life around: he quit drinking and re-focused on his writing. In 2003 he married the Irish painter Fionnuala Ni Chiosain, who said of her husband since his illness, “He’s a more peaceful person. The chaos is gone.” His sobriety, McPherson contends, “opens up even wider vistas for me.” The playwright’s time spent in the crucible of alcoholism and recovery left its mark. This is clearly on display in Shining City, which headlined the Dublin Theatre Festival in 2004, and quickly moved to the Royal Court Downstairs, then to Broadway, in a production directed by Robert Falls and starring Oliver Platt, Brian F. O’Byrne, and Martha Plimpton, in 2006. In creating the
McPherson’s dialogue is fundamentally lyrical, and unlike Mamet, McPherson is not always brutally direct — his words leave room for shades of meaning that reverberate beyond the realities of the physical world. sour), which established him as one of the up-and-coming voices of the Englishspeaking theatre. What McPherson’s characters share — in both his early work and his mature plays — is the relish of a tale-well-told, and like his countless forbearers in countless pubs across Ireland, McPherson knows how to spin a yarn. As a child, McPherson frequently rode the train alone from Dublin to visit his grandfather in County Leitrim, and in 1999, that remote and haunted destination on the Shannon River became the setting for The Weir, his most successful play to date. In a lonely pub awaiting the onset of the tourist season, four men exchange a series of increasingly gripping ghost stories. At the apex of the play, the
probably the wrong person to have it. I became dependent on drinking: you think it makes you feel better, but all you’re ever doing is keeping withdrawal at bay.” He did not write under the influence, but he did drink every day, and friends reported that he did most of it alone. McPherson faced a powerful inner self-doubt. He told the Guardian that, even after The Weir, he “never felt successful. I felt that that was all very accidental.” Alcoholism, he said, “was in me, and it would have happened to me no matter what I was doing.” Drinking, he argues, is also a deeplyembedded part of the Irish psyche. “The definition of an alcoholic in Ireland is a person who doesn’t drink, because you are the exception,” said McPherson. “It’s quite a difficult culture not to drink in.”
play’s main character, the former priest-turned-therapist Ian, McPherson was inspired by the professionals he encountered while in recovery. “In going to therapists,” he said, “I realized how many crazy people are in that job. To want to do a job like that you have to be very attracted to dysfunction.” Like McPherson, both Ian and his patient John are trying to put their lives back together after seemingly cataclysmic events — Ian’s loss of faith and John’s loss of his wife. The Daily Telegraph called Shining City “palpably a play by a writer in recovery from his own inner demons.” The characters in Shining City are at the beginning of an arduous journey, but to judge by their creator, it is a story that can have a happy ending. – KWB Limelight Literary & Curriculum Guide 2007-2008
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The Rise of Falls C hicago is one of America’s great theatre cities, and if there is one man who deserves a disproportionate share of the credit for that distinction, it is Robert Falls. As artistic director of the Goodman Theatre for more than twenty years, Falls has invigorated Chicago’s theatre scene and brought his company to the nation’s attention. Now, as the director of Shining City, he brings his outstanding work to Boston. Falls was born in 1954 in that part of Illinois affectionately termed as “Downstate” by Chicagoans. As early as age 11, he staged a reproduction of The Day the Earth Stood Still in his a local park, in the style of the avant-garde “happenings” that were popular in the artistic counter-culture of the time. When the time came to go to college, Falls attended the University of Illinois on a playwriting scholarship underwritten by the Shubert Foundation. After college, he moved to Chicago and began directing. In 1977, he became artistic director of the Wisdom Bridge Theatre, where he began staging the large-scale classical productions that would later become his hallmark. At the same time, Chicago was experiencing a theatrical renaissance, heralded in 1975 by the premiere of American Buffalo, the first major work of a then-little-known writer named David Mamet. Across town, the actor Gary Sinise got together with two of his college friends to found the Steppenwolf, a theatre devoted to the craft of acting, fueled by talented company members such as John Malkovich. Through all of this, Chicago’s oldest and largest resident theatre company, while surviving, was struggling. The Goodman Theatre was founded in 1925 by a wealthy couple in honor of their son, an aspiring playwright who had died in the influenza
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Huntington Theatre Company
Robert Falls
epidemic of 1917. While it prospered alongside the rest of Chicago theatre during the 1970s — it was at the Goodman’s Stage 2 that Mamet got his start. In 1985 the unexpected departure of its artistic director left the theatre in a bind: it needed a leader. Unlikely choice though he was, 31-yearold Robert Falls was chosen to head the venerable institution. Falls’ vision for the Goodman was then, and has remained, primarily focused on monumental productions of classical plays and American musicals. In his very first season, he directed Brecht’s Galileo, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and a full-scale revival of Sunday in the Park with George. In his twenty-two years at the Goodman’s helm, Falls has become a leader in the Chicago theatre community. But more than that, he is one of the
community’s greatest ambassadors, taking its work to the national stage. In 1998, Falls created a bold new version of Arthur Miller’s classic American tragedy Death of a Salesman. Eschewing the traditional “small beaten man” interpretation of Willy Loman, Falls and his leading man, Brian Dennehy, found the strength in the character through the actor’s burly physique and physical power, and the director’s almost expressionistic mise-en-scène, which drew the audience deep into Willy’s mind and soul. After a smash run at the Goodman, they took the production to New York, where it opened on Broadway to rave reviews. The production netted four Tony Awards, including Best Revival of a Play and Best Director for Falls. But Falls has not been content merely to bring the Goodman’s work to New York. He has also sought out exciting new work internationally and brought it home to Chicago. Shining City is a perfect example. In 2006, Falls directed the play on Broadway with a stellar cast featuring Oliver Platt as John and Brian F. O’Byrne as Ian. The New York Times hailed Falls’ direction of McPherson’s play, saying that Falls “reaffirms the affinity he demonstrated [in Salesman] for the loneliness of intimate strangers.” In 2000, Falls and the Goodman laid down another milestone. Since Falls’ tenure as artistic director began, the Goodman had been trying to build a new space, and at the turn of the new century, it finally happened. The new $46 million dollar complex opened the Goodman’s 2000-2001 season with a production of August Wilson’s King Hedley II. Once hailed as a theatrical wunderkind, it is fitting that Falls now tackles the work of Conor McPherson, who has himself achieved so much at a young age. This production, an association between the Huntington and the Goodman, will provide audiences in two great theatre cities the rare opportunity to witness the fruit of such a collaboration. – KWB
Storytelling, Literature, and The Irish Psyche F or an island with fewer than five million inhabitants, Ireland has produced far more than its fair share of celebrated storytellers. This heritage of Irish writing looms large, and modern writers like Conor McPherson are both its inheritors and its trailblazers, holding on to the past as they chart a course into the future. The first significant generation of Irish writers — aside from the anonymous composers of the great myth cycles — were members of the Protestant Ascendancy, and most are hardly remembered as Irish at all. William Congreve, Oliver Goldsmith, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan all hailed from Dublin, but are remembered as quintessentially English (Sheridan was even a member of the English Parliament). Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, and George Bernard Shaw were Irish, but each left Dublin and settled in London, where their mature work was created. In 1896, however, that began to change. Lady Augusta Gregory, a dramatist and folklorist, gathered together playwright Edward Martyn (the first president of Sinn Féin) and poet W.B. Yeats, and launched the Irish Literary Revival. These writers advocated a distinctively Irish style, and excavated the island’s mythological and cultural past for the makings of their plays, poems, and novels. They also founded cultural institutions across the country, most notably the Abbey Theatre, Ireland’s largest and most influential theatre company.
The most famous play of this period is without a doubt The Playboy of the Western World by J.M. Synge, in which life in a quiet Irish village is disrupted by the arrival of Christy Mahon, a self-aggrandizing petty criminal. Wildly successful both in Ireland and internationally, Playboy forged the prototypical image of the Irish countryside village, enthralled by the tall tales of a mysterious traveler. Throughout the 20th century, Ireland continued to produce great writers (among them James Joyce and playwright Samuel Beckett), but it was not until the 1960s that a new kind of Irish writer emerged, one who was concerned with the relationship between past and future, countryside and city. Writers like Brian Friel, Thomas Kilroy, and Thomas Murphy wrote in a vividly realistic style about the social problems facing Ireland — poverty and crime, urbanization, and the decline of traditional culture. The current generation of Irish playwrights has been described as a “Third Wave” by Fintan O’Toole, theatre critic for The Irish Times. These writers, like Martin McDonagh and Conor McPherson, are less concerned with the struggle between the past and the present — for them, the victory of modern culture is a fact of life. Their plays explore the consequences of that victory. McPherson’s first great success, The Weir, is set in the kind of countryside pub where Christy Mahon would have been comfortable, but even its perpetual inhabitants know that it couldn’t stay in busi-
Statue of James Joyce, Dublin; photo: Sean Cullen
ness without “the Germans” — tourists who keep the local economy afloat. The stories that flow as freely as the Guinness on that prototypical “dark and stormy night” are vintage Ireland, with ghosts and faeries abounding. The tale, related by newcomer Valerie, however, is a gripping story of the present — the ghost of her dead daughter haunts her in a 20th century fashion: over the telephone. Shining City is through-and-through a product of modernity. Set in a run-down office in today’s Dublin where McPherson grew up, its characters are dyed-in-thewool urbanites. In it McPherson does not romanticize Ireland’s past or its countryside; it is not a play about the struggle against the future, but rather a meditation on grief and loss, and the attempt to move forward in the wake of catastrophic change. But the play’s subtle hints of Ireland’s mythic past, such as John’s wife’s ghost and Ian’s clerical background, demonstrate that heritage and the past will never truly be gone, and the characters’ attempts to integrate what has happened to them replicates Ireland’s constant efforts to reconcile the past with the future. – KWB Limelight Literary & Curriculum Guide 2007-2008
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A church and graveyard in Newcastle, County Wicklow, Ireland; photo: Fritz Dressler
A SHINING, COMPLEX INHERITANCE
Understanding Ireland T o be Irish is a curious thing. A distinct people, a distinct place, and yet a blending of so many cultures that have come before — empires and colonizers, faeries and witches, saints and sinners — Ireland has been so often “remade” that, for many Irish both on the island and around the world, distinguishing between what is original and what is not is barely possible. Through it all, however, something distinctive, something different has survived. Perhaps of necessity — to be Irish, and particularly to be an Irish writer, is to negotiate the need for a distinct identity with the reality of hundreds of years of oppression, repression, and assimilation.
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Huntington Theatre Company
In Irish literature, playwriting in particular, the friction between past and present is constantly being reckoned with. Shining City does not immediately present itself as a cultural artifact of particular “Irishness,” however, Conor McPherson’s play can only be fully and completely understood by looking through the lens of the city and the nation of his birth. Story elements such as Ian’s stint in the priesthood and fall from grace, Neasa’s unplanned pregnancy, and John’s ghostly encounters with his dead wife resonate deeply within the Irish literary psyche, and reveal a level of meaning which may not be immediately apparent to an outsider. The intricate
interrelations between history, religion, and mythology resonate throughout McPherson’s work in general, and Shining City in particular. The history of Ireland is the history of repeated invasion and assimilation. The first inhabitants of the island arrived sometime after 8000 B.C.E. These earliest people left few signs of their existence, but with the dawn of the Iron Age, the first Irish were displaced by waves of invading Celtic tribes. By 400 A.D. that culture was subject to another invading force: Christianity. Tradition maintains that St. Patrick arrived in Ireland to convert its people in 432, and although the absolute historicity of Patrick’s deeds is
Graffiti outside the former St. Mary’s Church, Dublin; photo: Gordon Fortune, stock.xchng
The intricate interrelations between history, religion, and mythology in the Irish past resonate throughout McPherson’s work in general, and Shining City in particular. questioned, this missionary saint had a profound impact on Irish culture, eventually displacing the old pagan religion entirely. The invasion with perhaps the most lasting effects occurred in 1171, when Henry II of England attacked Ireland. By the mid-1500s, the Tudor and Stuart monarchs of England had won complete control, and the island was given to English aristocrats who emigrated there to establish plantations. This ruling class — known as the Protestant Ascendancy — almost completely suppressed native Irish culture, while at the same time stripping civil rights from Catholics, in accordance with England’s strongly Protestant views. This set the stage for the long-standing, violent, and bloody conflicts between Ireland’s Catholics and Protestants in the 20th century — a reality that has clearly influenced modern Irish literature, beginning with J. M. Synge and W. B. Yeats and continuing through to writers like McPherson.
In the second half of the 20th century, Ireland became a place of near-constant change. Botched economic reform in the 1960s led to a massive economic collapse in the 1970s as foreign investment was chilled by the continuing violence in Northern Ireland. But by the 1990s, Ireland was back on track, and its booming economy was nicknamed the “Celtic Tiger.” This boom brought another round of difficulties: massive immigration into Ireland, in particular Dublin, forced it to modernize almost overnight. Laws were liberalized, attendance at mass declined, and Dublin grew from a quaint regional city to one of the fastestgrowing metropolises in Europe. Conor McPherson grew up during this modernization; as a result, what it means to be Irish has changed completely in the course of his lifetime. This unprecedented growth has led to a reiteration of the country’s age-old crisis — Ireland is a key member of the European Union and a member of the
international community, but it still strives to maintain a sense of its individuality, and its rich heritage. One way Ireland has tried to honor its past has been to transform what was once religion into mythology, and allow longdead gods and heroes to continue to influence the present in new forms. Like the country’s history, Irish mythology is filled with tales of foreign invasions. In its earliest book of mythology, the Lebor Gabála Érenn (Book of Invasions), a race of gods colonized Ireland. When these gods were later defeated by the invading Celts, they did not die — myth records that they retreated underground into Ireland’s hills and became the faerie folk celebrated in countless later tales. This pattern repeats again and again in Irish culture; the past survives in a transformed state, and continues to affect the present. When John in Shining City sees the ghost of his wife, it evokes not only a lost loved one, but also the entire lost past of Ireland — gods, demons, and faeries come along for the ride. Once Christianity replaced the old pagan religion of Ireland, the Irish adapted it to their own sense of myth and story. Irish Catholicism is a unique creature — strictly devout and yet distinct from the purely Roman variety in worldview. When Ian, the main character of Shining City, turns his back on the Church and leaves the priesthood, his actions also reflect the ambivalence that modern, cosmopolitan Ireland feels toward its strict religious roots. In a sense, Conor McPherson himself symbolizes Ireland’s complex and compelling relationship with its own past. Thoroughly a child of modernity — not to mention a rising star of the international theatre — his plays celebrate the present and all its complexity, yet nevertheless resonate strongly with echoes of Ireland’s mythical and historical past. It is this quality, more than anything else, which makes him quintessentially Irish. – KWB Limelight Literary & Curriculum Guide 2007-2008
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BU Theatre by T. Charles Erickson
Audience Etiquette Because many students have not had the opportunity to view live theatre, we are including an audience etiquette section with each literary/curriculum guide. Teachers, please spend time on this subject since it will greatly enhance your students’ experience at the theatre. 1. How does one respond to a live performance of a play, as opposed to when seeing a film at a local cinema? What is the best way to approach viewing a live performance of a play? What things should you look and listen for? 2. What is the audience’s role during a live performance? How do you think audience behavior can affect an actor’s performance? 3. What do you know about the theatrical rehearsal process? Have you ever participated in one as an actor, singer, director, or technical person? 4. How do costumes, set, lights, sound and props enhance a theatre production?
Past Lives 2; photo: Steve Ford Elliott, stock.xchng
BACKGROUND
& Objectives Use the following synopsis and objectives to inform your teaching of Shining City curriculum.
I
an wants to help people with their problems but seems unable to fix his own. After leaving the priesthood, he decides to train as a therapist and start his own small practice in Dublin. His first client, John, is coping with the loss of his wife and the deterioration of their relationship during her last days. Ian guides John through the grieving process, which is complicated by John’s paranoia that he is being haunted by his wife’s ghost. But as John makes progress, Ian seems to flounder. Will helping John inspire Ian to confront his own demons?
OBJECTIVES Students will: 1. Identify key issues in Shining City including: • the search for happiness • consequences of adultery • homelessness • emotional and physical solitude 2. Relate themes and issues in the play to their own lives. 3. Analyze the themes and issues within the historical and social context of the play. 4. Participate in hands-on activities that enhance understanding of the production. 5. Evaluate the Huntington Theatre Company’s production of Shining City.
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Huntington Theatre Company
Dubliner; photo: Chris Chidsey, stock.xchng
Preparation for Shining City Note to Teachers: Use the following ideas to engage your class in thinking about Conor McPherson while introducing them to Shining City and its major themes.
CONOR MCPHERSON Shining City was inspired by the struggles that playwright Connor McPherson faced as a young man, including a brutal parochial school education that resulted in his departure from the Catholic Church and a life-threatening bout with alcoholism. During the time he spent recovering, McPherson worked with a number of mental health professionals who surprisingly seemed to lack stability themselves. Continue your research of McPherson by consulting the literary guide (p. 4). List other examples of links between his life and Shining City. Why do you think McPherson drew from his personal experience in writing this play? DUBLIN McPherson grew up in a suburb of Dublin and went to the city for his college studies. During the course of his life, Dublin underwent a major transformation, trading in its small-town feel for the status of a major European city. Why do you think McPherson chose this place as the setting for his play? What does John mean when
he says that Dublin is a “tough town”? Is it important to be familiar with Irish history and culture in order to understand and enjoy this production? Do you see any universal themes that are applicable to your own life? See “A Shining, Complex Inheritance: Understanding Ireland” (p. 8) for more information.
KEY ISSUES The Search for Happiness John says that happiness is “not a fairy tale … it has to be just kind of ordinary … boring, even, otherwise it’s probably not real.” Despite flirting with more adventurous possibilities, the main characters in Shining City ultimately make very conventional choices. John settles on buying a new townhouse. Ian asks for Neasa’s hand in marriage. What does “happiness” mean to each of these characters? Can true happiness be “ordinary” and “boring”? Consequences of Adultery Although John had nothing to do with his wife’s death, he feels like a murderer. His intense attraction to another woman and his equally intense dissatisfaction with their affair became a destructive force in his marriage. Now he believes that his
wife is haunting him from the grave as retribution for his cruel behavior. Similarly, Neasa wonders if her affair is the reason that Ian wants to abandon their family. Do you think that Neasa’s affair gave Ian license to cheat on her or to leave her? Do you think John deserved to be haunted for his infidelity? How does adultery affect one’s relationships with others? How does it affect the adulterer?
Homelessness None of the characters in Shining City live in their proper home. They can be found sleeping in cars, offices, inns, and relatives’ houses. Their homelessness reflects the great instability of their lives and the uncertainty surrounding their future. To acquaintances with more stable lives, it is something that needs to be explained or concealed. At the end of the play, John and Ian both announce that they are finally putting down new roots. How does having a place to call “home” change your life? Is it always better than having a wandering lifestyle? Emotional and Physical Solitude John and Ian both lead lives in which they have difficulty maintaining personal relationships and have little meaningful emotional connection to those around them. They further this phenomenon by physically withdrawing from the world. Why do you think this is? How do John and Ian’s physical states relate to their respective emotional solitude? How are the other characters isolated emotionally and/or physically? In what way has this changed by the end of the play? Limelight Literary & Curriculum Guide 2007-2008
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Country Graveyard, Saggart, County Dublin; photo: James More, stock.xchng
OPEN RESPONSE & WRITING
Assignments OPEN RESPONSE ASSESSMENT Students: Please answer the following as thoroughly as possible. Remember to use topic sentences and examples from the text. 1. Explain the meaning of the play’s title, Shining City. What is McPherson trying to say about the city of Dublin? 2. Do you think Neasa should have realized that relationship problems were inevitable for her and Ian? 3. What do you think Vivien wanted from John? 4. How would John’s life be different if he had children? 5. Why is Laurence a prostitute? Do you think his physical or emotional needs take priority in his life? 6. Based on what happened leading up to Mari’s death, do you think John should feel he played a part in her tragic end? 7. Explain the significance of Mari’s ghost appearing to Ian at the play’s end. 12
Huntington Theatre Company
WRITING ASSIGNMENTS Teachers: The following can be used as possible topics for well-planned and carefully written paragraphs. Encourage students to use topic sentences and examples from the text. 1. Do you think Ian is a good psychologist? Does he help John? How, if at all? 2. Children, or lack of them, play an important role in the lives of the main characters. Discuss why parenting is important to the characters of Shining City and how it shapes their relationships and the course of their lives. 3. Contrast John’s progress at the end of the play with Ian’s decision to marry Neasa. Do you think they have both found happy endings? 4. How are John and Ian alike? Does John help Ian? 5. Select one of the following quotes and discuss it in essay form. “Maybe before we found out that we couldn’t, that Mari couldn’t have
children, I think that maybe even before that … I felt that I had kind of settled for second best.” “I knew then that something bad was going to happen, because I deserved it, because there was like some kind of evil in me, that I did.” “And maybe I can just invite them to consider something that maybe they didn’t think was that important before, but, you know, maybe it was…” “I mean, seeing something is one thing but … it’s how it makes you feel, isn’t it? It’s how that makes you feel. That’s what’s important.” 6. Choose one of the main characters in Shining City and write a journal entry from his or her perspective, expanding on what we already know. Place the character at a key moment in the play, a time critical to propelling the action of the play forward.
MASTERY
13. Why does John think he was attracted to Vivien?
Assessment
14. Why does John feel responsible for Mari’s death?
SCENE 1 1. What does Ian do for a living?
8. How has Neasa sacrificed for her family?
2. What happened to John’s wife?
9. Why can’t Neasa go to her granny’s house?
3. Why does John believe he is in need of professional help?
SCENE 2 4. Why is Neasa angry with Ian? 5. Why does Neasa feel uncomfortable where she is living? 6. Who is Aisling? 7. What was Ian’s previous profession?
10. Who is Mark Whelan? Do you think Aisling is Ian’s child?
SCENE 3 11. Where is John living? Why can’t he live at home? 12. For what reason did John and Mari feel distanced from their friends?
SCENES 4 15. What’s wrong with Laurence’s hand? 16. Why does Laurence need money? What does he do to earn it? 17. Through this encounter between Ian and Laurence, what do we learn about Ian?
SCENES 5 18. Why is Ian leaving Dublin? 19. To where is John moving? 20. What does Ian hear as John leaves his office? Who appears behind the door?
For Further Exploration Note to Teachers: The following ideas and questions can be used to further explore the text. They can be used as prompts for class discussion or additional writing assignments. 1. As a student, Connor McPherson consciously imitated the dialogue style of playwright David Mamet, whose work inspired him to become a playwright. McPherson now has a style distinctly his own, which has received both praise and disapproval from his critics. Among other things, his dialogue is characterized by sentence fragments and unfinished thoughts. Do you find this style to be more realistic than others you have read? What are its advantages and disadvantages? 2. The phrase “city upon a hill,” famously used by Puritan leader John Winthrop in his sermon A Model of Christian Charity (1630), was recycled by Ronald Reagan in 1974, when he described the United States as a “shining city upon a hill.” Research Reagan’s speech and draft a paragraph explaining its political significance. What does it mean to be a “shining city”? Do you think that Reagan’s speech inspired the title of McPherson’s play? 3. According to the Kubler-Ross model, there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining (e.g., please let me live until my daughter
Ghost; photo: Tijmen van Dobbenburgh, stock.xchng
is married), depression, and acceptance. Individuals do not necessarily experience all of these stages in this particular order. Consider John’s character. Do you think he is coping as the model describes? How, if at all, does he deviate from it? 4. One critic from RTE Entertainment (an Irish public-service broadcaster) opined that Shining City is a “ghost story disguised as a play.” Do you agree with this assessment? Why or why not? Do you think the theatre is a good place to share a ghost story? Limelight Literary & Curriculum Guide 2007-2008
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Kilmainham (detail); photo collage: Christopher Potter, stock.xchng
MEDIA
Assessment The following exercises are interactive, hands-on challenges in Drama, Music, and Design. They aim to give students a better understanding of the many kinds of tasks that contribute to a theatrical production.
ACTING Ask students to form pairs in order to act out part of the play. Ask students to choose an important moment from one scene in Shining City. They should use props and elements of costumes, if possible. Have them consider their placement on the stage, blocking (who moves where and when), gestures, vocal tone, music, and the intended emotional impact of the scene. CREATING CHARACTERIZATION Have each student choose a character from Shining City to portray. As if preparing for the role in rehearsal, ask students to answer the following questions about their characters: (a) What is my objective 14
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in the play, and which obstacles stand in my way? (b) How, if at all, does my character transform during the course of the play? (c) Are there any contradictions inherent in my character? (d) What do other characters think of my character, and what does my character think of them?
VISUAL ARTS After the conclusion of his therapy sessions, John gives Ian an antique lamp as a token of his gratitude. Ian is overwhelmed by the gift, but John comments that he didn’t know what to give because he doesn’t really know much about his counselor. Do you think the gift of a lamp has any symbolic value? Using whatever media you feel comfortable with (drawing, painting, collage, etc.), create the lamp as you imagine it. After completing this project, share your work with the class.
THE DESIGN PROCESS Costuming Students should research present-day Irish clothing styles. Is the fashion scene in Dublin different from that of an American city like New York? Design at least one costume for each character. Use pictures from magazines and catalogs as a resource. The costume choices should reflect what we know about the characters’ personality, career, and social class. Sound/Music Before Mari’s ghost appears, the audience hears the jingle of an ice cream truck. This is one of many sensory cues present in Shining City. Because sound plays a key role in the action of the story, ask students to make a list of all the important sound cues (from buzzers to music). What symbolism might the audience attribute to them?
QUESTIONS AFTER
Attending the Performance Note to teachers: After viewing the play, ask the following questions:
1. About the Play and Production a. What was your overall reaction? Were you surprised? Intrigued? Amused? Explain your reactions. How was the play structured? Did it build to a single climax? Was it episodic? Did this structure help or hinder your understanding of the play? Was the dialogue interesting? Appropriate? Poetic? Were you aware of the imagery and symbolism during the course of the play? Would you have been aware of these devices without previous preparation?
production as a whole? Were there any features of the set that distracted from the action of the play? c. Did the design reflect the themes, type and style of the play? d. Were the artistic qualities of unity, balance, line, texture, mass and color used effectively? e. Did the set provide appropriate environment and atmosphere? f. Was the set used to present any symbolic images or did it simply
represent the space in which the action of the play occurred? Did it contain elements of both a “realistic” and a “symbolic approach?
4. About Lighting and Sound a. What mood or atmosphere did the lighting establish? Was the illumination sufficient? Did the lighting harmonize with, and contribute toward, the unity of the production? b. How did the sound used in the play enhance your overall experience?
b. Was the pace and tempo of the Huntington Theatre Company’s production effective and appropriate?
2. About the Characters a. Did any of the characters touch you personally in any way? How? b. Were the characters three-dimensional and believable? c. Were the motivations of the characters clear? d. What qualities were revealed by the action, physicality, and speech of the characters? e. Did the characters develop or undergo a transformation during the course of the play? f. In what ways did the characters reveal the themes of the play?
3. About the Set a. Was the set usable and workable? b. Was the set compatible with the
photo: Laura Borse, stock.xchng
Limelight Literary & Curriculum Guide 2007-2008
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Bridge Over Liffey River; photo: Enzo Cositore, stock.xchng
Related Works and Resources You might explore other books and plays recommended by the Huntington artistic staff: The Weir and Other Plays by Connor McPherson (1999) Connor McPherson: Imagining Mischief by Gerald C. Wood (2003) The Wordsworth Collection of Irish Ghost Stories (2005) Life After Loss: A Personal Guide Dealing with Death, Divorce, Job Change, and Relocation by Bob Deits (1988) Culture and Customs of Ireland by Margaret Scanlan (2006) Dublin: A Cultural History by Siobhan Kifeather (2005)
IRISHISMS D
ifferent regions of the world have slang words that people use to describe or refer to people, places, events, and objects. As the dialogue in Shining City shows, Ireland is no exception. Consult this brief list of “Irishisms” that appear in the play for the definition and usage of these words.
Kerbcrawler: a person who drives around areas known for street prostitution soliciting prostitutes for sex • JOHN: ... the parking around here is horrendous, isn’t it ... I left myself a bit of time but I was almost like a kerbcrawler out there looking for a spot.
Kip: a dump or a dive • NEASA: ... just to keep working in that fucking kip of a pub ...
Slash: to urinate • JOHN: ... I was dying for a slash and Mari doesn’t want to let me go and leave her on her own there ...
Skanger: a derogatory term for a youth sub-culture in Ireland with a reputation for anti-social behavior • JOHN: And then this guy appears, you know? Like a total skanger. Just with these really dead eyes, you know?
Jacks: a toilet • LAURENCE: Is that the jacks?
Banger: an old car
An Irish Literature Reader: Poetry Prose Drama by Maureen O’Rourke (2006)
• LAURENCE: ... I was eh ... I was letting off a banger, with my son, on Hallowe’en ...
Quid: money in pound(s); 50 quid = 50 pounds • LAURENCE: Get a few quid together.
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Darkness by the Door; photo: Matthew Hains, stock.xchng
Lesson Plans Teachers’ note: Choose activities that are appropriate for your classroom period. All assignments are suggestions. Only a teacher knows his or her class well enough to determine the level and depth to which any piece of literature may be examined. ONE-DAY LESSON PLAN introduces students to the context and major themes of the production. DAY ONE - Introducing the Play 1. Distribute Mastery Assessment (P. 13) for Shining City for students to read before, and to review again after attending the performance. Optional: Distribute Handout #1: Vocabulary and ask students to complete. A vocabulary test could be administered after viewing the play. 2. Read the Synopsis (P. 3) of the play. Discuss other works students have studied with similar themes and issues. 3. If time allows, discuss further pages from the literary guide, narrating highlights for students. FOUR-DAY LESSON PLAN introduces students to the production and then, after viewing the performance, asks them to think more critically about what they have seen. Includes time for class discussion and individual assessment. DAY ONE - Introducing the Play Same as Day One above; completed before seeing the production. DAY TWO - The Production Attend the performance at the Huntington Theatre Company. Homework: Students should answer the Mastery Assessment (P. 13) questions. Limelight Literary & Curriculum Guide 2007-2008
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DAY THREE - Follow-up Discussion Discuss Mastery Assessment answers in class. DAY FOUR - Test Individual Assessment: Choose either several questions from the Open Response or one question from Writing Assignments (P. 12) for students to answer in one class period. Optional: Students may choose one of the For Further Exploration (P. 13) or Media Assesment (P. 14) tasks to complete for extra credit. SEVEN-DAY LESSON PLAN completely integrates Shining City into your schedule. Within seven school days, you can introduce the play, assign reading and vocabulary, and assess your students on both a group and individual level. Students will ideally view the play after completing Mastery Assessment questions. DAY ONE - Introducing the play Same as Day One above. Optional: Distribute Handout #1: Vocabulary due on Day Four. Homework: Read Scenes One and Two and answer corresponding Mastery Assessment (P. 13) questions. DAY TWO - Scenes One and Two Discuss Act One and answers to Mastery Assessment questions. Homework: Read Scenes Three, Four and Five and answer corresponding Mastery Assessment questions. DAY THREE - Scenes Three, Four, and Five Discuss the end of the play and answers to Mastery Assessment questions. Optional: Complete Vocabulary Handout for homework. Homework: Ask students to look over Handout 2: Writing a Review. DAY FOUR - Attend Performance Optional: Students may choose one of the For Further Exploration (P. 13) tasks for extra credit. DAY FIVE - Group work/Individual Assignment Optional: Students may choose one of the For Further Exploration (P. 13) or Media Assesment (P. 14) tasks to complete for extra credit. DAY SIX - Review/Preparation Students should answer the Open Response (P. 12) questions as preparation for their test the following day. DAY SEVEN - Test Individual Assessment: Choose two questions from the Writing Assignments (P. 12) for students to answer in one class period.
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Name:_______________________________________________________
Handout 1
VOCABULARY affirmative
ignorance
amenities
jockey
antique
miscarriage
bereaved
physiotherapy
bewilderment
row
caterer
saga
cower
salubrious
cutlery
sinus
dismissive
tedious
envisage
therapist
exasperated
threshold
fugitive
unbidden
guile
wreckage
horrendous
Date:_____________________
Name:_______________________________________________________
Date:_____________________
Handout 2
WRITING A REVIEW Congratulations! You have been hired by a major Boston newspaper to work as a theatre critic. Your first assignment is to write a review of the Huntington Theatre Company’s production of Shining City directed by the Goodman Theatre’s Robert Falls. You must watch this play before completing this assignment. Attend the play as a theatre critic. Reviews often discuss the direction, acting, design (costumes/set/lights/sound), and the text of the play. Of course your reader wants to know whether or not this is a production worth seeing.
GROUP WORK 1. Collect reviews and critiques of this play from other sources (you can find most reviews posted online). In groups of three or four, discuss whether or not you agree with journalists’ opinions about the play. 2. As a group discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the play. Do you think these strengths and weaknesses lie in the Huntington’s production or the script itself? 3. Do you think that this play is appropriate for school groups?
INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT Write a rough draft of your review and share it with a classmate for editing and critique. Consider the following questions before making final revisions: 1. Is it difficult to distinguish between the actor’s performance and the direction the actors may or may not have received from the director? How much credit should be given to the actors and how much to the director for the success of a show? 2. How important is a good script or can incredible acting overcome the deficiencies in a story? 3. Can poor set design or improper lighting doom a play? 4. What is the formula for a successful theatrical production? What key parts must be in place to have a good show? Complete the final draft of your review. Make sure to send the Huntington a copy!