Third Curriculum Guide

Š Huntington Theatre Company Boston, MA 02115 January 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

Wendy Wasserstein

by

directed by

Richard Seer January 4 - February 3, 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

THIRD Wendy Wasserstein Richard Seer

by

directed by

Table of Contents STAFF This Teacher Literary and Curriculum Guide was prepared for the Huntington Theatre Company by Lynne Johnson, Associate Director of Education Becca Solomont, Education Department Intern With contributions by Donna Glick, Director of Education

Table of Contents 3 Synopsis 4 Wendy Wasserstein: A Legacy of Life, Laughter, and Love 6 A Continuum of Uncommon Women 7 Playwrights on Wendy Wasserstein 8 A Timeline of a Life Well-Lived

Ilana Brownstein, Literary Manager

10 Audience Etiquette

Kelly Miller, Freelance Writer and Dramaturg

10 Characters & Objectives

Amanda Rota, Education Department Manager

11 Preparation for Third

Theodore Zayka, Education Department Intern

12 Open Response & Writing Assignments

Melissa Wagner-O’Malley, Layout

13 For Further Exploration 14 Mastery Assessment 15 Media Assessment 16 Questions for After the Performance 17 Lesson Plans 19 Handout 1: Vocabulary 20 Handout 2: Career Advisor

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Wendy Wasserstein

by

directed by

Richard Seer January 4 - February 3, 2008 at the Boston University Theatre 264 Huntington Avenue, Boston

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SYNOPSIS

Third R

enowned feminist English professor Laurie Jameson has spent the last 30 years challenging the patriarchal status quo at her elite New England college. She expects the same intellectual dissension from the freshman students in her class, Uncorseting Elizabethan Drama. “I want you to speak up,” she says to them, “don’t be afraid to contradict me or challenge the norms of dominant culture.” But when she clashes with a conservative student-athlete named Woodson Bull III (nicknamed “Third”) over his Freudian views on King Lear, she quickly dismisses him as an overly entitled, rightwing jock who epitomizes everything she despises about the white male establishment.

Jameson’s confrontations with Third — over what she perceives to be his politics, social status, and Shakespearean scholarship — escalate when she accuses him of plagiarizing his final term paper on Lear, claiming that he could not have written such an intellectually insightful piece, and brings him before the school’s Committee of Academic Standards.

Their conflict is fueled further by Jameson’s own personal mid-life crisis of identity and family. The 54-year-old mother, wife, and daughter is struggling to maintain relationships with her rebellious, college-freshman daughter Emily, her distant husband, and Nancy, her cancer-stricken colleague and longtime friend. Meanwhile, she finds herself playing Cordelia to her aging father’s Lear, as his health and mind rapidly decline from dementia.

Wendy Wasserstein’s final play, Third (directed for the Huntington by Richard Seer) is an eloquent and thoughtprovoking exploration of ethics and hypocrisy, academic discrimination, and personal crisis. In it, she questions the very nature of liberalism and tolerance. Wasserstein asks her characters, and her audience, to re-examine politics and ethics, and to contemplate whether it’s really possible — in the third and final part of one’s life — to change beliefs held for a lifetime.

– KM

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WENDY WASSERSTEIN

A Legacy of Life, Laughter, and Love W

hen Wendy Wasserstein died from complications of lymphoma on January 30, 2006, the American theatre mourned one of its most talented dramatists and fiercest advocates. Her long-time artistic home, Playwrights Horizons, paid tribute to her thus: “As an artist, Wendy’s trailblazing candor, her compassionate intelligence, and her indefatigable wit inspired and stimulated our entire community. As a citizen, Wendy epitomized an ideal of liberal values: generous, open-minded, caring, loyal, she proved a tireless, articulate charismatic champion for artists, women, educators, children, and many, many others. But it was as a friend, daughter, sister, and mother that the gift of Wendy’s warmth and light burned brightest.”

As a Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Awardwinning dramatist, Wasserstein was one of the best-known playwrights of her generation. She was also one of the first playwrights to render the women of that generation on stage as fully realized characters with a unique brand of wry humor, compassion, and seriousness. In her most popular and groundbreaking plays, including The Heidi Chronicles and The Sisters Rosensweig, she wrote about a generation of women in transition — women who discovered their political voices in the feminist movement of the late 1960s and struggled to reconcile those voices with their lives, careers, and families in the decades since. Pervasive themes in her writing include female friendship, identity, independence, loneliness, and a search for balance.

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Wendy Wasserstein

Her longtime friend and collaborator André Bishop (artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater and former artistic director of Playwrights Horizons) contextualized her contribution to the American theatre in The New York Times, saying: “She was known for being a popular, funny playwright, but she was also a woman and a writer of deep conviction and political activism. In Wendy’s plays women saw themselves portrayed in a way they hadn’t been onstage before — wittily, intelligently, and seriously at the same time. We take that for granted now, but it was not the case 25 years ago. She was a real pioneer.”

Wasserstein broke new dramatic ground in 1989 when she won the Tony Award for Best Play for The Heidi Chronicles

— she was the first woman to win the award as the sole author of a play. Her critically-acclaimed serio-comic drama told the story of an art historian’s journey to reconcile her career, identity, and social convictions with a desire for a family. First produced Off Broadway at Playwrights Horizons, the play ran for 622 performances garnering the Outer Critics Circle and Drama Desk Awards, and ultimately the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Born in Brooklyn, New York on October 18, 1950, Wendy was the youngest of five siblings. Her father, Morris, was a successful textile businessman (whom the family often joked was the inventor of velveteen) and her mother, Lola, was a dancer. Her ambitious, close-knit family

was the genesis for many of her semiautobiographical characters, including her sisters: Sandra Wasserstein Meyer, a former executive at Citigroup, who died of cancer at age 60; and Georgette Levis, who runs a Vermont inn. Her brothers include Abner Wasserstein, and Bruce Wasserstein, a Wall Street magnate and owner of New York magazine.

After her family moved to Manhattan’s Upper East side in 1962, Wendy attended the all-girl Calhoun School. She received a degree in history from Mount Holyoke College in central Massachusetts in 1971, and returned to Manhattan to study creative writing at City College with Israel Horowitz and Joseph Heller.

Shortly after Wasserstein’s first play Any Woman Can’t was produced by Playwrights Horizons in 1973, she enrolled in Yale University’s M.F.A. playwriting program, where her classmates included Christopher Durang, Meryl Streep, and Sigourney Weaver.

Wasserstein’s Yale thesis play, Uncommon Women and Others — a comic drama about the aspirations and fears of eight Mount Holyoke students entering adulthood at the height of the women’s movement — was her breakthrough hit in New York. The Phoenix Theatre’s 1977 production was also a breakthrough for its young cast, which included Glenn Close, Swoosie Kurtz, and Jill Eikenberry.

PBS filmed and televised the play on its “Great Performances” in 1979, featuring the young Meryl Streep.

Wasserstein’s next plays included the comedy Isn’t It Romantic (1979; revised in 1983), The Heidi Chronicles (1989), and the The Sisters Roseinsweig (1993), which starred Madeline Kahn, Jane Alexander, and Frances McDormand on Broadway.

The Chekhov-inspired story of three sisters taking stock of their lives ran for 556 performances and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play.

Wasserstein’s other plays include An American Daughter (1997) about a female politician; a time-traveling comedy of

“In Wendy’s plays women saw themselves portrayed in a way they hadn’t been onstage before — wittily and seriously at the same time.” – André Bishop manners, Old Money (2000); and finally, Third (2005), about academic politics, ethics, and power.

Not confined to works for the stage, Wasserstein was also a screenwriter in television and film, an essayist, librettist, and fiction writer. In addition to several television scripts, she wrote the screenplay for the 1998 film The Object of My Affection (starring Jennifer Aniston); published two collections of essays, Bachelor Girl (1990), and Shiksa Goddess (or How I Spent My Forties) (2001); the children’s book Pamela’s First Musical; and Sloth, a satire of self-help literature (2005). She also wrote a libretto for The Festival of Regrets, as part of a set of one-act operas collectively titled Central Park for the New York City Opera. Her first fiction novel, Elements of Style, was published posthumously in 2006.

Wasserstein’s incredible dramatic legacy is rivaled only by her legacy as a friend and collaborator. She was renowned for her infectious laugh and smile, huge heart, and infinite generosity of spirit. A consummate arts advocate and teacher, Wendy taught playwriting at numerous schools including Columbia, NYU, and Princeton, and served on the board of many organizations including PBS, the Writers Guild, and the Guggenheim Foundation. She was an advocate and committee member for the National Endowment of the Arts during Jane Alexander’s tenure in the 1990s. In 1998, she established the Theatre Development Fund’s Open Doors program to share New York theatre with gifted but underprivileged high school seniors. She initiated

the program by taking eight students from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx to see and discuss On the Town and several other shows. Today, the program she founded includes 17 groups and more than 100 students.

In 1999, Wasserstein assumed her most cherished role — that of mother — when she gave birth to daughter Lucy Jane at age 48 after a difficult pregnancy.

Wasserstein wrote about the process, as well as the arduous experience of her daughter’s premature birth, in the essay “Days of Awe: The Birth of Lucy Jane” for The New Yorker. “Although I remain a religious skeptic,” she wrote, “I had a kind of blind faith. I believed in the collaboration between the firm will of my one-pound-twelve-ounce daughter and the expertise of modern medicine.

Of course, there was more than a bit of random luck involved, too.”

Wendy Wasserstein died on January 30, 2006, after being hospitalized for complications from lymphoma. Her friends, family, and the entire theatre community mourned this uncommon woman, who used her laughter, wit, talent, and humanity to champion theatre and stage the everyday drama of life. At the Lincoln Center Theater tribute to Wasserstein in March 2006, André Bishop voiced the shock everyone felt at losing her: “I find myself at this moment a little lost,” he said. “I feel my heart and mind stopped on January 30.

“She’d seen the world and made friends with everyone in it,” Bishop said. “Lucky me, lucky us, to have known and loved Wendy Wasserstein.” – KM Limelight Literary & Curriculum Guide 2007-2008

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A Continuum of Uncommon Women W endy Wasserstein distinguished her plays by populating them with smart, articulate women.

Feminist literary professor Laurie Jameson — the liberal protagonist of Third — is another one of those quintessential characters. The accomplished professors in Wasserstein’s Third are indelibly linked to the idealistic Mount Holyoke women she dramatized in her first major play, 1977’s Uncommon Women and Others. The women of both plays represent a continuum from the past to the present — the feminist students of the late 1960s, who were taught to question the cultural norms of motherhood, family, and career-choice and have grown into their lives as independent, accomplished women in the new millennium.

In Uncommon Women, friends Kate, Samantha, Holly, Muffet, Rita, and Leilah are about to graduate from the all-female Mount Holyoke college, where they’re struggling to figure out how they fit into the world as intellectuals, wives, and mothers. The exploding feminist movement has affected each woman’s plan for her life after graduation. Will they get married, potentially defining themselves by men? Will they choose careers? Or find a balance between work and marriage?

Kate, a driven student and future lawyer, describes her fear of success after getting into law school: “I’m afraid that I’m so directed that I’ll grow up to be a cold efficient lady in a gray business suit.

Suddenly, there I’ll be, an Uncommon Woman ready to meet the future with steadiness, gaiety, and a profession, and what’s more, I’ll organize it all with time to blow-dry my hair every morning.” On

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On the campus of one of the Five Colleges; photo: James Marshall

the verge of impending success in the late 1960s, Kate is still concerned with reconciling her identity, both intellectual and feminine.

Discussing her options of marriage versus career, extreme feminist and writer Rita says: “Well, God knows there is no security in marriage. You can give up your anatomy, economic self-support, spontaneous creativity, and a helluva lot of energy trying to convert a male halfperson into a whole person who will eventually stop draining you, so you can do your own work. And the alternative — hopping onto the corporate or professional ladder — is just as self-destructive. If

you spend your life proving yourself, then you just become a man, which is where the whole problem began, and continues.

All I want is a room of my own so I can get into my writing.”

Third’s protagonist Laurie Jameson could have easily been friends with Rita, Kate, or Holly — the more outspoken feminists of the Mount Holyoke group.

Laurie also attended elite schools, completing her thesis at Harvard, where she met her future husband. She married, but never let her relationship interfere with success as a groundbreakingscholar.

Laurie describes her early work to her friend and colleague, Nancy Gordon:

“When I first came here, […] I decided I would give everything I’ve got to change this place and open the door for women like you.” Her friend Nancy is also a hallmark Wasserstein character — a fiercely private and intelligent woman who’s battling a relapse of cancer, while still hoping to find meaning and love in her life.

As Laurie Jameson enters her 50s, she is affected by the realities of mid-life — caring for her aging father, menopause, and her daughter’s departure for college — and starts to re-examine her long-held political idealism. Wasserstein described Laurie’s transition in a Time interview: “She’s looking at the political beliefs she framed 30 years ago that she thought would be the dominant beliefs in her life and in the country — and which no longer are. She is looking at the third part of her life.”

Contending with her own cancer while she wrote Third, Wasserstein’s life definitively informed the evolution of her female characters. André Bishop described her feminism and the balance Wasserstein worked to represent in her plays, characters, and life: “Wendy was a feminist, but she had a clear-eyed view of feminism and of men. She was also at ease in the world of men. She wasn’t scared.

She was shy and nervous as a younger woman, but she wanted a balanced life, I think, and she felt her plays should reflect that balance.”

Laurie Jameson, then, represents a balanced evolution of the “uncommon women” Wendy Wasserstein first dramatized in 1977, and addressed again and again in plays like The Heidi Chronicles and The Sisters Rosensweig. Laurie has reached a point in the third part of her life where she’s working to find the balance between her long-held liberal beliefs and her desire to remain optimistic and hopeful. At the height of her academic crisis, Nancy tells her to stop obsessing about her conflict with a student and to “just embrace her goddamn life.” – KM

Playwrights on Wendy Wasserstein Marsha Norman and Christopher Durang — co-directors of Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Wallace Playwrights’ Program — were longtime colleagues and friends of Wendy Wasserstein.

After her sudden death, both Norman and Durang spoke out about this accomplished, approachable artist.

Norman’s works include Getting Out, ‘Night Mother, The Secret Garden, The Color Purple; Durang’s include Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All for You, Laughing Wild, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, Betty’s Summer Vacation, and Beyond Therapy.

Marsha Norman “She was an uncommon writer and an extraordinary human being. She had a sense of belonging that writers almost never have — she was comfortable with the rich and the famous and the known and the unknown and the broken-hearted and the just plain broke. She could find a way to laugh regardless of what was on the table. She’s laughing in every picture I have of her. It’s as if she knew with absolute certainty who she was and what she was supposed to do. And that wasn’t just to write plays and give speeches and be interviewed — it was to embrace whatever life brought her, to engage the person standing in front of her, to take whatever happened in her personal life and make something out of it.”

– American Theatre, April 2006 Christopher Durang “Wendy had this extraordinary ability to connect with people emotionally — with friends, colleagues and with fans of her plays and books. She had more friends than anyone I know of, but those friendships came from that genuine warmth of hers; and I think it gave her sustenance that people responded back to her, too.”

– Newsday, January 31, 2006

Top, Marsha Norman; photo: Susan Johann Left, Christopher Durang

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A Timeline of a Life Well-Lived 1950 Wendy Wasserstein is born October 18, in Brooklyn, NY. She attends Yeshiva in Flatbush.

1962 Her family moves to Manhattan’s Upper East side, where she attends the all-female Calhoun school.

Her mother, Lola, enrolls Wendy in ballet lessons at June Taylor and charm lessons at Helena Rubinstein.

1970 She takes her first playwriting class at Smith College.

1971 She graduates from Mount Holyoke College with a degree in history.

1973 Wendy receives an M.A. in creative writing from City University. Playwrights Horizons produces her first play, Any Woman Can’t, in New York.

She enrolls in the M.F.A. playwriting program at the Yale School of Drama.

1974 Her musical, Happy Birthday, Montpelier Pizz-Zazz, is produced at Yale.

1975 Her master’s thesis, Uncommon Women and Others, inspired by her years at Mount Holyoke College, is produced at Yale. The Yale Cabaret produces When Dinah Shore Ruled the Earth, co-written with Christopher Durang.

1976 Wasserstein receives an M.F.A. in playwriting from Yale.

1977 New York’s Phoenix Theatre produces Uncommon Women and Others, featuring Glenn Close, Swoosie Kurtz, and Jill Eikenberry.

1978 Uncommon Women and Others is broadcast on PBS as part of their 8

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From left, Madeline Kahn, Jane Alexander, and Francis McDormand in the original Broadway production of The Sisters Rosensweig; photo: Martha Swope, 1992

“Great Expectations” series; Meryl Streep joins the cast.

1979 PBS broadcasts her adaptation of John Cheever’s short story, “The Sorrows of Gin.”

1988 The Heidi Chronicles is produced

by Seattle Repertory Theatre; it subsequently moves to Playwrights Horizons.

1989

After to moving to Broadway, The Heidi Chronicles receives the Pulitzer Prize, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, a Tony Award, and Drama Desk, New York Drama Critics Circle, and Outer Circle Awards.

1990

Her first book of essays, Bachelor Girls, is published.

1981 Isn’t It Romantic? is produced by New York’s Phoenix Theatre.

1983 Her play Tender Offer is produced as part of the Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Marathon of One Act Plays.

Playwrights Horizons mounts a revised version of Isn’t It Romantic?

1986 Her adaptation of Chekhov’s short story, “The Man in a Case,” is produced in New York as part of Orchards, a series of Chekhov inspired one-act plays.

Playwrights Horizons produces her musical Miami.

1992 Lincoln Center Theater premieres The Sisters Rosensweig, featuring Jane Alexander, Madeline Kahn, and Frances McDormand.

1993 The Sisters Rosensweig moves to Broadway and receives a Tony nomination and an Outer Critic’s Circle Award; she receives the William Inge Award for

Distinguished Achievement in the American Theatre. The American Ballet Theater performs her adaptation of The Nutcracker in Los Angeles.

1994 A revival of Uncommon Women and Others, with a revised ending, runs at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York.

1995 The Heidi Chronicles is televised

by TNT, starring Jamie Lee Curtis.

Wasserstein lobbies on Capitol Hill to save the National Endowment for the Arts.

1996 Her children’s book, Pamela’s First Musical, is published.

1997 An American Daughter is developed at Seattle Repertory Theatre and premieres on Broadway under the auspices of Lincoln Center Theater.

Wasserstein joins the Artists Committee of the Americans for the Arts Action Fund, established to offset the decline in arts funding, and to ensure that all Americans have the opportunity to participate in the arts. Her essay collection Sloth: And How to Get It is published.

2005 Her last play, Third, premieres at the Lincoln Center Theater, starring Dianne Wiest, Jason

Ritter, and Charles Durning. The Huntington Theatre Company produces The Sisters Rosensweig to audience and critical acclaim.

2006 At age 55, Wasserstein dies from lymphoma on January 30.

She is posthumously awarded the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award and is inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. Her first novel, Elements of Style, is published posthumously.

2007 The Huntington produces Third.

Other regional theatres, including the Guthrie Theater, Denver Theatre Center, and the Geffen Playhouse, pay tribute to Wendy Wasserstein by programming Third in their 2007-2008 seasons.

- KM

1998 She founds the Open Doors mentoring program with Theatre Development Fund to take Bronx high school seniors to the theatre; Wasserstein adapts Stephen McCauley’s novel The Object of My Affection for film 1999

Wasserstein writes The Festival of Regrets, a libretto for New York City Opera’s Central Park trilogy. Her daughter Lucy Jane is born.

2000

Lincoln Center Theater premieres her play Old Money.

2001 Her collection of essays, Shiksa Goddess (Or, How I Spent My Forties), is published.

2002 She writes the libretto for Franz Lehar’s The Merry Widow at the San Francisco Opera.

2004 An early one-act version of Third premieres at Theatre J in Washington, D.C.; New York’s Tribeca Theater Festival presents her short play Psyche in Love.

Left to right: Maureen Anderman, Mimi Lieber, and Deborah Offner in the Huntington Theatre Company’s 2005 production of The Sisters Rosensweig; photo: T. Charles Erickson. Inset, Mount Holyoke College campus

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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.

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CHARACTERS &

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?

Objectives

2. What is the audience’s role during a live performance? How do you think audience behavior can affect an actor’s performance?

Emily Imbrie, Laurie’s daughter

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?

CHARACTER BREAKDOWN Laurie Jameson, a college professor Woodson Bull III (THIRD), a college student Jack Jameson, Laurie’s Father Nancy Gordon, a college professor and one of Laurie’s best friends.

OBJECTIVES Students will: 1. Identify key issues in Third including: • Stereotyping • Coping with major life changes 2. Relate the themes and issues of Third to their own lives.

3. Examine the generational values expressed in Third.

4. Analyze the themes and issues within the political and social context of the play.

5. Participate in hands-on activities including acting and visual arts.

6. Evaluate the Huntington Theatre Company’s production of Third.

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Preparation for Third Note to Teachers: Use the following ideas to engage your class in thinking about Wendy Wasserstein while introducing them to Third and its major themes.

WENDY WASSERSTEIN’S LEGACY Wendy Wasserstein is praised for her ability to capture the lives of a generation of women struggling to balance the pressures and possibilities of family, career, life and art while maintaining some sense of personal identity. As a class, research the life, work and legacy of Wendy Wasserstein.

Have students choose one aspect of Wasserstein’s life they find particularly relevant or inspiring and write an essay describing why or how this is so for them.

Topics to consider might include: • Feminism • Her journey and development as a playwright • The influence of motherhood on her writing • Awards and honors • Attitudes and reflections towards her work following her death

KEY ISSUES Stereotyping During her first encounter with her student, Third, Laurie Jameson immediately stereotypes him as a wealthy, over entitled, Republican jock, who epitomizes everything she despises about the white male establishment from her feminist perspective.

For Discussion: Have students look at what it means to stereotype, and what it means to classify. How are the two different? Often when Laurie is trying to justify her actions, she says she is “classifying,” something, but ultimately isn’t this the same as stereotyping? Ask students to define the two words to find the similari-

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ties. Is stereotyping an inevitable part of life? Can we exist without it? Have the students discuss ways that they stereotype people in their own class, school and/or community.

Below are possible activities to help students discuss the issue of stereotyping in Third, and find the comparisons in their own lives: 1. Divide students into two groups. Hand out copies of Act One, Scene 1 of Third.

Choose one volunteer from each group to read the roles of Laurie and Third aloud in front of the class. Ask one group to identify all of the ways Laurie displays she is stereotyping Third. Ask the second group to examine all the ways Third defends himself to Laurie. Have each group report their findings.

2. Have students relate to this relationship, by recounting a time when they or someone they know were stereotyped, how it made them feel, and what the repercussions were.

3. Have students improvise a scene where someone in authority is abusing their power over the individual and attempting to block them from achieving an important opportunity. Discuss. Have

the students do the same scenario with a more positive outcome. Have them discuss the difference. Optional step: Have them improvise the scene between Laurie and Third and develop a positive outcome.

Coping with Major Life Changes Wendy Wasserstein is prolific for her ability to illustrate generations within a single play. Take the characters of Emily and Jack, each is experiencing his or her own personal crisis — Emily is dealing with the clash of her home life with collegiate life, while Jack must deal with his slowly dying memory. For Laurie, representing the play’s middle generation, she must deal with “empty nest” syndrome, her aging parent’s rapid dementia, and the end of a familiar phase of life. How does each character deal with their personal crises? What is the outcome for each?

How does each person’s background and current state affect their method of coping with crisis?

Some of the more comic scenes throughout Third deal with Laurie’s reactions to menopause and its unyielding hot flashes. Both literally and metaphorically this signifies the end of an era. Discuss either as a class or in small groups the different phases of life. What phase of life is Laurie about to enter? Use family, friends, and public figures as examples of the various phases of life and how people navigate change.

Have students divide into small groups.

Ask each student to pick an age bracket: young adult, middle age, or senior citizens.

Ask students to each create and perform a scene for each age group dealing with the following situations. How does each person’s age effect what he or she does?

• Packing for a trip • Losing electrical power • Shopping at a mall • Going to a movie • Purchasing something on the computer Limelight Literary & Curriculum Guide 2007-2008

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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. Most plays have a protagonistic and antagonistic force. Define these two terms. Who or what is the protagonist in this play? Who or what is the antagonist? Justify your choices.

2. In Laurie’s first monologue, she outlines the course for her students. What kind of tone does she set for the class and her students? During her first direct encounter with Third, how does she contradict herself?

3. Why do you think Wendy Wasserstein chose to make Laurie’s husband an “off-stage” character?

4. List the different relationships Laurie has in the play. Include characters that are mentioned but not seen as well. Use one adjective to describe each of these relationships. Discuss what these relationships say about Laurie’s character.

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5. How do Laurie’s relationships change over time? Choose a relationship between Laurie and one other character and describe it from the beginning to the end of the play.

6. Describe what you think happens to Laurie or Third after the play. Choosing one of those characters, write a paragraph describing where they are one, five or ten years later.

7. What do you think is really behind Laurie’s discrimination against Third?

8. How do Laurie and Third differ in their definitions of education?

9. Why do you think the playwright chose the title Third for the play? Come up with another title, and explain why it either works or doesn’t work as an alternative for the play.

10. What do you believe is the message Wendy Wasserstein is trying to convey through her play Third? Is the message relevant to young people today?

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. Write a critical review of the Huntington Theatre Company’s production of Third and submit it for publication in your school newspaper. Be sure to send the Huntington a copy!

2. Choose one of the main characters in the play and write a journal entry from his or her point of view, expanding on what we already know. Place the character at a key moment in the play, a time critical to propelling the action forward.

3. Many of the characters in this play are at moments of life defining crises. Write a short essay about a similar time in your own life. How did the crisis affect you? How did you deal with it? Do you believe you would have done anything differently now to solve the problem?

4. Use one of the following lines from Third as a topic for a short essay: THIRD: I’m straight. I’m white. I’m male. And I happen to like America.

NANCY: If you use what you’ve been taught here about literature and

science by people like me and Laurie Jameson solely for your personal gain and social status, then you’re guilty as hell and so is every other student here.

THIRD: In conclusion, to quote King Lear, “Nothing can come of Nothing.”

THIRD: I was Pinky, the aborigine lesbian. And I hated you for it, Professor Jameson, but on the other hand, I knew that for once in my life I was actually interesting. I will never be that intellectually mesmerizing to anyone ever again.

5. Consider one of the supporting characters in Third. All characters in this play are affected by each other’s decisions.

Write a journal entry from the point of view of one of these characters, expanding on what we already know.

6. How does the playwright Wendy Wasserstein’s death affect how we view the play?

7. How do you think the play might have changed if a man had written it?

Choose one scene, and rewrite it, bringing your own personal priorities or emphasis to it.

8. What effect does the present have on Third? What would Third be like if it took place in 1960? 1840?

9. The Boston Globe published an article on December 6, 2007, stating that “Just one out of twenty-five faculty members

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. The play opens with Laurie teaching a class on William Shakespeare’s King Lear. Lear is the story of the aging King of Britain, who decides to step down from his throne and divide the kingdom evenly amongst his three daughters. Research the play, and briefly describe its plot. Why would Wendy Wasserstein choose this play to be the source of “drama” for the characters?

What parallels can you draw between King Lear and Third?

2. Sociology is defined as the study of human social behavior, especially the study of the origins, organizations, institutions and development of human society. Perform your own sociological study. Pick out a time in your life where you’ve been placed in an unfamiliar setting, and think about the people that were there. What was it about the circumstances that made people act a certain way?

3. A Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright, Wendy Wasserstein has been praised for her ability to capture the lives of a generation of women struggling to balance the pressures and possibilities of family, career, life and art while maintaining some sense of personal identity. In her play, The Heidi Chronicles,

granted tenure this year at MIT is female, a gender imbalance that appears to contrast with the university’s decadeold effort to boost the status of women.”

Research this article, entitled “Tenure at MIT Still Largely a Male Domain.” How does this article change the way you view the character of Laurie? Write an article for The Boston Globe dated December 6, 1978, announcing Laurie’s success at being the first women to receive tenure at the small New England college where she teaches.

10. Wasserstein parallels the individual usage of power with news clips of the Bush Administration and the Iraq war, to further the theme of power abuse in the play. How do you feel about this ?

Wasserstein follows Heidi Holland throughout a 20-year journey, from childhood to motherhood, struggling to find her place in a world where women’s rights are constantly changing. The Sisters Rosensweig takes a different approach as it tells the story of the Rosensweig sisters, a generation of women, who all reunite one weekend for one of the sisters’ birthday. Third strays the most from this thematic path as it tells one woman’s story over a year’s time. Using what you know about Wendy Wasserstein’s other works, compare and contrast how Third follows the pattern of representing a generational story?

4. Nancy remarks, “If you’re taking art history so you can buy the best Degas after your first IPO then you’re guilty. If you use what you’ve been taught here about literature and science by people like me and Laurie Jameson solely for your personal gain and social status, then you’re guilty as hell and so is every other student here.” Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not?

5. Listen to James Taylor’s “Country Road” (the song that Laurie references during her session with her analyst). Choose your favorite verse, and write down the lyrics. Why did you choose that verse? What parallels do you draw between that verse and your own life? The play? Why can Laurie not get the lyric “Guess my feet know where they want me to go, walking down a country road”, out of her head?

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MASTERY

Assessment ACT ONE SCENE 1 1. What is Third’s major?

2. Describe how Laurie feels about Third’s collegiate, extra-curricular activity.

SCENE 2 1. From where is Emily coming when she arrives home?

2. How does Laurie view her older daughter Zooey’s sexuality?

3. How is Jack/Grandpa doing, according to Laurie?

4. How does Laurie react to Emily’s new boyfriend?

SCENE 3 1. How would you describe Nancy and Laurie’s friendship?

2. Why does Nancy have to leave?

3. Is Laurie being strict with Third?

What is she making him do?

SCENE 4 1. How does Laurie categorize Third?

2. How many topics does Laurie cover in this one session with her analyst?

3. How does she end the session?

SCENE 5 1. Does Laurie think that Third’s King Lear paper is well written? What about his Social Relations paper?

2. How is Laurie punishing Third?

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SCENES 6 1. Why does Third go to see Nancy?

4. How does Emily view her mother’s relationship with her dad?

2. Does Nancy think that Third is guilty?

5. What change does Emily decide to make in her life? Why?

SCENES 7 1. What does Third believe to be the point of education?

2. Why does the playwright, Wendy Wasserstein, suddenly change the scene into Laurie’s fantasy?

SCENES 8 1. Does Nancy think Laurie was justified in her accusations? Why or why not?

2. How has Nancy and Laurie’s friendship changed as result of the problems with Third?

ACT TWO SCENE 1 1. Why does Emily go to the bar?

SCENE 3 1. Does Third feel that the administration of the school is supportive? Why or why not?

2. How does Third believe that liberals “lost the country”?

SCENE 4 1. What class is Laurie teaching?

2. What memory does Laurie have of Jane Austen?

3. What do we find out about Laurie’s father?

SCENE 5 1. Why does Jack/Grandpa think that he is on a boat? What memory does he have of boats?

2. Who does Emily meet in the bar?

2. What trick does Jack/Grandpa try to show Laurie, but can never complete?

3. How does Third describe his background?

3. What happens with Laurie and Jack at the end of the scene?

SCENE 2 1. Why does Laurie think that Third is working at the bar?

SCENES 6 1. Is Third going to continue next year at the school?

2. What does the audience learn about Zooey’s girlfriend? What has she done wrong?

2. What triggers Laurie’s change of heart?

3. Why does Emily think Laurie accused Third?

3. Third says that he hated Laurie for making him “Pinky, the aborigine lesbian.” Why is this? Why is he also grateful for such an occurrence?

sent major milestones within their lives?

Have them discuss and research musicians whose work they enjoy or they feel could benefit the show.

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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.

DRAMA Have each student choose a character from Third to portray. As if preparing for the role in rehearsal, they should answer the following questions about their characters: 1) what is my objective in the play, and what obstacles stand in my way? 2) How, if at all, does my character transform during the course of the play? 3) Are there any contradictions inherent in my character? 4) What do other characters think of my character, and what does my character think of them?

Going Deeper: Wendy Wasserstein knows that “one’s cultural background contributes to how one sees the world.” Ask students to consider their character’s cultural background, and how it influences their actions within the play. Other factors

to consider are: what was the most important event in the character’s life prior to the time depicted in the play, what in the character’s life has led them to seek out their current objective, what specific events in the character’s past influence the way they speak or move during the play.

MUSIC Within Third characters often find common ground over music tastes — Nancy and Laurie joke over songs from their past, Third meets Nancy as she is listening to Laura Nyro’s “Wedding Bell Blues,” and Laurie tries to introduce Emily to the world of Frankie Avalon hits. How else could music be introduced into the play? Ask students to think about the show and transitions between scenes.

What mood could music evoke during scene changes? How could these selections relate to the rising action of the play? How does music, in general, enhance the movement of a theatrical work? Ask students what songs repre-

THE DESIGN PROCESS Third can be looked at as a slice of life play, as characters are very relatable, the language is incredibly accessible, and situations they experience are ones to which the audience can relate. The playwright takes this one step further for today’s audiences by setting the play in modern times, with references to current culture and events. What are some tangible items that represent modern day? Have students work to create a setting collage, thinking about what they can do to make their piece represent the 21st century, considering events, music, fashion, politics, social and cultural concerns, etc. How do you illustrate every day life? Then, have them think about how you would capture their setting collage onstage. Are there certain things students can think of that would help create the atmosphere so actors don’t appear as if they could be any place at any time? How do you create something typical of day-to-day life that still looks theatrical?

STAGE AN EXPANDED SCENE FROM THE PLAY As a class, examine Third’s plagiarism hearing. Pay attention to not only how the scene looks, but also to what exactly happens. Wendy Wasserstein provides the framework for what needs to happen.

Questions to consider are: 1) is the decision entirely unanimous that Third is innocent? 2) how does the trial begin? 3) who else speaks at the hearing? and 4) what is the committee like? Write out the scene in its entirety. Remember to take into account Laurie’s direct address to the audience. Is this something that only her character does, or do other characters utilize this theatrical convention as well? Once the scene is written, perform it as a class and see if it affects students’ views of the play afterwards.

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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 16

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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. 14) for Third 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. 14) questions.

DAY THREE - Follow-up Discussion Discuss Mastery Assessment answers in class.

DAY FOUR - Test Individual Assessment: Choose either several questions from the Open Response (P. 12) or one question from Writing Assignments (P. 12) for students to answer in one class period.

Optional: Students may choose one of the Media Assesment (P. 15) or For Further Exploration (P. 13) tasks to complete for extra credit.

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SEVEN-DAY LESSON PLAN completely integrates Third 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 Act One of Third and answer corresponding Mastery Assessment (P. 14) questions.

DAY TWO - Act One Discuss Act One of Third and answers to Mastery Assessment questions.

Homework: Read Act Two of Third and answer corresponding Mastery Assessment questions.

DAY THREE - Act Two Discuss Act Two of the play and answers to Mastery Assessment questions.

Optional: Compete Handout #1: Vocabulary for homework.

DAY FOUR - Group work Complete Handout #2: Career Advisor during class time.

Optional: Handout #1: Vocabulary due!

DAY FIVE - Attend Performance Optional: Students may choose one of the Media Assesment (P. 15) or For Further Exploration (P. 13) 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

Aborigine

Impertinence

Insidious

In loco parentis

Amoral

Masochistic

Cynical

Neo-con

Erroneously

Patriarcha

Exorcise

Proliferate

Felicitate

Reverential

Glib

Tropes

Hegemonic

Verbatim

Heterosexist

Villified

Date:_____________________

Name:_______________________________________________________

Date:_____________________

Handout 2

CAREER ADVISOR Laurie finishes the play deciding to take a leave of absence from teaching.

You are going to serve as her career advisor! Playwright Wendy Wasserstein often uses aspects of her life to create her characters. Using Wasserstein’s biography, suggest a new career path for Laurie Jameson.

What is Wasserstein’s background like?

What is Laurie’s personality like?

Create a resume combining these two!

Now, think about potential jobs that Laurie could have — should she apply to be a professor some place else?

What about writing?

Create a formal job suggestion for Laurie.

Explain your choice. Remember to take into consideration what she’s been through when you make your choice.