FINAL REFLECTION            This is an essay of maybe two to three pages summarizing your vision

FINAL REFLECTION
            This is an essay of maybe two to three pages summarizing your vision of the play you’ve analyzed. Please follow this outline, but use it with appropriate flexibility, of course, as it will apply differently to every play you look at. Think of this as an open letter to a producer and director of your play: help them appreciate the exciting potentials of the play that you have come to understand and appreciate by studying it.
         Name your play, with the edition and translation you’re using.
         First paragraph: describe the play, in lively terms: for example–what is the genre, and what kind of comedy or tragedy or farce or satire is it  (a tragedy of idealism, of the most fundamental human commitments, of the purposelessness of life)?  Add specifics: what’s the most memorable moment at offer in the play? (When Uncle Vanya shoots at his enemy and misses, we feel the failure of every hope; when Dynamene proposes to save her new lover by exposing her admired late husband’s remains, we feel the craziness and irreverence of all hope in a tragic world.) What does it feel like to see a great production of this play, what are its pleasures, what makes it special?  Don’t be general here; don’t sound like a press release. Give a hint as to the secret power of this play. Think about what’s shocking here. Think about what’s important about this play.
         Now tell us what we need to understand to get full value of this play: what are the themes that drive this play, what values are at stake in it? (Again, give an example of how these values are embodied in the play—when Falstaff brings a bottle instead of a sword to the battlefield, we suddenly feel the inadequacy of comic irresponsibility in a time of war; when Charles dons drag and beings to pose for the Generalissimo, he has crossed the line into the theatrical madness that overwhelms the orderly goal-setting and labor of creation he was committed to and we don’t know where it will end.) Make this clash sound like something we should care about! By the end of the play, what should we feel the play’s conclusion is? We should leave the theater feeling what about the world?
         Now: what are some important elements that the directors and producers might miss without the advantage of your analysis? What have you learned by analyzing that you didn’t realize in looking at the play at first? What are details of stage directions, theatrical rhythm, echoes of ritual or mythology, other kinds of patterning that we should not ignore if we are to give the play its full power? “It’s important to realize” . . . what? What have you come to realize?
         With that in mind, what are some “traps” that lie in this play—how might it be conventionally misunderstood, or only shallowly interpreted? It’s always easy to conceive a play in tired, clichéd ways. What alternatives might the production team consider to keep the play fresh, idea-driven, productively new? Do you have original casting thoughts (say, a black Falstaff or Hispanic Grusha, or a thin, fragile Empress in Caucasian Chalk Circle, carried everywhere she goes? Should Henry IV and Falstaff be played by the same actor? What would happen if God in The Apple Tree were female, motherly?) Design thoughts—what might be an engaging way of setting up the performance space—are there conventions written in that you might want to play with (or leave out), what thoughts might you recommend to the costume designer (should Yelena, whom Vanya calls a mermaid, be in blues and watery colors? Should Lady Windermere seem a little over-dressed at her birthday party, wearing clothes more extravagant than her nature?), what thoughts might be productive for the lighting and sound and set designers (does this play have to be done realistically, or would a shift toward non-realism help—or, in the case of pre-realistic plays, what might contemporary clothing and props add to the play, or ruin?) Are special talents needed—a choreographer, a period etiquette specialist, a musician? Recognize that at this point you are not the designer nor the director: your job is to open up possibilities, so be wary of narrowly prescribing too many artistic choices—in discussing design and acting and casting choices, try to name more than one option, so as to open up others’ imaginations. Or, alternatively, you may propose a very particular approach to the play (the time for the all-female production of Lady Windermere has arrived!), but, if you do so, you must talk through how it would be done, the implications of the idea, and give us the rewards of this approach.
         You may want to center your recommendations for the play in a suggested staging of a particular salient moment in the play—an action-image or a climactic scene. If you can persuade us of the power of your approach to this one scene or moment, we may be more persuaded to hear you out on everything about the play.
         Concluding paragraph: if this play is done in the fresh, deeply-tied-to-the-energies-of-the-text, powerful way you recommend, remind us (with new words and maybe a fresh example or two) how strong the experience of the play can be. Cheer us on to a production inspired by what you have found in reading this play with an eye to performance.