Theatre 597 Wraps Up Winter 2007

The term's over, all work in, grades assigned and reported. In general, good work done. A preponderance of As and A-s with only a smattering of grades in the B range, and the usual odd C or failing grade. Although the students had the option of mounting a webpage as the final report, only one of the research groups did so; the results are at http://chrismindless44149.tripod.com/index.htm --a report on the censorship problems Christopher Durang had/is having with Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All To You.

One side note, which has to do with my own advancing age and the changing world we live in--these students are pretty hard to shock. They've grown up with an openness (or blatantness) about sex and language which is very different from my teenage years a half century ago. So many of their research reports about efforts to censor various things were marked by the students' bemusement, and difficulty in really getting why the material was so offensive to some. Haven't yet figured out a way to find out what they find offensive, in the main.

And one effect of the changes mores--when the Department did Our Town during this past quarter (and I was cast in a couple of small roles to add some age to the cast!), I realized that there's now a problem: our student audience, for the most part, hasn't any idea what Mrs. Webb is talking about in the wedding scene when she talks about how barbaric the whole system is, how she wasn't able to bring herself to say anything to Emily, and she went into 'it' totally unprepared herself. Of course she's talking about sexual intercourse; for the current crop of young people, that a young woman could reach her wedding day being entirely ignorant of the mechanics of sexual relations, is literally incomprehensible. Most of the students in the cast of Our Town had no idea what the speech was about; imagine how bewildered the student audience was?

Overall, the course was a terrific experience for me as the instructor. I'll find out the student perspective when the students' evaluations are made available to me!