Performance Analysis (Paper) Guidelines

A written performance analysis of each of your performance selections is due at the class before your performance. If your group performs on Friday, for example, the analysis is due Wednesday in class. Papers must be turned in then or the performance will be delayed, and the grades for both will be reduced.

GOAL: The first step is to identify specific physical behaviors a performer can present to make the written literature meaningful in the oral medium. You are searching for the locations in the literature where vocal qualities, facial and hand gestures, rate and the other variables of oral language can help an audience respond to the meanings potentially present in the work. You must be able to describe the behaviors you imagine specifically, and you must quote the phrase or passage where you might per for m that behavior. "I will look sad," for example, is not specific enough. "I might lower my eyes, slump my shoulders, and turn down the corners of my mouth to indicate sadness" is acceptable. Your goal is to organize at least fifteen such behaviors and line quotations into a written paper organized around a clear theme.

ORGANIZATION: Each analysis must have several parts.

An Introduction which uses some form of evidence or support to introduce the theme you have chosen for your paper. The goal is to "introduce" the idea you summarized in your thesis by using a quotation, telling a brief story, referring to a time when something happened to you similar to what happens to the central character in the work, etc. You have two basic ways to approach the audience. Either we refer to something they will probably have experienced, like a first date, a lousy time at bat in softba ll, etc., OR we give them an experience in terms graphic enough to get them thinking and reacting.

Think of the way we introduce each other, looking for common experience as football fans, cheerleaders, readers of Stephen King, or whatever we may have had in common. Your opening could touch on something common to the reader/ audience's experience. So if we were reading "Down at the Dinghy," by J. D. Salinger, for example, where a little boy hears his father called a "sloppy kike," we might look for similar experience in the audience's past. We could refer to a time in the past when we each have enter ed a room full of strangers, for example, and that uneasy feeling of not belonging. Then we close that out with a transition into the Thesis, or central idea of the paper. "In a similar fashion, the six-year-old character in Salinger's 'Down at the Dinghy' has his first painful experience with prejudice." This warns the reader that something's coming, and something important.

A Thesis, or one sentence statement of your interpretation of that selection. In other words, try to sum up in one sentence what the story means to you. Do not create a four-legged monster sentence with conjunctions like "and" "but" "or" strung off into the sunset. The thesis should have some link to every paragraph of the paper. So ake it one simple sentence, such as: "'A Clean, Well-Lighted Place' presents the experience of one lonely individual as a symbol for the apparent meaninglessness of human existence." Everything else in the paper should be linked directly to one of the key words in this important sentence.

A Partition (or Preview) should follow the thesis immediately, usually in the same paragraph. This is essentially a list of the topic sentences for your paper's six major paragraphs, stated in different words.

Example: "We can see this story's symbolic loneliness in the troubled life of the author, the darkness of the setting, the isolation of the characters, the climax of the plot in a soliloquoy, the bare simplicity of the language, and the detached relationship between the narrator and the implied audience." Note that the words "troubled life," "darkness," "isolation," "soliloquoy," "bare simplicity," and "detached" all connect to the idea of loneliness or isolation. Then you should elaborate on that theme in a one sentence summary. Example: "We see the loneliness in the life of the author, an eventual suicide himself, as he searches for something he never seems to find." Again, bonus points if you can make a meaningful connection right from the start. For example, "in the troubled life of the author" reinforces the ideas of the thesis, whereas "in the life of the author" leaves us wondering what the nature of the connection might be.

A Body which discusses each of the sections introduced in your partition, usually in one or two paragraphs for each. These topics are Author, Setting, Characters (including the narrator in prose or the persona in poetry), Act (or plot), Language (or style) and Reader/Audience.

For each of these you should present three specific pieces of information about the literature as you envision it. These will be biographical details in the Author section. In the other categories of Setting, Character, etc., for each detail you should describe a physical behavior which might show us the meaning that wording in the literature has for you. That makes a total of 15 items for the monologue, more for later assignments with two characters (Dialogue), or two characters and a narrator (Narrative).

Your reactions to some items under "author" might be general. The fact that Ernest Hemingway killed himself, for example, might not result in a specific behavior in the performance. The other topics, however, must describe in specific terms what you might do with your voice or face. For each setting, each character who has more than a few lines, each major turning point in the plot, the major stylistic devices of language, and for the implied relationship between the performer and the audience, you shou ld have specific concrete images in your mind, and specific performance behaviors that you might employ in the performance to help the audience experience or respond to those images which you find meaningful. The smell of a skunk might result in the wrinkling of a nose combined with a grimace, etc. This should form the basis for a paragraph about each of the categories, setting, character, etc.

Each paragraph, then, is based on a core of behaviors, a quotation of the lines in the literature which makes them possible. Each should open with a topic sentence which restates the appropriate line from the Partition/ Preview. And each should close with a transition. In short, this is what a good paragraph should look like. You must have a transitional or introductory sentence to begin each paragraph, ideally one which follows the meaningful connection to the theme set up in your partition. Then sim ply describe three of the images you see (based directly on what the author has given you in the literature) in a sentence or two, along with a performance behavior for each of the three images, then you've got a paragraph. Add another sentence to sum up or ease the transition to the next idea, and you're finished with that section.

Use transitional devices to give the audience a meaningful connection to the next idea in the framework of the main point you set up in your thesis. If we take the thesis about 'A Clean, Well-Lighted Place' as a theme, for example, we could label the quietness, the separation between characters, and the darkness as physical representations of the loneliness of human existence in the setting. The quietness, we might say, could be performed by a slow pace, and a soft, serious voice; the separation between the characters in their cool and detached looks at each other, with little physical reaction between them; and the darkness of the environment by having the narrator employ vocal stress on the images of light and dark in his/her description of the setting. You could describe each physical action, and quote the line upon which it might be performed. Then, to make a transition into the next idea, we could write that these "provide a background for characters who 'are of different kinds' and are unable to b ridge the loneliness that separates them." This (1) tells the reader that we're summing up "setting" as a topic, and closing it down; (2) restates the theme to remind the reader that loneliness is your key idea; and (3) warns the reader that the topic of "character" is the next one up for discussion. Each of the sections should follow the same rough plan.

A Conclusion that summarizes the approach to the performance which you have described in the paper. Bring the paper to a meaningful close by giving us another concrete experience (colors, smells, sensations) with the key term "loneliness." Use a quotation, a personal experience that matches something in the story and sums up your feeling about it, or an allusion to a similar literary work that the reader/audience should know. Bonus points if the conclusion restates or reflects the thesis idea in so me way.

HINT: Don't sit down and get overwhelmed by thinking about the whole project which stands before you. Take it one step, one section, at a time, beginning at the point you find easiest. If you have a clear picture of the setting in your mind, start there. All you have to do is to find physical and vocal ways you can perform what you see, and then describe these one at a time. Take it one sentence, one image, one performance behavior at a time. Make a list of the images, and the behaviors, and check the m to be sure there are specific words. Not "sad," but "with a downturned face, slow rate of speech, and a slight sigh." Then, after you have roughed out the whole paper, work toward an idea that summarizes the whole picture to use for your thesis. Don't panic if you don't get the "thesis" idea the first time. I will rewrite your first pieces to help you locate one.

IF YOU CAN LEARN TO DESCRIBE SPECIFICALLY, AND FOCUS ORGANIZATION ON A SINGLE THEME, YOU WILL HAVE LEARNED A VITAL LIFETIME COMMUNICATION SKILL. One of my former students came back from Pitt to say that he prepares legal briefs for presentation in class the way he prepared for my assignments, and outscored most of his class. Heads of corporations constantly talk about communication skills as a requirement for success in today's world---and this is one of the basic keys.

WARNING: Remember, all the parts of the paper above must be present.

Many first papers are returned without a grade (meaning that they are failing grades) because they forget to include an introduction, a conclusion, a partition/preview, or a thesis sentence, or one or more of the six parts of the body.

GRADING: Take a look at the analysis checklist. The instructor will look down that list for each of the papers. If you do not have all the required parts of the paper (Introduction, Thesis, Partition, Body, Conclusion) or if you do not discuss each part of the Body (author, setting, characters/narrator, act [plot], language, and implied audience) with three behaviors for each, then you will get an "F." EVEN IF YOU DO, DON'T PANIC! You can revise it for the higher grade.

Don't be discouraged if you blow the first analysis. Remember that you learn by making mistakes. Many analyses which don't meet the minimum requirements will be returned for revision before I will accept them. If you did everything perfectly the first time, you wouldn't be learning anything. People learn by trying something new, and usually that requires a few mistakes. The people who succeed in life are those who learn from those mistakes, and keep on pushing forward. Find out what you did incorrec tly, recheck the grading section above, and avoid those mistakes on the next assignment. I don't mind that it takes time... I just want you to learn how to do this.

WARNING: The goal of the analyses is not simply to answer all the questions on the analysis guidelines which follow. These are examples of the things you should consider for each assignment.

Use these suggestions to think about the performance in detail, to conceive your own interpretation of the written selection as it will appear in the oral dimension of performance. These are examples, not required questions you must answer. You are bridging a gap between the oral and written traditions of western literature, attempting to "make meaning" with an audience by showing them how you respond to a work of literature, showing them vocally and physically what the work means to you. The written an alysis should force you to think in a detailed fashion about the concrete sensory experiences you have with the literature, and make you consider the ways in which you can help the audience respond to those experiences. Finally, it should help you organize those experiences and responses as you put them in written form.

The key to understanding the assignment is to find three specific vocal and physical behaviors that you could perform for setting, character/narrator [three for EACH character we hear], plot, the language, and for implied audience.

For setting, describe three things you as a reader can do to show us a character reacting to the setting. Example: shivering in response to the cold, looking at a tree described in the story, or describing part of the scene to the audience in the introduction.

For characters, focus on making them slightly different: look for postures, voice qualities & rates, higher & lower pitch levels, louder and softer voices, and specific movements that would show and tell and audience what kind of individual each character was. For narrators, look for the same specific behaviors based upon what you know about these people from the language they use, the tone of voice in which you hear them speak, and other hints the author provides about your storytellers [Remember the narrator's importance as a builder of tension as we reach climactic moments in a story through loudness and tension in his/her voice].

For plot, consider the three most important moments when things change in the selection, either thoughts or actions or relationships. In "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," for example, the younger waiter changes things when, for the first time in memory, he closes the cafe and forces the old man to leave before three o'clock. This, in turn, causes the older waiter to consider why he liked to stay open, and this leads him to his conclusion that humans can survive nothingness in life if they had "light...and a certain cleanness and order." Each of those is important moments. The first we could highlight by having the old man look up in his focus as if he was puzzled, with his eyebrows wrinkled to say, "Another." The second we could say by having the older waiter's voice become tense as he says, "Each night I am reluctant to close up because there may be someone who needs the cafe." The younger waiter, in contrast, laughs and says with a smile, "Hombre, there are bodegas open all night long." The third we could perform by having the narrator pause for a long thought, looking off into space, before he said, "What did he fear? It was not a fear, or dread, it was a nothing that he knew too well....It was only that, and light was all it needed, and a certain cleanness and order."

For language, look for specific words that have qualities which can be translated into the oral medium [soft can be said softly, etc.], look for symbols that are important to the story which the narrator should stress, look for metaphors & similes that can be made more meaningful with vocal qualities ["David was a lion" can be said with loud volume and gruff qualities to emphasize the strength of the lion in the metaphor], look for alliteration and other styllistic devices that you can emphasize vocally in some way. [See the "Tools of the Vocal Artist" Handout.]

Under implied audience, consider the specific ways you can focus and place characters & narrators to show us the kind of relationship you see between the characters in your reading and the audience in front of you. In monologues the performer may look at the audience or not, based upon your interpretation of the literature. In some monologues, the speaker employs open focus, and looks directly at the audience as if talking to them in person. In others, the speaker employs closed focus, and unfocuses his/ her eyes as if thinking to him-or-herself [as we often do when talking on the telephone, for example]. In dialogues, the audience usually overhears the two characters as if the characters don't see them, so normally we put the two characters in offstage focus and place them right and left as if they were looking at two points over the audience members' heads. In narratives, we should see three focus combinations, with the narrator telling the story to the audience with direct eye contact [looking around t he room at everyone] and at least two characters in offstage focus, placed right and left over the audience. In poetry we see all combinations of the above, from dramatic monologues [Browning's "My Last Duchess"] to dialogues [Frost's "Death of a Hired Hand"] to narratives [Robinson's "Mr. Flood's Party].

After you consider specifics and develop a list of them, look for a theme which can tie all the pieces together in your thesis. So in "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," the theme could be "'A Clean, Well-Lighted Place' portrays the importance of light and order to humans to facing the meaninglessness of the human situation." Then you can connect that theme, through the partition, to the light and dark of the setting (order vs. chaos), the contrast between the characters (impetuous youth vs. older & wiser, ol d man as a symbol of death & meaninglessness), the plot's description of a "nothing" which the character can never escape, the use of light and dark as symbols of life and death, and the narrator's invitation of the audience into the older waiter's mind at the key point in the "climax" of the plot. Specific behaviors could be related to the theme. So, for example, you could highlight the symbol of the shadows of the leaves (light vs. dark, life vs. death) by having the narrator point or look to a particul ar focus when he mentions them, as though he sees them.

Consider this sample Thesis/Partition Paragraph. "'A Clean, Well-Lighted Place' portrays the importance of light and order to humans facing the meaninglessness of their existence. Certainly Hemingway felt himself to be pursued by a sense of nothingness in his life. This theme is reflected in the darkness of the setting as it represents the meaninglessness that surrounds the characters. The characters portray the reactions of three different 'ages of men' as they face that meaninglessness. The plot sho ws the middle-aged waiter coming to the conclusion that 'nothing' could be endured if there was light, cleanness and order. The language of the piece highlights the images of light and dark that reflect nothingness and order. The narrator emphasizes the theme as he brings the audience into the mind of the older waiter for his climactic realization about life. All of these connections to the theme are highlighted by the gloomy setting."

The most important thing to remember is that this is NOT a LITERARY analysis, it is a PERFORMANCE analysis. You are making a connection between the written medium of literature and the oral medium of performance. The key to success is selecting those parts of the written literature which can be translated or interpreted into the oral medium meaningfully, through specific vocal and physical behavior. Tell me what you will do with your face, hands and voice to show the audience the meaning of a particular word or phrase.

ASSIGNMENT: Only one voice should be presented to the audience. The character may quote others briefly AS THE CHARACTER himself or herself would in his/her own voice. There should not be a narrator/dialogue framework, and the focus should be on the single, individual character who is speaking to himself or to the audience. We should see only one person in the performance, although they may remember or paraphrase something someone else said. Avoid selections with lengthy quotations that would make your character into a narrator. Avoid selections where the one voice is mostly a narrator, telling a story that happened in another time and place. The focus should be on one individual thinking, reacting, and talking to the audience (or him-or-herself). The general rule is to stick to letters, essays, and diary selections where the character is thinking to him/herself. If the character is telling a story, the story should be secondary to an idea the speaker is working to communicate to others or clarify for him/herself.

AUTHOR: Focus here on biographical details which may offer clues to the type of character voice the selection may present. Are there things about the author that influence the way in which you respond to the story? Were there similar characters, settings, events, language or audiences in the author's life? Hemingway was proud of his physical strength, liked drinking and hard living. If I were reading one of his essays I would consider presenting an active, energetic man with a large voice and large mov ements. If I were reading a fictional character he created I would use the same information, if the character was similar to Hemingway himself. If the character was created as a parody of someone Hemingway didn't like, I could use H's attitude toward his target (F. Scott Fitzgerald?) to help me decide what physical behavior would be appropriate. Hemingway probably wouldn't like effeminate men, for example, and if he was making fun of one in a monologue that could help me decide how to respond. Furthermo re, I think he was a little overconcerned about his own "macho" image, which indicates a little uncertainty about his own masculinity. In other situations that might lead one to "overdo" macho behavior, to signal the audience of that underlying uncertainty.

SETTING: Where is the character? Does the author tell us? Can you imagine the kind of place it is based on the situation? If you know s/he's in prison, how could an audience see you interacting with the prison? Could you use the window to the outside world for "looking" behavior in the selection when the character talks about the tree in the prison yard. Are there other behaviors you can use to suggest the surroundings? Shiver in the cold, hunch in shoulders to suggest cramped quarters, wrinkle you n ose against the smell, look around as the character describes the bare walls, etc.

IF THERE IS NO SPECIFIC SITUATION, YOU MUST STILL FIND SPECIFIC BEHAVIORS. A performer cannot do nothing...you will lose your audience. In an oral situation, they don't have time to react to the words quickly enough to create the experience for themselves without your help.

If there is no specific situation, what specific behaviors are suggested by the GENERAL situation? Is it a humorous situation? Serious? Does the character "confess" to the reader, as in some passages of Catcher in the Rye, for example? Each of those general contexts suggest different postures, eye contact, and vocal behavior. In a humorous situation the speaker might have a little smile at the corners of his/her mouth. In a serious situation there would be no smile, and less vocal variation in the vo ice through pitch, rate and pause.

CHARACTER: How is the character of the author seen and heard in this selection? What is the voice we hear going to be like? Is s/he relaxed, uptight, older/younger, friendly with the audience, distant from the audience? What kind of person is he/she, and which of those "characteristics" is important to this selection's theme? First consider the character's exterior. What does the author tell or imply about his/her voice and body? How do you imagine the person on the basis of that description or sugge stion? How can you use your voice and body to suggest the way the character looks and moves, his or her age and appearance? Then consider the character's interior. What is the character's personality like, and what are the character's goals in the situation---why is s/he writing or talking? What vocal and physical behavior can you employ in the performance to give us a sense of his/her true motives in the situation? Remember that even if we know very little about the character, we must still give the c haracter life in the performance...thus you must create him or her in your imagination. Then we must see and hear specific moves and vocal actions to suggest that character in your reading.

ACT: What is different in the character's life after the selection is finished, either mentally or physically? Has s/he changed his or her mind about something? Had a new perception about something that happened before? Remembered something powerful from the past? Has the character described a setting, another character, a sequence of events, established a relationship with an audience (even an imaginary "Dear Diary"), or used different forms of language? Among these changes, look for the turning point s, for the places where the character changes moods or attitudes, moves to a different topic, has a new realization about the world, or finally gets to the point. You should describe at least three of these changes in mental or physical action.

Is there a major turning point or climax, a "most important" moment that ties all the rest of the selection together? What vocal and physical behavior could show us that sequence of events, and the change in the character at each step, and the big change that takes place at the climax? Rate, loudness, tension, physical movement? Be particularly aware of conflicts within characters, of mixed emotions like love/hate relationships, or situations where a character says one thing and means another. These sh ould result in "conflicting signals" for the audience in the performance.

LANGUAGE: What kind of vocabulary does the character have? Do the words flow smoothly, or are they rough and simple, like Hemingway's? What are the images that predominate? Is there a symbol in the story that we should pay particular attention to, like the "bell tolling" in For Whom the Bell Tolls, or light and darkness in the "Clean, Well-Lighted" cafe? What are the connections, in short, between the levels of abstraction we discussed in class, from the title of the selection down to the concrete colo rs, tastes and smells. Look at the "Tools of the Vocal Artist" handout.

AUDIENCE: A vital element in oral performance is the suggestion that a live person is talking to another live person. Who is the audience in this selection? Does the character address a large audience, one person, or him/herself only? What placement, locus, focus and volume will you employ to present your character's relationship with the audience? Does the speaker adjust his/her volume to the room, making it soft enough to suggest an intimate conversation? Or is he too loud, as if drunk, or as if she 's an arrogant character who loves to be the center of attention?

Are there moments where the character shifts from open focus (looking at the audience) to closed focus (not making eye contact with the audience, pretending they aren't there)? As the character shifts from open conversation with the hearer, do we see them looking down at the floor or off into space? We often do this, for example, when speaking on the phone.

ASSIGNMENT: A dialogue from dramatic literature (plays) with two characters in interaction. The focus should be on the interaction of the two characters in a DIALOGUE, so don't select a scene that is largely a monologue by one character with one-line responses from the other character in the passage. Scenes with a lot of physical action, like fights, etc., are also less effective. It is usually best to stick to well-known plays, and to avoid selections from short stories or novels. You may not use a se lection from a short story or novel if it would require deleting sections of narrative. You may select more than two characters if you wish, but avoid the placement and focus difficulty involved if you don't have a lot of experience.

AUTHOR: Same questions, roughly, as for monologue. Are there things in the author's life, or in other plays s/he has written, that provide clues to the ways this scene might be performed? Performing a scene from Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, for example, would be easier if you knew a little about his style of play-writing. The apparently meaningless passages in the play take on a new life when you realize that often that's just what he wants to say---that life often is meaningless.

SETTING: Where does the selection take place? What does that location look like according to the author? How do you envision it? After you imagine it for yourself, determine what you might do to behave in interaction with the setting as you perform. First, how will you describe it in the introduction to "set" the stage in the audience's imagination? Second, what are several ways in which you can react to the setting in character? Could you, for example, look out a window? "See" a flower in a particu lar location over the audience's head? Remember that you want the characters' reactions to the place that surrounds them.

CHARACTERS: What kind of people are these, and which "characteristics" are most important to this particular scene. Who are the characters in your selection, inside and out? The goal is to identify the kind of people the characters are, and how you can present clues regarding their nature to the audience. What does the author tell you in the rest of the play about their physical and vocal characteristics? How do you picture and hear them? What vocal and physical behavior can you use to show us the way you envision this person? What are the goals this person has in the selection, the motivations underlying his or her actions? How can you show us what the characters really want in the scene through their voice and face and body?

ACT (PLOT): What is different in this scene after your reading takes place? What has changed between the characters? Does one of them know something new? Has one of them determined to take a new action? Does one of them win a fight? Is there an important major turning point, in other words, during the reading? Most good selections will center around one major moment, a decision, an announcement with reaction, etc.

After you locate that central moment, consider the minor changes back and forth that lead up to this major change in the scene. Identify changes in voice and face that could let an audience see and hear the changes in the characters reactions to each other as these minor and major turning points take place. You should describe at least three changes altogether.

LANGUAGE: What do the words spoken by each of the characters tell you about them, and about the situation? How has the author employed sentence structure, vocabulary, images, symbols, metaphor and simile to create a meaningful situation between these characters? Consider the vocal or physical behavior you might employ to make particular words or phrases more meaningful to the audience. If the characters employ a lot of undeleted expletives, you might employ harsh vocal qualities to increase their emotio nal impact. If a character in a comedy says a punchline, you might stress the word that makes it funny. David Mamet creates characters with simple vocabularies and very short lines; you might use longer pauses to emphasize this choppy structure to the audience. Images can be very important; soft vocal quality can add a new dimension to a description of a rose, the black of night can be made all the more terrible if we can hear the fear in the character's voice quake as s/he describes it.

IMPLIED AUDIENCE: Performers in drama usually focus on each other and ignore the audience. There are exceptions made for soliloquies or asides delivered to an audience, but they are rare. Usually the audience will overhear a dramatic reading, and the characters will speak to each other in offstage focus. Describe how your characters will be focused, and state that the audience will overhear the scene as if they were unseen viewers of the scene. If there are exceptions, and your characters will look at the audience, explain why and where these will take place. Three behaviors: 1) I will not look at the audience (offstage focus), 2) I will place Charles to my left over the audience's head, and 3) I will place Alice to my right over the audience's head.
You should also think about changes in the way the characters look at each other IN FOCUS. Are there moments when a character is thinking to themself, for example, and not looking at the other person? Is there a moment when someone has just been shocked to learn of something new, which requires them to look away, stunned, to get a moment to think in "closed" focus --- as if not looking directly at anyone for anything? These may be important ways to signal major changes in the relationship between characters.

ASSIGNMENT: A selection from narrative prose (a novel or a short story) with a narrator and a minimum of two characters. The narrator may also be a character, and then become part of the scene which he or she is describing. There must be, however, a roughly equal balance between passages where the narrator tells the story directly to the audience, and passages in which two characters (at least) talk to each other within the story that the narrator is telling. One important goal of the assignment is lear ning to handle shifts from the narrator's open focus on the audience to the off-stage focus of two characters speaking to each other without making eye-contact with the audience.

AUTHOR: Same basic considerations as the above author sections are important. Are there relationships between the author's life and this story which make the selection more meaningful to you, or which could make it more meaningful to the audience in an introduction? Ernest Hemingway's biographer writes that "A Clean, Well-Lighted Cafe" represents the nothingness or emptiness that followed Hemingway throughout his life, and the fact that both he and his father committed suicide gives that message even mor e emotional impact. Your audience will know how to respond when you tell them that his father's pistol had been sent to Hemingway shortly before he wrote the story.

SETTING: Note that there are two settings, at least, in a narrative. First, the narrator is in a particular place as s/he tells the story to his or her audience. How do you imagine it? Does the author give you clues to the type of place it might be---through the narrator's tone of voice, through the ways s/he talks to the audience? Is the atmosphere that of a tall-tale telling by a cracker barrel in a country store, or that of a sophisticated joke being told at a cocktail party? What is the atmosphere , then? How can you create this scene in your audience's imagination, either in the narrator's face and body or in your introduction to the performance. Second, there are settings for the scene(s) from the past about which the narrator is telling the audience. What does the narrator tell us about these settings? How do you imagine them? How can your narrator behave while describing, and how can the characters react, so as to help the audience experience the settings? Describe physical movements or vocal behavior that can support the audience's imagination in your performance.

CHARACTERS: First, and most importantly, REMEMBER THAT THE NARRATOR IS A CHARACTER, TOO! S/he is not a disembodied voice speaking out of the next dimension; the narrator is a person telling a story, one with thoughts, feelings, and motives for telling the story. The most important question in considering a narrative assignment is the nature of the narrator's relationship to the story s/he tells. How does the narrator feel about the characters? Does s/he make fun of them? Mock them? Admire them? Pity them? Sympathize with them? With one of them more than the others? How do you know these feelings by specific things the narrator says about or does to the characters? How can you perform the narrator's voice and body so we can see and hear these feelings as the story is told? Another important consideration is what the narrator looks and sounds like in your imagination. Does the author describe the narrator? If there is no description, what details about the kind of person s/he may be can we pick u p from the way he/she speaks, or from the attitudes toward the characters, story and the audience which you hear in the story-telling? How do you picture the narrator based on this information, and how could you show us this kind of person in a performance?

Other considerations will also affect the way the story is told. Does the narrator know everything that happens before it happens? Will we see this thought, this twinkle in the eye, this knowing glance as s/he leads the audience into the story? Or does the narrator discover the story along with us, watching the events as they happen? The narrator's emotional involvement will probably be greater if s/he is also a character in the story being told, and his/her behavior should reflect that intensity. There may also be a special affection in the narrator's mind for one particular character, often the hero or heroine. Describe ways in which we can see the story as it happens in the narrator's imagination.

Also consider the characters in the story, just as you would examine them under "dialogue" above. Remember you should have three specific behaviors in mind for each character/ narrator.

ACT (PLOT): Remember, again, the narrator's importance as the person through whom we see and hear the story. Your selection should be focused on something that happens between two people(or more), and the major concern in narrative plot is the way in which the characters and the narrator work together to build up to this "turning point" in the story. The narrator usually tells us what is happening, whether the story is exciting, eerie, or sad, by the tone of his/her voice and the physical energy s/he dis plays to the audience. The narrator must, in short, be involved. DON'T TELL ME YOU HAVE AN OBJECTIVE NARRATOR, AND THEREFORE YOU WILL DO NOTHING AS NARRATOR! Then the audience will do nothing as listeners. Determine how can the narrator's voice and face show us the importance and meaning of the little changes in the story as the scene progresses, and finally the major turning point that tells us "what happened." The same question applies to the characters. How will their voices and face change to show us what happens, and how they feel about that happening. You must decide how you can show the audience that "this is the point at which the character changes his mind," or "this is the point at which she gives up on their relationship and decides to leave town."

LANGUAGE: Are there particular images, symbols, metaphors or other figures of speech that are important to the story's setting, characters, plot, or audience? Does a particular character use a particular type of language that you might perform in a particular way? Holden Caulfield of Catcher in the Rye, for example, uses foul language often for its shock value, to impress people because he's grown-up enough to curse. How can you perform that? By overstressing the curses, perhaps? Does the narrator use a particular symbol to remind us what the story is about? The narrator of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, for example, mentions a dog early in the story as a symbol of freedom as he looks through the barred windows of his mental institution, and later when he mentions the dog it becomes a symbol of freedom to which we must give a little extra stress and thought in the performance. Find at least three uses of language that deserve special attention in your performance, and describe the ways you will perf orm them to make them meaningful. If you decide that the language is simple and objective, you still have to find a way to perform that...and describe it clearly to me.
AUDIENCE: What does the narrator's tone of voice tell you about his/her relationship with the audience? Much of this will be relevant to your discussion of setting, but consider this on personal terms. How will you narrator talk to your audience? Basic questions you must answer are those about placement and focus. Will your narrator look directly at the audience as s/he tells the story? Are there times when the narrator might look over the heads of the audience to "place" the scene and watch it as s/h e describes it? Are there times when the narrator "closes" focus, remembering the experience of the story more for himself than the audience. Will the characters be "placed" offstage, not looking directly at the audience? Where will each of your characters be "focused" as they talk to each other, which right and which left? Are there other small things about the way the narrator relates to the audience that could be meaningful in the performance, ways s/he slyly winks at them to share a joke, or speaks to them intimately to get them involved in an emotional moment?

SELECTION: Either one longer poem or a few short poems. If you collect a group of poems, have a theme or idea which connects them which you can state in your introduction. You might tell the audience that you are performing three love poems by Robert Frost that show his attitudes toward love as a boy, a young man, and as an older man, for example. You might collect three poems by contemporary black poets, or three of the best-known Victorian poems, or anything of that sort. Please do not bring your own poetry or that of your friends into the class --- stick to the suggested selection list or ask your instructor. IF YOU HAVE MORE THAN ONE POEM IN A COLLECTION, SELECT ONE OF THE POEMS AS THE BASIS FOR YOUR ANALYSIS PAPER. Don't try to cover three poems in one paper.

AUTHOR: The author's life is often intimately connected with contemporary poetry. Sylvia Plath, for example, wrote about loneliness, depression, and attempted suicide, and eventually she took her own life. Many modern poems grew out of specific events in the poet's life, like the William Stafford poem described on p. 73 of your text and printed on p. 74. Search for such meaningful connections between the author and the poem, especially those which help make the poem more understandable to yourself and w hich might make it more accessible to your audience if you mentioned them in your introduction. The CD-ROM indexes in the library should make it possible to find information on many if not most works of literature.

PERFORMANCE GENRE: Poetry may be written in any of the performance genre we've discussed, monologue, dialogue, or narrative. The essential difference between poetry and the other forms of literature you have performed is that it is shorter, more concentrated emotionally (a lot happens in a small space & time), and is much more concerned with language. You must, therefore, slow down, get your concentration before you begin the performance, and attempt to make every word meaningful in the performance. Rev iew the analysis guidelines (monologue, dialogue, narrative) that match the poem you have chosen to perform, and check the following for additional suggestions.

SETTING: Many times the setting of a poem is not described in detail. Because poetry is usually short, it often focuses heavily on one of its characteristics, either on the setting, the characters or persona (voice of the poem), the plot, the language (often a central metaphor or symbol), or the persona's relationship with the audience. Despite the fact that setting is often deemphasized, we must still give the audience a sense of place in performance. What does the persona of the poem imply by the tone and language used? Is the setting formal, informal, a kind of sermon, a personal and emotional confession to a close friend? How do you imagine the setting, and how can we see and hear this in your performance? Describe as much as you can based on what the author tells you, and decide upon a specific setting for your interpretation in as much detail as possible. Can the persona (or characters) show us the setting as they react to it, or imply the kind of setting it is in their tone of voice? Remember that narrative poems (those with a narrator telling a story) will have at least two settings, the one from which the narrator tells the story to the audience, and another where the story takes place in the past which the narrator describes. Note also that personae may shift from one setting in monologues as they remember things that happened in the past.

CHARACTERS: Just as the narrator is vital to the performance of narrative prose, so the persona (or speaking voice) of the poem is vital to the performance of poetry. Develop a clear image of who this voice is, what his or her attitude toward the poem is, and how we can see and hear this person as you read. Also, of course, consider the other characters (voices) and outline specific vocal and physical behaviors that will enable your audience to respond to them in the performance.

ACT: The turning point of a poem is often not a formal climax to conflicting forces like the climax of a scene in a play or the "end" of a story in prose. John Crowe Ransom uses the word fulcrum to describe the way a poem keeps many things in balance on one particular moment or idea or image. For example, it may be a moment when the overall structure of the images in the work becomes clear, a moment of recognition by the persona or by the audience. It may also be a kind of "summing up." Robert Frost sai d that a poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom. His poems often begin with a description of trees or rocks or flowers---some part of life in New England---and end with a concluding realization about life that serves to balance or summarize the rest of the poem. The point just before that realization would be the fulcrum or balance-point of the poem, just before the weight of the poem shifts to realign how we perceive it. Once this most important point is identified, you job is to consider how the poe t "builds up" to this moment, and to determine the minor "turning points" early in the poem that you can help the audience see and hear as you perform the poem. Other poems may have a central image or symbol that ties the rest of the work together, and which would require a particular kind of stress, pausing, or voice quality to help the audience understand the importance of that one word or phrase.

LANGUAGE: Pay particular attention to the language employed by the character(s) and the persona. Poetry is really language that is conscious of itself as language. The words themselves become of primary importance, as relationships are drawn between images, symbols, and other levels of meaning throughout the poem. The figurative language of a poem is often a vital part of its life and meaning. How does the poet use metaphor, simile, metonymy, and synecdoche in your poem? Check the textbook chapter on poetry or the "Tools of the Artist" handout if you're unsure what these are, and decide how you can display these uses of written language in your oral performance through timing, voice quality, and facial gesture. The "Tools of the Artist" handout has some clues. Are there many words that sound like the things being described (onomatopoeia) in the poem, words like "crash" or "bang" which you could perform meaningfully with volume or voice quality? Are there words like "soft" or "harsh" which do not actu ally imitate sounds, but which you might perform to reinforce their meaning by saying them "softly" or "harshly"? Are there alliterations or assonances (repeated consonants or vowels) which you could perform so as to "sound" the poem's meaning?

Another serious consideration is the structure of rhyme and meter in the poem. Does the language in the poem settle automatically into that rhythm, da-DAH, da-DAH, da-da-DAH, or does the conversational flow of the poem fight to break the rhythm and line endings in to something like normal talk? Unless it's being done for comic effect, you shouldn't let the rhyme and meter become a vocal cliche by over-emphasizing them. Robert Frost said that the language of a poem should stretch over the rhyme and meter that gives the poem structure, like waves breaking over the rocks on the New England coast. The conflict between the two keeps the poem alive. Another well-known critic, Cleanth Brooks, refers to the structure of poetry in The Well-Wrought Urn as the container tha t shapes the life of the poem, with the conversational flow and imagery of the poem held in check by the shape of the rhyme and meter or other line structure. Your performance should allow us to hear this tension; we should be aware of the structure of the rhyme and meter, but we should primarily notice the flow of the words and ideas over that structure. Don't automatically pause, for example, at the ends of lines unless the sense of the ideas demands a pause---let us hear the words stretching around the line ending to the next word and the continuation of the thought. Don't automatically stress the beat of the meter or the rhyming words unless the meaning of the poem requires it.

Also, since the language is so important, and often so difficult, you may want to explain difficult words or images to the audience before you begin your performance. Which symbols, levels of meaning, or obscure words will you explain to your audience?

IMPLIED AUDIENCE: The person(s) being spoken to remain an important consideration in poetry. Since poetry is found in all the three performance genres, we must decide how we will use placement and focus to represent the poem in performance. Will your persona look at the audience like a narrative storyteller, a single character in an intimate dialogue, or will the audience overhear the persona talking to him/herself in "closed focus." Often the focus is mixed, with the persona remembering (closed on his/ her thoughts with unfocused eyes) one moment, then speaking directly to the audience in "open focus" in the next moment. How does your persona talk to the audience, how will your characters (if any) place themselves as they speak, and how will placement and focus reinforce the structure of the poem as it is performed?