Race & Culture; Caucasian Chalk Circle - Day 3

Lab: Period 1

Morning reading task: please read the following short articles about key ideas involving race from a variety of thinkers: Adam Ferguson's "Mankind Have Always Wandered or Settled...In Troops and Companies", W.E.B. DuBois' "The Problem of the 20th Century is the Problem of the Color Line", Paul Gilroy's "There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack", and Elijah Anderson's "The Ghetto is Where the Black People Live." Consider some of the following prompts:

• Examine an area of human or cultural progress and explain the social cost of this progress (Ferguson)
• Is Ferguson correct in stating that "commercial growth is driven by self-interest...happening at the expense of traditional values or cooperation"?
• How might we advocate an issue (for example concerning race) of civic spirit, encouraging people to act in the interest of society rather than self-interest.
• Respond to W.E.B. DuBois' ideas. Have things changed to solve the color line problem in our culture?
• Write about being a "problem" in a society or culture from the perspective of the person who is a problem.
• Examine or comment on the issue of double-consciousness
• What is your opinion as to how to solve race problems in our country. Should a group compromise or cause agitation to achieve their goals?
• Examine race as a social construct; consider Gilroy's concern that we create a false idea of "natural" categories by putting different people into groups, leading to a division between "them" and "us" (note Ferguson's theories in comparison to Gilroy's)
• Write about a time you felt discriminated against because of your race, class, gender, age, or sexual orientation.
• Think about a race or culture. What assumptions are you guilty of thinking in regards to meeting a person outside of your hegemony.
• Examine and comment on Elijah Anderson's ideas.
• Any other idea you had while reading these summaries/articles.

Other prompts:

Prompt from our discussion on The Distance Between Us: Write about abuse. Your own or someone you know, or a fictional character.

Prompt: Write about an immigrant or immigrant family. Or about DACA. This can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or script. Do an oral history project on a person who has been affected by contemporaries issues involving immigration. Consider documentary as well.

Prompt: Use any theme or idea from reading The Distance Between Us for a poem, short story, essay/memoir, etc.

Required Prompt (due in your portfolio in April): Find a contemporary issue, perhaps one on race, minorities, class struggle, or clashes with ethnicity (although you are free to choose some other topic that moves you). Using Brecht's characteristics of epic theater, write a story or play that utilizes some of these elements.

• Use of a narrator or character that "breaks the fourth wall" (directly addresses the audience)
• Use of montage, as in film, by juxtaposing scenes or episodes; use of parallel action
• Songs or parables with overt political or social messages
• Plots are non-linear, or fragmented
• Scenes are longer or self-contained episodes that create an epic play spanning time
• Actors play various or many parts
• Play is set in the past but comments on contemporary issues
• No use of the unities of time, place, or action (the Unities)
• Non-realistic acting, set, and/or dialogue
• Issues of class or culture, minorities, race, or politics common
• Characters are "types" not necessarily individuals--they represent the collective idea instead
• Signs and placards announce new scenes
• Use of screen projection, music, lack of lighting
• Historical characters are presented in the story (or discussed)
• Names of characters are generic (worker, peasant, doctor, etc.)
• Focus of the play is on a social issue or society, as opposed to individual characters
• Didactic dialogue (purpose is to inform or teach)
• The play requires a good amount of philosophical thought or a philosophical debate or agitation occurs to make the audience think
• Aim is for the representational as opposed to the realistic

Prompt: Should someone who owns a thing have possession of it? Or should someone who uses a thing best hold possession? Relate this to problems of race in our society. Should students, for example, be given every opportunity, even if they do not take advantage of that opportunity? Or should only those who use the opportunity gain benefits from it? Should, for example, immigrants get jobs if the indigenous people lack the skills or interest to hold these jobs? Or vise versa: should immigrants be given privileges (jobs, education, economic stability) that American citizens might lack? Respond in writing.

Prompt: Black Lives Matter. Do they? Why is this such a hot-button topic in the media? Defend your answer, discuss this movement, discuss your own feelings about any race issue you are willing to explore.

Contest: Kill two birds with one assignment...make a short film (due 3/30) for the Real2Reel Youth Film Festival. See flyer for details.

Contest: Write an essay for the Harvard Radcliffe Club of Rochester: on the topic of "who bears the responsibility for a student's education?"

Contest: Geva Young Play Festival. Write or revise a 10-minute play. You might combine a scene from your epic Brechtian play--or combine any of the prompts from above to create a 10-minute play.

Classroom, Period 2:

The Caucasian Chalk Circle. We will continue our reading of the play. Look for elements of Epic theater as we read. Capture the style for your required piece (see above). Jot down ideas or thoughts as we read. Get philosophical.

HOMEWORK: None.