English Activity

INSTRUCTIONS We’ve just read Nella Larsen’s novella--the kind of work that is in between a short story and a novel--shortly after looking at a play by Lorraine Hansberry. This reading activity invites you to think about genre, specifically what changes and what doesn’t when a work takes on a different form. You’ll think about how you could adapt part of Nella Larsen’s Passing into a scene of a play for audiences today, considering how the decisions you make in writing the scene would bring out important themes, ideas, or meanings. In this workshop, please complete the following steps: 1. Choose one passage from Passing that you are interested in adapting into a scene lasting approximately 3-5 minutes of a play version of Passing for modern audiences, and give some brief identifying information for the passage (e.g., opening and closing sentences and page numbers). There are no length requirements, in particular, for the passage that you select, but please keep the length of the scene in mind as you make your choice. You’ll want enough content to fill the time. Otherwise, think about a scene from the novela that you find interesting, powerful, or significant and one that you think would work well as part of a play. There is no writing to do for this step aside from identifying the passage from Passing briefly. 2. Present the script you’ve written for your adaptation of the passage above into a 3-5 minute scene of a play. Here is your opportunity to flex your creative muscles. Your job in this section is to show how you would adapt the passage into a scene of a play. Use our class copy of A Raisin in the Sun as a model for this, and write out the scene you have imagined, including any and all theatrical elements that you would like to include such as stage directions, settings, costumes, dialogue, props, lighting, etc. You may add and change words or sentences to Nella Larsen’s original work, if you like, but this is not required: do try to be faithful in your adaptation to your understanding of Larsen’s work. You may also use Larsen’s direct wording in your script. As you’ll soon see, there are many interesting decisions that playwrights and directors make for a stage production, and each decision represents a small interpretation of the work. Think about which themes or layers of meaning in the passage you want your scene to bring out, and design your scene accordingly. Feel free, by the way, to try something experimental or avant garde here, if you would like to. This is your space to create! Rather than a length requirement in terms of sentences (since scenes can differ based on what information you include), I’ll ask you to design a 3-5 minute scene. 3. Analyze your own scene in terms of thematic and figurative meaning: Now that you’ve spent significant time adapting a passage of Passing into a well-crafted scene, take a moment to interpret your own work of art. Focus on some specific decisions you’ve made in your scene above to emphasize thematic or figurative meaning in Passing. Did you add something interesting to the scene in terms of stage directions, for instance? Did you make some choices in presenting the scene as a dialogue or in including (or not) a narrator? How did costuming or lighting or pacing of the scene affect your interpretation of what’s happening to the characters in the novella? Try to think in terms of figurative significance and messages: rather than stating, for instance, that you wanted to bring out the theme of “racial identity,” explain what you wanted to show about racial identity, according to Larsen, and how the passage from the novella invites this kind of a reading. Feel free, of course, to quote from your own scene and from the novella to show the figurative meaning you discuss. Please give an interpretive analysis of your scene in five to ten sentences. The literature for this assignment is Passing by Nella Larsen Reading Activity 1. Give some brief identifying information for the passage from Passing that you have chosen to adapt into a 3-5 minute scene of a play (page number[s] and quick summary or beginning and ending lines): 2. Write below the script for your 3-5 minute scene, including any stage directions, notes about character appearances, and dialogue that you would like to provide. (Use our copy of A Raisin in the Sun as a guide for how play scripts look, and see the prompt on the first page of this doc for instructions and elements you might choose to focus on in your script): 3. Give an analysis of your scene above, explaining how decisions that you’ve made as a playwright emphasize certain thematic or figurative meanings that you see in Passing. (5-10 sentences):