1. EN107: WEEK THREE Roots (cont’d), A Taste of Honey

2. Roots wrap-up Part One

3. Structured reading exercise: Roots  You’ve been assigned one element of the play to read  Take five minutes, and select two striking moments from the play that illustrate the element you’ve been given  Remember mid-level exegesis: moving from detail to larger, abstracted claim about play

4. [pg. 43 scan]

5. Time  Why does Roots describe significant numbers of events occurring beyond the time of the play?  Why is it significant that time “drag[s] heavy” for Mrs Bryant? (pg 43)  What is the curtain doing act the end of each scene? What does it interrupt, and why

6. The story, the letter, the ending  What is the purpose of the story Beatie tells on pg. 82?  What is happening at the play’s ending (pg. 90-1)?  Why is the play called Roots?

7. [pg. 82 scan]

8. [pg. 90 scan]

9. Roots and Look Back in Anger  What is the significance of noise in both plays? (cf. Roots pg. 45)  Why do both plays take place in confined spaces? (cf. Mrs Bryant’s speech on pg. 88)

10. [pg. 88 scan]

11. Roots and A Taste of Honey  What work does popular song do in each play?  A note on elements (songs, illustrations, characters) brought into plays from other plays: they often comment on action occurring in play  When do Helen and Jo control popular song?  When does it control them?

12. A Taste of Honey Part Two

13. Another Layer: Metatheatre  Variety of terms: alienation, distancing  Fourth wall as test  What this means:  Are the characters aware that they are in a play?  Does the diegesis—the play’s sense of its own world— stay consistent, or is it interrupted by references to the play being a play?  Think of this as a continuum, something like an axis  Diegesis completely stable  -----------------------------------------  Play totally self-aware as play

14. Realism and Metatheatre  How are the stage directions different in A Taste of Honey than in Roots?  Remembering the complexities of realism…  What is realistic about A Taste of Honey, and where is this realism interrupted?  Why does the play make these choices? What overall effect is suggested?

15. Stage directions  What are s.d. like in A Taste of Honey? (take a few minutes and have a look, if necessary)  What is space like in A Taste of Honey?  How to approach this question: Note how the s.d. describe the space of the play What is onstage, and what is offstage? How are they related? Can characters move easily around the stage, or are they somehow restricted? Note how characters make use of this space

16. Storytelling  What are the gaps or inconsistencies in Jo’s stories? In Helen’s?  What can we make of these?  How are these related to the play’s metatheatrical elements? I might say specifically: to the elements brought into the play from outside of it?

17. Culture  What is the “third-rate” in Roots? How does it appear in A Taste of Honey?  “An English girl born and bred and I couldn’t talk the language—except for to buy food and clothes” (Roots, 23)  What does Beatie mean?  Do the characters in A Taste of Honey speak the language of their country, in the sense that Beatie intends? Why or why not?