What do you think happened to the bird? Why is it central to the play?

FIRST

BEFORE YOU READ THE PLAY ` READ SUSAN GLASPELL’S BIO:
Susan Glaspell (1876-1948) is known primarily as the author of Trifles, the frequently anthologized, classic feminist play. But Glaspell wrote over fifty short stories, nine novels, fourteen plays, and one biography. Her plays received better reviews than those of Eugene O’Neill, and in 1931 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her play Alison’s House.
Glaspell was the co-founder with her husband George Cram Cook of the Provincetown Players (1916-1922), the Little Theatre that did most to promote American dramatists.
She had never liked to feel controlled or limited; born in Davenport, Iowa, in 1876, she rebelled against society’s expectations and, rather than passively wait for a husband to appear, went to Drake University in Des Moines, graduating in June of 1899, and then worked as a reporter for the Des Moines Daily News. She did meet and marry a man who shared her passions. George Cram Cook had given up a promising university career to try his hand at truck farming and socialism. Gossip provoked them to move East to settle in Greenwich Village where they found other free-thinking liberals and radicals in both politics and art: the ideal breeding-ground for their experiments in theatre.
Source: The International Susan Glaspell Society – A TLTC Blog About Susan Glaspell | The International Susan Glaspell Society (shu.edu)

QUESTION

DB: TRIFLES by Susan Glaspell
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10 unread replies.
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10 replies.
Give your thoughts on the questions below and then reply to at least one other classmate post:
What do you think happened to the bird? Why is it central to the play?
How does knowing the time this play was written and information on the playwright help understand why this play was considered highly controversial when first produced although you might find it a bit “dated”? Can a production today still be relevant anywhere in the world?
Discuss the way the men are portrayed versus the women in this play…any differences?

SECOND
Here is the link to the play by David Ives written in 1988 ~ SURE THING
sure thing david ives script 101 fall 2007 (blanckd.yolasite.com)
(Links to an external site.)
BEFORE READING PLAY READ DAVID IVES BIO
David Ives is probably best known for his evenings of one-act comedies called All in the Timing and Time Flies. All in the Timing won the Outer Critics Circle Playwriting Award, ran for two years Off-Broadway, and in the 1995-96 season SURE THING (one of the one-acts in AitT) was the most performed play in the country after Shakespeare productions. David Ives is the author of three young-adult novels: Monsieur Eek, Scrib, and Voss, and he has adapted 32 American musicals for New York City’s beloved Encores! series. A graduate of the Yale School of Drama and a former Guggenheim Fellow in playwriting, he lives in New York City. Two quotes from David Ives:
“With my plays, when the lights go down, at least the audience isn’t thinking, ‘Oh, God, two more hours of this.”
“Learning to write for the theatre is learning to be a human being, because the theatre by its very nature makes you deal with other human beings.”
Source: Broadway World online https://www.broadwayworld.com/people/bio/David-Ives

QUESTION
Give your thoughts about the questions and then reply to at least one classmate.
In the late 1980’s and since in America, SURE THING has been one of the most attended plays of any besides Shakespeare. One reason is that is has been done by so many high schools and colleges in addition to professional theatres.
What are some reasons you think it has been such a favorite to produce?
Would this play have been written exactly the same iin 1916? Why/why not?
While it is still a fun script to act in and to watch, SURE THING now has some problems when being looked at through the lenses of diversity, inclusion, and multiculturalism. When written, Ives did not mean to be offensive but in what ways could some people understandably take issue with parts of the script?

THIRD

Here is the link to the play written by Edward Albee in 1959 ~ The Sandbox:
The Sandbox by Edward Albee (ub.ac.id)
(Links to an external site.)
FEFORE READING THE PLAY — READ ALBEE’S BIO:
Born on March 12, 1928, in Washington, D.C., Edward Albee was adopted as an infant by Reed Albee, the son of Edward Franklin Albee, a powerful American Vaudeville producer. Brought up in an atmosphere of great affluence, he clashed early with the strong-minded Mrs. Albee who attempted to mold him into a respectable member of the Larchmont, New York social scene. But the young Albee refused to be bent to his mother’s will, choosing instead to associate with artists and intellectuals whom she found, at the very least, objectionable.
At the age of twenty, Albee moved to New York’s Greenwich Village where he held a variety of odd jobs including office boy, record salesman, and messenger for Western Union before finally hitting it big with his 1959 play, The Zoo Story, the story of a drifter who acts out his own murder with the unwitting aid of an upper-middle-class editor. Along with other early works such as The Sandbox (1959) and The American Dream (1960), The Zoo Story effectively gave birth to American absurdist drama. Albee was hailed as the leader of a new theatrical movement and labeled as the successor to Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Eugene O’Neill. He is, however, probably more closely related to the likes of such European playwrights as Beckett and Harold Pinter. Although they may seem at first glance to be realistic, the surreal nature of Albee’s plays is never far from the surface. His best known play is Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962).
Albee describes his work as “an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, and emasculation and vacuity, a stand against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen.

QUESTION
Give your thoughts on the questions below then respond to at least one classmate post.
This short one-act play is a cross between Satire and Theatre of the Absurd. It is a very comical take on a couple of very serious themes. Seeing these themes in dramatic full-length plays would be very different experiences.
What do you find to be the main theme underlying this absurdist satirical comedy? What important issue did Albee bring to light that wasn’t being dealt with very well when it was written?
Why do you think Albee used this way to present his thoughts and feelings on a subject he found to be personal? He also wrote very serious dramas so it wasn’t that he only wrote comedies.
Would as many audience members have gone to the theatre in the 1960’s to see a long serious play about this topic – as saw it as a short comedy,, do you think? What are some reasons for your answer?
Has your family had to deal with the issue presented in this play? It is a very relevant topic today and changes have been made since this play was written in how it is handled.

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