Lesson Overview:

This lesson explores structural and technical devices of the "memory" play by focusing on a Tennessee Williams' masterpiece, The Glass Menagerie. Students will examine the concept of memory, first from a personal perspective, and then as an element of modern American drama.

Length of Lesson:

Five to six 45-minute class periods

Instructional Objectives:

Students will:

• become aware of innovative techniques that translate the inner workings of the human mind into art expression.
• experience growth in the writing process, oral skills, skills of research, contextual analysis, and collaboration.
• gain deepened insight into ways historical and cultural contexts shape themes and forms in art expression.
• recognize the widespread impact of philosophical and psychological theory in transforming themes and forms of art genres.
• understand and appreciate the dramatic power playwrights can achieve using non-linear "memory" structure to build their plays.
• view drama as a vehicle of social conscience.

Instructional Plan:

Preparatory Assignment

Prior to teaching this lesson, distribute the Vocabulary Handout and have the students research the forces contributed to changes in the American economic, political, sociological, philosophical and cultural landscapes in the last half of the 19th and in the 20th century. Divide the class in collaborative groups and have them select a topic to research.

Encourage students to draw from past work in history, literature, art, science, music classes, etc. to build an overview of the time period. Also, encourage students to divide their topic into sub-topics, and have each member of the group research and analyze one of the segments.

Topic Suggestions:

• a brief definition of key ideas of Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung (evolution as "progress"; the impact of heredity and environment; "survival of the fittest"; Social Darwinism; the divided consciousness: ego, id, super-ego; racial memory; the inward and outward personality of the individual, etc.)
• a definition and brief background on the role of the "drummer" in American society.
• a probe of the implications inherent in the terms "Victorianism," "Puritanism," and "Southern Puritanism" as influences on the outlook of American society
• brief definitions of the late 19th and early 20th century literary movements: Realism and Naturalism as reactions to Romanticism and as extensions of the influences of Charles Darwin, Spencer, Marx, Freud, and Jung
• experiments in innovative art forms dedicated to capturing the new "reality" of a changed world ; for instance, the Imagists, Symbolists in fiction and poetry; the visual art forms of Impressionism, Expressionism, Surrealism; the extensions of these innovative art forms in music composition and Modern Dance (for instance, the work of Martha Graham)
• some background on the Great Depression of the 1930's and the build-up to World War II, including Franco's Spain.
• the "Cavalier" attitudes, manners and mores of the pre-Civil War South versus those of the "mechanized" industrial antebellum South
• the impact of the Industrial Revolution on the realignment of the American rural/urban population

Have students present their findings to the class.

Warm Up

The "memory" play is a very successful non-linear structural pattern in modern American drama. The following activity is designed to help students understand the use of and appreciate the power of memory to build structure in drama.

Ask students to close their eyes and call up the memory of one of the following:

• a happy event
• a traumatic event
• a "panoramic" account of a particular summer
• a return to a favorite place of one's childhood
• a weekend afternoon spent with family members
• an intense conversation with a parent
• the encounter of meeting someone you knew in the past

Ask students, with their eyes still closed, to scan their specific memory from the following points of view:

• What are the sensory experiences embedded in the memory? i.e., Is your chosen memory mainly visual? Are you experiencing any audio recall? Tactile? Olfactory? Sense of taste?
• What dominates the memory? Is it the details of the environment? Could it be the personalities of a person or people? The dialogue? The impact of the experience on you at the time it occurred?
• Is your mind making cross-current connections simultaneously from past to present? For instance, are you weighing what kind of a person you were or how you looked then in relation to the person you are now and how you look in the present?
• Are all faces in your memory equally dominant? Or are one or two faces the main center of the recall - almost larger than life—and others subordinated in the background?
• Do you remember all the names of people surfacing in the memory? Or do the names of just one or two who appear in your mind stream?
• Is your memory in color or black and white? If in color, are some colors more vibrant than others are?
• Is there any special focus in your memory on a real object; for instance, a painting, a sofa, a car, a swing on a playground?
• Does something in the initial memory kick you off into a whole new memory? What do you think is the trigger?

Ask students now to open their eyes and record, in free-style writing, specifics from their memory based on the above scan and from any other aspect in their recall.

Encourage students to share some of their memories and points of analysis of their scan.

Ask the students whether or not any immediate thoughts or outside sounds from the present environment intruded or were simultaneously operating in their consciousness during the memory. Note: You may wish to contrive a distraction during the exercise, such as dropping a book, to interrupt the stream of the students' memory.

Arrange students in small collaborative groups. Ask each group to initiate an open-ended discussion about the processes of the mind, drawing from their individual scans to negotiate some conclusions about the following:

• Does the mind operate with simultaneous threads of experience - threads of memory pulsating at the same time the mind is processing extrinsic experience, weighing options, anticipating and/or conjecturing future experience?
• During intense concentration - evoked perhaps by coping with strong emotional response, facing a difficult decision, or dealing with a traumatic situation - does the mind become more one-dimensional, shutting out other forces and compulsively concentrating on one thing or problem?
• How "selective" is memory? Are only the good things remembered? Is memory built on illusions about what has happened in the past? Or does it recall things exactly the way they happened?
• What are some of the effects of memory? (Does it disturb? Support? Reaffirm? etc.)

Have the students share their ideas in a large group discussion.

The Memory Play

Tell the students that post-World War II many American playwrights began to tap into the power of memory as a narrative device. Influenced by the forces that were shaping American society, especially the psychoanalytical concepts of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, these playwrights used the concept of memory to fuel non-linear plots and intense character development.

One of these playwrights was Tennessee Williams, whose Glass Menagerie is one of the seminal pieces of American theatre. Refer students to the Biographical Information of Tennessee Williams handout.

Divide the class into play reading groups for oral reading of The Glass Menagerie. Ask that one member of the group be selected to take on the responsibility of Director, assigning roles for oral reading of the play and realigning the assignments to have different voices project the characterizations.

Initiate the small-group play reading activity with a large-group discussion of students' perceptions of the terms "linear" and "non-linear." You may wish to examine Williams' stage set description in large group format to help clarify the term "non-linear." Encourage students to differentiate the "non-real" and "actual" properties of the set as described by Williams in his Scene I set description.

Distribute a study sheet that gives some specific suggestions for ways to examine the play as the reading moves forward. Encourage each group to collect notes as they negotiate conclusions about the questions. Advise students that notes could be valuable for later discussion and writing assignments.

Have students answer one or more of the study questions from the Study Questions Handout in a short essay, and conduct a follow-up discussion on the topic of Williams' use of memory as a narrative and dramatic device. Draw the students back to their preliminary research and ask them whether they think the play is reflective of and/or responsive to the changes in post-World War II American society.

Using Memory to Create Drama

Divide students into working partners. Ask each student to return to the memory he or she recalled in the Warm-up activity. Assign each pair the task of developing a written script that emulates Williams' structural, non-linear pattern, giving attention to the following guidelines:

• frame the memory with a narrator (yourself or another person in the memory)
• recreate the "real" details of the environment of the memory
• develop dialogue for key elements of the memory
• build in specific directions for "non-real" ("unconventional") devices that will help externalize the memory for the reader/viewer

Note: Depending on time allotment, each pair could "co-author" one of the partners' memories, a script of a memory of both partners, or perhaps blend the two memories together as episodes within the framework of one narrator.

Ask students to select one or more of the scripts to be dramatized for the class.

Assessment:

Assess the students based on the following criteria:

• level of serious and cooperative participation in research and collaborative assignments
• level of discernment in contributions from research and to collaborative work
• substantive contributions to class discussion and special projects
• range and depth in analysis
• evidence of creative thinking
• organization, meaningful substance, rhetorical skill, and poise in formal oral presentation
• thoughtful response in pre-writing, pre-discussion "brainstorming" activities
• seriousness of purpose in following through on creative writing assignments
• solid preparation for performance activities
• alignment of written performance with good practices of the writing process
• willingness to volunteer for special activities
• general level of engagement in all activities and assignments

Extensions:

As a culminating experience, if time allows, teachers may want to show students clips of the videocassette of The Glass Menagerie (1987 version).

Sources:

Print:

• Background material and readings on theories of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung
• Background material on the new art forms (Impressionism; Expressionism; Surrealism, etc.) and literary movements Realism; Naturalism) emerging in last half of the 19th century
• Plays of Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg; Anton Chekhov; fiction of D.H. Lawrence (as influences on Miller and Williams)
• Falk, Signi Lenea. Tennessee Williams. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc. 1961.
• Gunn, Drewey. Tennessee Williams. Scarecrow Press, 1991.
• Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. New American Library Trade, 1987.

Authors:

• Jayne Karsten, English, Grades 9-12
  The Key School
  Annapolis, MD US