Blog #30. "I Mean—We Are Very Proud People." A Raisin In The Sun, Act Three.

I was just watching the last act from the Kenny Leon television production starring Sean Combs as Walter. Compared to Danny Glover, Combs is a much quieter performance, but powerful nonetheless. We'll look at both performances in the next couple days.

A few final questions as we finish this most magisterial of American plays. But first, take a look at the scene from the original 1959 production starring the great Sydney Poitier, Claudia McNeil as Lena, Ruby Dee (whom we'll see again next week in Do The Right Thing) as Ruth, Diana Sands as Beneatha, Glenn Turman (for you Wire fans, he played the mayor in the first couple seasons, the one defeated by the white councilman Carcetti), and John Fielder as Lindner (he shows up again in the 1984 revival). Watch the first three minutes, then skip ahead to 6:25 and watch the rest. I find it strangely dated, but maybe you'll disagree. We'll watch the same scenes from the Bill Duke and Kenny Leon productions in the next couple days.

So:

1. Why Joseph Asagai? What role do you see him playing here? Why put him in here and give him such prominence in Act Three?

2. The ending of the play has been read by many as a "happy"ending. Is it? Why or why not?

3. What line in Act Three jumped out at you, and why so?

That's it. See you all tomorrow. (By the way, it's been reported—notice the passive voice—that this play is the only work by an African-American that high school students read. Is that true? I'll follow up on this in the next couple days.)

Blog #29. "That Money Is Made Out Of My Father's Flesh." A Raisin In The Sun Act Two, Scenes 2 and 3.

In thinking about the play this morning, I came to marvel at the way Lorraine Hansberry managed to incorporate as many disparate voices in it as she did. There's the family itself, as we've talked about. But then there is George Murchison (who leaves the play with such a sweet kiss off from Lena); there is Mrs. Johnson, who was cut from many revivals of the play; there is Mr. Lindner, the reasonable representative from the Clybourne Park Improvement Association; there is Asagai, who will return in Act Three. It's as if Hansberry put all of America—at least the America the Youngers would encounter—on the stage. It's not always a pretty picture.

I hope everyone had a good, relaxing break. To start off our conversation tomorrow and for the next couple days, address the following questions.

1. For the girls only.  Imagine the play without Mrs. Johnson (as it was for many years, as noted above). What would we miss by her absence? What does she bring to the play? Go ahead and quote from the play in your answer. Try to not repeat each other—add to the discussion with your comments.

1. For the boys only. Also cut in the original production and revivals that followed (it's missing from both the Bill Duke production we've been watching as well as the Kenny Leon television production with Sean Combs and Audra MacDonald which we'll glimpse at in the next couple days) is the scene at the end of scene two between Walter and Travis. Just as I asked the girls, imagine the play without this scene.  What would miss by its absence? What does it bring to the play? Go ahead and quote from the play in your answer. As always, try to not repeat each other—add to the discussion with your comments.

2. For everyone. Perhaps the most gut wrenching scene in the entire play occurs at the end of Act Two. You know which one—when Walter, when the whole family, discovers what happened to the $6500 dollars Lena entrusted to him. You reaction to the scene? Your reaction to Walter?

3. Finally, the aftermath to the scene with Lindner (this never gets cut). Look at pages 119-121, from Walter kicking the white man out to Lena's "It expresses ME!"  What strikes you about the way the Youngers deal with the first overt racism we see in the play?  Go ahead and quote from the scene (and everyone, do not use the same quote).

That's it. See you all tomorrow for the final push to finals. There will be a quiz on Tuesday,  the assignment of an out-of-class paper in the next couple days, and a revised schedule to take us to Christmas.

Blog #28. "Mama, There Ain't No Colored People Living In Clybourne Park." A Raisin in the Sun, Act Two, Scene 1.

Talk about what goes around...A little over 50 years after A Raisin in the Sun was first produced, playwright Bruce Norris writes a sequel of sorts to Hansberry's play. Clybourne Park is the unfriendly neighborhood where Lena has put down a payment for a house. Norris's play looks at the effect of their coming on the white people living in the neighborhood...and then looks at the effect of a white couple moving into what is now a black neighborhood fifty years later. The play was a smash on Broadway and won both a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize. Proof for us that the waters that roil in Hansbery's play still bubble today.

Just a couple questions for tonight's reading.

1. What moment or line int he scene particularly grabbed you or struck you? And why?

2. Period Two: look at the scene between Walter and Ruth on 87-89. This gives us a new way of looking at the couple, given what we we've been seeing. What do you think happened to their marriage? Why is Walter so cruel to his wife? And why is Ruth so forgiving? Obvious questions probably, but worth acknowledging so we can move past the Walter is a mean husband reaction many have had.

2. Period Five: goodness, Lena bought a house! Their problems are over! Okay, I'm being sarcastic. How doesn't this potential move their problems? There are obvious reasons, of course, but consider too the less obvious problems associated with a move to Clybourne Park.

I understand that there will be overlap—there are only so many answers—but again, try to bring something new to your response: add to what your classmates say, look at what is implicit or not yet brought out by the other answers.

See you all tomorrow.

Blog #27. "Once Upon A Time Freedom Used To Be Life—Now It's Money." A Raisin In The Sun, Act One, Scene Two.

MAMA. Son—how come you talk so much 'bout money?
WALTER. Because it is life, Mama!
MAMA. Oh—now it's life. Money is life. Once upon a time freedom used to be life—now it's money. I guess the world really do change...
WALTER. No—it was always about money, Mama. We just didn't know about it. (74)

Money. Freedom. We can't away from these two subjects in this class. I didn't necessarily plan it that way, and I know damn sure that Scott Fitzgerald did not have a talk with Arthur Miller, David Mamet, John Jay Osborn Jr., nor Lorraine Hansberry about money and freedom and the American Dream. How can one talk about American without talking about money and freedom?

1. Let's keep this simple. Everybody respond to this question: looking at this exchange above and the response that Mama gives to Walter, and then Walter's anguished "You just don't understand, Mama, you just don't understand," who do you think is right—Lena or Walter? You've been saying for days that Americans are predisposed to be selfish and self-serving, driven by the desire for more money—that's just the way it is—yet here is Lena running a different narrative. And Hansberry refuses to answer the debate. So go ahead and do so.

2. Period Two: Would you comment on Joseph Asagai or the rat scene with Travis? What is its purpose, in your mind, in the play? And your response to the particular scene? Please don't simply repeat or agree with what others say—try to bring a new perspective or add to the conversation being made.

2. Period Five: Would you comment on Lena's reaction to the check finally coming or on Ruth's visit to the woman and putting a five-dollar down payment on an abortion? What is its purpose, in your mind, in the play? And your response to the particular scene? Please don't simply repeat or agree with what others say—try to bring a new perspective or add to the conversation being made.

Okay, guys. I hope you're enjoying the play. I've read it several times and still find it strikingly moving and complex. We'll look at Danny Glover as Walter tomorrow (and maybe in the coming days P-Diddy as Walter—he's not bad). See you tomorrow.

Blog #26, "What Is It That's Changing?" A Raisin In The Sun, Act One, Scene One.

"No—there's something come down between me and them that don't let us understand each other and I don't know what it is. One done almost lost his mind thinking 'bout money all the time and the other done commence to talk about things I can't seem to understand in no form or fashion."

This is Lena Younger at the end of scene one and it seems to me that her words capture perfectly the zeitgeist in which the play existed. Hansberry's play was first performed in 1959, the first play on Broadway written by an African American. The Civil Rights Movement is barely four years old. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is not yet a national figure. Five years later four little girls will be murdered in a bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, and their killers will be acquited (the bomb maker will be eventually convicted in 2001). That same year, three Civil Rights workers in Mississippi are murdered with the help of local law enforcement. Congress passes its first Civil Rights legislation since Reconstruction. And to a great degree it all comes crashing down with the murders of both Dr. King in 1968 and Malcom X in 1965. (Of course, it's all good now, what with a black President and the post-racial age his election inaugurated...)

A Raisin in The Sun is universally hailed as one of the great contemporary American dramas. If this were a class on American theater since World War II, we would most certainly have read this play as well as Miller and Mamet's plays. It's a play that, like Miller and Mamet's plays, attracts the great actors. The original production starred Sydney Poitier and Ruby Dee (Mother Sister, to some of you, in Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing). Poitier was succeeded by Ossie Davis (Ruby Dee's husband and Da Mayor in Do The Right Thing). We'll be watching clips from the 1989 production starring Danny Glover as Walter. And the play was revived on Broadway in 2004 (and made into a television movie)
starring Sean Combs (yes, Puff Daddy—or is it P-Diddy?) as Walter, muti-Tony award winner Audra McDonald (most recently seen on Broadway in the new adaptation of Porgy and Bess) as Ruth, and Mrs. Huxtable herself from The Cosby Show, Phylicia Rashad as Lena. Like Death of a Salesman and Glengarry Glen Ross, A Raisin in The Sun has become a staple in the American dramatic canon. It's a magnificent play, and one that hasn't become dated in the 53 years since its creation. And I, for one, happen to love it.

I know some of you read the play in 10th grade. I hope our study of it will add something new to your understanding of the play. 

All this said, a couple questions:

1. Your reaction to the first scene? Like? Dislike? What draws you in—or what keeps you out?

2. Which character do you find yourself drawn to so far? Which character do you find yourself not drawn to so far? And, in both cases, why?

3. What line(s) in the first scene best captures for you what you think the play is about so far? And why?

Those of you who have read the play, try to the best of your ability to not give spoilers of what hasn't happened yet.

Tomorrow, we'll look at some of the first scene in class. The Death Star is alive again! See you then.

Blog #25. "Big Deal. So I Wasn't Cut Out To Be a Thief. I Was Cut Out To Be A Salesman." End of Glengarry Glen Ross.

Poor Levene. He thought he had it all made...He just never considered that Bruce and Harriet ("Harriet and blah blah Nyborg," in Roma's words) were insane. "They just like talking to salesmen," Williamson. Poor Levene didn't know they were not "talking," but "just talking." It cuts both ways.

Here is Roma's dressing down of Williamson.

And just a little later, Williamson turning Levene in:

And finally, something funny: Kevin Spacey as Williamson telling Aaronow to "go to lunch." How many different ways can this be said?

Cat said at the end of class on Tuesday, having finished the play, that she didn't quite know how to feel about the ending. A mystery is solved—Levene and Moss stole the leads—but at the same time did we ever care about who did the crime? It's just one criminal act among others; and if the others aren't exactly criminal, they are massive ethical breaches. These men have the ethical sense of piranhas. Yet do we end up caring, or at least being interested, in them? Weren't Roma and Levene brilliant in their almost successful scam of Lingk? They were making it up on the spot! And isn't there a part of you that thought Lingk deserved on some level the flogging he was taking—such a pantywaist! Should any of them be ethical in a system and world that has the same ethics as they? Mitch and Murry? Williamson? The contest board? As we said in class, to win in this world, you have to be a winner; and winning is the only thing that matters; and if you are a loser, the system is designed to keep you a loser so the winner can get all the good leads and continue winning...which is a win, above all, for Mitch and Murry. Yes, Roma "wins", but exactly did he really win? The opportunity to scam another sucker?

1. So...what did the end of the play mean for you? Think of the downfall of Levene and specifically the last moment when Roma rushes out of the office back to do "business" at the restaurant. And the final words of Aaronow—the survivor. What do you see Mamet saying with this conclusion? Agree and disagree with each other, of course, but don't simply repeat what others have said.

2. These men are admittedly awful. Yet is Mamet, to you, making them the villains? Is this a play that wants us to think of these men as despicable creatures? Is Mamet indicting them? Yes? No? Why?

3. The line in last night's reading that really stuck with you. And why?

4. Reaction to the play? Like? Dislike? Why?

We'll talk for just a few minutes tomorrow about the program today. Then we'll jump into Mamet.

My favorite line of the reading? The one I used for the heading. It says it all.
 

Blog #24. "What Are You, Friend of The Working Man?" Glengarry Glen Ross Through 72.

What we read in class on Friday: a master salesman at work.

Notice in the conclusion of this below the pamphlet Roma shows Lingk: "Make your dreams come true." In both classes you mentioned that selling really is selling a dream.

A moment from Act Two, Roma and his enlightened racial views:

And finally, where your reading stopped, with Moss's "farewell speech."

Well, these clips do prove that, a. David Mamet has a wicked sense of humor and a way with words, and b. Al Pacino in his prime was the man (Not that Ed Harris nor Jack Lemmon are slouches). The film came out in 1994, and now, almost twenty years later, Pacino, as we know, is spearheading the play's revival, but not as the young hotshot Roma but as the washed up Levine. I personally would love to see this production.

A couple questions to help our discussion over the next couple days.

1. Why salesmen? We talked a little about selling in class, but why make your heroes salesmen, whether its Willy or the men in Mamet or, today, a Don Draper in Mad Men? We may see these men as some of you said in class as "sleazy" or "shysters," but the fact is they don't see themselves this way—Willy didn't and Roma doesn't either. "'I got to argue with you, I got to knock heads with the cops, I'm busting my balls, sell you dirt to fucking deadbeats money in the mattress, I come back you can't even manage to keep the contracts safe, I have to go back and close them again...'" (62). Roma, approve of him or not, is busting his ass: he's working. So what makes, perhaps, the salesman such a resonant figure in contemporary American culture, enough so that three of the great works of popular culture in the last sixty years have put them at their center?

2. What do you think of these men? Are they heroic at all? Are they likeable? Are they good people? Do you care about them? If Miller gave us a tough group of characters to warm up to, arguably Mamet has made it even tougher with these men. Or maybe not. So what's your reaction to the characters here? And why?

3. Reaction to the clips above? Do they make understanding the text and characters easier? Is it the way you heard the dialogue in your head? What particular jumped out at you in one of the clips?

That's enough for now. Remember, quiz tomorrow. See you then.