Posted: May 26th, 2015

The Taming of the Shrew

The Taming of the Shrew

All students are responsible for a creative project that relates to one of the plays we read this semester and a topic discussed in your text and/or in class. If you wish to work within a group, this is acceptable but each group member will be responsible for their own creative project and an accompanying essay. The projects can relate to one another but they must also stand on their own.

The project is designed so that you, the student, can actively participate in the creative process of theatre. Theatre is a collaborative art and all of these projects will be designed to highlight that constant communication is an essential part of all theatrical traditions.

The project consists of both presentational and written components.  In addition to the in-class presentation (3-5 minutes per person), each group member will be responsible for a two-page written report about your creative project that specifically addresses the process you took, your research, decision-making, the problems you encountered and the adjustments you made during the course of developing the project.

Assignment:

You are the artistic director/marketing guru/dramaturg for a new Post-modern, Globalized theatre company devoted to challenging the definition of “liveness” and “audience” in theatre. This company takes already existing play texts and inserts social media into the storytelling. You have been asked to design the social media for a production of The Taming of the Shrew.
Using Twitter or Instagram (your choice) you will tell the story of your chosen play through “tweets” or photos which can be broadcast around the world to your followers in order to expand what could be considered live theatre and who can be considered your audience. What is your preferred medium? Words or images? Will you choose one character to be your user persona? Will you make one Twitter or Instagram for each character and create a world in which they interact? Will they use twitter to expose their inner demons? Will they filter their pictures to create a mood or tone of their own life?
This project requires that you creatively depict the life of this/these character with 14 posts in chronological order. What is important in this play? How does the character experience that through social media? What images and photo-ops do they encounter? How do they express themselves with only 140 characters or less?
These words and images must be all original; no quotes from the play and no pre-existing photos. You must do research about the characters, read analysis by scholars, learn about the time period and culture you wish to depict and then translate this to your posts creatively. This project should supplement the actual play, meaning you are not required to tell the exact story through your posts but create a parallel world where these characters are able to engage in social media and create an online persona and online life for themselves. You are constructing another reality online, live to a potentially infinite audience—the theatre of social media. Use chapters 1 & 2 of THINK Theatre to truly incorporate Globalization, Post-Modernism, and the audience in to this project.
Your essay will discuss specifically, your research process, the specific reason for each tweet and image, and why. Special attention must be given to how you used social media to define the character’s personality and illuminate certain aspects of that character which you find to be most important as well as how social media served to emphasize the world of the play.