1. GENERAL HEADING: Live Performance Analysis

2. TITLE OF EXERCISE: "Staging: Elaborate vs. Minimalist"

3 GOALS: To encourage awareness of cultural pressures affecting production choices.

4. NUMBER OF STUDENTS: N.A.

5. EQUIPMENT AND SUPPLIES: If possible, actors, directors, set and costume designers from productions seen by the class.

6. CLASS TIME NEEDED: N.A.

7. STEP-BY-STEP DESCRIPTION: Take the class to view (or watch videotapes of) two productions of the same play, the first thoroughly "designed" (for example, the Shakespeare Theatre's Macbeth) and the second bare stage (i.e., ACTER's Macbeth).

Have students prepare 5 questions for each of the visitors, pertaining to his or her role in the production process.

Go around the circle so that each student can ask one of the prepared questions of one or more of the visitors.

After the visitors have gone, discuss what is gained and lost as a result of these different production approaches.

8. POINTS FOR OBSERVATION, DISCUSSION: How do the different production approaches affect the roles of the actors, the director, and especially the playgoer?

9. SOURCE/REFERENCE: Alan Dessen and Audrey Stanley

10. ADDITIONAL READING: N.A.

11. VARIATIONS: N.A.