YEAR PLAN

Year plan

Below is a schedule for the year’s content. Plan carefully and allow enough time for revision. The Via Afrika Dramatic Arts Learner’s Book is divided into journeys rather than chapters or modules. We will study all journeys except journey 6 (Contemporary Pan-African Theatre), journey 9 (Theatre of the Far East), journey 10 (Contemporary American Theatre) and journey 11 (Expressionist Theatre). It would, however, be to your benefit to read these journeys and get to know these types of theatre. Refer to the year plan below to know

when to study which journey.

Week 1 – 4

Realism and Stanislavski (18 hours)

Journey 5 Term 1

Week 5 – 6

Play text: Realism – Death of a Salesman (8 hours)

Journey 4, 5 and

Prescribed Texts Guide Week 7 – 9 Week 10 or 11

Voice and body work (10 hours) PAT (50) Term test (50)

Journey 1 and 2

Week 1 – 4

South African Theatre (20 hours)

Journey 6 Term 2

Week 5 – 6

Play text: South African Theatre – Boesman and Lena (8 hours)

Journey 4, 6 and

Prescribed Texts Guide Week 7 – 8 Week 9 – 10 or 11

Physical theatre performance (8 hours) PAT (50) June examination Theory (150) Practical (150)

Journey 3

Week 1 – 4

Stylised Theatre: Elizabethan Theatre (16 hours)

Journey 8 Term 3

Week 5 – 7

Play text: Elizabethan Theatre – Romeo and Juliet (14 hours)

Journey 4, 8 and

Prescribed Texts Guide Week 8 Week 9 – 10 or 11

Director and designer in theatre or film (6 hours) PAT (50) Term test (50)

Journey 12 and 13

Week 1 – 3

Poor Theatre (12 hours)

Journey 14 Term 4

Week 4 – 5

Revision and consolidation (8 hours)

All the work done throughout the year Week 6 – 7 Week 8 – 10 or 11

Preparation of practical work (10 hours) November examination Theory (150) Practical (150)

Realism Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

Learning aims

After completing this section (in this guide, as well as the learner’s book), you should be able to:

 Analyse Death of a Salesman according to the dramatic principles.  Understand the context and background: sociopolitical, religious, economic, artistic, and historical events relevant to the play.  Design elements: sound and visuals of the play including decor, properties, sound, lighting, etc.  Placement of the text on the stage – direction and design.  Audience reception – past and present.

Study

Read the text of Death of a Salesman (as many times as possible), study the notes in this guide and Journey 5: Realism in the Theatre.

You may also benefit from watching the play on YouTube:

ACT 1: https://goo.gl/x6SYwY ACT 2: https://goo.gl/J7tojP

Please note that although all URLs in this guide have been shortened, they will still direct to the required page.

Important terminology

Term Definition

Adonis An extremely handsome young man. anaemia A condition in which there is a deficiency of red cells or haemoglobin in the blood, resulting in pallor and weariness. babble Talk rapidly and continuously in a foolish, excited, or incomprehensible way. blow (Informal) To boast or brag. buck up (Informal) To cheer up. buckle down Tackle a task with determination. calibre The quality of someone’s character or the level of their ability. chippie (Slang) A promiscuous young woman or a prostitute. cut and dried Of a situation that is completely settled. a dime a dozen Very common and of no particular value. A hero of superhuman strength and courage who performed twelve immense Hercules tasks or ‘labours’ imposed on him and who after death was ranked among the gods. ignoramus An ignorant and stupid person. incipient Beginning to happen or develop. lick (Informal) To overcome, vanquish or control. louse (Slang) A person regarded as mean, contemptible. mutt A mixed-breed dog; an insult if applied to an individual. philander To engage in passing love affairs, make love insincerely. requiem A Mass for the souls of the dead; any musical service, hymn or dirge for the dead. ruddiness A red or reddish colour or complexion. ruin To deprive (a woman) of chastity. saccharine Relating to or containing sugar; excessively sweet or sentimental. simonise To wax or polish a car, from the trademark Simonise Polish. strudel A kind of pastry; here the term refers to a prostitute. surly Bad-tempered, sullenly rude, hostile and uncivil. thunderstruck Struck with amazement.

tired to death

undercurrent

worm

An expression meaning exhausted. Here the phrase can also be interpreted literally because Willy has attempted suicide several times and is planning to try again. An underlying tendency or opinion. Usually kept hidden and not expressed openly. An abject, wretched or contemptible person.

The playwright – Arthur Miller (1915 – 2005)

‘The plays are my autobiography. I can’t write plays that don’t sum up where I am. I’m

in all of them. I don’t know how else to go about writing.’1

Most people who have heard of Arthur Miller know him as the author of Death of a Salesman and the playwright who was once married to Marilyn Monroe. What most people don’t know about him is that he was a master carpenter. He made furniture, including the desk he wrote on. He was as proud of his tables as he was of anything he had ever written.2

Arthur Asher Miller was born in Harlem, New York City on 17 October 1915. His father ran a clothing business which went bankrupt and placed great financial strain on his family. Miller attended a Hebrew school. As a child, he loved ice-skating and football. He woke up at 04:30 in the morning and delivered freshly baked bread on his bicycle before going to school. As a student at the University of Michigan, he was very poor and would help in the kitchen of a local restaurant in exchange for meals. He graduated in 1934, and briefly joined the Federal Theatre, an organisation designed to give work to unemployed writers, actors, directors and designers.

In 1948, Miller built a small studio in Connecticut and it was there where he wrote Act 1 of Death of a Salesman in one day. Within six weeks, the entire play was written. In 1949, Miller took the train from Penn Station in New York to Philadelphia for the auditions of a strange new play he had originally thought of calling The Inside of His Head. From early on, the work demanded a completely different stage solution. It would be realistic of course, but realism with a difference. No one involved in the original production of Death of a Salesman (as the play was eventually called), least of all Miller, was sure that the gamble on a new way of theatre would work.

When the curtain came down on the first performance at the Locust Theatre in Philadelphia, followed by too many moments of awkward silence, the tension, as Miller relates in his autobiography, was palpable and real. A lot was at stake, not only for Miller, but ‘for the future of the American theatre.’ There was, finally, thunderous applause, followed by the oddest thing of all: ‘men and women wept openly’ and after the applause died down, ‘members of the audience refused to leave and started talking to complete strangers about how deeply they had been affected by the play.’ Miller, who thought he had written a tough, hard-hitting expose of the dangerous and deceptive myth of ‘making it in America’, was entirely unprepared for the emotional punch the play delivered in performance. His play had found a life of its own. The work, Miller said, ‘is written from the sidewalk instead of from a skyscraper.’3 It won a Tony Award for Best Author, the New York Circle Critics’ Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Drama becoming the first play to win all three these prestigious awards. The play would eventually run for 742 performances.

1 Newbold, S., 2008, York Theatre Royal, Teacher’s Resource Pack, p. 6 2 Brater, E., 2005, Arthur Miller: A playwright’s life and woks, Thames and Hudson, p. 7 3 Brater, E., 2005, Arthur Miller: A playwright’s life and woks, Thames and Hudson, p. 43