Henrik Ibsen, 1881
Overview: In A Doll House and Ghosts, Ibsen explored the role of women and men in our society. Sadly, many parallels to our present society are abound, yet there is something dated about the philosophical concepts. Yes, as a society, we have accepted that women and men should have equal rights, for example. However, is this truly happening? Are women paid the same as men for the same occupation? More importantly, what are we seeing with regard to sexual harassment, assault, and rape in the media today? Have you noticed the difference in male and female responses in the media? This goes beyond gender. In what ways has the idea of gender been challenged through the efforts of the LBGTQ community? Also, issues pertaining to race and immigration follow similar blueprints. How would Ibsen have defended them today? How do the efforts of all marginalized groups impact everyone?
Your task will be to explore current issues (like those mentioned above) connected to human rights in and around the world. Have a global focus. Ibsen challenged society through drama. Now it is your turn.
Directions: Each group will research a global issue happening right now. 1) Each student in class will compose a blog response (here), exploring an issue seen in the current media that resembles the ghosts explored by Ibsen. Make direct parallels to what we explored in Ibsen's plays and how we see a new but reminiscent thing happening now. 2) Next, we will form groups and choose one concept to explore in an Ibsen play of your own. The written work will be visual and it will include a performance of a single scene from your play. Carefully read the criteria, below. Best of luck!
Directions: Each group will research a global issue happening right now. 1) Each student in class will compose a blog response (here), exploring an issue seen in the current media that resembles the ghosts explored by Ibsen. Make direct parallels to what we explored in Ibsen's plays and how we see a new but reminiscent thing happening now. 2) Next, we will form groups and choose one concept to explore in an Ibsen play of your own. The written work will be visual and it will include a performance of a single scene from your play. Carefully read the criteria, below. Best of luck!
Ibsen Play Criteria
3) Slideshow Presentation
Below is a guideline for your slideshow. Obviously, you can spread out the slides in any manner you wish. Use video, music, images, drawings - the sky's the limit. Please share these with me so I can evaluate the work after class. Important: Be creative! Here is a list of alternatives to PowerPoint.
- Slide 1: Create a symbolic title for the play.
- Slides 2-3: Develop a statement of purpose with a focus on a global issue about the rights of women/LBGTQ community, immigrants, or another issue of concern (Please, check with me before you begin). Tell us why you are composing this play? What do you hope to teach your audience? How do you expect them to respond? What do you hope to achieve?
- Slide 4: Share a list of characters (Make the cast look like Ibsen).
- Slide 5: What will the stage look like? Include setting, time, place, staging, etc. Again, think Ibsen imagery and design. See the examples on this page.
- Slides 6-8: Develop an outline of the 3-4 acts in your play. Include the basic plot, characters's actions, conflicts, symbols and resolution. Use all of Ibsen's techniques: the characters who develop past their initial stereotypes, couples, the outlier, a shocking ending, etc.
- Slides 9-13: Share your scripted scene so we can all follow along as you perform.
4) Presentation:
Everyone should been an active participant. Perhaps some people give the above presentation, taking turns and the other group members perform. Someone can act as narrator or help explain what is going on and how it will play out your play. Again, play to your strengths as a group.
- Present slides (Be engaging. Do NOT just read off the slides).
- Perform your scene.
John Marshall
ReplyDeleteIn the United States today, one of the most polarizing factors is someone's political beliefs. Whether that is a person's stance on immigration, race, and or gender, politics tend to separate groups of people into sided argumentative forces.
Hate groups are a major power and problem in today's political climate. Though they are very few and far between, their mere existence stirs so much drama within political communities. Hate groups’ purpose is to continually divide people based off of ghosts from many generations prior. Whether these old beliefs are based on a superior race, anti-immigration sentiments, and or strong religious persecution, almost all of them are basically indoctrinated into youth by parents or relatives of these children. These groups hold their political and personal beliefs very near and dear to their hearts so it is very hard to change their minds. This makes hate groups in general very hyper polarizing figures in the political landscape, using their misinformed minds to scare people away from expanding upon their mindsets or expressing their own opinions
I would like to have my scene be a talk behind closed doors, about a man and his boss having a conversation behind closed doors. Behind closed doors, the man is furious that instead of him getting the lead role on the investigation, it was given to a woman named Laura. After some harsh words and ideals, the boss is forced to let the man go. There is no reason you should let things like that get in your head, it only makes things worse and your boss obviously knew what he was doing when making the selection.
ReplyDeleteSomething I am seeing that I don't like is the growing division between the liberals and conservatives. They focus more on their differences than their similarities and, instead of fixing issues, they end up just making new ones. I believe this is because people sign up for political parties when they're 18 and then just identify with whatever that party identifies with and believes whatever that party believes. They don't think critically enough to think about who and what they're voting for. They just check off the box that has their party next to it because they must agree with them. If we do my idea in my group there would be two opposing political leaders running for office who are radical figures on opposite sides of the political spectrum and there would be a young couple with a friend. One person in the couple would side with one leader, and the other would side with the other. They would argue, break up , and join opposing radical political groups while their friend tries to be an intermediary between the two of them. One, if not both, of them will end up in critical condition in a hospital by the end of the play because of the violence happening between the two radical groups. If we're going to move forward as a people we need to be concerned with the division between us, and closing that gap, not widening it because we disagree about things with the other side. We need to be having respectful discussions about the issues, not riots that end in death and destruction.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to explore the idea of equal treatment in the workplace among genders, when a man is being paid more than a woman for the same role. This then starts a divide in the company creating two clear sides to the argument, as a correlation to the great political divide we live amidst. Finally end our play with a debate and vote where one side is outnumbered to display injustice and how somethings are not fair.
ReplyDeleteI think it would be interesting to create a scene about the power struggle between men and women. Specifically in the work environment. A women might not get a job as the manager just because of her gender. Although when women are more successful than men it causes tension because men are so used to having higher power than women. I would like to do a scene on this to show how much has changed with power between men and women.
ReplyDeleteSomething that still is a problem nowadays, that probably will be a problem for a long time, is the view on men. Sure, men have had the right to do and say certain things for a very long time, but there are some things that they can’t do or say. If a father wants to play with his child in the park? He’s probably gonna be thought of as a pedo and the police may be called on him. He wants to go to his child’s dance practice? He’ll get side-eyes from all the mothers there. What if a man is getting abused by his significant other and they’re a women? Most likely he’ll be blamed or asked to leave the property instead. It may not be much, but nowadays, fathers are spending more and more time with their kids and there are several single fathers as well, so I’d think they’d want to not be considered some sort of pedophile when hanging out with their children at the park, or really anywhere outside of their own home. It’s usually even worse if their child is a female.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing that somewhat goes both ways, but mainly males, is fashion. If a male wears heels, even if they’re only a couple of inches? He’s usually preserved as gay, a drag queen, or a weirdo. Same with if they wear anything that’s inherently “female”. Fun fact, heels used to inherently masculine, only males wore them, until females, wanting to be seen as more equal with them, started wearing them, quickly making them a female item.
I think a global Issue that would be good for this or resembles ghosts would be climate change. Climate change would be a good choice because It's not something you can see or will affect you hugely in your day to day life. However it definitely is a more important global issue currently. It relates to Ghosts because it's something not everyone can see but is affecting their lives. It's also something a lot of people ignore and choose to not care or pay attention to, similar to the ghosts in ghosts. Conclusively I think this would be a usable topic for ghosts.
ReplyDeleteEasily one of the biggest problems in the world is how us humans are damaging earth and causing things such as global warming. We need to be more considerate of the environment so we can save earth before it comes back and kills us from the damage we dealt to it. If we slowed down on the gas guzzling we could release less co2 into the atmosphere, allowing the ozone to heal and potentially revive the earth.
ReplyDeletenolan brezinski
Deletean issue in the current media that resembles ghosts by ibsen, would be political conflicts today. That being said it directs parallels to what we explored in Ibsen's plays and how we see a new but reminiscent thing happening now.
ReplyDelete... in the coming year, and the results will define the country for a generation. These are perilous times. Over the last three years, much of what the Guardian holds dear has been threatened – democracy, civility, truth. This US administration is establishing new norms of behaviour. Anger and cruelty disfigure public discourse and lying is commonplace. Truth is being chased away. But with your help we can continue to put it center stage.
jacob mini
DeleteHannah Peck
ReplyDeleteIn the business world, there is a large gap between the pay of women and the pay of men. In today’s world women holding the same position or higher than men aren’t receiving the same dollar amount on their paychecks. Doing the same amount of work and achieving the same goals, the gender is the deciding factor of the amount of money going into the pockets. Ibsen has talked about the roles of parenting between mother and father but never in the workplace, I believe this issue is current in the media and as a woman hoping to get a job after college, I hate to see that because of my gender I could be getting paid a lower amount than if I was a man in holding that position.
One of the crises that is affecting everyones day to day life is the economic crisis in our country. Some people stress about this because sometimes there would be an increase in taxes so they could pay it off easily. Currently we are in debt of 22 trillion dollars. Right now, our GDP is 2.9 percent but because of all of the spending we have been doing it is now listed at 4.4 percent. In 2029, the debt is projected to be around 28 trillion. This would worry americans even more and it would put our country in more of a downfall economically.
ReplyDeleteI would like to talk about climate change. I not exactly sure how though. Maybe I could set it up so there’s a different scientific fact that is being disputed (maybe something obvious, like apples are red or something) and the person in denial just kind of looks bad the whole time. I think that could speak some volumes about my opinion.
ReplyDeleteA problem that spans many generations and continues developing, still today, is racism. Racism is an issue that was created out of a need for one group to feel more powerful than the other, and though there have been many reforms and a lot of people believe that every man was created equal, it is still so easy to see examples in everyday life how there is so much more change that needs to be made. In a class I took last semester, Race and Membership, I learned a lot about what the majority of people are repeatedly missing when looking for inequalities. For example: racial wealth gap (generational), police brutality, perceived roles for minorities, and the government plays in all of this.
ReplyDelete-Regan Grygiel
Kate Lyons
ReplyDeleteOne Ghost that Ibsen never touched upon, is the violence that is shown towards women, wifebeating, rape, child sexual abuse and sexual harassment. Here they are treated as part of a spectrum of violence with the aim of demonstrating that our men still do not respect women in our present day society. These acts impact on and lead to consequences in women’s lives. While violence against women is a conternporary concern, 'first wave' ferninists who carnpaigned and wrote in the nineteenth century were keenly aware of its existence and significance. Violence towards women is not a new topic, because it has been going on for many years, it is a topic that has recently been talked about and something we need to fix.
Rape and sexual assult have always been something that women have suffered but over the years the issue has gotten much worse and more frequent, 70% of women suffer physical or sexual violence. Women who experience sexual assult have higher rates of depression, more likely to get an abortion or have HIV. It starts at childhood if you see your parents in an abusive relationship and you see your father assault your mother, that person is much more likely to show the same acts as their father when they’re older compared to someone who didn't grow up in that type of environment. Men do this to women so they can continue to feel entitled to women and their bodies and ignore their right to consent and I think this would be a good issue to speak upon.
ReplyDelete- Paige B
For my scene I would like to talk about the issues in the workplace and our idea that women should be the only ones taking care of newborns. There is a big difference in the amount of men who are paid more and are in higher positions than women because women generally take a maternity while the husband continues working. For that reason women miss out on a lot of job opportunities and don't receive any promotions because of their absence. Obviously there are other reasons for the difference in pay but I feel like this is a big factor.
ReplyDeleteIn today's world there are so many ghosts, good and bad, that we dwell upon. One on which too many people lean towards is politics. Unfortunately politics has affected the way people think of others and there abilities. Ethnicity, color, and gender all play a major role as well. There is always an ongoing fight between the left and right side, liberals and conservatives. Most people like to stick to their values and tend to be offended by and idea contrary but there are others who are also flexible. Many people here in the U.S are pretty stubborn when it comes to being respectful of others views and then you have immigrants from Europe, middle East, or Asia come to the states and take in this different culture, learn, and grow. It is also shocking to see how American natives react to these different cultures settling in the same country and partake in the same activities as them like work and hobbies. That is where the diversity of ghosts comes in to play and either ends good or bad. I hope for future generations that this changes and improves but this problem seems to keep progressing.
ReplyDeleteIn the US today an issue talked about is abortion and I think that men and women have very different views on it. In the play we could talk about a young woman wanting a abortion because she isnt ready, and others getting angry, then understanding. I think that this issue has many ghosts involved in it.
ReplyDeleteCurrently, the issue of climtae change is affecting the United States, and our planet as a whole. This issues is connected to the ghosts we read about in Ibsen in a couple of ways. We cannot see it in our lives so therefore, many choose to ignore this problem. Ontop of that, many citizens do not want to change their habits claiming that climate change isn't real or as bad as scientists or saying but clear evidence has been proven for global warming. In Ghosts, both the problems of people not directly seeing what they're doing wrong and people not caring or really understanding why they must change is present, relating very closely with climate change.
ReplyDeleteI think a big issue that is going on today and I have a strong opinion about is pro life or pro choice. People have very strong opinions on this and there is a ton of conflict around it. I would think that more women would want pro life over pro choice because we know how it is to be a women now a days but actually that is not the case. There are a ton of women that are for pro life which surprises me. It makes me angry also because I am totally pro choice.
ReplyDelete- Justina Reppucci
ReplyDeleteI think one of the ghosts in the world is humans damaging the environment. Many today dont care enough about keeping the environment around us healthy and clean. I think we need to focus on these issues since one day it will effect all of us and by then it is too late.
ReplyDeleteDereck Silvestro
ReplyDeleteI have been seeing a lot of companies, particularly but not limited to the gaming industry, using tactics that allow them to cut corners on their products while making the same or more money as they would if they were to sell a fully fleshed out product. Within the gaming industry, a lot of big companies like to send out games every single year and some have ways to do this in a way that makes a decent game but others copy and paste their previous game into their next game and sell it at full price. Not only that but they put microtransactions, such as those you would see in free mobile games, to make a massive profit. Many produces suffer from this from many companies in America and around the world. It’s all about the money.