Study Guide - State Theatre Company of South Australia

Transcription

Study Guide
26 May – 4 June 2011, Space Theatre
7 – 23 June 2011, Regional Tour
Presented by arrangement with Samuel French Limited and William Morris Endeavor
Entertainment.
Images by Cassandra Backler and Shane Reid.
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Study Guide: The Zoo Story
by Catherine Fitzgerald & Alison Howard
© 2011
Table of Contents
Cast/Creative Team .......................................................................................................................... 5
Duration ............................................................................................................................................ 5
Playwright ......................................................................................................................................... 6
Edward Albee................................................................................................................................ 6
From The Director............................................................................................................................. 7
Actor Profiles..................................................................................................................................... 8
Renato Musolino ........................................................................................................................... 8
Brendan Rock ............................................................................................................................... 9
Synopsis ......................................................................................................................................... 11
Plot.................................................................................................................................................. 12
Forms and Conventions.................................................................................................................. 14
Theatre of the Absurd ................................................................................................................. 14
Characteristics of Theatre of the Absurd..................................................................................... 15
Themes ........................................................................................................................................... 15
Set Design ...................................................................................................................................... 16
Cassandra Backler...................................................................................................................... 16
The Designer’s Process .............................................................................................................. 16
Interesting Reading......................................................................................................................... 20
Facts about this America in the 1950s ........................................................................................ 20
Key Moments in 1950s ............................................................................................................... 20
Facts about this America in the 1960s ........................................................................................ 21
Post World War II America.......................................................................................................... 22
Economy ................................................................................................................................. 23
Film and TV............................................................................................................................. 23
Gays in Central Park ............................................................................................................... 25
References in The Zoo Story .......................................................................................................... 26
Peter’s Book................................................................................................................................ 26
J.P Marquand.............................................................................................................................. 26
Charles Baudelaire ..................................................................................................................... 27
Essay Questions ............................................................................................................................. 28
English Questions ....................................................................................................................... 28
Drama Questions ........................................................................................................................ 29
Design......................................................................................................................................... 29
Performance ............................................................................................................................... 29
Immediate Reactions .................................................................................................................. 30
Design Roles............................................................................................................................... 31
Further Resources .......................................................................................................................... 32
Useful Links ................................................................................................................................ 32
References...................................................................................................................................... 32
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State Theatre Company of South Australia presents
The Zoo Story
By Edward Albee
26 May – 4 June 2011, Space Theatre
7 – 23 June 2011, Regional Tour
Cast/Creative Team
Renato Musolino
Brendan Rock
Catherine Fitzgerald
Alexis West
Cassandra Backler
David Gadsden
Larua Smans
Simon Stollery
Michelle Saint-Yves
Jerry
Peter
Director
Assistant Director, part of the ATSI Artist Development Program
Set & Costume Designer
Lighting Designer
Stage Manager
Voice & Dialect Coach
Creative Writing Secondment
Duration
Approx: 60 minutes without interval
Followed by a 20 – 30 min Q&A session
Warning: some people may find the image of violence (suicide) very disturbing. For support,
information and resources for people experiencing depression, their families and friends and the
wider community go to www.beyondblue.org.au
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Playwright
Edward Albee
Edward Albee was born on March 12, 1928, and was adopted by
millionaire couple Reed and Frances Albee at the age of two weeks.
Reed Albee was the son of Edward Franklin Albee, a rich and powerful
early American Vaudeville producer. An only child, Edward grew up in a
privileged household. His every wish was fulfilled and his life consisted of
private tutors, servants, chauffeurs and winter getaways. However, his
adoptive parents were uncommunicative and cold, and his mother
controlling. To her it was of utmost importance that Edward attend the “right” schools and associate
with the “right” people. By age 20, Albee was estranged from his bourgeois family and had moved
to New York’s Greenwich Village to live a bohemian life.
An inheritance from his grandmother allowed Albee to live in New York City, where he continued to
write (with little success) and do odd jobs. After a period of depression, he challenged himself to
write a play before his 30th birthday. Albee said “I finished The Zoo Story in three weeks…
everything in my life had led to this moment; the writing seemed to flow from some inner need and
conviction… it was sort of an explosion and the words never stopped.” Rejected by several New
York City publishers, The Zoo Story made its way to Europe, where it premiered on September 28,
1959 at the Schiller Theatre in Wensfaff, Germany. Four months later it returned to New York City,
paired with Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape at the Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich
Village. This marked the beginning of Albee’s prolific and outstanding career as a playwright.
Recently (in 2004) Albee expanded The Zoo Story into a two-act play. At the age of 83, Edward
Albee is not slowing down as he continues to write and teach.
Plays by Edward Albee
The Zoo Story (1958)
The Sandbox (1960)
The American Dream (1961)
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962)
Tiny Alice (1964)
A Delicate Balance (1966)
Seascape (1975)
Three Tall Women (1991)
The Lorca Play (1995)
The Play About the Baby (1997)
The Occupant (2002)
The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? (2002)
Peter & Jerry re-titled in 2009 as At Home at the Zoo (Act One: Homelife. Act Two: The Zoo Story)
(2004)
Me, Myself and I (2007)
At Home At The Zoo (2009)
Several novels adapted for the stage (1970s–1980s)
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From The Director
Catherine Fitzgerald
The Zoo Story explores themes of solitude, loneliness, inequality, fear of
‘the other’, the impossibility of communication and the deceptive nature of
language. Albee’s characters are trapped between the trick of middle
class politeness and the human desire to understand each other and the
world and, ultimately, their inability to do so.
Set in New York’s Central Park in 1959, The Zoo Story is about the
‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’. It has many discourses: class, capitalism, privilege, ownership, gay
culture, male sexuality, power and Christianity. Written in President Eisenhower’s conservative
America - where family values, respectability and ‘male honour’ were revered - Albee picks at the
seams of American culture, exposing the hegemony that promotes the myth of equality within a
capitalist, heterosexual and patriarchal society.
Set in the shadow of the Cold War and under the cloud of the Committee of Un-American
Activities, The Zoo Story has contemporary relevance for Australian audiences. We no longer have
a Cold War but a ‘War on Terror’ and live in a very conservative society where any oppositional
voice to dominant values and behaviour is cited as unpatriotic
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Actor Profiles
Renato Musolino
Renato is a graduate of AC Arts. He has performed for State Theatre
Company in The Misanthrope, King Lear, Mnemonic and Blue/Orange. In
2002, he travelled to Italy and performed in John Romeril’s one-man
show Carboni (also in Ballarat for Eureka Week, and Canberra for the
Multicultural Arts Festival). He played Salieri in Amadeus (Barossa Music
Festival) and, with an Emerging Artist Award from Arts SA, undertook an
observership/mentorship at the Actors Studio in New York. Theatre
credits include Romeo and Juliet, The History of Australia, Oh! What a Lovely War, Danny and the
Deep Blue Sea and Bash (Holden Street Theatre), Directors Choice Season (winner The
Advertiser Oscart Award for Best Actor), What I Heard About Iraq and The Homecoming (Directors
Choice). Other credits include Assassins and True West (Winner, Best Actor - Professional,
Adelaide Theatre Guide Awards 2009) for Flying Penguin Productions and Helly’s Magic Cup
(Windmill Theatre). Film work includes the South Australian Film Corporation and Australian Film
Corporation feature Caterpillar Wish.
Describe the character you play?
Jerry is an isolated vagrant from the West Side of New York City. He is disturbed and in desperate
need to communicate with another person. He is quite poor and lives in a small rooming house.
Jerry is one of the most coveted roles by actors in theatre, can you explain why?
It’s such a complex role. Jerry offers the actor the opportunity to dig deep and really explore many
facets of human behaviour. His use of language is quite simple yet poetic. He is funny, quite
disturbed and yet quite charming. It’s rare to find a role with such duplicity.
What are the challenges of playing Jerry?
The greatest challenge for me would be the fine detail in such a complex role. The great danger is
to play the essence of crazy and angry, without exploring the fine details. He also has some very
large speeches which need lots of attention.
What research did you do in preparing for the role?
I explored Jerry’s world and surrounding, the city of New York and, most especially, New York in
1959. I also did a lot of reading on the writer, Albee, and his motivations in writing the play. We
looked at lots of images from the period and lots of maps of the city.
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Brendan Rock
Brendan graduated with Honours from Flinders University Drama Centre
in 2004. He has performed in many State Theatre Company productions
including The Misanthrope, Things We Do For Love, The Dumb Waiter,
Ghosts, Central Park West, Hot Fudge and Death of a Salesman. Other
roles include Ben Hur, Morph (Fresh Track), Been So Long, Assassins
(Flying Penguin), and Dogfall (The Imagen) for which he was nominated
for best actor at the 2007 SA Theatre Guide Awards. Brendan’s feature
film roles include Snowtown, Here I Am and Swerve and his television roles include Rush, Danger
5 and McLeod’s Daughters. Brendan also directed his brother David in Cold Comfort at the
Bakehouse Theatre and Chapel off Chapel, Melbourne with their new company, Boomshanka!
Productions. Brendan is a proud member of Actors Equity.
Describe the character you play?
Peter is a middle-high class publishing executive who is completely blind to the world outside his
social class. He lives on the East side of New York City and is living the picture-perfect nuclear
family American Dream…or so it seems…
What are the challenges of playing Peter?
There are two very challenging things in playing the role of Peter.
1. Identifying with his social status which includes the task of playing a character whose outer is in
complete conflict with his inner, and
2. Playing a character who has to listen a LOT!
What research did you do in preparing for the role?
I read a lot on Albee, how he was feeling when he wrote the play, his stand politically, and the
companion piece to The Zoo Story, called Homelife, which he did write some time later. But it gives
great insight into Peter’s, well, home life ☺ I looked at lots of maps of New York, tons of pictures of
New York in 1958 and movies for the period and accents.
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Synopsis
First produced by the Schiller Theater, Berlin - Sept 28, 1959, then the Provincetown Playhouse Jan 14 1960
Peter, a middle-aged publishing executive sits peacefully reading in the sunlight in Central Park.
There enters a second man, the antithesis of the first. He is Jerry, a young, unkempt and
undisciplined vagrant. Where Peter is neat, ordered, well-to-do, conventional, the vagrant Jerry is a
soul in torture and rebellion. He longs to communicate so fiercely that, when he does make the
attempt, he alternately frightens and repels his listener. He is a man drained of all hope who, in his
passion for company, seeks to drain his companion. With ironic humour and unrelenting suspense,
we see the young savage slowly but relentlessly bring his victim down to his own atavistic level and
initiate a shocking and horrible ending.
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Plot
Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story is a long one act play in which “nothing happens” except
conversation — until the violent ending. Shorn of much of the richness of Albee’s utterly arresting
language, and his astonishing nuances of psychological attack and retreat, the play can be
described as follows:
A man named Peter, a complacent publishing executive of middle age and upper-middle income, is
comfortably reading a book on his favorite bench in New York’s Central Park on a sunny afternoon.
Along comes Jerry, an aggressive, seedy, erratic loner. Jerry announces that he has been to the
(Central Park) Zoo and eventually gets Peter, who clearly would rather be left alone, to put down
his book and actually enter into a conversation. With pushy questions, Jerry learns that Peter lives
on the fashionable East Side of the Park (they are near Fifth Avenue and 74th Street), that the firm
for which he works publishes textbooks, and that his household is female-dominated: one wife, two
daughters, two cats, and two parakeets. Jerry easily guesses that Peter would rather have a dog
than cats and that he wishes he had a son. More perceptively, Jerry guesses that there will be no
more children, and that that decision was made by Peter’s wife. Ruefully, Peter admits the truth of
these guesses.
The subjects of the Zoo and Jerry’s visit to it come up several times, at one of which Jerry says
mysteriously, “You’ll read about it in the papers tomorrow, if you don’t see it on your TV tonight.”
The play never completely clarifies this remark. Some critics think, because of statements Jerry
makes about the animals, that he may have released some from their cages, while others think
Jerry is talking about a death which has not yet happened, which might be headlined “Murder Near
Central Park Zoo.”
The focus now turns to Jerry, who tells Peter that he walked all the way up Fifth Avenue from
Washington Square to the Zoo, a trip of over fifty blocks. Adding Washington Square to Jerry’s
appearance and behaviour, Peter assumes that Jerry lives in Greenwich Village, which in 1960,
the year the play was first produced, was the principal “bo-hemian” section of Manhattan. Jerry
says no, that he lives across the Park on the (then slum-ridden) West Side, and took the subway
downtown for the express purpose of walking back up Fifth Avenue. No reason is given for this but
Jerry “explains” it in one of the most quoted sentences of the play: “sometimes a person has to go
a very long distance out of his way to come back a short distance correctly.” It is possible that Jerry
saw his trip up Fifth Avenue, which gradually improves from the addicts and prostitutes of
Washington Square to such bastions of prosperity as the famous Plaza Hotel, as a symbolic
journey through the American class system to the source of his problem — not millionaire’s row but
the affluent, indifferent upper middle class.
Without any prompting from Peter, Jerry describes his living arrangements: a tiny room in a
rooming house, with a very short list of possessions; some clothes, a can-opener and hotplate,
eating utensils, empty picture frames, a few books, a deck of pornographic playing cards, an old
typewriter, and a box with many unanswered “Please!” letters and “When?” letters. Jerry’s building
is like something out of Dante’s Inferno, with several different kinds of suffering on each floor,
including a woman Jerry has never seen who cries all the time, a black “queen” who plucks his
eyebrows “with Buddhist concentration” and hogs the bathroom, and a disgusting landlady whom
Jerry describes vividly. Jerry also reveals the loss of both parents — his mother to whoring and
drinking and his father to drinking and an encounter with “a somewhat moving city omnibus” —
events that seem to have had little emotional effect on him. Jerry’s love life is also discussed: an
early and very intense homosexual infatuation and, at present, one-night stands with nameless
women whom he never sees again.
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It is clear in this section of the play that Jerry is trying to make Peter understand something about
loneliness and suffering — not so much Jerry’s own pain, which he treats cynically, but the pain of
the people in his building, the Zoo animals isolated in their cages, and more generally the societal
dregs that Peter is more comfortable not having to think about. Peter is repelled by Jerry’s
information but not moved except to exasperation and discomfort. Desperate to communicate with
Peter or at least to teach him something about the difficulties of communication, Jerry comes up
with “The Story of Jerry and the Dog.” It is a long, disgusting, and eventually pathetic tale of his
attempt to find some kind of communication, or at least relationship, with the vile landlady’s vile
dog (the hound who guards the entrance to Jerry’s particular hell). Jerry fails to reach the dog,
though he goes from trying to kill it with kindness to just plain trying to kill it; the two finally achieve
mutual indifference, and Jerry gains free entry to the building without being attacked, “if that much
further loss can be said to be gain.”
Jerry also fails to reach Peter, who is bewildered but not moved by this story and who prepares to
leave his now-disturbed sanctuary for his comfortable home. Desperately grasping at one last
chance, Jerry tickles Peter, then punches him on the arm and pushes him to the ground. He
challenges Peter to fight for “his” bench, but Peter will not. Jerry produces a knife, which he throws
on the ground between them. He grabs Peter, slapping and taunting him (“fight for your manhood,
you pathetic little vegetable”) until Peter, at last enraged, picks up the knife. Even then, as Albee
points out, “Peter holds the knife with a firm arm, but far in front of him, not to attack, but to
defend.” Jerry says, “So be it,” and “With a rush he charges Peter and impales himself on the
knife.”
Peter is paralysed. Jerry thanks Peter and hurries him away for his own safety, reminding Peter to
take his book from “your bench . . . my bench, rather.” Peter runs off, crying “Oh, my God!” Jerry
echoes these words with “a combination of scornful mimicry and supplication,” and dies.
Portions of Albee’s dialogue and stage directions have been included in this summary in an
attempt to indicate the huge importance of Albee’s incisive use of language and psychology in the
play. The play resides, in fact, not in the physical actions of the plot (except the killing at the end)
but in the acuteness (not to mention the shocking quality) of the language, in the range of kinds of
aggression shown by Jerry — from insult and assault to the subtlest of insinuations — and even in
the symbolism which becomes more apparent near the end of the action.
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Forms and Conventions
Theatre of the Absurd
Theatre of the Absurd refers to particular plays written by European and American playwrights of
the post-Second World War period who shared the view of many existential philosophers that life is
meaningless, communication impossible, society robotic and inhuman. These playwrights could
not express these views within the framework of traditional theatre; they needed new modes of
expression, new venues, new dramatic structures and new stage imagery, and thus Theatre of the
Absurd was born.
Two people in particular played key roles in the development of Theatre of the Absurd. In his 1942
essay The Myth of Sisyphus,* French philosopher Albert Camus defined the human situation as
meaningless and absurd; it was the Hungarian-born British writer Martin Esslin who coined the
actual phrase “Theatre of the Absurd” in his book of the same title, published in 1961, in which he
comments on this disorienting postwar drama. At first, most audiences were opposed to this style
of theatre because they didn’t understand it. However, as the movement gained intellectual
currency and momentum, more and more theatre-goers began to enjoy the experience of a new
and challenging drama performed in church basements and other unconventional venues.
Samuel Beckett (1906–1989), author of Waiting for Godot, was the first to gain international fame
as an absurdist playwright. Irish by birth, he moved to Paris in the 1920s. His plays gained
popularity first in France and then elsewhere. Beckett’s plays are characteristic of the post-war
1950s, a time when people still felt the threat of war and their own powerless to understand or
control the world they lived in. Unlike the existential philosophers, the playwrights of Theatre of the
Absurd did not try to resolve the issues around the absurdity of the human condition but rather
alluded to the greatest question: why are we all here?
Unable to answer the question, many Absurdist plays are circular: they end where they started,
with no apparent resolution, no happy ending, and no definite call to action. Language is devalued,
communication is non-literal and action and images prevail. By choosing to depart from traditional
dramatic conventions, the absurdists portrayed on the stage the chaos and despair they
experienced in the world.
* According to Greek mythology, Sisyphus was condemned to push a heavy stone up a steep hill;
but before he reached the top the stone always rolled down, and he had to begin all over again.
Other great playwrights who contributed to Theatre of the Absurd:
• Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
Endgame (1957), Krapp’s Last Tape (1958), Happy Days (1961), Come and Go (1966), That Time
(1976)
• Eugene Ionesco (1912–1994)
The Bald Soprano (1949), The Lesson (1950), The Chairs (1952), The Killer (1959), Exit the King
(1962), Hunger and Thirst (1966), Macbett (1972), The Man with the Suitcases (1975)
• Jean Genet (1910–1986)
The Maids (1947), Deathwatch (1949), The Balcony (1956), The Blacks (1959), The Screens
(1961)
• Arthur Adamov (1908–1971)
The Invasion (1950), Parody (1952), All Against All (1953), Paolo Paoli (1957), Spring ’71 (1960).
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Playwrights who continued the tradition after 1960:
• Fernando Arrabal in Spain
• Tom Stoppard in England
• Gunter Grass and Peter Weiss in Germany
• Israel Horovitz and Sam Shepard in the USA
• Vaclav Havel in the Czech Republic
Characteristics of Theatre of the Absurd
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Situations and characters’ emotional states may be represented through poetic metaphor
(dreamlike, fantastical or nightmarish images).
The notion of realism is rejected: situations and characters are not “realistic” and characters
are often placed in obviously unreal situations.
Set and costumes may not reflect an outward reality.
Dialogue is often nonsensical, clichéd or gibberish.
Communication is fractured.
There is usually an emphasis on “theatricality” as opposed to realism.
Absurdist playwrights often use dark comedy for satiric effect.
Characters exist in a bubble without the possibility of communication.
Characters may be one-dimensional, with no clear motivation or purpose.
Characters may be symbolic of universal situations.
Behavior and situations may not follow the rules of logic.
Structure may be circular, without a precise resolution.
Action may be minimal.
Setting of the play may be in one locale.
Often characters perceive a threat from the “outside”, leading to a sense of powerlessness.
Themes
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Isolation of human existence in a world without God
Lack of communication between individuals
Dehumanization in a commercial world
Social disparity
Life without purpose or examination
Loneliness
Class difference/the have’s and have nots
Loneliness
Fear of the disenfranchised
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Set Design
Cassandra Backler
Cassandra is the 2011 Design Associate with the State Theatre Company
and The Zoo Story is her first design with the Company. She has
designed sets and costumes for a wide range of companies, with recent
highlights including The Eisteddfod with five.point.one; the inSPACE
creative development of Caleb Lewis’ Rust & Bone with Corey McMahon;
My Name is Rachel Corrie with Daniel Clarke and Rhinoceros for Urban
Myth Theatre of Youth. She has also worked extensively as a secondary
school performing and visual arts teacher and director, and as a Project Manager at the SACE
Board of South Australia. Cassandra is a graduate of the Centre for Performing Arts (now AC Arts)
where she presently coordinates the Design course. In her spare time she is attempting to finish
her Masters in Education at Flinders University.
The Designer’s Process
When I receive a play I read it all in one go, particularly if I haven’t read it before or it’s been a
while. This allows me to experience it the way the audience may when they see the show. After
first savouring it, I re-read the text a few times looking for a conceptual starting point and taking
note of practical considerations such as the set, costume and props. I may not end up using these
things but I need to note them.
With The Zoo Story I considered the different stylistic approaches we could take with its staging
before speaking with the Director (Catherine Fitzgerald), such as heightened realism, naturalism or
expressionism. The primary driver to what style to choose was the level of engagement we were
seeking with the audience.
Some of the first images that came to me seemed fairly random yet had some connection with the
text and its themes. For example one of the first images was of falling leaves, acting as a metaphor
for lives cut short such as Jerry’s. Then I thought about writing obituaries on the leaves as a step
away from the naturalistic. I also wondered how young Jerry could be as it opened up the
possibility of making Jerry an ‘Emo’, i.e. a contemporary version of disengaged youth, and whether
the ‘schools’ audience would connect with him more or dismiss him as a caricature. With the
opening, I wondered if it presented an everyday situation or a piece of picture book perfection. I
explored the nature of the particular stories of each of these two men versus the universal story
and themes being told through the text. Equipped with my notebook full of these thoughts and
questions I met with Catherine to see where her interpretation took the play.
In talking with Catherine she highlighted the dominant interpretations of the text in class and
religious terms in her research. We talked about the situation Peter finds himself and related it to
our own personal experiences. We both had been in a public place, bus or train – somewhere you
can’t easily get away – and a guy just started talking to us who we quickly realised was a little
‘strange’. We wanted Jerry to be fairly ‘normal’ on the surface but as he continues to talk to Peter
we see he’s not what he appears. Subsequently it was important for Jerry’s costume to not give
away too much to the audience until he started behaving in that stranger way.
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Other considerations for the design were:
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The fact this production would be touring extensively. Early on in the design process
Catherine and I talked about the design needing to be self-contained as the show is touring
to a number of venues that would all look different. It needed to be able to travel fairly well
and fairly easily. So, rather than having supports that were obvious to the audience, we
wanted the set to appear as though it was a complete world all on its own. I played with a
few ideas such as an old style picture frame with a self-contained stand (referencing Jerry’s
empty frames in his room) and a painting with the scene ‘bleeding’ out of the frame onto the
stage. Letters and envelopes also made an appearance at some point as Jerry talks about
how he has some old letters in the strong box in his room.
What was needed for this show in the design as opposed to what I would love to have
design-wise purely for my own satisfaction (unfortunately the answer was simply park
benches). I was constantly weighing up what we needed versus what we ‘could’ possibly
have throughout the process. (Personally I don’t like decoration in my stage designs –
every element needs to fulfil a reasoned and necessary purpose).
Getting a sense of the place in order for me to translate it to the set. The Zoo Story is
littered with references to New York’s ‘places’ so that is the track that I took with my
research. I have never been to New York so based on the text details I ‘walked’ the path
Jerry takes from Washington Square to Central Park Zoo and on to 74th street using Google
Street View. I also researched the neighbourhood Jerry lived in (Upper West Side) and
Peter’s (a more affluent one) in the year it was written (1958). Another essential part of my
research was to look at Central Park’s geography and find a place to site the action. I
imagined I lived where Peter does and walked towards the Park. I looked at the gates at
76th and 72nd street and just near the 72nd gate is an area called Conservatory Pond
where people sail their model boats. There are several benches in this area where Peter
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could retreat in solitude to read his book. So this is the place I thought Peter would sit and
imagined him watching the model boats sail on the water when he occasionally looked up
from his reading. Another factor that sets a sense of ‘place’ is the weather. It is set on a hot
day so I looked at the summer temperatures in New York and what would be considered a
‘hot’ day (about 29 degrees, up to 32 or on rare occasions 37 degrees). This kind of detail
then informed a number of choices I made in the design, particularly for costume as it
dictated the weight of fabrics and tones of the colours.
Whether it was going to be set in the original era or ‘updated’. There are so many
references in the text, like the neighbourhood Jerry lives in, that only make sense if the play
is set in that time and place so Catherine and I decided that we would set the play in its
original context.
What feel to give the set and costumes given our decision not to update the play. I collected
a number of images of ‘cheesy’ men and women looking ‘perfect’ from the late 1950s that
had a very distinct colour palette, i.e. quite autumnal (Figure 1). With these images I went to
a paint shop and matched some of the colours in the images to the shop’s sample chips to
get a better sense of the colour range. In addition I looked at old postcards of New York
(Figure 2) and airline posters (Figure 3) which also have quite a distinct colour palette. With
regard to what Peter and Jerry wear, I searched the archival images at Getty images (which
is a great resource) and looked at figures of rebellion from that era, such as Marlon Brando
and James Dean. Albee’s writer’s notes also give great clues into how he sees Jerry: “Not
poorly dressed, but carelessly”. It is also clear that Jerry has little money so we decided his
clothes would be quite worn in appearance, with frayed hems, and be wearing scuffed
boots. Jerry’s colour palette is much cooler than Peter’s without being too jarring as I
wanted the audience to feel, through his costume, Jerry intruding into Peter’s world.
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At this point I had a number of directions I could take the design and a number of ideas floating
around my head. It was time to start assessing each one and choose which would be best for this
production. I kept coming back to the vintage postcards and thinking is Peter’s life a ‘wish you were
here’ type of existence?
I took some colour photocopies of the postcards so that I could cut bits out and create depth and
soon realised that I was making a pop-up book! So I found some examples of pop-up books in
different styles and tried to marry that idea with the playing space we needed. I was probably
influenced by Peter’s profession (i.e. a text book publisher) but I also wanted to present something
that on first impressions looked quite saccharine or ‘cute’. I thought that this is the world Peter lives
in and is the one that Jerry invades on a Sunday afternoon and changes so deeply and profoundly
by the end of the play.
Rather than having a purely naturalistic setting, Catherine and I felt strongly that we wanted an
aspect of expressionism within the world. We want the audience to realise they’re not watching real
life. To begin with the set had fairly strong colours but these were lightened as Catherine reinforced
the need to have a space that works for the final act of the show. Something too garish would take
away its impact and have the potential to turn the piece into some sort of comedy.
Over the last month it has been amazing to sit in on rehearsals and watch Catherine and the actors
(Brendan and Renato) create the show, to walk next door to the workshop and see the team build
and paint the set and then seeing wardrobe put together the characters’ costumes. I hope that the
design I imagined - which you now see on stage - helps tell the story for you and acts in harmony
with all the other elements.
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Interesting Reading
Facts about this America in the 1950s
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Population: 151,684,000 (US Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census)*
Unemployed: 3,288,000
Life Expectancy: Women 71.1, men 65.6
Car Sales: 6,665,800
Average Salary: $2,992
Labour Force male/female: 5/2
Cost of a loaf of bread: $0.14
Bomb shelter plans, like the government pamphlet You Can Survive, become widely
available.
Elvis Presley’s 1956 classic “Hound Dog/Don’t Be Cruel” becomes one of the top certified
singles of all time with sales of four million. It is the only single released prior to “We Are
The World” in 1985 to reach quadruple-platinum status.
On March 25, 1958 Elvis was inducted into the U.S. Army and assigned serial number
53310761. In September of 1958 he began his 18 month assignment in West Germany,
where in late 1959, he met Priscilla Ann Beaulieu.
Key Moments in 1950s
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The Korean War (1950-1953)
The rise of modern jazz, (‘Cool jazz dominated first half 1950s (such as Chet Baker)
emerging in New York and moving to ‘modal jazz’ in late 1950s with its main practitioners
Miles Davis, John Coltrane)
Ushered in the age of Rock and Roll and a new younger market of teenagers (American
Bandstand was first aired nationally on TV in mid-1957 and the film Rock Around the Clock
in 1956)
The rise of fast food restaurants and drive-ins (Jack in the Box - founded in 1951;
McDonalds - first franchised in 1955 in Des Plaines, IL),
A baby boom
The all-electric home as the ideal
White racist terrorism in the South
Segregation ruled illegal in US (1954) and Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus
in 1955 beginning the Civil Rights Movement
Colour TV introduced in 1951, the TV remote control invented in 1953 and the advent of TV
dinners (about 10.5 million US homes had a TV set in 1950. By 1954-55 50 percent of US
homes had at least one TV set)
Abstract art (such as Jackson Pollock)
The first credit card (Diners Club, in 1951),
Young people attended outdoor drive-ins that showed exploitative, low-budget, short,
sci-fi/horror quickies created especially for them in a newly-established teen/drive-in genre.
Drive-in theatres came to a peak number in the late 50s with over 4,000 outdoor screens
By the last year of the decade, the youth market in all its forms was worth $10 billion a year
First "Peanuts" cartoon strip (1950)
Senator Joseph McCarthy communist witch hunt (1950 –mid 1950s)
US President Truman orders construction of hydrogen bomb (1950)
Car seat belts introduced (1952)
Polio vaccine created (1952)
DNA discovered in 1953
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Joseph Stalin dies (1953)
Report says cigarettes cause cancer (1954)
Disneyland opens in 1955
James Dean dies in car accident in 1955
Warsaw Pact signed in 1955 and Hungarian Revolution in 1956
Dr Seuss publishes The Cat in the Hat in 1957
Soviet satellite Sputnik launches space age in 1957 and NASA formed in 1958
Boris Pasternak awarded Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958 but forced to refuse under
pressure from Russia’s Kruschev. His novel Dr Zhivago was the most popular book in US in
1958/59.
Chinese leader Mao Zedong launches the Great Leap Forward
Hula hoops become popular in late 1950s
Lego bricks introduced in 1958
Peace symbol created in 1958
Castro becomes dictator of Cuba in 1959
The Sound of Music Opens on Broadway in 1959
US quiz shows found to be fixed in 1959
Academy Awards were televised for the first time by NBC in 1953
The first feature film broadcast on US TV (1956), during prime-time, was The Wizard of Oz
Facts about this America in the 1960s
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Population: 177,830,000
Unemployment: 3,852,000
National Debt: $286.3 billion
Average Salary: $4,743
Teacher's Salary: $5,174
Minimum Wage: $1.00
Life Expectancy: Males 66.6 years, Females 73.1 years
Auto deaths 21.3 per 100,000
An estimated 850,000 "war baby" freshmen enter college; emergency living quarters are
set up in dorm lounges, hotels and trailer camps.
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Post World War II America
During the post-war affluence and increased leisure time of 1950s, a sense of uniformity pervaded
American society. Conformity was common, as young and old alike followed group norms rather
than striking out on their own. Though men and women had been forced into new employment
patterns during World War II, once the war was over, traditional roles were reaffirmed. Men
expected to be the breadwinners; women, even when they worked, assumed their proper place
was at home. Sociologist David Riesman observed the importance of peer-group expectations in
his influential book, The Lonely Crowd. He called this new society "other-directed," and maintained
that such societies lead to stability as well as conformity. Television contributed to the
homogenising trend by providing young and old with a shared experience reflecting accepted
social patterns. As exemplified by:
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The early sitcom I Love Lucy (on CBS, beginning in 1951)
The family show The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (on ABC, from 1952-1966)
The Donna Reed Show (on ABC, from 1958-1966)
The Honeymooners (from 1951 and after)
Lassie (on CBS, from 1954-1971)
Gunsmoke (on CBS, from 1955-1975) with James Arness as Matt Dillon
This is Your Life (on NBC, from 1952-1961)
Dragnet (1951-1959)
But not all Americans conformed to such cultural norms. A number of writers, members of the
so-called "beat generation," rebelled against conventional values. Stressing spontaneity and
spirituality, they asserted intuition over reason, Eastern mysticism over Western institutionalised
religion. The "beats" went out of their way to challenge the patterns of respectability and shock the
rest of the culture.
Their literary work displayed their sense of freedom. Jack Kerouac typed his best-selling novel On
the Road (written in 1951 and published in 1957) on a 75-metre roll of paper. Lacking accepted
punctuation and paragraph structure, the book glorified the possibilities of the free life. Poet Allen
Ginsberg gained similar notoriety for his poem Howl, a scathing critique of modern, mechanised
civilisation. Howl was published as part of his 1956 collection of poetry titled Howl and Other
Poems. The poem is considered to be one of the great works of the Beat Generation, along with
On the Road and William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch (1959). When police charged that it was
obscene and seized the published version, Ginsberg won national acclaim with a successful court
challenge in 1957.
Musicians and artists rebelled as well. Tennessee singer Elvis Presley popularised black music in
the form of rock and roll, and shocked more staid Americans with his ducktail haircut and
undulating hips. In addition, Elvis and other rock and roll singers demonstrated that there was a
white audience for black music, thus testifying to the increasing integration of American culture.
Painters like Jackson Pollock discarded easels and laid out gigantic canvases on the floor, then
applied paint, sand and other materials in wild splashes of colour. All of these artists and authors,
whatever the medium, provided models for the wider and more deeply felt social revolution of the
1960s.
The early developing Off and Off-off Broadway movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s
sought freedom from the constraints of conventional theatre. The musical and the psychological
drama dominated the mainstream theatre of the times. According to University of California
professor Theodore Shank, these productions were "intended as business ventures and, if
successful, they were packaged and toured." This notion of theatre as a packaged commodity
offended the creative sensibilities of those who wished to work outside of commercial success.
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Members of this new movement observed the psychological and physical constraints built within
the theatrical space itself; in his book, Astonish Me: Adventures in Contemporary Theatre, theorist
John Lahr notes, "The audience is compartmentalised...There is a ghostly, static uniformity of onepoint perspective...Each seat is pointed towards the stage; numbered, raked, isolated by armrests
from the next viewer...the message built into the architecture is 'sit tight'". To the alternative theatre
movement, the constraints of conventional theatre represented a dangerous illusion that evaded
the tumultuous reality of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Economy
Over the decade the housing supply increased 27 percent and overall quality level of U.S. housing
increased dramatically. A move from urban areas to the suburbs was the predominate
characteristic of the new construction and increasing health and living conditions characterized the
urban growth.
With surges in the economy, the 1950s are often recognized as the decade that eliminated poverty
for the great majority of Americans. By 1955, the country had pulled out of the previous year's
recession and gross national product (GNP) was growing at a rate of 7.6 percent. The boom was
so great that the budget for 1956 predicted a surplus of $4.1 million.
The economy turned sharply downward in the summer of 1957 and reached its low point in the
spring of 1958. Industrial production fell 14 percent, corporate profits plummeted 25 percent and
unemployment rose to 7.5 percent. President Eisenhower did little to stimulate the economy
because he worried more about inflation and not unemployment. Subsequently, in 1959 the
economy realised a $12 billion deficit, a new record for a budget shortfall during peacetime.
Film and TV
The adult generation continued to regard the new youthful generation (and the rise of juvenile
delinquency) with scepticism and fear, as illustrated by:
• The film adaptation of Maxwell Anderson's stage play, The Bad Seed (1956)
• Blackboard Jungle (1955)
• The Wild One (1954)
• Rebel Without A Cause (1955)
• Elvis Presley made his first national TV appearance in January 1956 on CBS' Tommy (and
Jimmy) Dorsey's Stage Show, although he is best remembered for his controversial, sexy,
mid-1956 performance of Hound Dog on the Milton Berle Show, and for three rock and roll
performances on the Ed Sullivan Show from September 1956 to January 1957 - his last
show was censored by being filmed from the waist-up.
The 1950s was the rise of the anti-hero - with stars like newcomers James Dean, Paul Newman
and Marlon Brando. With television aimed at family audiences, the movies were free to explore
realistic adult themes and stronger or previously taboo subjects, such as On the Waterfront (1954)
that won eight Oscars; Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951) - adapted from Patricia Highsmith's
first novel about amoral murderers who traded or exchanged crimes - with veiled hints at
homosexuality, or voyeurism in Rear Window (1954) (with James Stewart as a wheel-chair bound
photographer). George Stevens' A Place in the Sun (1951) demonstrated the tragic struggle of
class differences, as social-climbing Montgomery Clift was convicted of the murder of his pregnant,
working-class girlfriend while romancing rich socialite Elizabeth Taylor. Another potent adaptation
of a Tennessee Williams' stage hit, Richard Brooks' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) was forced to
dilute its references to homosexuality, but it still contained frank exchanges about sex. This was an
Oscar favourite in 1958.
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A new style termed Method Acting that Marlon Brando had acquired at the Actors Studio in New
York, also exemplified in the acting of Montgomery Clift and James Dean in the era. In the early
1950s, when McCarthyism and the Hollywood blacklist had taken a firm hold, independent
producer/director Stanley Kramer was producing the classic, Best Picture-nominated western High
Noon (1952), a veiled anti-McCarthy allegorical film about a marshal (Gary Cooper) in a showdown
against evil threats to the community. Other powerful films from Kramer with a social conscience
and a serious message about sensitive subjects were:
• Death of a Salesman (1951),
• The Wild One (1954), about youth rebellion in the guise of black-jacketed bikers led by the
iconic Johnny (Marlon Brando)
• The Defiant Ones (1958), about a black and white prisoner (Sidney Poitier, the first black
actor to star in mainstream Hollywood films in non-stereotyped roles, and Tony Curtis) who
escaped from a prison chained together;
• Hitchcock's sombre and noirish The Wrong Man (1956) examined the plight of Henry
Fonda as a family man unjustly accused of armed robbery.
• Another definitive film noir was Fritz Lang's The Big Heat (1953)
• Fred Zinnemann's anti-HUAC western High Noon (1952) for which Gary Cooper won a
Best Actor Oscar by portraying an archetypal loner/marshal taking a showdown stand for
justice against the bad guys as the clock tensely ticked towards noon
• George Stevens' mythic classic Shane (1953), a new kind of Western which featured an
individualistic, existential loner/hero gunslinger.
• John Ford's greatest masterpiece The Searchers (1956), possibly the greatest Western
ever made.
By 1959 the production of films in the US dropped to about 250 films a year - a 50 percent drop
from only a decade earlier, and only 42 million Americans were attending theatrical films on a
weekly basis (as compared to more than double that amount during 1948). In contrast, more and
more imported European and Asian films (such as Rashomon (1950), The Seven Samurai (1954),
Pather Panchali (1955) and The 400 Blows (1959)) were being showcased in art houses and in
burgeoning film festivals.
The aftermath of studio blacklists and Communist Party fears, following Senator Joseph
McCarthy's HUAC witch-hunt that targeted Hollywood and smeared hundreds of film people in the
early 50s, had wide-spread effects for years to come. Communist and Cold War paranoia and
fears of communist infiltration were reflected in a number of films of the early and mid-50s.
Allegorical science fiction films reflected the collective unconscious and often cynically commented
upon political powers, threats and evils that surrounded us (alien forces were often a metaphor for
Communism, e.g., Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)), and the dangers of aliens taking over
our minds and territory.
This decade also witnessed the prodigious rise of colourful, escapist, lavish, classic musicals e.g
Calamity Jane, Singing in the Rain Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) with its exuberant
dancing, Guys and Dolls (1955), The King and I (1956), High Society (1956), Carousel (1956),
South Pacific (1956) Oklahoma! (1955) and Porgy and Bess (1959).
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Gays in Central Park
Class, racial, and ethnic tensions were not the only ones to find their way into the park in the
1950s. Gay New Yorkers were newly seen as a danger after the war. Central Park had been a
gathering place for gay men since at least the turn of the century.
During and after World War II, gay men seem to have cruised more openly. But the important
change was not so much in the way gay men acted as in how they were perceived. A panic over
sex crimes in the late 1940s and early 1950s helped displace the earlier stereotype of the
effeminate "queer," as an object of ridicule with a new stereotype of the homosexual as a
dangerous psychopath, a menace to young boys. In that atmosphere, gays faced increased
surveillance and persecution, and arrests of men for homosexual activity skyrocketed in the late
1940s/1950s. In these post-war years, some of the local and national press prominently featured
gays -- invariably described as "perverts" or "misfits" -- in their catalogues of the "dangers" of
Central Park. In 1955 Robert Moses proposed transforming the Ramble into a recreational centre
for senior citizens, in part, apparently, because the Ramble was considered a gathering place for
"anti-social persons”.
Actually, gay park users were much more likely to be crime victims than victimisers; thugs, who
knew that gay men frequented the park at night and that they were reluctant to go to the police
because of a fear of public exposure, preyed on them in the Ramble.
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References in The Zoo Story
Peter’s Book
The book Peter is reading in the park is by J.P Marquand. Edward Albee later changed it to a
Stephen King novel when he set the play in more contemporary times. He also changed the
amount of money Peter earns from $18,000 per year to $200,000 per year.
We decided to set the play in 1958 not only for historical accuracy but also because the Upper
West Side in 1958 was a lower social economic area of New York. An apartment or boarding
house (if they indeed exist today) on the West-Side today, would be worth a fortune and there is no
way Jerry would be able to afford to live there. Also by setting the play in the time it was written
allows for more parallels to be drawn between then and now. Unfortunately it seems that the gap
between the haves and the have nots is just as large as it was in 1958 in America. In fact it could
be argued that it is worse now, especially in light of the huge economic crises the United States is
facing with an increasing amount of unemployed and homeless. The gap is widening, yet America
boasts the largest amount of billionaires (8 out of 20) in the world and dupes itself into believing
that it is the land of opportunity for all.
J.P Marquand
John Phillips Marquand (November 10, 1893 – July 16, 1960) was a 20th-century American writer.
Originally best known for his Mr. Moto spy stories, he achieved popular success and critical
respect for his satirical novels, winning a Pulitzer Prize for The Late George Apley in 1938. One of
his abiding themes was the confining nature of life in America's upper class and among those who
aspired to join it. Marquand treated those whose lives were bound by these unwritten codes with a
characteristic mix of respect and satire.
Marquand's life and work reflected his ambivalence about American society and, in particular, the
power of its old line elites. Being rebuffed by fashionable Harvard did not discourage his social
aspirations. In 1922, he married Christina Sedgwick, niece of The Atlantic Monthly editor Ellery
Sedgwick. (The Sedgwicks were a prominent and well-connected family; The Atlantic Monthly was
one of the country's most prestigious periodicals). In 1925, Marquand published his first important
book, Lord Timothy Dexter, an exploration of the life and legend of eighteenth century Newburyport
eccentric Timothy Dexter (1763–1806).
By the mid-1930s he was a prolific and successful writer of fiction for slick magazines like the
Saturday Evening Post; during this period Marquand began producing a series of novels on the
dilemmas of class, most centered on New England. The first of these, The Late George Apley
(1937), a satire of Boston's upper class, won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1938. Other
Marquand novels exploring New England and class themes include Wickford Point (1939), H.M.
Pulham, Esquire (1941), and Point of No Return (1949). The last is especially notable for its
satirical portrayal of Harvard anthropologist W. Lloyd Warner, whose Yankee City study attempted
(and in Marquand's view, dismally failed) to describe and analyze the manners and mores of
Marquand's Newburyport.
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Charles Baudelaire
Born in Paris in 1821. In 1833, the family moved to Lyons where
Baudelaire attended a military boarding school. Shortly before graduation,
he was kicked out for refusing to give up a note passed to him by a
classmate. Baudelaire spent the next two years in Paris' Latin Quarter
pursuing a career as a writer and accumulating debt. It is also believed
that he contracted syphilis around this time.
In 1842 he received a large inheritance, which allowed him to live the life
of a Parisian dandy. He developed a love for clothing and spent his days in the art galleries and
cafes of Paris. He experimented with drugs such as hashish and opium. By 1844, he had spent
nearly half of his inheritance. His family won a court order that appointed a lawyer to manage
Baudelaire's fortune and pay him a small allowance for the rest of his life.
To supplement his income, Baudelaire wrote art criticism, essays, and reviews for various journals.
His early criticism of contemporary French painters such as Eugene Delacroix and Gustave
Courbet earned him a reputation as a discriminating if idiosyncratic critic. In 1847, he published the
autobiographical novella La Fanfarlo. His first publications of poetry also began to appear in
journals in the mid-1840s.
In 1857, Auguste Poulet-Malassis published the first edition of Les Fleurs du mal. Six of the
poems, which described lesbian love and vampires, were condemned as obscene by the Public
Safety section of the Ministry of the Interior and excised from the first edition: Lethe, Les Femmes
Damnees, Les Bijoux, A Celle Qui Est Trop Gaie, Lesbos, and Les Metamorphoses du Vampire.
The ban on these poems was not lifted in France until 1949.
In 1861, Baudelaire added thirty-five new poems to the collection. Les Fleurs du mal afforded
Baudelaire a degree of notoriety; writers such as Gustave Flaubert and Victor Hugo wrote in praise
of the poems. Unlike earlier Romantics, Baudelaire looked to the urban life of Paris for inspiration.
He argued that art must create beauty from even the most depraved or non-poetic situations.
Les Fleurs du mal, with its explicit sexual content and juxtapositions of urban beauty and decay,
only added to Baudelaire's reputation as a poéte maudit (cursed poet). Critics now regard it as one
of the most important and influential collection of poetry to come out of the 19th century, and an
essential bridge between Romanticism and Modernism.
In the 1860s Baudelaire continued to write articles and essays on a wide range of subjects and
figures. He was also publishing prose poems, which were posthumously collected in 1869 as Petits
poémes en prose (Little Poems in Prose). By calling these non-metrical compositions poems,
Baudelaire was the first poet to make a radical break with the form of verse.
On August 31, 1867, at the age of forty-six, Charles Baudelaire died in Paris likely from syphilis.
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Essay Questions
English Questions
1. What does the title signify? Which character is most representative of a caged animal, i.e.,
living in a metaphorical zoo?
2. Jerry first calls Peter a vegetable, then changes his mind and calls him an animal. Why?
3. How are Jerry and Peter different? (Think of their socio-economic class, their careers and
their family life.) How does Edward Albee emphasise these differences?
4. How are Jerry and Peter alike?
5. Having seen the play, how would you describe Albee’s view of the world?
6. Describe how Jerry dies. Albee purposely makes the final moment of the play ambiguous;
why does he make that choice?
7. What will Peter take away from this day in the park?
8. Absurdist playwrights rebelled against the traditional structures of theatre and created their
own. What convention/institution would you like to rebel against and what alternative would
you offer?
9.
Why do you think Jerry went to the zoo? What is his need to tell Peter about it?
10. Why does Peter stay when Jerry begins abusing him?
11. What is Jerry trying to tell Peter with “The Story of Jerry and the Dog”?
12. Albee wrote a prequel called Homelife, which he has staged as the first act, with The Zoo
Story as the second act, in a new play called Edward Albee's At Home at the Zoo . Read
Homelife and discuss the development/changes in Peter through each act.
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Drama Questions
1. Which of the absurdist characteristics were true of The Zoo Story?
2. Discuss as a class how the plays were representative of Theatre of the Absurd. How were
the staging, the script, the acting, the directing and the costumes and set characteristic of
Theatre of the Absurd?
3. Jerry has a knife and Peter has a book. What is the playwright trying to achieve by giving
the characters these specific props?
4. Compare and contrast The Zoo Story with Waiting for Godot by Samuel Becket or The
Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter.
5. Although Edward Albee updated the script when he added the prequel Homelife nearly 50
years after writing The Zoo Story, the Director Catherine Fitzgerald has chosen to set this
production of The Zoo Story in 1958. Why do you think about this choice? Which era
would you chose to set this play in?
Design
50 years after writing The Zoo Story, Edward Albee wrote the prequel Homelife which he has
staged as the first act, with The Zoo Story as the second act, in a new play called Edward Albee's
At Home at the Zoo.
Read Homelife and using the set design parameters of The Zoo Story design a one-space setting
for At Home at the Zoo.
Performance
In small groups explore through improvisation what would happen in the The Zoo Story if Peter’s
response to Jerry differed from what we see in the play. For example, if Peter were to completely
ignore Jerry when he first begins talking to him, what would happen? If Peter said he did mind
Jerry talking to him when asked “Do you mind if we talk?” what would Jerry’s response be and
would this change the course of events?
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Immediate Reactions
After viewing the play set aside time for class discussion. Consider the following aspects of the
play, and record them into your journal.
Production Elements
Performance Elements
Strengths
Impact on
Audience
Weaknesses
Impact on
Audience
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Design Roles
For each of the following design roles, explain using three specific examples, how each role added
meaning to the action or your understanding of context, theme or other aesthetic understandings of
the drama event.
Design Role
Technique
What did this contribute to the performance?
One
Two
Lighting
Three
One
Two
Set Design
Three
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Further Resources
•
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Symbolism and Naturalism in Edward Albee's The Zoo Story, Rose A. Zimbardo, Twentieth
Century Literature, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Apr., 1962), pp. 10-17 (article consists of 8 pages),
Published by: Hofstra University, Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/440743
McCarthy, Gerry. Modern Dramatists: Edward Albee. London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd.,
1987.
Amacher, Richard E. Edward Albee (revised edition). Boston: Twane Publishers/G.K Hall &
Co., 1982.
Useful Links
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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/16/theater/theater-edward-albee-returns-to-thezoo.html?src=pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zoo_Story
http://greenstone.refer.bf/collect/revu/index/assoc/HASH0162.dir/B-007-01-039-049.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Albee
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/artworks/stories/2009/2621602.htm
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xdwxw_edward-albee-on-coming-out_news
http://www.pdf4me.net/pdf-data/the-zoo-story-edward-albee.php
http://www.gradesaver.com/author/edward-albee/
http://www.roycecarlton.com/admin/speakers/fileuploads/Albee_Info-Kit.pdf
http://etd.eprints.ums.ac.id/5528/1/A320050155.pdf
*Web links were active when preparing this guide
References
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http://ibneldelta.ahlamontada.com/t3648-topic)
http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade50.html
http://www.answers.com/topic/the-zoo-story-events-in-history-at-the-time-of-the-time
http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade50.html
http://history1900s.about.com/od/timelines/tp/1950timeline.htm
http://countrystudies.us/united-states/history-117.htm
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG01/mincks/brief.html
http://www.filmsite.org/50sintro3.html
http://www.centralparkhistory.com/timeline/timeline_postww2_gays.html
http://elcoushistory.tripod.com/economics1950.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Baudelaire
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/607
http://www.todayinliterature.com/biography/charles.baudelaire.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_P._Marquand
This study guide was prepared by Catherine Fitzgerald (Director) and Alison Howard (Education
Coordinator) with additional research by Michelle Saint-Yves (Creative Writing Secondment) and
Alexis West (Assistant Director). All effort has been made to acknowledge the references
throughout the document. We are particularly indebted to and acknowledge the a Soulpepper
Theatre (Toronto) production Study Guide which was written and researched by Martina Kuska,
Education and Outreach Intern for English Theatre.
See: http://www.artsvivants.ca/pdf/eth/activities/zoo_story_guide.pdf
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Study Guide - State Theatre Company of South Australia

Transcription

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