Play Guide [356k PDF] - Arizona Theatre Company

The Great GatsbyLESSON PLANS• Ask students to stand up and arrange themselves into a group, girls at the back, boysat the front, and look around the room. Explain that they represent the population ofAmerica on the eve of WWI. Ask the boys to move off to the side – they’ve just goneoff to war; girls, step up – you’re taking over the workforce back home. Instructor thentaps two or three boys on the shoulder and asks them to sit down. They represent theAmerican casualties during WWI. Have students look around, reflecting on how theyfeel in this new situation: boys with their friends and brothers losing their lives and notreturning home with them, girls with a newfound sense of responsibility and power intheir society.• (Students can all sit/return to the group.) Ask students: how would you feel, if so fewof you returned from the war? If you stayed at home, how would you feel if so fewreturned? Boys, how did it feel returning to find the girls holding more power? Girls,same question? What would you do now? Discuss responses.• Instructor leads discussion back to aftermath of WWI in America and the “carpe diem”attitude that was fostered by explaining that partying was the country’s collectiveresponse to the war. They decided the rules of life didn’t apply to them much any more,and they started partying, dancing, drinking – even though Prohibition was still ineffect (ask if anyone knows what Prohibition was; explain when they don’t; started as away to conserve resources for the war effort, wasn’t repealed until 1933).• Prep CD player and jazz music as you tell students that the author of The GreatGatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, is the person who first referred to this period as “the JazzAge”. Introduce the music you’re about to play and let the students listen for a bitbefore asking them their impressions of the style, how it makes them feel, what theyimagine when they hear it.• As the music plays (quietly) briefly introduce the characters of Jay Gatsby, DaisyBuchanan, and Tom Buchanan. Tell the students that you’re going to be reading quotesfrom the novel that each character said about the other. Ask them to listen to thesequotes and try to get an idea of these people in their heads. Read the selected quotesfrom The Great Gatsby (Appendix A).• Tell students that in just a minute they’re going to be working in small groups to answersome questions about these people they now have in their minds. Divide studentsevenly into groups of 4 or 5 and ask them to pick someone to be the recorder for thegroup; make sure they have a writing utensil and ask them to sit in their groups. Assigna character to each group (Gatsby, Daisy, or Tom – try to get roughly the same numberof groups assigned to each). Explain Character Questionnaire (Appendix B) as you passit out to student groups, and ask them to spend the next 3-5 minutes filling out theiranswers, based on the quotes they heard from the novel.Arizona Theatre Company Play Guide 54