Ragtime - Shaw Festival Theatre

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ACTIVITIES cont’d SEGREGATION ACTIVITY ASK: Who among you are immigrants? Who might have parents who are immigrants? Discuss. EXPLAIN: because the US was growing, immigrants were encouraged to America to take jobs Americans did not want. People who came to America during this time flocked to the cities for jobs. ASK: What do you think might be outcomes of many people from different backgrounds living together in a small amount of space? INSTRUCT: spread chairs in a random pattern throughout the room. Sit in chair. Select one person to move to opposite side of the room from their chair. INSTRUCT: The person standing must try to sit in an empty chair. The people seated must prevent that person from sitting in a chair. If one person allows the standing person to sit – they are placed in the tenement – an area in the room (a corner) that is small with not a lot of space (hula hoop). Once a person is placed in the tenement their chair is removed. NO running allowed. NO talking. If you run or talk you are put in the tenement . INSTRUCT: (Option: play mood music). Continue playing the game until there are lots of people overcrowded in the tenement and only one person left sitting. As the tenement population is increased the teacher takes on the role of a critical, mean, berating guard. At times, the teacher as guard, could choose to let one person out of the tenement to return to the game. The goal is to make the tenement very uncomfortable and create a distinction between the people playing the game (the haves) and the people confined in the tenement (the have-nots). Reflection: Discussion – 10 minutes ASK: How did it feel to work together against one person? How did it feel to be the one person? ASK: How did it feel when in the tenement? What was the group dynamic? How did you feel towards the people still playing? EXPLAIN: these feelings of segregation and oppression are central to story in Ragtime - for blacks, immigrants, and women. 20 C ONNECTIONS Shaw Festival Study Guide
“ People ” love to see what people do. -Tateh, Ragtime The World of the Play EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN MOVIE INDUSTRY A Friday night at the movie theatre in the late 1800s, might be playing a film like "A Train Pulling Out of the Station" or "Traffic at the Local Intersection" - which simply showed a moving picture of a train pulling out of a station or traffic at the local intersection! For New York's first film audiences—moving pictures of anything—including normal, everyday occurrences —were magical! You could see things happening that had actually happened somewhere else. New York audiences flocked to see the 10-minute movies of everyday life, paying five cents at storefront theaters called nickelodeons. By the early 1900s, New York had dozens of these theatres. Most had little more than a projector, a screen, some camp chairs, and a piano. Ordinary scenes, when captured on film, were entertainment enough—at least at first. Soon big moving picture cameras could be seen in the stations on a subway line, on a traffic island on Lower Broadway, and atop the city's first skyscrapers. Of course, the novelty of everyday films eventually wore off. Soon people wanted longer movies with stories. The first was the "Passion Play," a biblical story shot on a New York rooftop in 1897. Audiences also wanted more comfortable places to watch the longer movies. The city's first real movie theater -- the 1,800-seat Regency -- opened in 1913. Within a few years, New York was home to dozens of movie palaces, showcase theaters designed to look like exotic Egypt, India, China, and Spain. In them, audiences of thousands watched movies and also vaudeville shows, comedians, and even orchestras. In Ragtime, Tateh finds himself in the right place at the right time, at the merging point of technology and entertainment at the dawn of America’s very profitable motion picture industry. SOURCES http://pbskids.org/bigapplehistory/arts/topic13.html Ragtime novelist, E.L. Doctorow, was fascinated by people’s preoccupation with documenting reality. In the novel Ragtime, he documents a fictional account of American history. DISCUSS: Do you document reality? In what ways? Talk about how people use Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and the phenomenon of reality TV. All have regular folks documenting mundane daily activities. It seems nearly everyone is documenting reality every moment. Why do you think that is? C 21 ONNECTIONS Shaw Festival Study Guide
Page 1 and 2: Ragtime Book by TERRENCE McNALLY Mu
Page 3 and 4: C ONNETIONS Study Guide A practical
Page 5 and 6: Production History RAGTIME This mus
Page 7 and 8: EMMA GOLDMAN Anarchist Emma Goldman
Page 9 and 10: “ The Tony winning score of Lynn
Page 11 and 12: Design Notes SUE LePAGE talks about
Page 13 and 14: “The tumultuous early years of th
Page 15 and 16: THE WORLD OF THE PLAY cont’d TECH
Page 17 and 18: THE WORLD OF THE PLAY cont’d CLAS
Page 19: THE WORLD OF THE PLAY cont’d Whil
Page 23 and 24: DISCUSSION QUESTIONS—POST SHOW 1.
Page 25 and 26: Sweatshop any working environment c

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