Day 14 Assignments

[Marie Wilson]

Marie Delivers Irony!

What I learned doing this assignment is that it can be hard to wrap your brain around true irony, but the descriptions in this lesson were very helpful – I reread and contemplated them often while I worked, along with one of the most concise examples of irony in movie history: from Dr. Strangelove: “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here. This is the war room!”

1. With your list of the New Ways / Insights you want audiences to experience, go through these steps:

Step 1. What is the New Way / Insight you want to deliver?

a) Putting on a play or any artistic endeavour is more about the process or the journey than it is about the product.

b) People are not always who you think they are, so if you don’t know how they identify, then you shouldn’t care one way or the other.

Step 2. How could you deliver that insight through opposite experiences?

a) The cast adheres to Eunice’s football-like diagrams for blocking the play, but eventually it makes them so agitated by its mindlessness that they start on their own accord doing creative things within the play’s scenes.

b) Eunice comes to Wes to complain, he has always been her sounding board, but the more she blathers on this time, the more he realizes he can’t take her bullshit, so he tells her to look around the room and understand that she doesn’t know who everyone is or what their birth assigned gender may have been. He gives her a lecture, ending with having her look into to his eyes and answer whether she really knows who he is. What the audience knows but she doesn’t is that he is trans and after this she looks at him and wonders what he was getting at.

OR

Step 1. Where could you build opposite experiences into your screenplay?

a)The homecoming party for Kay where everyone is being happy and wanting selfies with Kay because she plays a TV princess, but she can’t stand their phoney adulations and inside she’s sad. She wanders off, a bit drunk, & unwittingly wrecks some harvest decor on Main Street.

b) At the AA meeting Wes tells Kay her TV show is pretty mediocre; she gets angry and tells him his commentary makes her want to go get drunk.

Step 2. What is the New Way / Insight you want to deliver through them?

a) You can’t just “love” someone because they are now a TV princess while in the past you treated them poorly and continue to treat others poorly.

b) One must be honest about certain things but one must also read the room.

2. Come up with at least five (5) different ways you can create IRONY in your screenplay and deliver an insight.

a) Kay wants the world to see the talent in Emoke but in casting her in the play, the townspeople boycott the play. Insight: You can lead horses to water but you can’t make them drink.

b) Instead of a fun afternoon where Kay introduces her mom to Emoke, her mom has a heart attack. Insight: You can’t force people to have fun or to like someone.

c) In her apron, humming merry tunes, Sandra bakes pies to raise money for the drama club. Kay helps. But Sandra’s cheery good-neighbour attitude does not extend to including an “outsider”, and she threatens to destroy her apple pies if Kay insists on including Emoke in the play. Insight: a cheery attitude and an apple pie are just fake if that attitude is selective.

d) Kay goes to the bookstore to apologize to Emoke for breaking her window, expecting the usual adulation because she’s a TV star, but instead Emoke tells her off for being such a whiny drunk princess the night the window got smashed. Insight: Check your privilege.

e) Opening night is sold out; there are a few picketers outside, but mostly a feeling of celebration as audience arrives. Some Eunice supporters show up to heckle, but when an egg gets pitched at a cast member, it is Eunice herself (having gone through her own gradient steps) who stops the show to tell them to sit up and pay attention to the hardworking actors. Insight: Even the most strident of opposition can see the light.

[Kathleen Gamble]

Kathleen Delivers Irony

I learned doing this assignment is that irony is a way to make the audience think and it’s a way of teaching a lesson with lecturing.

Step 1. Where could you build opposite experiences into your screenplay?

With the conversation between Cassie and her mother.

Step 2. What is the New Way / Insight you want to deliver through them?

Nichelle, Cassie’s mother, wants her to meet her father’s family and work at the company, but Cassie was afraid. New way is that Cassie is open and up for the Challenge. Open herself up to knew opportunities, but she seems to have forgotten Nichelle’s side of the family because of all of the hours she spend at work and visiting new family members.

Come up with at least five (5) different ways you can create IRONY in your screenplay and deliver an insight.

1.For the example above: IDENTITY: Reaching your potential, but alienating those you love.

2. When reporting to the Board on how to save the company, Rhonda makes the presentation because of Cassie’s stage fright. Cassie did all the work, but Rhonda gets the accolades. CREDIT: Do something amazing, but the credit goes to another.

3. Rhonda’s team mixes fake documents among Cassie’s papers causing her to think she has found the solution. The Board notified her that her figures were wrong and reminded her of the stakes. DEALS: A special deal that turns out to be worthless.

4. Mason told Cassie he had found the real figures in Rhonda’s office. This is the way to gain control of your father’s company. REASONS: Doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.

5. Cassie nervously watched Mia bagged all of her (Cassie’s) oversized clothes and gave them to the needy. WIN/LOSS: a loss that is really a win.

[William Peed]

1. Miguel is angry that Hassan chooses de Garza’s play for the Easter Pageant, thus granting de Garza his freedom/Miguel being in de Garza’s play makes him realize that he truly loves Daniella

2. Miguel uses his role in de Garza’s play to escape/once he escapes, he gives himself up to allow Daniella to escape

3. Miguel uses Hamad’s interest in Zoraida to convince him to help him escape/Hamad’s selflessness helps convince Miguel he has to change his ways

4. Miguel wants to escape, but needs to learn the meaning of true love/By giving himself up so Daniella can escape, he loses his freedom, but learns the meaning of true love/after learning the meaning of true love, he is ransomed by the Trinitarian friars.