Educators Introduction
Welcome to the McCarter Audience Resource Guide Educator Edition for our 2008-2009 season-opening production of Herringbone. This guide has been assembled to complement both your students’ theater-going experience as well as your class curriculum by offering a variety of interesting and engaging activities for both pre-show and post-performance instruction and enjoyment.
This production of Herringbone affords opportunities for enrichment in theater, history, music, and dance. Before experiencing the highly theatrical nature of the one-person show, students will have the opportunity explore and contemplate the challenges of the unique form through the study and viewing of other examples of solo performance pieces. They will embark upon investigations into the historical period of the Great Depression as well as the American popular entertainment form of vaudeville from which the authors of the play drew their contextual inspiration. Following the performance, students will consider, analyze and evaluate textual and subtextual themes presented by the production, such as childhood, family bonds and dynamics, greed, exploitation, the search for identity, and depression as metaphor. They will reflect upon the performance both in terms of its virtuosic performer and in terms of the effectiveness of the various elements of production, including design elements as well as music and choreography.
Our student audiences are often our most engaging audiences at McCarter, and we encourage you and your students to join us for a discussion with performer BD Wong after the performance. Our visiting artists are always impressed with the preparation and thoughtfulness of McCarter’s young audiences, and this post-performance discussion will offer a unique opportunity for students to engage intellectually with an award-winning professional theater practitioner. We look forward to seeing all of you for a wonderful discussion about the amazingly entertaining and complex Herringbone.
