Pre-Show Preparation, Questions for Discussion, and Activities

Note to Educators: Use the following assignments, questions, and activities to introduce your students to Talley’s Folly and its intellectual and artistic origins, context, and themes, as well as to engage their imaginations and creativity before they see the production.

1. Exploring and Personalizing the Themes of Talley’s Folly, Before the Performance.  Although playwright Lanford Wilson has described his play Talley’s Folly as “one simple romance,” the play, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980, is filled with complex, yet relatable, themes that make it much more than simply a story about romantic love and courtship. 

The questions for discussion immediately below are designed for both teachers able to incorporate the reading of Talley’s Folly into their pre-performance curriculum (read Section A, then proceed to C), as well as for those whose students will not have the opportunity to read the play in advance of their experience of the performance (begin with Section B).

1. After reading Talley’s Folly either aloud as a class or individually, ask your students to brainstorm a list of themes central to the play.  [See section B for a list of themes.]
   
   
2. Set in Wilson’s hometown of Lebanon, Missouri in 1944, Talley’s Folly illuminates the extraordinary evening in the lives of Matt Friedman and Sally Talley (see “Character Profiles” in this audience guide) when Matt drives four hours to Sally’s home to confront her about his feelings.  Associated with the main action of the play are the issues that color, complicate, and conflict the simple story, including:  Sally and Matt’s disparate backgrounds; ethnic and cultural prejudice and intolerance; social expectations regarding love, marriage, family, and procreation versus the interests, wants, and goals of the individual; the position, status, and experience of the outcast or misfit; the yearning for belonging; the repressive and isolating nature of secrets; and the healing power of confession.  Share these themes with your students.
   
   
3. Ask your students if they find a personal connection (either in relationship to their own experience or to someone that they know) to any of the themes of Talley’s Folly.  Have them write/journal about one theme with which they personally connect.  If appropriate, students may volunteer to share their thematic connection with the rest of the class for purposes of discussion.
   
   
4. Ask your students to recall and make connections to other plays or works of literature they have read or studied with themes similar to those of Talley’s Folly.

2. Envisioning Talley’s Folly:  Set Design Project.  It has been said by drama scholars and theater critics alike that the old boathouse, which is the sole setting for Talley’s Folly, is the third character in Lanford Wilson’s two-character play.  Wilson takes great care in describing the boathouse in his opening stage directions for the play:

A Victorian boathouse constructed of louvers, lattice in decorative panels, and a good deal of Gothic Revival gingerbread.  The riverside is open to the audience.  The interior and exterior walls have faded to a pale gray. The boathouse is covered by a heavy canopy of maple and surrounded by almost waist-high weeds and the slender, perfectly vertical limbs of a weeping willow.  Lighting and sound should be very romantic; the sunset at the opening, later the moonlight, slant through gaps in the ceiling and walls reflecting the river in lambent ripples across the inside of the room.

The boathouse contains two boats, one turned upside down, buckets, boxes, no conventional seating.  Overhead is a latticework attic in which are stored creels, bamboo poles, nets, seines, minnow buckets, traps, floats, etc. all along past use.

Have your students bring to life their personal design conception of the setting for Talley’s Folly by creating a three-dimensional set model in miniature or a design rendering (full color illustration) in whatever medium they might feel is appropriate. 

• Students should begin by researching the definition of an “architectural folly” and any other words or terms in the above description with which they are unfamiliar.  Although no one should be required to create a literal design based upon Wilson’s description—indeed, some might envision an abstract setting for the play—many may want to conduct some image research of boathouses, Victorian architecture, fishing accoutrements, etc.
  
  
• If theatrical set design models are something with which students are unfamiliar, they can access the McCarter Theatre Youtube page to view a video of professional scenic designer Eugene Lee (who has designed seven McCarter sets in the past four seasons) and his set design model for Emily Mann’s A Seagull in the Hamptons.  The Eugene Lee Video Interviews are accessible at the following link http://www.mccarter.org/blog/?p=278; an up-close tour of the model can be easily accessed in the fifth of five segments, entitled “Eugene Lee Discusses His Model for A Seagull in the Hamptons.”
  
  
• Models may be constructed out of any arts and crafts materiel/supplies available to teacher and students (e.g., cardboard, paper, clay/Sculpey, wood, etc.) Although the size of each model may be left up to its individual designer, every completed model should include a cut-out or silhouette of a human figure to clarify its scale.
  
  
• Renderings may be created in whatever medium the students feel is appropriate to create the tone of the play. Popular mediums include acrylics, color pencil, collage, markers and computer art programs.
  
  
• Students should be given time to show their finished Talley’s Folly models and/or renderings to the class, and they should explain their design choices and proces

3. In Context:  Lanford Wilson and Talley’s Folly.  To prepare your students for Talley’s Folly and to deepen their level of understanding of and appreciation for the life and work of great American playwright Lanford Wilson, have your students research, either in groups or individually, the following topics:

Lanford Wilson: Biography Early one-acts (Ludlow Fair, Home Free, The Madness of Lady Bright) Caffe Cino Major works: Balm in Gilead The Rimers of Eldrich Lemon Sky The HOT L BALTIMORE Burn This Marshall W. Mason Circle Repertory Company

The Other Talley Plays Fifth of July Talley & Son Talley’s Folly related: Lebanon, Missouri Architectural follies Anti-Semitism in America, 1930’s-1940’s America, c. 1944 Politics Family Popular culture Life at home during WWII

Have your students teach one another about their individual or group topics vial oral and illustrated (i.e., posters or PowerPoint) reports.  Following the presentations ask your students to reflect upon their research process and discoveries.

4. Preparing to Observe Talley’s Folly Through the Playwright’s Lens.  At the heart of any great play, such as Lanford Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Talley’s Folly, are playwriting’s two essential dramatic elements:  action and conflict.  Before coming to McCarter to see the play, sharpen your students' dramaturgical knowledge and understanding by providing them with the following terms/concepts:

Action:  What a character wants; also often referred to as a character’s objective.  Characters have both immediate actions (in any given scene) and overarching actions (in the entire course of a play).

Conflict:  That which stands in the way of what a character wants; also referred to as an obstacle.  Conflicts come in two varieties:

External:  A conflict which comes from outside the character, either in the form of an inanimate object or another character.

Internal:  A conflict which comes from within the character, in that she or he wants more than one thing and therefore is blocked from both.

To reinforce your students’ command of the above terms, utilize any plays that they have read in common and ask them to identify the actions and conflicts of each play’s major characters.  Then ask them, as they experience Talley’s Folly, to keep track of the actions and conflicts of characters Matt and Sally.  Points to consider:

• What are Matt’s and Sally’s individual actions/wants when the play begins?
• What conflicts arise to face each want?  What keeps Matt or Sally from getting what they want?
• Do either Matt or Sally suffer from an internal conflict?
• Who gets what they want by the play’s end?
• Does either Matt’s or Sally’s action/want change in the course of the play?  If so, then why?
• How and why do Matt and/or Sally change, if at all, during the course of the play?

Following your Talley’s Folly attendance, utilize the above questions for a discussion of the dramatic content of the play.

5. A Theater Reviewer Prepares.  A theater critic or reviewer is essentially a “professional audience member,” whose job is to report the news, in detail, of a play’s production and performance through active and descriptive language for a target audience of readers (e.g., their peers, their community, or those interested in the Arts). To prepare your students to write an accurate, insightful and compelling theater review following their attendance at McCarter Theatre’s production of Lanford Wilson’s Talley’s Folly, prime them for the task by discussing the three basic elements of a theatrical review:  reportage, analysis and judgment
   
   
   • Reportage is concerned with the basic information of the production, or the journalist’s “four w’s” (i.e., who, what, where, when), as well as the elements of production, which include the text, setting, costumes, lighting, sound, acting and directing (see the Theater Reviewer’s Checklist).  When reporting upon these observable phenomena of production, the reviewer’s approach should be factual, descriptive and objective; any reference to quality or effectiveness should be reserved for the analysis section of the review.
     
     
   • With analysis the theater reviewer segues into the realm of the subjective and attempts to interpret the artistic choices made by the director and designers and the effectiveness of these choices; specific moments, ideas and images from the production are considered in the analysis.
     
     
   • Judgment involves the reviewer’s opinion as to whether the director’s and designers’ intentions were realized, and if their collaborative, artistic endeavor was ultimately a worthwhile one.  Theater reviewers always back up their opinions with reasons, evidence and details. 

   Remind your students that the goal of a theater reviewer is “to see accurately, describe fully, think clearly, and then (and only then) to judge fairly the merits of the work” (Thaiss and Davis, Writing for the Theatre, 1999).  Proper analytical preparation before the show and active listening and viewing during will result in the effective writing and crafting of their reviews.