INCORPORATING THOREAU AND THEATRE:
A CURRICULUM UNIT DESIGNED FOR A COURSE IN JUNIOR AMERICAN LITERATURE
Tanja Hiti
August 9, 2002
This curriculum unit addresses the following general standards of the
Massachusetts English Language Arts Curriculum Frameworks (2001):
Standard 1: Discussion
Students will use agreed-upon rules for informal and formal discussions
in small and large groups.
Standard 2: Questioning, Listening, and Contributing
Students will pose questions, listen to the ideas of others, and
contribute their own information or ideas in group discussions or
interviews in order to acquire new knowledge.
Standard 3: Oral Presentation
Students will make oral presentations that demonstrate appropriate
consideration of audience, purpose, and the information to be conveyed.
Standard 9: Making Connections
Students will deepen their understanding of a literary or non-literary
work by relating it to its contemporary context or historical
background.
Standard 13: Nonfiction
Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the purposes,
structure, and elements of nonfiction or informational materials and
provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Standard 15: Style and Language
Students will identify and analyze how an author’s words appeal to the
senses, create imagery, suggest mood, and set tone, and provide
evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Standard 17: Dramatic Literature
Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes,
structure, and elements of drama and provide evidence from the text to
support their understanding.
Standard 18: Dramatic Reading and Performance
Students will plan and present dramatic readings, recitations, and
performances that demonstrate appropriate consideration of audience and
purpose.
Standard 24: Research
Students will gather information from variety of sources, analyze and
evaluate the quality of the information they obtain, and use it to
answer their own questions.
Materials:
Walden (excerpts) and “Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau (both
contained in Walden and Other Writings of Henry David Thoreau, edited
by Brooks Atkinson, New York: The Modern Library, 1965)
The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1971)
Brief excerpts from other prominent Transcendentalists, including Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Sophia Rilpey, George Ripley, William Ellery Channing,
Margaret Fuller, and Bronson Alcott (found in Transcendentalism: A
Reader, edited by Joel Myerson, New York: Oxford University Press,
2000)
The plans that follow are grouped as “lessons” for adaptability to
different settings. Most lessons are intended to be completed within
several class periods, but this will vary, of course, depending on the
length of time in class each day and other work students are pursuing
simultaneously. The obvious exception is lesson five, the culminating
project of the unit, in which students will actually write and perform
their own play based on the lives of the major players in the
Transcendentalist “movement”.
This lesson will easily take several
weeks of dedicated class time.
LESSON ONE:
As an introduction to Thoreau, students will be asked to learn and
present a dramatized version of perhaps one of the most widely-known
passages of Walden, taken from “Where I Lived and What I lived For”.
The class will begin by reading the excerpted passage in choral form.
This exercise will be repeated at the opening of class every day until
the due date for the recitation. This will enable those students for
whom memorization proves difficult to learn the piece more readily.
The passage could certainly be shortened or lengthened depending on the
nature and ability of each individual student.
After the initial reading of the passage in choral form, students will
be broken into groups of four or five and asked to list any examples of
imagery found in the passage. They will also be asked to examine the
diction of the passage (why so many first person pronouns? why so many
strong verbs?). Finally, they will be asked to write, based on this
very brief passage, a short character analysis of the author that they
support with information from the passage.
In this as in all subsequent small group discussions, one member of the
group will record ideas and suggestions, one will facilitate the
discussion and insure that each member of the group participates, and
one will keep an eye on the time and make sure the group is moving
forward at an appropriate pace. Finally, one representative of each
group will then present the findings to the class. If the groups
contain five members, two students can easily present together.
At the conclusion of this lesson, students will be assigned the whole
of “Where I Lived and What I Lived For” for independent reading and
will write a two page, detailed character analysis of Thoreau based on
their reading. This assignment asks students to explore any two of
Thoreau’s predominant personality traits. They must provide examples
of moments when, through his words or his actions, Thoreau exhibits
these traits. The class will then break into two large groups and
students will share their papers aloud, with the opportunity for
commentary from their peers.
Lesson One
“Where I Lived and What I Lived For” Performance Scoring Rubric
Your performance will be evaluated based on the following criteria.
One of the most important components of this project is that you show
HOW you have interpreted the piece THROUGH YOUR PERFORMANCE. If you
must give a monologue that explains your interpretation before you even
begin with Thoreau’s words, your choices are not clear and strong
enough. Remember that you will have to hear this speech about twentynine times in class, so be original and take some risks. You must
perform on the stage with only one chair as a prop. You should bring
any hand props that you deem appropriate, but, at this point in our
exploration of the Transcendentalists, you should NOT dress in costume.
Wear comfortable clothing that will allow you to move easily about the
stage.
1. Fluency with the passage (i.e. do you know the lines?)_- 35 points
2. Clear and thoughtful interpretation of the passage, shown through
your use of voice and physical movement - 30 points
3. Vocal clarity and variety (can we hear you, even in the back? do you
vary the tone of your voice, or do you simply scream at us while
delivering the passage or speak in a monotone?) - 15 points
4. Effective use of the physical stage space - 15 points
5. Inventive use of props - 5 points
***You must be ready to perform the passage on the assigned day. If you
are not prepared, you will still have ONE more chance to perform on the
following day BUT you will automatically lose FIFTY points from your
score (much better than a zero, but still a failing grade that will be
added to your quarter average). Do yourself a favor and be prepared!
Lesson One
Performance excerpt from “Where I Lived and What I Lived For”
David Thoreau’s Walden
in Henry
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front
only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it
had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not
lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear;
nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.
I wanted to live deep and suck out the marrow of life, to live so
sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to
cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and
reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then
to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness
to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be
able to give a true account of it in my next excursion...”
-Taken from Walden and Other Writings of Henry David Thoreau, edited by
Brooks Atkinson, New York: The Modern Library, 1965.
LESSON TWO
The purpose of this lesson is to introduce students to the voices of
other Transcendentalists, and at the same time to ask them to examine
the language closely, paying attention to tone, diction, and imagery.
Another main objective is to demonstrate to students that this movement
was comprised of a multiplicity of different voices and to begin to
think about the personalities behind these voices.
Working in groups of four or five, students will be assigned one of the
passages that follow. After completing the analysis page (included as
part of this lesson), students in the group will perform a dramatic
enactment of the passage itself, while one student reads the passage
aloud. This enactment should literalize the images in the passage,
helping explain them. For example, if the passage spoke of a wave of
injustice falling upon the innocent, one student could represent the
innocent while the others might link arms and undulate back and forth
to become the wave that would (gently, we hope) fall.
Some students
may be reluctant at first to be so physical in class, but encourage
them to take risks. An even better mode of encouragement, if you feel
comfortable doing so, would be to model one of the passages using
yourself and a few volunteers first, so everyone knows exactly what to
do (and has laughed at you a bit first, before they are asked to put
themselves out there). Then the whole class would discuss the way this
scene helped (hopefully) illuminate the meaning of the passage and
served to reinforce the tone, diction, and imagery.
Lesson Two
Transcendentalist Passages
All of the following passages are taken from Transcendentalism: A
Reader, edited by Joel Myerson, New York: Oxford University Press,
2000.
1. “Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air, and
uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a
transparent eyeball. I am nothing. I see all”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
2. “Engage in nothing that cripples or degrades you. Your first duty
is self-culture, self-exaltation; you may not violate this high trust.
Your self is sacred, profane it not. Forge no chains wherewith to
shackle your own members”
-Bronson Alcott
3. “Woman is educated with the tacit understanding.
that she is only half a being, and an appendage. First, she is so to
her parents, whose opinions, perhaps prejudices, are engrafted into her
before she knows what an opinion is. Thus provided she enters life,
and society seizes her; her faculties of observation are sharpened,
often become fearfully acute, though in some sort discriminating, and
are ever after so occupied with observing that she never penetrates”
-Sophia Ripley
4. “Man is of woman born, and her face bends over him in infancy with
an expression he can never quite forget. Eminent men have delighted to
pay tribute to this image”
-Margaret Fuller
5. “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept
the place the divine Providence has found for you; the society of your
contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done
so and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age,
betraying their perception that the Eternal was stirring at their
heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
6. “A dropping shower of spray,
Filled with a beam of light,The breath of some soft day,The groves by wan moonlight,Some rivers flow,
Some falling snow,
Some bird’s swift flight;A summer field o’erstrown
With gay and laughing flowers,
And shepherd’s clocks half blown,
That tell the merry hours,The waving grain,
The spring soft rain,Are these things ours?
-William Ellery Channing
7. “With a deep reverence for the Past, we shall strive so to use its
transmitted treasures, as to lay in the Present, the foundation of a
better Future. Our motto is, the elevation of the whole human race, in
mind, morals, and manners, and the means, which in our view are alone
adapted to the accomplishments of this end, are not violent outbreaks
and revolutionary agitations, but orderly and progressive reform”
-George Ripley
8.
“Patient serpent, circle round,
Till in death thy life is found;
Double form of goodly prime
Holding the whole thought of time,
When the perfect two embrace,
Male and female, black and white,
Soul is justified in space,
Dark made fruitful by the light;
And, centered in the diamond Sun,
-Time and Eternity are one”
-Margaret Fuller
Lesson Two
Transcendentalist Passage Analysis
Group Names
Facilitator:
Timekeeper:
Reader/Presenter:
Recorder:
1. Have your chosen reader read the passage aloud, twice
2. List every image that you find in the passage:
3. What specific words seem particularly important?
and comment on the author’s choice of diction here.
4. Discuss the overall tone of the passage.
the tone and justify your choice here.
Write them down
Chose one word to describe
5. Finally, look back at your list of images and figure out how to
create these images, using only your own bodies, to present a dramatic
version of this passage to the class. This is the moment (hurrah) when
you can stand up, stretch out, and move around!
6. The final component will be your group’s visual presentation of the
passage (simultaneously read aloud by your reader) and discussion of
both the passage and the performance.
LESSON THREE: “CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE”
Students are given the whole of Thoreau’s essay “Civil Disobedience”
to read. They must keep a reading journal in which, on the left hand
side of the page, they record any details or facts that they deem
significant. On the right hand side of the page, they record any
questions or thoughts that the essay raises in their own minds. These
journal entries would be included as part of the regular quarterly
journal to be collected and graded for completion (i.e. have the
students done all of the assigned entries completely and thoughtfully)
at the close of the quarter.
One right hand page MUST address the issue of whether there exists for
the student any one cause or issue for which he or she would be willing
to spend a night (or more) in jail.
After a whole class discussion of the essay itself and the response to
the above prompt, students will be asked to find and bring in any
examples from contemporary life (broadly defined as within the last ten
years)
of civil disobedience in action. They should try to find a magazine,
newspaper, or Internet article detailing the incident and make a copy
to share with the class. Some examples might be conservationists who
chain themselves to trees to save them from loggers or the animal
rights activists in PETA who disrupt fashion shows to protest the fur
industry.
We will then create a bulletin board for the school library with
photographs of Thoreau and quotes from “Civil Disobedience” along with
the copies of the contemporary articles so that other students can also
learn about this philosophy.
LESSON FOUR: THE NIGHT THOREAU SPENT IN JAIL by Jerome Lawrence and
Robert E. Lee
As an introduction, we will discuss the quote that opens the text and,
in a whole class discussion, suggest possible themes and objectives of
the play based on these initial words.
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because
he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he
hears, however measured, or far away.” - Henry David Thoreau
Small groups of students will be assigned a character from the play and
asked to research what is known about this real-life person. The
students will together deliver a ten minute presentation about what is
historically known about the character. The members of each group
will be asked, to the best of their abilities, to comment on how
realistically this historical character is depicted by Lawrence and
Lee.
As students read the play, they will also be asked to answer reading
check questions and to explore a list of important quotes from the
play.
Lesson Four: Character Research Group Project
You and your partners will select a character from the list below. You
must tell me whom you have selected, to avoid doubling of
presentations. Then, you must research this person. Try to find out
about his or her life and, in particular, what is known about his or
her relationship with Thoreau. You and your partners must prepare a
ten minute (or longer, your choice) oral presentation in which you
disseminate what you have gleaned from your research.
List of characters to select from:
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Lydian Emerson
Thoreau’s mother
John Thoreau
Deacon Ball
Ellen Sewell
Sam Staples
Henry Williams - in general the plight of former slaves during this
period
Lesson Four: Group Character Presentation Guidelines
Your group, in a ten minute oral presentation, must address the
following points:
1. Give a brief outline of the major events of this person’s life.
2. Tell us what you discovered about this character’s personality and
behavior, giving applicable examples.
3. What was the nature of this figure’s relationship with Thoreau?
What significance did he or she play in Thoreau’s life?
4. What role did this person play in the events surrounding Thoreau’s
incarceration?
5. And now, the hardest but most interesting part, explain, based on
your research, whether you feel that this person has been realistically
portrayed in the play. Try to find examples to support your
conclusion. Show us “fabrications” in the text. To what end have the
authors used their poetic license?
Lesson Four: Study Guide Questions for The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail
Act I
1. How is Emerson depicted as an old man?
Why?
2. How does Mother view Henry’s nonconformity?
3. Describe the relationship between John and Henry.
4. Why does Henry refuse the Harvard diploma? What is his attitude
toward formal education in general?
5. Why is Bailey in prison?
What is Thoreau’s response to this?
6. What is the significance of Henry’s “getting things backwards”?
7. What impression do we get of Henry’s character from the “flogging”
scene?
8. Why does Henry flog the children if his intention is to resign? Why
does Emerson resign his pulpit? How are these two events paralleled?
9. Explain the difference - as Thoreau does to Ellen - between “being”
and “living”.
10. Why does Henry “give” Ellen to his brother?
this?
What is the result of
11. What is Thoreau’s attitude toward organized religion?
12. Why does Henry refuse to pay the poll tax?
the government?
What are his views of
13. Why won’t Henry allow Sam to pay the poll tax on his behalf?
Lesson Four
Study Guide Questions
Act II
1. How does Henry serve as a surrogate father for Edward?
dimension of his character does this open up?
What new
2. What is the significance of the scene with Williams?
3. What does Emerson mean when he tells Henry, “you live what I talk
about”?
4. What is the purpose of the dream/war scene in the play?
relevant themes are addressed here?
What
5. What is the role of Abraham Lincoln as a shadow figure in the play?
6. How does Thoreau come to his decision to leave Walden while in jail?
7. How does Henry’s act of civil disobedience end?
8. Comment on the tone of the final moments of the play.
Lesson Four
Quotes from The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail by Jerome Lawrence and
Robert E. Lee
Students should identify the speaker and explain the significance of
each of the following quotes from the play.
Act I
1. “No.
I refuse to commit murder.
That’s why I’m here.”
2. “A man can suffocate on courtesy.”
3. “A man’s conviction is stronger than a flame or a bullet or a rock.”
4. “Being a teacher is like being in jail: once it’s on your record,
you can never get rid of it.”
5. “Nobody can teach anybody anything.”
6. “The only people who ever get anyplace interesting are the people
who get lost.”
7. “What law ever made men free?
Men have got to make the law free.”
Act II
1. “They can’t lock up my thoughts.”
2. “Oh, it’s very simple for a hermit to sit off at a distance and
proclaim exactly how things should be. But what if everybody did that?
Where would we be?”
3. “My God, he was my god.
No more!”
4. “Bailey, I tried to escape. But escape is like sleep.
sleep is permanent, it’s death.”
5. “I must leave Walden.
there.”
And when
It’s not necessary to be there in order to be
LESSON FIVE: FINAL PROJECT - MASSACHUSETTS IN THE ‘40S
THE THOREAU PLAYWRIGHTING PROJECT
This unit on Thoreau and drama will culminate in the presentation of an
original theatrical work, written, performed, and directed entirely by
students in the class, which will be performed before an audience of
juniors and seniors in the high school.
First, as a whole class, we will select the major themes, figures, and
events from this period that we wish to include in the project in order
to make the finished play as coherent as possible. Students, working
in groups of two or three, will select characters to research and
ultimately play from the Transcendentalist period. They will script a
scene, modeled after Lawrence and Lee’s work, in which they present a
significant historical moment in the lives of these characters.
Students will dress, act, and speak like their characters. We will
then, working with a selected director and assistant director, weave
these varied scenes together to (hopefully) create a cohesive picture
of the major literary and historical figures and conflicts in
Massachusetts in the 1840s.
This lesson will begin with compiling the various themes and characters
as a whole class. Students will have considerable say in deciding
which historical figures should figure predominantly in the play and
which figures will appear in scenes together. Ideally, several scenes
should involve Thoreau and Emerson at different stages of their
respective lives, to be played by different actors.
Next will commence a period of modeling. In class, students will view
an episode of the television program Little House on the Prairie in
which Laura attends a college lecture given by Emerson himself.
Students will note how Emerson is portrayed by this actor with regard
to clothing, manner, voice, etc. In addition, students will take a
field trip to see a Thoreau interpreter perform and then comment again
on clothing, manner of speaking, and overall presentation of this
historical figure.
Once students have each been assigned a character to play, they will
complete the assignment sheet that follows that provides guidelines for
researching the character and beginning to write.
Lesson Five: Thoreau, the Play Research Sheet
Name of your character:
Steps to creating this character:
1. How old will your character be in the scene you are planning to
write? What was happening in this person’s life at the time?
2. Try to find images of your character at this time. Note carefully
the style of the hair, the clothing, the facial expression, and signs
of age.
3. Look into the kind of clothing typical for a person of your
character’s status during this period in Massachusetts. You will be
responsible for creating your own costume and applying your own makeup.
4. Try to find out any information you can on how the character
actually spoke, stood, walked, moved. Imitate this the best you can.
5. In the scene you and your partners create, you must include, at
appropriate places in the scene, FIVE things that your character
actually thought (to be found in his or her writing). This means that
you should look at any essays, poems, or speeches that you can find
that your character wrote. The most difficult aspect of this part of
the assignment is to find places in the scene where the quotes will be
logical. Tinkering will be required!!!
6. Examine how your character feels about what is happening in your
scene. Remember that most effective scenes have conflict. What is the
conflict in your scene? What is the source of this conflict? It’s a
cliché but a relevant one: ask yourself, what is my motivation?
7. How does your character feel about other people in the scene? What
is their past relationship? This is crucial! If you don’t understand
this, neither will your audience!
8. Where does the scene take place? What sort of furniture or props
would realistically be in this place? You are responsible for
collecting and bringing in these materials.
Lesson Five (continued)
After students have completed the preceding worksheet, they should work
together to write a draft of their scene, which should be a minimum of
five full pages. The groups will then do a read through of their
scenes for the class, both to solicit advice and criticism for
revisions, and for the director and assistant director to decide on a
logical order for the scenes. Following the critique session for each
scene, students will rework the scene and provide a final copy so that
complete scripts can be made for the entire class.
Next will commence the rehearsal period, which will take place in the
actual performance space (auditorium, classroom, gym) if at all
possible. The director and assistant director will be responsible for
scheduling rehearsal times so that each scene is given adequate time.
They will also be responsible for researching period appropriate music
and scoring the scenes and set changes.
The director and assistant director will also be responsible for
drafting several letters, one to the principal, one to every teacher of
junior and senior English, one to the English Department Head, and one
to each of the assistant principals informing them of the performance
and inviting them to attend. In the case of the teachers, they will be
invited to bring their classes to any of the four scheduled
performances and will be given a reply card to return so that we will
know the number of attendees.
The director will be asked to compose an introduction to the piece that
will be delivered before each performance. The assistant director will
lead the discussion with the audience and the actors that will follow
each performance.
Ideally, the performance can be videotaped the first year and used as
a teaching tool in the years to come! Students involved in the
production should have the opportunity to view their performances and
take part in a critique session to evaluate their own work and the work
of their peers.
Thoreau Play Performance Evaluation Rubric
For Actors
Name:
Name of character, specify age:
1. Realistic physical and vocal portrayal of the character - 15 points
2. Effective and period appropriate costuming and make-up - 15 points
3. Logical incorporation of the FIVE required quotes, with
documentation of sources (the source for each quote must be documented
in writing and handed in to me) - 30 points
4. Fluency with your script (do you know your lines well?) - 20 points
5. Relationships with the other characters clearly established - 15
points
6. Participation in the post-performance discussion - 5 points