Final Project Assignment

If you are reading this post, it means you have completed your exams and are ready to sail through the rest of the school year. All that is left in Literature and Performance is your final project which will count as your final exam grade. The project grade will consist of the performance itself and a written reflection of it due finals week.

The project entails transforming a piece of literature into a theatrical performance and it will be graded on:

1) Faithfully representing some aspect of the original text
2) Creative adaptation of the text onto the stage
3) Strong rationale for staging decisions
4) Strong portrayal of characters
5) Ease of following the plot
6) Interesting dialogue
7) Emotional expression/impact
8) Engaging the audience
9) Good collaboration of the group
10) Effort put forth by individuals in the group

Two notes:

1. The final project should be a minimum of 5 minutes and a maximum of 15 minutes.
2. You should not have more than 4 people in your group.

Project Steps:

A) Each student will write a proposal outlining what literary text they chose (novel, short story, poem, excerpt of a longer work), why they think it would be good for this project, how they would stage it, how it would be fun, creative, and a good learning experience. Also, please include the number of characters you will have in the scene and how many students you think you might need to play these characters. This proposal is due on your blogs (500 words) on May 9. You will also present your idea to the class on that day.

B) The class will vote on which projects to actually stage and who will participate in what.

C) Scripts and stage designs are due May 13. Costume and Prop lists are due May 20.

D) The first draft of staging is due May 19. The next draft is due May 26.

E) There are also some blog posts due to help chart your progress.

Videos of final drafts and final reflective writings are due by the end of Finals week.

Another Nye poem found by Ryan

Famous

Related Poem Content Details

BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

The river is famous to the fish. 

The loud voice is famous to silence,   

which knew it would inherit the earth   

before anybody said so.   

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds   

watching him from the birdhouse.   

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.   

The idea you carry close to your bosom   

is famous to your bosom.   

The boot is famous to the earth,   

more famous than the dress shoe,   

which is famous only to floors. 

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it   

and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.   

I want to be famous to shuffling men   

who smile while crossing streets,   

sticky children in grocery lines,   

famous as the one who smiled back. 

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,   

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,   

but because it never forgot what it could do.

Blood -- the true version with correct stanzas

Blood

Related Poem Content Details

BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

“A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,” 

my father would say. And he’d prove it, 

cupping the buzzer instantly 

while the host with the swatter stared. 

In the spring our palms peeled like snakes. 

True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways. 

I changed these to fit the occasion. 

Years before, a girl knocked, 

wanted to see the Arab. 

I said we didn’t have one. 

After that, my father told me who he was, 

“Shihab”—“shooting star”— 

a good name, borrowed from the sky. 

Once I said, “When we die, we give it back?” 

He said that’s what a true Arab would say. 

Today the headlines clot in my blood. 

A little Palestinian dangles a truck on the front page. 

Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root 

is too big for us. What flag can we wave? 

I wave the flag of stone and seed, 

table mat stitched in blue. 

I call my father, we talk around the news. 

It is too much for him, 

neither of his two languages can reach it. 

I drive into the country to find sheep, cows, 

to plead with the air: 

Who calls anyone civilized? 

Where can the crying heart graze? 

What does a true Arab do now? 

Nye letter

Letter from Naomi Shihab Nye, Arab-American Poet:

To Any Would-Be Terrorists

I am sorry I have to call you that, but I don't know how else to get your attention.  I hate that word.  Do you know how hard some of us have worked to get rid of that word, to deny its instant connection to the Middle East? And now look.  Look what extra work we have.  Not only did your colleagues kill thousands of innocent, international people in those buildings and scar their families forever, they wounded a huge community of people in the Middle East, in the United States and all over the world.  If that's what they wanted to do, please know the mission was a terrible success, and you can stop now.

Because I feel a little closer to you than many Americans could possibly feel, or ever want to feel,  I insist that you listen to me.  Sit down and listen.  I know what kinds of foods you like. I would feed them to you if you were right here, because it is very very important that you listen.  I am humble in my country's pain and I am furious.

My Palestinian father became a refugee in 1948. He came to the United States as a college student. He is 74 years old now and still homesick. He has planted fig trees. He has invited all the Ethiopians in his neighborhood to fill their little paper sacks with his figs. He has written columns and stories saying the Arabs are not terrorists, he has worked all his life to defy that word. Arabs are businessmen and students and kind neighbors.  There is no one like him and there are thousands like him - gentle Arab daddies who make everyone laugh around the dinner table, who have a hard time with headlines, who stand outside in the evenings with their hands in their pockets staring toward the far horizon.

I am sorry if you did not have a father like that.  I wish everyone could have a father like that.

My hard-working American mother has spent 50 years trying to convince her fellow teachers and choir mates not to believe stereotypes about the Middle East. She always told them, there is a much larger story. If you knew the story, you would not jump to conclusions from what you see in the news. But now look at the news. What a mess has been made.  Sometimes I wish everyone could have parents from different countries or ethnic groups so they would be forced to cross boundaries, to believe in mixtures, every day of their lives.   Because this is what the world calls us to do. WAKE UP!

The Palestinian grocer in my Mexican-American neighborhood paints pictures of the Palestinian flag on his empty cartons.  He paints trees and rivers. He gives his paintings away. He says, "Don't insult me" when I try to pay him for a lemonade. Arabs have always been famous for their generosity. Remember? My half-Arab brother with an Arabic name looks more like an Arab than many full-blooded Arabs do and he has to fly every week.

My Palestinian cousins in Texas have beautiful brown little boys. Many of them haven't gone to school yet. And now they have this heavy word to carry in their backpacks along with the weight of their papers and books. I repeat, the mission was a terrible success. But it was also a complete, total tragedy and I want you to think about a few things.

1. Many people, thousands of people, perhaps even millions of people, in the United States are very aware of the long unfairness of our country's policies regarding Israel and Palestine. We talk about this all the time. It exhausts us and we keep talking. We write letters to newspapers, to politicians, to each other.  We speak out in public even when it is uncomfortable to do so, because that is our responsibility. Many of these people aren't even Arabs. Many happen to be Jews who are equally troubled by the inequity. I promise you this is true. Because I am Arab-American, people always express these views to me and I am amazed how many understand the intricate situation and have strong, caring feelings for Arabs and Palestinians even when they don't have to. Think of them, please: All those people who have been standing up for Arabs when they didn't have to. But as ordinary citizens we don't run the government and don't get to make all our government's policies, which makes us sad sometimes.  We believe in the power of the word and we keep using it, even when it seems no one large enough is listening. That is one of the best things about this country: the free power of free words. Maybe we take it for granted too much. Many of the people killed in the World Trade Center probably believed in a free Palestine and were probably talking about it all the time.

But this tragedy could never help the Palestinians. Somehow, miraculously, if other people won't help them more, they are going to have to help themselves.  And it will be peace, not  violence, that fixes things. You could ask any one of the kids in the Seeds of Peace organization and they would tell you that. Do you ever talk to kids? Please, please, talk to more kids.

2. Have you noticed how many roads there are? Sure you have. You must check out maps and highways and small alternate routes just like anyone else. There is no way everyone on earth could travel on the same road, or believe in exactly the same religion. It would be too crowded, it would be dumb. I don't believe you want us all to be Muslims. My Palestinian grandmother lived to be 106 years old, and did not read or write, but even she was much smarter than that. The only place she ever went beyond Palestine and Jordan was to Mecca, by bus, and she was very proud to be called a Hajji and to wear white clothes afterwards. She worked very hard to get stains out of everyone's dresses -- scrubbing them with a stone.  I think she would consider the recent tragedies a terrible stain on her religion and her whole part of the world. She would weep. She was scared of airplanes anyway. She wanted people to worship God in whatever ways they felt comfortable. Just worship. Just remember God in every single day and doing. It didn't matter what they called it.  When people asked her how she felt about the peace talks that were happening right before she died, she puffed up like a proud little bird and said, in Arabic, "I never lost my peace inside." To her, Islam was a welcoming religion. After her home in Jerusalem was stolen from her, she lived in a small village that contained a Christian shrine. She felt very tender toward the people who would visit it.   A Jewish professor tracked me down a few years ago in Jerusalem to tell me she changed his life after he went to her village to do an oral history project on Arabs. "Don't think she only mattered to you!" he said. "She gave me a whole different reality to imagine - yet it was amazing how close we became. Arabs could never be just a "project" after that."

Did you have a grandmother or two?  Mine never wanted people to be pushed around. What did yours want?  Reading about Islam since my grandmother died, I note the "tolerance" that was "typical of Islam" even in the old days. The Muslim leader Khalid ibn al-Walid signed a Jerusalem treaty which declared, "in the name of God, you have complete security for your churches which shall not be occupied by the Muslims or destroyed." It is the new millenium in which we should be even smarter than we used to be, right? But I think we have fallen behind.

3. Many Americans do not want to kill any more innocent people anywhere in the world. We are extremely worried about military actions killing innocent people. We didn't like this in Iraq, we never liked it anywhere. We would like no more violence, from us as well as from you. HEAR US!  We would like to stop the terrifying wheel of violence, just stop it, right on the road, and find something more creative to do to fix these huge problems we have. Violence is not creative, it is stupid and scary and many of us hate all those terrible movies and TV shows made in our own country that try to pretend otherwise.  Don't watch them. Everyone should stop watching them.  An appetite for explosive sounds and toppling buildings is not a healthy thing for anyone in any country. The USA should apologize to the whole world for sending this trash out into the air and for paying people to make it.

But here's something good you may not know - one of the best-selling books of poetry in the United States in recent years is the Coleman Barks translation of Rumi, a mystical Sufi poet of the 13th century, and Sufism is Islam and doesn't that make you glad?

Everyone is talking about the suffering that ethnic Americans are going through. Many will no doubt go through more of it, but I would like to thank everyone who has sent me a consolation card. Americans are usually very kind people. Didn't your colleagues find that out during their time living here? It is hard to imagine they missed it. How could they do what they did, knowing that?

4. We will all die soon enough. Why not take the short time we have on this delicate planet and figure out some really interesting things we might do together?  I promise you, God would be happier. So many people are always trying to speak for God - I know it is a very dangerous thing to do. I tried my whole life not to do it. But this one time is an exception. Because there are so many people crying and scarred and confused and complicated and exhausted right now - it is as if we have all had a giant simultaneous break-down.  I beg you, as your distant Arab cousin, as your American neighbor, listen to me. Our hearts are broken, as yours may also feel broken in some ways we can't understand, unless you tell us in words.  Killing people won't tell us. We can't read that message. Find another way to live.  Don't expect others to be like you.  Read Rumi.  Read Arabic poetry. Poetry humanizes us in a way that news, or even religion, has a harder time doing. A great Arab scholar, Dr. Salma Jayyusi, said, "If we read one another, we won't kill one another."  Read American poetry.   Plant mint.  Find a friend who is so different from you, you can't believe how much you have in common. Love them. Let them love you. Surprise people in gentle ways, as friends do. The rest of us will try harder too. Make our family proud.

naomi shihab nye 

The Importance of Literature/Poetry/Writing

Here is a quote from Naomi Shihab Nye (but it also relates to Emily Dickinson):

“Why should it be a surprise that people find solace in literature? Literature slows us down, cherishes small details.…We need literature for nourishment and noticing, for the way language and imagery reach comfortably into experience, holding and connecting it to ourselves.”

Poetic Terms

On the portal, I posted a partial list of poetic terms you might want to review.

I also found an easy explanation of alliteration, consonance, and assonance online here:

http://www.writingrhymeandmeter.com/rhyme/208-consonance-assonance-alliteration/

Emily Dickinson's Death Obsession

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Because I could not stop for Death – 

He kindly stopped for me – 

The Carriage held but just Ourselves – 

And Immortality. 

We slowly drove – He knew no haste 

And I had put away 

My labor and my leisure too, 

For His Civility – 

We passed the School, where Children strove 

At Recess – in the Ring – 

We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain – 

We passed the Setting Sun – 

Or rather – He passed Us – 

The Dews drew quivering and Chill – 

For only Gossamer, my Gown – 

My Tippet – only Tulle – 

We paused before a House that seemed 

A Swelling of the Ground – 

The Roof was scarcely visible – 

The Cornice – in the Ground – 

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet 

Feels shorter than the Day 

I first surmised the Horses' Heads 

Were toward Eternity –