Drama and Hakka

Week 1段馨君副教授國立交通大學人文社會學系

Hamlet, recounts how Prince Hamlet exacts revenge on his uncle Claudius for murdering the old King Hamlet (Claudius's brother and Prince Hamlet's father) and then succeeding to the throne and marrying Gertrude (the King Hamlet's widow and mother of Prince Hamlet).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-NLnsq3P7Y

Hamlet

The subjects of the play are weighty and somewhat timeless: failures of the family structure, failures of fathers , broken promises, individual failure and reconciliation. The Glass Menagerie is about tough decisions people make for themselves that affect others and adversely themselves.

The Glass Menagerie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxf2-Fz7WS0

Oedipus the King The Oedipus Tyrannus

represents the king of Thebes, in the full confidence of his own glory at the beginning of the play, but brought step by step to the consciousness of the horrible guilt in which he had unawares involved himself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS9KJ_bAJLE

The Importance of Being Earnest

Two young gentlemen living in 1890's England use the same pseudonym ("Ernest") on the sly, which is fine until they both fall in love with women using that name, which leads to a comedy of mistaken identities...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-rzDkwZIt4

Angels in America It is the story of two couples whose

relationships are disintegrating, set in America in the 1980s against a backdrop of greed, conservatism, sexual politics, and the discovery of an awful new disease: AIDS.

It is this backdrop that provides Angels in America its magnitude and sets it apart from other love stories. In this play, the plot is largely driven by its themes, which are viewed from different characters' perspectives, as through a kaleidoscope, as the story unfolds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt2eEmJhAF4

Hedda Gabler

The entire play takes place in the Tesman's living room and in a smaller room to its side. Jürgen Tesman and Hedda Tesman are newlyweds. They have just returned from a six-month honeymoon. Hedda is aristocratic and hard to please. Throughout the play, it becomes apparent that Hedda is pregnant…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKAKwr69lJA&feature=related

Fences The focus of Wilson's attention in Fences is

Troy, a fifty-something head of household who struggles with providing for his family and with his obsession about cheating death.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v4l36NTrsA

How I Learned to Drive

The story follows the strained, sexual relationship between Li'l Bit and her aunt's husband, Uncle Peck, from her adolescence through her teenage years into college and beyond. Using the metaphor of driving and the issues of pedophilia, incest, and misogyny, the play explores the ideas of control and manipulation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T7X1mobARE

The Taming of the Shrew

The main plot depicts the courtship of Petruchio, a gentleman of Verona, and Katherina, the headstrong, obdurate shrew. Initially, Katherina is an unwilling participant in the relationship, but Petruchio tempers her with various psychological torments – the "taming" – until she is an obedient bride. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ1U5XTR148

Broken Eggs Broken Eggs, refers to that

famous political proverb often attributed to Lenin: ''You cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs.'' The play's characters are a family of upper-middle- class Cubans who lost everything when Fidel Castro's revolution forced them to flee their homeland in the early 1960's.

The Golden Child Golden Child is an Obie Award-

winning play by American playwright David Henry Hwang. Hwang's second Broadway play, it depicts a nineteenth century Chinese family being faced with Westernization.

Focusing on the chasm between Eastern and Western religious and political practices, the play features Eng Tieng-Bin, a husband torn between his Chinese devotion to his three wives and his desire to embrace American Christianity, which mandates that he divorce two of them.

Yellow Face http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdOvAP5QITU