Pygmalion -- George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw -- one of the most well regarded playwrights -- wrote this comedy and first presented it to the public in 1912. He took some of the substance of the original Greek myth of Pygmalion and turned it into a popular play. In Greek mythology Pygmalion actually came to fall in love with one of his sculptures, and the sculpture suddenly became a living human. But in this play two older gentlemen, Professor Higgins (who is a scientist studying the art of phonetics) and Colonel Pickering (a linguist who specializes in Indian dialects) meet in the rain at the start of this play.
Higgins makes a bet with Pickering that because of his great understanding of phonetics, he will be able to take the Covent Garden flower girl -- who speaks "cockney" which is not considered very high brow in England -- and make her into a well-spoken classy big city girl. It turns out that the flower girl (Eliza Doolittle) actually wanted to pay in order to be able to be better spoken. In the play she is being transformed into a sassy, perky lady, and as the play moves along, Higgins has won the bet. But the two men become uninterested in the bet and Eliza is not happy at all with being used in this wager.
Interestingly, even though the master phonetics teacher Higgins has been able to get Eliza to speak with a higher class accent, in more beautiful tones, her statements reflect that she is still a girl without a lot of intellectual substance. In Act four Eliza throws slippers at Higgins because she is mad that after she was taught better use of the English language, there was no future for her beyond that. In Act five, Eliza is angry at Higgins for his part in the ploy, and turning to Pickering (she believed it was his example, not Higgins' phonetics, that made her a lady) she seems to be a more self-assured person; she says about herself: "Oh, I'm only a squashed cabbage leaf."
In time Eliza retreats into her old gutter speech and during an argument with Higgins, it is clear that all Eliza ever wanted was to be herself. The point of the play is about different social classes and social status in Ireland. I enjoyed the story because it was also Shaw's way of poking fun at high society and its pretensions. And even though Higgins is heard to say that his work with Eliza was "…the most absorbing experiment I ever tackled," the audience knows that this attempt to help a flower girl who speaks cockney become a classy lady was just a ruse between two men who really didn't care about the young lady per se. They cared about themselves, and in effect, Shaw used them to show the pretensions and posturing of Irish high society.
Oleanna -- David Mamet
This play has among its main themes miscommunication, indifference, improper behavior, transformational behavior and revenge. It is a play that has a lot of confrontational dynamics. A college student named Carol has a problem that she wants to discuss with her professor. And like any college student who may be struggling in a particular class, Carol asks for a conference with her professor to discuss how she can still pass this class even though she is failing. The scene between the professor and Carol takes up the first act of the play.
The audience sees that the professor is very busy on the phone while his student is sitting there waiting for a chance to actually convey to him what she is thinking and hoping -- that he will provide some ways in which she can still get through the class. What the audience sees in the first act is a college woman who appears to be quite simple. Carol seems cliched and shallow, and even kind of dumb. She says things like, "Did…did I…did I say something wrong" (p. 3); and "I'm stupid" (p. 12); and "I'll never learn" (p. 14); and "nobody wants me" (p. 14).
In that first act the professor finally pays attention to her but begins touching her in a provocative way, and just when Carol is about to say something apparently very personal, the professor's phone rings again and she is stymied. She has said, "I'm bad…Oh God," and John says, "It's all right…" and Carol continues, "I always…all my life…I have never told anyone this…" John says, "Yes. Go on. Go on." And Carol starts to explain this deep
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