Paper #1: The Lost Play of Sappho (Due September 23rd)

NOTE: The handout had a typo--it's due September 23rd, not October 23rd! Sorry! :) 

Sappho’s poetry has all the elements of theater that we’ve seen in Aristophanes: dialogue, humor, songs, and choruses (and penis jokes!). Maybe her poems were not meant to be poems at all, but are passages from a long-lost play that would have been staged alongside Lysistrata and other Greek dramatists?

PART I (The Play):

• Arrange several fragments from Sappho (anywhere from 4 to 8 of them) into a short “scene” from a play. (You can slightly edit the fragments if you want, but you can’t add lines—only subtract).
• Your scene should have at least two speakers, but can have more. Each fragment should be a speech/dialogue from one of the speakers.
• Give the characters names and tell us where they are. It can be modern—they can be at ECU, or at a football game, or in ancient Greece. Just make sure the characters and setting complements what is being discussed.
• Use the fragments to determine who the characters are: what conversation/argument are they having? How does one poem answer the other? How does it create a mini drama—or comedy?
• Use poems from throughout the book: don’t just use all the poems next to one another. In fact, that might not make sense as a conversation between two or more people.
• Use Lysistrata as a model: you can even use poems as a ‘chorus’ that responds to the action of the two characters. Be creative and listen to the poems and think about what story they tell you.

PART II (The Notes):

• In a follow-up 2-3 page paper, provide scholarly ‘notes’ for your production. Why did you choose the poems you did? What story did you think they were telling?
• Examine a few of the poems to show how they respond to one another and what they reveal about your characters’ personality and ideas.
• You might also offer some insight to the actors: what kind of actor should play these roles? How should they say the lines? What lines are funny—and which ones should not be played for laughs? Remember, this is supposed to be staged, so how should it look to the audience?

REQUIREMENTS

• Must have two parts: the actual play (2-3 pages, at least) and the Notes (2-3 pages, at least); if you’re missing one or the other I won’t grade the paper
• You must use the fragments verbatim in your play (unless you cut a few lines); do not add your own dialogue.
• You must briefly quote from a few poems in your Notes. Cite them according to MLA format, which looks like this:
• In one of Sappho’s fragments, she writes, “neither the honey nor the bee for me,” (Penguin 45).
• DUE MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23^rd BY 5pm