Topics for Paper #3 on The Comedy of Errors

Paper due Monday November 14

This paper requires you to compare two performances of the play in terms of their interpretation of the text. Your paper should be no less than 500 and no more than 1000 words. Your ungraded required performance critique will describe and comment upon the in-class student presentation of Act 4, Scene 4.

If you attend the live performance in Santa Barbara, discuss that performance and either the BBC or Karamazov Brothers production. Since you don’t have the benefit of being able to watch it more than once, you will get a half grade extra credit on the paper’s evaluation—e.g. if your paper earns a C, a C+ is recorded. You will also have the benefit of our post-performane discussion on the bus trip back to SLO. If you don’t attend the live performance, discuss both BBC and Karamazov brothers’ productions.

Your paper should begin with some general statements about each production’s interpretation of the script. For example, what kind of comedy does it emphasize? What themes does it make most prominent? How does it present characters? How does it treat the audience? How does it deal with the complexity of the plot and the difficulty of following some of the language? What is the concept informing its use of sets, costumes, props and sounds.

Most of your paper should deal with one or more specific aspects of each production, for example, its treatment of a single theme or character, its rhythm or blocking of a particular scene, its presentation of the opening or the ending.

If possible, point out one specific way that each production illuminated something in the text that you would not have otherwise understood or laughed at.