

Recommended for High Schools & Middle Schools. Excellent for the classroom or competition. These are genuine human conflicts that most folks can relate to in one way or another. The plays can be performed individually or all together for a full evening of theatre. I prefer it to many of the books with dozens and dozens of "Teen Monologues." They don't consistently offer quality material that will motivate students to dig deeply into their characters. This is a wonderful tool for the theatre classroom by one of America's best playwrights. Each scene is built as a mini-play in itself and offers a simple and identifiable dramatic structure and subtext for you and you students to uncover together. Some scenes are quite serious, others very comical, and every one offers a manageable length for script analysis and memorization. It is a series of scenes that take place over several decades in a single grand old fashioned dining room. Gurney's, The Dining Room, for acting classes.

What might they say to each other? Who might they be talking about? What might their hopes be for the evening? What might they say about Cinderella? Children would be encouraged to get into partners and act out this scene between the two sisters. Children might be asked to imagine that the ugly sisters are having a conversation. For example: if the class were reading Cinderella, the teacher may show them a picture of the ugly sisters on the way to the ball. A teacher will often start by giving the children a scenario.
