Ionesco: An avant-garde man is like an enemy inside a city he is bent on destroying, against which he rebels; for like any system of government, an established form of expression is also a form of oppression. The avant-garde man is the opponent of an existing system.
Questions
Maternity - Against Mother Courage — a mother who fails to protect her children — the play places Kattrin. Her kindness involves an impulse to mother in opposition to her mother's coldhearted business sense. As the Model Book notes, if Courage's war spoils consist of the loot she can scavenge, Kattrin's are the children she saves. Notably, her heroic intervention — one that breaks her stony silence — is the salvation of the children of Halle. (Compare with Fathers)
Ionesco: All history is nothing but a succession of "crises"--of rupture, repudiation and resistance. . . . When there is no "crisis," there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.
Camus: Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.
The "traditional" conflict -- Fathers & Sons. Hamlet2001
Then and Now...
Generations and the society.
Conflict and continuity.
Old and New.
Break it down: Parents & Children, Fathers & Daughters, Mothers & Sons (including Dr. Freud) Oedipus
[ new page for "Sisters & Brothers"? ] POV: how the children see it...
Williams [Glass Menagerie]: Parents (Past), Children (Future). Father is absent, husband is gone.
Four main steps: 1. The Greeks, 2. Shakespeare, 3. High Modernity (Chekhov and after), 4. Postmodern (Beckett)
...
...
ANDREY. I'll say what I have to say and then go. First, you have something against Natasha, my wife, and I've noticed that from the very day of my marriage. Natasha is a splendid woman, conscientious, straightforward and honourable -- that's my opinion! I love and respect my wife, do you understand? I respect her, and I insist on other people respecting her too. I repeat, she is a conscientious, honourable woman, and all your disagreements are simply caprice... [a pause]. Secondly, you seem to be cross with me for not being a professor, not working at something scholarly. But I'm in the service of the city, I'm a member of the District Council, and I consider this service just as sacred and elevated as the service of learning. I'm a member of the District Council and I'm proud of it, if you care to know... [a pause]. Thirdly... there's something else I have to say.... I've mortgaged the house without asking your permission... For that I am to blame, yes, and I ask your pardon for it. I was driven to it by my debts... thirty-five thousand... I'm not gambling now -- I gave up cards long ago; but the chief thing I can say in self-defence is that you girls... while I don't get... my wages, so to speak... [a pause]. (3 Sisters, Act II)
Images [ assigment? ] sounds, music?
Williams : The Glass Menagerie [ updates for dramlit class ]
theatre theory * 
