Speaking and Listening – Assessing Miss Norat’s Arthur

Miller PresentationLearning Objectives:

• To be able to identify what makes a good speaking and listening presentation.

• To be able to respond to information about Ar-thur

Miller.

As you watch the presentation – complete the table

Is Arthur Miller the Greatest Playwright Who

Ever Lived?By Miss Norat

Who is Arthur Miller?

Arthur Asher Miller

Playwright, essayist and prominent figure in American theatre.

Born in Harlem, New York City.

Polish Jewish immigrants ruined by the Wall Street Crash.

Paid for his own college tuition-living the American Dream.

“The American Dream is the largely unacknowledged screen in front of which all

American writing plays itself out..."death and betrayal and injustice and how we are

to account for this little life of ours.”–Arthur Miller

Academic Life - building the dream

His first play:No Villain

Changed course-won an award

Professor Kenneth Rowe- understood the art of a playwright

"The dynamic of play construction"

Arthur Miller Award, Arthur Miller Award in dramatic writing, the Arthur Miller theatre

1939

Closed down.

Worked in Brooklyn Navy Yard and continued writing radio plays.

What has been said about his plays?

"a very depressing play in a time of great optimism" - All My Sons

"Miller has written a superb drama. . . . It is so simple in style and so inevitable in theme that is scarcely seems like a thing that has been written and acted. For Mr. Miller has looked with compassion into the hearts of some ordinary Americans and quietly transferred their hope and anguish to the theatre. " - death of a salesman

"Miller has written another powerful play. . ." - the crucible

"has power and substance" - A view from the bridge

"Will give a great deal of pleasure to many people" - the price

"an anguished consideration of mortality and the gulf between men and women." - elegy for a lady

The turning point

House un-American activities committee

Monitoring 'communist' activities during a time of tension:the Cold War

Communist sympathisers blacklisted and brought to account in front of the committee

Miller investigate by HUAC and wrote 'the crucible' inspired by the Salem Witch Trials.

"Great theatre can change the world"

6 decades of:

Power conflicts

Personal responsibility

Social responsibility

Repercussions of past actions

Guilt

Hope

Morality

Who can he compare to?

William Faulkner

America's 'poet and prophet of race'

Thornton Wildner

"I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being"

Tennessee Williams

"The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks"

So is he the greatest playwright?

"Unquenchable"

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BirqjuayQTA

Interesting info about Miller Questions/comments about the presentation