The Passion Play: A Hero's Journey

I decided for my play review that I would go see Mary Poppins The Broadway Musical at the Jefferson Davis Fine Arts building this past weekend. The play is based on the stories of P.L. Travers and the Walt Disney Film; the original music was by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman, the book written by Julian Fellowes, and the co-creator of the original was Cameron Mackintosh.

In his use of characterization, he descriptively talks about the different states his mother undergoes in her illness and the surrounding events and emotions elicited by her continuous downfall, readers experience a feeling of sympathy for Wolff in his circumstance. This also brings light and support to his obscure, perhaps unethical, reasoning that his mother's life, along with those who find

You are going to fail more times you succeed so keep trying because success is on its way. To start, the fiction book Playmakers, written by Mike Lupica, is about the rivalry between Ben McBain and Chase Braggs in basketball. Ben plays for the Rockwell Rams and Chase plays for Darby Bears. The author shows us the battles between Ben and Chase and the problems Ben faces such as one of there best players getting hurt. In the book two main themes show. The first theme is never give up and the second theme is treat others the way you want to be treated. These two themes show up throughout the book multiple times.

Today, the new movie "Zombieland" has just been released into theaters so the zombie is still going strongly through culture. Night of the Living Dead was a serious horror look at zombies but society has turned a once terrifying genre into some humor. Spoofs like ‘Shawn of the Dead’ and ‘Zombieland’ “has fun messing around with the rules of the post-apocalyptic zombie movie genre” (Machosky). However the reason the undead have survived so long is because they have broadened their publicity range. Not only does the world see zombies in movies, but mankind must “watch out for Nazi zombies rising from the grave in videos games like ‘Dead Snow’ and ‘Call of Duty: World at War’” (Greene). Zombies have been expanded into music as well with the Kingston Trio’s release of the song “Zombie Jamboree”. Even books have been used to spread the disease, such as “at Borders zombie literature runs the gambit from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to Zombie Haiku” (Greene). In addition, David Lubar has just recently expanded the zombie craze to elementary school children with his newest novel, My Rotten Life (Lauer-Williams). This is a children’s book about a middle school student who is also a zombie. Zombies, once a scary menace only for the brave at heart, have become a friendlier topic for everyone.

The victims of the Holocaust, as told by Elie Wiesel in his novel, Night, suffered a loss of identity and struggled to maintain their humanity. In the book, Wiesel describes his experiences that occur throughout the Holocaust. In one example, the run through the snow gives the Jews a chance to surrender all feelings of good and become very narrow minded. One youthful Jew takes the risk wholeheartedly.

Rodney Clapp, writer, editor for Wipf and Stock Publishers and expert in topics such as theology and culture, in the article, “Attack of the Zombies”, argues that many things in life are beginning to resemble zombies. Clapp assumes that the audience also views zombies as lifeless creatures that go around spreading their disease. The author’s purpose is to persuade the audience to believe that many things they see today are starting to resemble zombies. The author writes in a challenging tone for people who question the similarity of zombies to every day life. Clapp supports his argument by comparing and contrasting, and exemplification.

In the play “Doubt: A Parable” by John Patrick Shanley, Sister Aloysius is a headstrong principal at a Catholic school in New York in the 1960’s. She is a person who speaks her mind, and she will take whatever means to ensure that she gets her way and keeps her school running in a manner she deems fit. It seems as if Sister Aloysius is almost afraid of change and new ideas, and she will try her hardest to keep progress from pushing old ideas that she firmly believes in aside.

It is these extreme behaviours, which challenge and contradict the values that most individuals have been taught from the very beginning. The values the boy must carry into the future. After the mother’s death, all that stands between him and death is his father’s light. It is this light at the end of the tunnel, which allows the man to continue his quest. Despite all the wrong deeds occurring around the world, the boy progresses through his quest whilst also upholding his values such as dignity, perseverance, justice and faith. But it is a greater story of survival, it is the story of the world surviving with the morals, beliefs and laws that are at risk of losing. This concept of the story profoundly confronts my values and how others reject them for their own survival at any cost. Having experienced the environments of a refugee camp, if people were to abandon their values and beliefs just as the characters in The Road, then there would be no hope or future left for them to look forward to.

In “The Black Death” the author Phillip Ziegler attempts to fully describe the Plague that struck Europe in 1338 and remained until 1665. The year of the great Plague of London Ziegler tries to give an unbiased account of the Plague by compiling information from contradictory sources. Ziegler begins the book with the Tartans catapulting diseased corpses into Genoese as the Genoese escape back to Europe. Following this, the author provides some insight into the Plague in Italy, Germany, and France, in which he highlights the persecution of Jews, who became the scapegoat for the Plague in Germany. The majority of the book discusses the Plague in England, dealing with the people that died.

Godface, the latest work by Matriark Theatre showing at 107 Projects in Redfern, is a trippy, music-driven political satire about a young girl’s rise and fall in the election campaign of an unfamiliar, dangerous city.

A possible theme for Oedipus the King by Sophocles is that one’s blindness can hide the inevitability that is his destiny. Oedipus is in this situation. He struggles to escape his fate: killing his father and marrying his mother and believes he is successful. Sophocles believes that the gpds control one’s destiny and the inevitability that a person will do what is destined despite there hero’s intentions.Oedipus represent the standards of a true tragic hero: he is well known, basically good, his punishment is out of proportion compared to his crime, the audience at some point feels sorrow and pity for him, and Oedipus has a tragic flaw. During the whole story Oedipus thinks that he may be able to change his fate a live life how he wants but he falls to that which is his destiny.For these reason Oedipus is truly an example of a tragic hero and is unable to avoid his tragic fate.

Defining play can be very difficult. The term play can be used to illustrate a wide range of behaviors and activities, and can be perceived as both essential and insignificant to the child at the same time. Santrock (2012, p.437) suggests a definition of play as "a pleasurable activity that is engaged in for its own sake." However, this is argued by Kernan (2007, p.5) who states that none of the potential definitions are broad enough to encompass all of the meanings associated with play. Despite the lack of such universal definition, Rennie (2003, p.22) claims, that "we can recognize play across barriers of language, of culture, even of species", which conveys its importance in the life and development of children, as it is

Where Shakespeare's tragedies will tell the story, chiefly, of a single principal character, this is rarely the case with his comedies. The comedies are more social and deal with groups of characters. In the case of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the principal groups are, at first, introduced severally. Though, one group may interact with another (as when Puck anoints Lysander's eyes, or Titania is in love with Bottom) they retain separate identities.

Equus depicts modern society and its worship of the “normal” as the true enemy of passion. In the play, passion can only be achieved by breaking of the chains of normalcy, chains formed by the assumed authority of establish institutions such as religion and psychiatry. Dysart comes to see normality as the enemy to passion throughout the play as he observes Alan, his model of abnormality. The characters of Alan and Dysart are the main tools Shaffer uses to comment on the loss of passion due to destructive nature of the normal. Passion stems from the individuality that society attempts to cut out of its citizens and to Alan this individuality is found his instinctual and intense worship of his god, Equus. Dysart is drawn to admiration by the

     There have been many dramatic plays over the centuries. Many of these plays have died in their time, while others have lived on. What makes these plays endure time and continue to be influential over time? Perhaps it is the storyline or the interesting nature of the play is what makes these dramas last. I think that it is the focus on human nature and its essential truths that keep these plays alive. Most of the plays, still enacted in theaters today, deal with social issues that people can learn from and relate to.