My Year of Rain

Abstract

The work done on this project has combined the knowledge I have accumulated from nearly all of the classes and learning opportunities I have experienced over the course of college. The first semester's work consisted of a long literary analysis of Three Days in comparison to three other plays contemporary with it. This resulted in “Looking Behind Us As We Leap Ahead.” In the paper, I compared the use of time in Three Days of Rain, Sideman by Warren Leight, Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches by Tony Kushner, and Sight Unseen, by Donald Margulies. All of these plays were written by American playwrights in the last decade of the twentieth century. The initial connection between the four plays was the fluidity of time, an element of dramatic structure that creates abstractions and skewed perception within the play. However, after studying the plays in conjunction with each other, I was struck by just how much the concept of time can affect a play not only in its form, but also in its content. Issues related to history, preservation, and planning for the future ran through all four of the plays, as it became obvious that time was of the utmost importance in the theater of the 1990s. The same proved to be true in the production of theater in 2004. The rest of the thesis was devoted to the production of Three Days of Rain, directed by me and produced by the Contemporary Theater in the Bonn Studio in March 2004. I kept journal entries throughout the process of creating this thesis, which aided in the final written part of the thesis, “One Year of Rain: Memoirs of a Director.” This section, while more personal in nature than the first academic writing, also deals with issues of time, as it documents the trials and successes of this production, as well as the personal growth of the author and director over the course of the project. The additional information supplied is evidence of dramaturgical research related to the production. Outside sources filled in the information about the world of the play that the text was missing. The combination of the support of this research and the production of the play allowed the ultimate goal of the director to be realized: To bring the play to life, and to bring real life to the play.