Sociology 3701: Worksheet--"Noises Off"

As the video opens, an English play, "Nothing On," is about to open on Broadway, and we see the director, Lloyd, slinking off, in dread of the New York audience's reaction to opening night. As he leaves he thinks back six months to the disastrous "tech rehearsal" on the eve of the play's original opening in Des Moines, Iowa.

1. What is the play about?

2. What are your initial impressions of the actors? Who are they in the play and who are they as people?

Dotty

Selsdon

Brooke

Garry

Frederick

Belinda

Poppy (stage manager and stand-in)

After the introduction we skip part of the video (you can check it out at the UMD library and see it all) and pick up at a performance in Miami Beach.

3. What goes wrong in this performance? How do the actors react to the various errors and complications? What does the audience think about it all?

Sociology 3701: "Noises Off"--Groups

1. In real life, of course, there's no script. Is there anything equivalent and where does it come from? If not, where do we get our lines?

2. In real life, there's no director. What if you try thinking in terms of Mead's "I" and "me?" Which would be the director?

3. Goffman makes a lot of use of the front region/ back region distinction, and this video gives us a look at both simultaneously in the Miami Beach performance. How might that distinction be useful in an analysis of ordinary life?

4. Think about a play rehearsal where all the actors have general scripts for their own parts (the basics, but not the details) and there's no director so they have to simply cooperate to make the play happen. What are the likely complications?

5. What if it's not the rehearsal, but the play itself (like the performance in Miami Beach) isn't going according to script? There are a lot of disruptions? What are the sources of the disruptions, and how do the actors pull together (or not) to keep the play going? . In what ways is this like life and in what ways different?

6. What if all the actors are in more than one play at once(not simultaneously but in different parts of their day--kind of like Lloyd describes with some of his Hamlet actors in New York City) and their problems in one play sometimes carry over into another one? How does that complicate the presentation of self? How does it threaten the continuity and coherence of a particular play? Is our dramaturgy metaphor beginning to fit better?

7. Just before the Miami Beach performance, Lloyd says: "I think this play is beyond the help of any director." But of course the show goes on, and the audience is actually happy with it? Again, what are the parallels to life? Who is the audience in ordinary life? What happens in real life if some of the players and/or the audience are unhappy with the script or the performance?