Let's Find The Big Idea
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Authors
Carlson, Bernice Wells
Issue Date
1982
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Issue
Type
Book, Whole
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Abstract
The book presents seven skits, six playlets, and six plays--all for the purpose of helping audiences find the big idea or point. I find this a good way to go at the centrality of moral in a fable. The introduction talks wisely about the plurality of big ideas that an audience can legitimately find in a single skit. Every answer related to the play is accepted as correct (8). Unfortunately, the same introduction introduces Aesop as a Greek slave who was engaged to teach Roman boys more than two thousand years ago (7). Is the writer thinking of Phaedrus? Even within the plays, the script regularly asks the actors to decide how their characters react in the last phase of the presentation. Among the skits are CJ (turned to illustrate the moral Think before you crow), BC, The Whole Truth (on King Lion's bad breath), BS, SW, and Rain or Shine (about the prayers of the potter and the gardener). The playlets include So Proud (on two horses carrying differently valued commodities); Lion, Sick and Dying?; TMCM (where the city visit is at Christmas time); and The Heart of a Monkey (with two morals). The plays include The Tiger, the Brahman, and the Jackal and Half of the Reward about a peasant asking for lashes as his reward, in order to expose the corrupt servant who has bargained for half his reward. In Lion, Sick and Dying? the fox actually sees several characters enter the cave; he tells the lion that he will wait to see them come out before he will go in. There are several simple but effective illustrations; among the best is that of the deer's severed head on 22. Appendices present various kinds of puppets.
Description
Citation
Publisher
Abingdon Press
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DOI
Identifier
3381 (Access ID)