Essay #2 for UWP 102J: Review of a Performance

Essay #2: Review of a Performance

Length: Four Pages / about 1,000 words

Rough Draft Due in class and via Canvas: 4/25

Final Draft Due via Canvas: 5/2

Note what is bolded at the bottom of this assignment description.

102J Main Page | Syllabus | Essay #1 | #2 | #3 | #4

Reading:

“Ion” by Plato
“Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness” by bell hooks

In an essay titled “The Still-Unbuilt Hacienda,” Composition theorist Geoffrey Sirc suggests that at the “core” of any essayist’s project should be an interest in qualities that we associate with the arts: “passion, beauty, lyricism.” He argues that when considering their audiences, too may writers see them as a “construct, not as lived,” and that [d]espite all the lip service we give to empowerment in our ideological curricula, we don’t really believe in the power of a composition [rhetorical and non-fiction writing] to change the world.” With regard to the value of the essays we write, Sirc concludes that “there’s only one heuristic that matters: the person who reads this—and it is one specific person, saturated in lived desire—will that person be changed?”

For your second major assignment, you shall “review” a live performance of some sort, preferably one that has at least the potential to change the lives of the viewers or participants. We shall generate a list of possibilities in class.

To prepare for this writing assignment, you will locate, attend, analyze and, to the extent possible or appropriate, participate in a particular performance. To do so, take the following approach:

1) Locate the site and occasion of the performance, taking into consideration what sorts of sites encourage a meaningful response to a performance, and what sort of places encourage only passive presence. Investigate performance spaces that you may not already know well. Alternatively, consider a site that you know has the potential to support a life-changing performance.

2) Record your expectations for this space and the performance. Who do you expect to find in the performance space (age, class, race, interests, education)? What sort of response do you expect of the performance as it was advertised? What do you expect to learn (about the performance, about the subjects of the performance, of the “happening space,” about yourself, about the topic of any incidental discussion)? In what ways other might this space or performance or experience be understood or categorized?

3) Attend the performance. Consider what your “participation” in the performance would mean or entail. Determine the extent to which participation is warranted or expected. Would your participation lessen others’ pleasure from having attended the performance? If you are comfortable doing so, engage in whatever sort of activities you find others engaging in (within reason).

4) Consider your responses to the performance. Were you bored? If so, to what do you attribute your lack of interest? Do you credit (or blame) the talent of the performers, the performance space, the other attendees or participants, or something else? Would you ever have attended this performance if you were not required to by this assignment? Will you attend another such performance? If so, would you consider inviting friends to join you at this “happening space”?

Your Prompt:

Review a performance. In addition to using words to describe the specific sensory and intellectual experience of viewing or participating in the performance, (as an arts critic does with a theater review), convey your sense of whether or not the performance meets the life-changing criterion suggested by Sirc. More specifically, explain the extent to which your life was meaningfully changed or could have been changed by your viewing such a performance.

Support your discussion of the effect of your place with assertions that are supported with specific evidence (descriptions and narratives), with some analysis of your response to the interaction (or lack of interaction), and inspiration (or lack of inspiration) that you observe in the “happening space,” and with at least one relevant citation from “Ion” by Plato, from “Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness” by bell hooks, or from another intellectually-hefty source of your choosing (and with my approval).

Aim for no more than 1,000 words.

Bonus directions.

1) A review must present a central assertion, typically a value judgment in which the value of the performance is posited; that central assertion is typically connected to body paragraphs through the use of topic sentences;

2) Paragraphs that include claims (and this should be just about every paragraph) must include sensory (often visual) data to support those claims (and, of course, the relationship between claim and evidence should be evident or explained);

3) Evidence that is presented, such as descriptions of what you experienced as a reviewer, must be used to support claims. Such evidence is typically found in every paragraph except, perhaps, introductory and concluding paragraphs.

If you were to reflect at length on these three concerns, you would see the ways they interrelate, connecting the higher order concerns of ideas/theses, organization/paragraphs, and support/evidence. One could argue that these are three ways of saying the same thing.

Read these bonus directions multiple times before submitting your review. You will be evaluated on the extent to which your essay reflects attention to these three concerns of the value judgment, the specific and shown sensory evidence, and that evidence used to support claims. Submitted essays that neglect to address any one of these three concerns is unlikely to earn better than a grade of C.

Bonus Resources:

According to Scott Alberts at Truman State University, “Transformative learning occurs when an educational experience that includes reflection results in a profound change in the way you think and/or behave relative to what you have learned.”

We may list other bonus resources here.

Issues that came up in office hour conversations about this performance review assignment:

Take full advantage of office hours. Don’t submit your essay a day before it’s due, as we may discuss important concerns in class.
Allusions to Plato or bell hooks can be glancing, incidental. Work them into the spirit of your insightful paragraphs and your critiques, rather than feeling that you must “add on” a separate paragraph about one of these sources. This may feel awkward at first, but this assignment requirement is also a necessary part of putting discussions of others’ creative output in an aesthetic or intellectual context. I want you to have had some practice engaging in this intellectual work.
Convince your reader, in an insightful way, that the performance you are reviewing has value. A performance “review” without a value judgment is merely a diary entry.
To restate that point slightly differently, characterize the value of your performance (and do so in an insightful way).
We’ve talked in class about how insights work: they suggest something surprising or not immediately obvious, they resolve an important conflict, they indicate a discovery or realization. The insight helps the reader see something that she wouldn’t have noticed without having read the insight.
Determine what will be your purposeful balance of claim and evidence, of statement of fact and insight. An essay that offers precise descriptions but no claims or insights will not succeed. Likewise, an essay that offers a strong thesis and helpful topic sentences, but which does not support those claims, will also not succeed.
Regarding Evaluating and Grading Your Review. When we refer to a problem that causes an essay not to succeed, we mean that an essay that is missing either an assertive thesis, or one that is missing specific (sensory) and relevant evidence, will earn a grade of “C” at best. An essay that is missing both an assertive and/or insightful thesis AND specific evidence will typically earn a “D” at best.
Include specific and sensory evidence of your experience of the event. Show, show, show. Show how that specific and sensory evidence functions as support for the claims you are making. Review the evidence you have offered to ensure that at least some of it is highly descriptive, that is, that it presents shown, almost cinematic, narrative, or precise, almost photographic, description.
Beware oversimplifying, such as by merely asserting that the performance was enjoyable. Spend some time determining what insights you will offer about your experience. Read reviews of performances (for example, in Rolling Stone, in Playbill, in Art, Ltd.) to see how other critics present their claims and insights. Statements of fact should not be substituted for assertions and insights.
Because you are not yet a published critic in your field of expertise, you may (or should also) depend upon your own reflections upon your own lived experience to make and support claims.
Remember to include a word count and a count of “to be” verbs (which you should eliminate as much as possible). Especially root out “There is” or “there was” constructions.
Review the ladder of abstraction when looking at your evidence. Aim for the most relevantly specific evidence, because that will engage your reader the most. Abstractions make performance reviews seem wobbly, ephemeral, and inchoate.
Imagine that you were asked to assign a cash value to each of your sentences. An insightful, assertive, and not immediately obvious thesis would be worth a dollar. Topic sentences that communicate the focus of a paragraph are worth 80 cents or so. A sentence with specific, described, and relevant evidence that supports a claim made in a topic sentence would be worth 75 cents. Sentences that make no claims or offer no evidence are typically worth a penny or two. Rid your essay of low-value sentences. Such “penny-a-piece” sentences cheapen your essay and should not survive the drafting process.
While the assignment requires that you explore your expectations, you did that in part to make you more reflective and insightful. If your expectations do not meaningfully support the focus of your review, do not include mention of them in the final draft essay. Instead, focus on your main points, and eliminate that which you or your reader would deem irrelevant.
In that vein, ruthlessly revise your essay for wordiness and needless repetition. Doing so will improve your review’s readability, and will improve the quality and the impact of the assertions and insights that you include therein.
Answer these questions: What is your unifying argument?How do your topic sentences support your thesis?In your paragraphs, what insights do you offer about your evidence?