AS ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
ELLA 1 INTEGRATED ANALYSIS AND TEXT PRODUCTION
STREETCAR QUESTION
TASK
Imagine that Mitch returns home and talks with his mother before or after the events of Scene 6, (where he and Blanche reveal their feelings to one another). Write the dialogue between Mitch and his mother, in which Mitch tells his mother about Blanche.
Give careful consideration to your language choices, form and style, in order to convey a sense of Mitch’s voice. You should use dramatic dialogue form.
You will be advised to spend 50 minutes answering this question in the exam in the summer –this includes planning and writing the answer. Try and limit yourself to spending no more than an hour on this task - 50 minutes to write and 10 minutes to plan.
SOME NOTES FOR THIS TASK
Note the layout of the script on the page. You should follow this format in your own script.
· Print the name the character speaking
· Place a colon after the name
· Leave two spaces before you write
· Indent text if it is longer than a line
· Stage directions should be in brackets and indented and leave a space before and after the stage direction
· You can imbed a stage direction the middle of speech
Content of the dialogue
· The majority of the dialogue will include
o Mitch’s attitude to Blanche – I expect you will write about Blanche from Mitch’s very biased and subjective view of Blanche. I expect that Mitch will dominate this dialogue. He will say a lot. Mitch will speak using an informal register that will include ellipsis and colloquial language.
o Mitch’s mother - her concerns and or suspicions about Blanche. His mother’s questions will be short and open. They will enable her to communicate her suspicions about Blanche. They will enable Mitch to say a lot about Blanche. You should choose questions that enable Mitch to speak. She may reflect on what he says but I expect this won’t be more than a line or two of dialogue.
o Use one stage direction to introduce the scene – Mitch’s home, mother’s illness and their relative poverty. Also use one or two stage directions to reinforce Mitch’s attitude to Blanche and his mother’s suspicions about Blanche.
Mitch’s Voice
· Try and adopt Mitch’s voice in your dialogue. You could refer to the words and phrases he uses in the play. And you could refer to the Americanism hand out I gave out in class. But be aware that some of the terms in that hand out will be too contemporary.
More general but important points
· Don’t add content that appears later in the text
· Only use material from the play itself
· Only add material to help make the dialogue realistic – this will be minimal
· Be clear in your answer about audience, purpose and format
· Remember the main focus will be the attitudes, feelings, motives of characters rather than what actually happens
· Avoid just re telling and summarising the actions of the text being studied
· I expect you will refer to scene 3 when they first met, Blanche’s teaching job, her privileged childhood in Belle Reve, her dead husband – Alan. You could have another look at scene 9. Is there anything that Mitch says in this scene that might have been prompted by his mother. After all he says at the end of scene“ You’re not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother.”
