A 440, a Cable or TV series in 3 seasons (original) (raw)
2019
Season 1 – the first 4 (4-bedroom house, living room) Meet the original cast. Watch the interaction between the main 4 characters – they are Bohemian’s, interested in their art more than their success. Sort of like the 4 characters in La Bohème by Puccini. We see them out on auditions, discussing their projects with each other, and in their own rooms working. Jenni with an i - her room is a music studio with posters of Hilary Hahn and Paul McCartney facing each other, April has a small Mac Plus computer and a dot matrix printer, Newton has a giant TV and tons of DVDs, and Otto has bookcases overfilled with books and a bed. Each room is as quirky as the artist … Their auditions/situations lead us to wonder if they will ever be commercially successful – especially since they don’t really seem to be chasing that dream. They are interested in their art. The situations they find themselves in are incredibly ‘artistic’ types of scenes – everything from performing at funeral home (Beatles, The End) to weird art showcases (Renaissance art gallery with ‘out of place’ performance art), etc. While all of the situations are a twist on the modern art/music scene, the first 4 always end up shining in the situations (even if they are not re-hired and considered a commercial success, they are certainly an artistic success – the theme of the show). For Example -- Romeo and Juliet – Newton comes to life when he gets a call to audition for Romeo. He gets April to play Juliet. As they rehearse the balcony scene, Newton jumps over the couch (walls in Shakespeare) to speak to April – who is sitting atop a stack of chairs (balcony). After getting all the lines correct and really nailing the scene, he gets so excited he exits the apartment. He leaves April up on the stack of chairs – unable to get down. By the end of the season, April has written, submitted and had a TV show about their lives picked up by a TV network (that we find out in S2 is really just a local community college theater class). This will change their lives in S2 when they see how they ‘look’ as they are cast against the S2 "fab 4."
Related papers
Shakespeare’s Serial Returns in Complex TV
Shakespeare’s Serial Returns in Complex TV. Reproducing Shakespeare. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020
This book examines how Shakespeare’s plays resurface in current complex TV series. Its four case studies bring together The Tempest and the science fiction-Western Westworld, King Lear and the satirical dynastic drama of Succession, Hamlet and the legal thriller Black Earth Rising, as well as Coriolanus and the political thriller Homeland. The comparative readings ask what new insights the twenty-first-century remediations may grant us into Shakespeare’s texts and, vice versa, how Shakespearean returns help us understand topical concerns negotiated in the series, such as artificial intelligence, the safeguarding of democracy, terrorism, and postcolonial justice. This study also proposes that the dramaturgical seriality typical of complex TV allows insights into the seriality Shakespeare employed in structuring his plays. Discussing a broad spectrum of adaptational constellations and establishing key characteristics of the new adaptational aggregate of serial Shakespeare, it seeks to initiate a dialogue between Shakespeare studies, adaptation studies, and TV studies.
Spring Season Publications, 2020
1. Would you call the character of Dr. Faustus ‘heroic’? Give reasons for your answer. (20) 2. Discuss the play within the play in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (20) 3. What is the importance of Hamlet’s soliloquies in the play? (20) 4. Can The Alchemist be considered an allegory? Give a reasoned answer. (20) 5. Can Eliza in Pygmalion be termed as feminist? Elaborate. (20) 6. What are the comic strategies used in The Playboy of the Western World? (20) 7. Discuss Murder in the Cathedral as a poetic drama. (20) 8. Comment on the title of Look Back in Anger. (20) 9. Discuss Waiting for Godot from the perspective of the theatre of the Absurd. (20) 1. Discuss the character of Dr Faustus as a tragic figure. 20 2. Identify the characteristics of Shakespearean comedy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 20 3. What do you think is the dominant quality of Hamlet’s character? Illustrate. 20 4. Discuss The Alchemist as a satire. 20 5. Comment on the relevance of The Playboy of the Western World to the present time. 20 6. Do you think Pygmalion is a romance? Give reasons for your answer. 20 7. What are the qualities that set Murder in the Cathedral apart from other plays? 20 8. Examine the existentialist elements in Waiting for Godot. 20 9. Discuss the main characters of Look Back in Anger and their relationship with each other. 20 10. Write an essay on British drama in the twentieth century. 20
Super Size Stories. Narrative Strategies in Contemporary TV Series - «Cinergie» n. 11 giugno 2017
This paper starts by claiming that the amount of narrative time is one of the distinctive features by virtue of which TV series are treated as a self-standing appreciative kind in contemporary culture. As suggested by Jason Mittell, time is constitutive of TV seriality: " a series is a cumulative narrative that builds over time " and also " time is an essential element of all storytelling but is even more crucial for television " or " seriality itself is defi ned by its use of time " 1. There are so many contemporary series considered experimental in time structure that, as Melissa Ames puts it, " although temporal play has existed on the small screen prior to the twenty-fi rst century […] never before has narrative time played such an important role in mainstream television " 2. We will argue that this vast amount of time can confl ict with the structural constraints of formulaic narrative, especially from an Aristotelian perspective according to which a narrative is inherently a knot to be untied. More specifi cally, according to Aristotle, " Every tragedy is in part Complication and in part Denouement; the incidents before the opening scene, and often certain also of those within the play, forming the Complication; and the rest the Denouement ". We will show that, with respect to this issue, contemporary TV series primarily face two options, which we will call the super-knot and the super-knotty rope. We will argue that these two options are not suffi cient in order to fi ll the TV series' amount of time. Further fi lling strategies are needed. We will present what we consider the two main fi lling strategies in contemporary TV series, namely the fl ash strategy 3 and the strand strategy 4. Finally, we will argue that these strategies can raise issues that risk to make the narrative experience of contemporary TV series less valuable. We will do so with particular reference to heavily serialized shows both in US and in Europe.
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