Instructions
Writing assignment: Theater Analysis and The Good Life
Please read through all the instructions below before beginning work on this OPTIONAL MAKE-UP writing assignment. 
Points available: 100
Purpose
Apply what you’ve learned about theater by analyzing the Cracknell production of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.
Practice your analytic and critical thinking skills.
Develop your writing skills.
Important reminders and requirements!
This is not a review or plot summary assignment. To successfully complete this writing assignment, you will need to apply what you’ve learned throughout the semester about constructing reasonable interpretive arguments about art. 
Here are the only approved materials you may use to complete this assignment:
We screened A Doll’s House together in class, but you can also re-watch it here.
Approved Supplementary Materials on Eudaimonia: the “good” or “flourishing” life
Approved Digital Theatre+ Supplementary Materials
Failure to include specific and detailed examples from the assigned Cracknell production will result in an automatic zero on this assignment. 
Failing to use the assigned course material will result in an automatic zero. 
Failing to include time stamp references on any examples will result in an automatic zero. 
Including examples that do not accurately reflect the content of the film will result in an automatic zero. 
Using any other production of the play, relying only on the written text of the play, or using any other outside sources that have not been provided to you in MyCourses will also result in an automatic zero on the assignment. 
Overview
Philosophers, artists, and scientists have all attempted to describe what means to live a purposeful or fulfilled life, a life that is lived in accordance with our values and aspirations. Aristotle described this idea as Eudaimonia, which is often translated as “happiness,” but is better translated as “the (moral) good” or “the flourishing” life. In Approved Supplementary Materials on Eudaimonia: the “good” or “flourishing” life, you’ll find introductions to the concept good life described from a variety of different philosophical perspectives. These resources have been provided to help you determine how Nora and other characters in A Doll’s House are attempting to live a fulfilling life.
At the end of A Doll’s House, Nora leaves her family because she has realized that she does not know herself as an individual human being; she has been playing the roles society has defined for her: dutiful daughter, beautiful and bubbly wife, doting mother, and friend. What she comes to realize is that none of the characters she’s been playing her entire life are who she really is, so she removes her costume, and sets off to see things for herself without any assurance that she will ever find what she’s looking for. The only thing she does know is that this choice is the first authentic and free one she has ever made.
The thematic questions from our discussion on the play attempt to encapsulate a variety of different perspectives on how we can understand A Doll’s House as Ibsen’s meditation on what it means to live a fulfilled life in the modern age. Ibsen’s plays often posit that freedom is required if we are going to live authentically fulfilling lives. He was interested in how social expectations and tradition placed restrictions on an individual’s ability to live accordance with their values, or how these expectations and traditions kept individuals unable to even discern what those values are. Lilia Melani explains that Ibsen’s plays, 
“exposed other stresses of modern life by showing the inner pressures and conflicts that inhibit and even destroy the individual. Some of these pressures stem from conditioning, i.e., from the individual’s internalizing society’s values. John Northam distinguishes the opposing elements within the individual as the social self and the essential self. The social self is the persona which conforms to the demands of family, friends, community, and society and which an individual generally develops for acceptance or as a protection. The essential self is an individual’s true Self and expresses the individual’s thoughts, feelings, desires, needs, etc.” 
Directions
For this writing assignment, you will write an analytic essay in which you engage with these ideas as they were embodied in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and as they were emphasized in the Cracknell production. You will be able to build on the responses you’ve already written in the discussion on the play. 
Step 1: Choose a thematic sentence to guide your interpretation. 
Return to Assignment 7 A Doll’s House Viewing Questions and review the list of thematic statements from question 5. You can choose to use the same sentence you used in your original responses, or you can select another one if your thoughts have changed about the play. 
Step 2: Review the supplementary materials.
Approved Supplementary Materials on Eudaimonia: the “good” or “flourishing” life
Approved Digital Theatre+ Supplementary Materials
These will help provide you with more context for the production and introduce you to a variety of different ways philosophers, mostly from the western tradition, have thought about what it means to live a good or flourishing life. You must use at least two resources from this supplementary material to help you formulate the conception of the good or flourishing life you will use in your essay. 
Step 3: Brainstorm for your essay and develop a working thesis. 
Once you have made you have chosen your guiding sentence and reviewed the supplementary materials, you should spend some time brainstorming ideas for your essay. If you’re unfamiliar with brainstorming, please review the page here for a wide variety of techniques. I recommend the “3 perspectives,” “freewriting,” and “clustering/mapping/webbing” for this particular assignment. During this process, highlight examples from the play that you think will be relevant, and review your answers to the discussion questions, especially for questions 4 and 5. Build on what you’ve already written! 
At the end of the the brainstorming process, draft a working interpretive thesis statement about your understanding of A Doll’s House and what it’s saying about the human need to live a fulfilled life to anchor your draft. Your working thesis can be a reworking of the thematic sentence you chose. I’ve provided these statements as a guide and to help you narrow your focus, but you should also feel free to construct your own thesis statement so long as it addresses the the production’s relationship to the idea of the good or flourishing life.  
Your working thesis statement may need to be revised once you’ve completed your draft. Don’t be afraid to let your ideas develop as you write. You can review how to develop and write thesis statements here. 
Step 4: Write a draft of your essay using the outline below. 
Your analysis must accurately reflect the content and staging of the Cracknell performance. 
Refer to the “performance” or “production” and NOT “the movie” or “the film.”
Your final submission must be formatted using MLA style. 
Introduction (1 paragraph)
Introduce the play, its author, and the director of the performance. 
Include a 1-2 sentence summary of the plot and the play’s general themes.
Give a 1-2 sentence description of the performance.
End with your working thesis statement. Do not pose a rhetorical question as your thesis statement. 
Define the good life (1-2 paragraphs): Define and explain the conception of “the good life” or “eudaimonia” you will be using to frame your arguments
Interpretation (as many paragraphs as you need): now that you’ve introduced the play and defined the terms you’ll be using to frame the interpretation you set out in your thesis, you will work through your argument point-by-point. Your interpretation must be reasonable and convincing. To insure your argument is convincing, you will need to use several specific and descriptive examples from the performance along with the concepts you’ve defined in support of your claims. 
In your interpretation, you must address Nora and at least 2 other characters.
In addition to content evidence from performance, you must also use some formal evidence of theatrical elements from the performance such as set design, costuming, actors’ performances, and any other design elements to support your thesis. Use what you’ve already written from the 3.3 discussion. 
Your paragraphs should follow the claim, evidence, explain format: 
Begin with a topic sentence that links to and supports your thesis
Introduce the example you’re going to analyze
Give example (this could be a quotation, description of installation, description of scene, etc.)
Analyze the example and explain how it supports the topic sentence and the thesis
Repeat steps 2-4 if you have more examples for that topic sentence
Summarize discussion
Conclude and transition to next idea in the next paragraph.
Examples MUST be cited with timestamps references from the Cracknell performance.
Conclusion: (1 paragraph) wrap up your argument, reflect on your own sense of happiness, and what you’ve learned from writing the paper and exploring A Doll’s House. 
Works Cited: copy and paste the citation below for the Cracknell production and include the supplementary sources you used. 
A Doll’s House. Dir. Carrie Cracknell. Royal National Theatre, London, 2012. Digital Theatre. Web. Date Month Year. 
In the bolded section, put the day you watched the play using the format shown. 
Step 5: Revise your draft.
Once you’ve completed your rough draft, you should spend time revising it. During the revision process, focus on the organization of the essay and the individual paragraphs. Do the paragraphs follow the claim, evidence, explain format? Do the paragraphs have topic sentences that support the thesis? Do you need to revise the thesis? Do you need to add more evidence? Do you need to remove some discussions because they’re off topic? Does your interpretation develop logically?
Here are some resources to help you learn about and develop your revision practice.
Higher and lower order revision concerns
What is revision and how do I do it? 
Step 6: Proofread and Submit.
Before submitting your revised draft, spend some time proofreading it. Check your formatting, spelling, punctuation, etc.