Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Study Guide for Rebecca Gilman's "Blue Surge"
    A Study Guide for Rebecca Gilman's "Blue Surge"
    A Study Guide for Rebecca Gilman's "Blue Surge"
    Ebook42 pages34 minutes

    A Study Guide for Rebecca Gilman's "Blue Surge"

    By Gale and Cengage

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Rebecca Gilman's "Blue Surge," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama For Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama For Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateAug 12, 2016
    ISBN9781535819725
    A Study Guide for Rebecca Gilman's "Blue Surge"

    Read more from Gale

    Related to A Study Guide for Rebecca Gilman's "Blue Surge"

    Related ebooks

    Teaching Methods & Materials For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The 10 Best Shows

      Dec 19, 2016

      The 10 Best Shows
      3 min read

    • Article

      Sarah Brightman My Amazing Life

      Mar 21, 2024

      Sarah Brightman My Amazing Life
      8 min read

    • Article

      Refugees

      Mar 1, 2019

      Refugees
      12 min read

    • Article

      Review: Martyna Majok's Pulitzer-winning Drama 'Cost Of Living' Has Found An Ideal Home

      Nov 13, 2018

      LOS ANGELES - Two of the best productions this fall have happened at intimate theaters that are keeping up with the exciting developments in American playwriting. Earlier this season, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' "Gloria" was presented by Echo Theater Com

      3 min read

    • Article

      Qui Nguyen Finds a Home in Orange County

      Apr 2, 2019

      As a playwright, I’m a little bit ADD artistically,” says Qui Nguyen. “I get bored really quickly. I put things in there that are kind of wild, just to keep myself entertained.” Nguyen’s breakthrough play, Vietgone, illustrates exactly what he’s talk

      5 min read

    • Article

      Pain And Love In The Backyard

      Feb 25, 2020

      In Will Arbery’s new play, five conservative Catholics in Wyoming gather late at night by a fire pit to argue, commiserate, and face the uncertain future of their faith and their country. Danya Taymor, who directed the play’s premiere at New York Cit

      8 min read

    • Article

      ‘The Humans’ Review: Stephen Karam’s Hit Play About An Unsettling Thanksgiving Comes To Showtime, Starring Amy Schumer And A Table Full Of Real Humans

      Nov 24, 2021

      ‘The Humans’ Review: Stephen Karam’s Hit Play About An Unsettling Thanksgiving Comes To Showtime, Starring Amy Schumer And A Table Full Of Real Humans
      2 min read

    • Article

      Onstage March 19

      Feb 25, 2019

      Onstage March 19
      26 min read

    • Article

      We Laughed–until We Cried

      Feb 5, 2020

      We Laughed–until We Cried
      4 min read

    • Article

      Denise Gough: From Feral Brilliance In 'People, Places & Things' To A Broadway Debut In 'Angels In America'

      Dec 5, 2017

      NEW YORK - At the start of Duncan Macmillan's "People, Places & Things," which concluded its triumphant run at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn on Sunday, Emma, an actress with a serious substance abuse problem, is flailing about in Chekhov's "The Sea

      6 min read

    • Article

      My 21st-century Touchstone Play: Theatre Stars Share The Shows That Shook Them To The Core

      Feb 19, 2021

      Here at the Evening Standard, we recently tried to pull together the 21st-century’s greatest plays (read our list and see if you agree). But what about those plays that impact us more personally, that seem to speak to us directly and leave us getting

      7 min read

    • Article

      Samuel D. Hunter The High Tragedy Place

      Apr 27, 2020

      In Samuel D. Hunter’s Greater Clements, Maggie and Joe, a mother and son who run an Idaho mining museum, face its imminent closure as their small town goes through the process of unincorporating. When an old flame of Maggie’s turns up, her chance for

      8 min read

    • Article

      Polly Stenham

      Jun 4, 2016

      Polly Stenham
      1 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Study Guide for Rebecca Gilman's "Blue Surge"

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Rebecca Gilman's "Blue Surge" - Gale

      1

      Blue Surge

      Rebecca Gilman

      2001

      Introduction

      Rebecca Gilman's Blue Surge, first produced in 2001 (and published by Faber and Faber in the same year), was a bit shocking when it first opened to enthusiastic audiences at Chicago's Goodman Theatre. It is, after all, a play about prostitutes, and it utilizes full frontal male nudity in the first scene. However, audience interest in the play stemmed more from the fact that Gilman is a local Chicago playwright, and her plays are known for their cutting-edge social commentary. Blue Surge is no exception.

      The overall theme of this play is the wide gap between the people of upper-class society, with their wealth and seemingly easy lives of opportunities, and the people of the lower, working classes, with their economic and educational limits (at least in Gilman's portrayal). This gap is dramatized through the interactions of a vice-squad policeman and his interest in two women. His live-in girlfriend comes from the privileged class. She is an art student and lives off a trust fund inherited from her grandfather. The young woman with whom the policeman would like to begin a new relationship is a massage-parlor prostitute, whose only ambition is to make enough money to retire by the time she is thirty.

      The title Blue Surge reflects a mixture of sadness, poverty, desire, and misunderstanding, other motifs that run through the play. There is mention in the play of a piece by the jazz master Duke Ellington called Blue Serge. The protagonist, Curt, hears the title and thinks it is Blue Surge, because he finds the music rather dark and melancholic. When Curt tells his prostitute friend, Sandy, about this misunderstanding, relating that blue serge is really a type of material used to make men's suits, Sandy imagines that perhaps the songwriter felt sad because he could not afford a suit. Thus, Gilman uses the misunderstood title of the jazz piece to pinpoint one of the messages of the play, a play in which her characters have particular longings that are difficult for them to fulfill. As Gilman portrays it, the main hindrance for those who are left wanting in their desires is poverty, and the creators of that poverty are the rich.

      Author Biography

      Rebecca Gilman was born in Trussville, Alabama, in 1965 and studied at Middlebury College in Vermont. Later, she returned to her home state and gained her undergraduate degree from Birmingham Southern College. Then she attended the University of Virginia, majoring in English, because she thought she might be interested in teaching. However, she soon discovered that her real passion was writing. After receiving her master's degree at Virginia, she fought hard and eventually made it into the prestigious writers' program at the University of Iowa, where she earned an MFA in playwriting.

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1