You are viewing an archive of the 2009 festival at University of Oregon.
For the 2012 EMOS Festival, go to http://emosfestival.wordpress.com/

Curriculum Suggestions

The Ecodrama Festival & Symposium provide wonderful opportunities for learning across disciplines.  We encourage faculty to attend the Festival with their students, or to send students to see specific performances, speakers and events.

We invite you to use the Festival & Symposium to enrich your students’ understanding of the connections among and between environmental studies, gender and post-colonial studies, cultural geography, history, philosophy, religious studies, and the visual and performing arts. 

This page, together with Related Articles [related articles] will help you make the best educational use of the Festival.

Play Synopses (see also the link to "About the Plays" in the sidebar menu)

SONG OF EXTINCTION, by E.M. Lewis.
"A journey of the heart as we follow Max, a musicaly gifted teenager, his biologist father, and a Cambodian high school teacher into the personal meaning of 'extinction.' A magical and moving weave of human and ecological love and loss." 

 ATOMIC FARMGIRL, by C. Denby Swanson (based on the book by Teri Hein)
An intimate, joyous and sobering story about the layers of human history in the land. Four sisters must decide the fate of their childhood home -- on the aird plains of eastern Washington -- where they encounter not only their own childhood ghosts, but the land's as well.

Discussion Questions for Song of Extinction

1) What does Max learn about the idea of "extinction"?

2) Why do you think the playwright made Max's biology teacher a Cambodian-American? What is the parallel between the Kamar Rouge and extinction?  Do you think this is a fair or useful comparison?

3) How is music and sound used in this play and why is it important?

4) The scenic design is abstract, rather than "realistic."  What do you see in the set pieces? What images or ideas are communicated by he vertical structures and "sit-ables" that compose the set?

5) How and why does Ellery, Max's dad, change?
 

Discussion Questions for Atomic Farmgirl

1) What might this play be telling us about the connections among memory, history, land and community?

2) This play is a series of short episodic scenes that move fluidly between space and time.  What does this dramatic structure reveal about the theme/s or main ideas of the play?

3) What scenes, characters or lines in the play most reflect these main ideas?

4) The scenic design is abstract, rather than "realistic."  What do you see in the set pieces? What images or ideas are commuicated by he vertical structures and "sit-ables" that compose the set?

5) Why have the Ghosts -- both Indigenous and anglo-American -- come back to talk to the Delores, Ralph and their daughter Teri?

6) What ideas and concerns of environmental justice do you find in this play?  What eithical issues do you find?