Book Review: Blood Relations by Sharon Pollock - Entrepreneur Generations

I wrote a little bit in my last entry about our IB English IV team's move towards doing Drama as our genre for Part III of the curriculum, and how difficult this is to do while maintaining our goals of gender and racial diversity. Only eight of the 42 playwrights on the IB Prescribed Authors List are women, and we have been studying these eight playwrights this summer in trying to choose plays to match with Richard III and Rosencratz and Gildenstern Are Dead. 

Suzan-Lori Parks provides several possibilities, and Sharon Pollock may also be a possibility. Pollock is best known for her 1980 play Blood Relation, which dramatizes the notorious Lizzie Borden murders in 1892 in Massachusetts.

Being both the history junkie and the murder-mystery fan that I am, I immediately took an interest in this play and wondered if my students would. While I'm not sure if they've heard the skipping rope song -- "Lizzie Borden took an axe / And gave her mother forty whacks. / When she saw what she had done, / She gave her father forty-one" -- they may have, and, even if not, I think they'll be intrigued by hearing the story. I envisioned watching scenes from documentaries about the case, maybe even comparing it to Serial today in some way. Maybe.

But the play had to be good, and I finally got around to reading it yesterday. And, you know what? I think there is definitely potential here for teaching, though some things that worried me, too.

The play begins ten years after the murders, when Lizzie is talking to the actress (presumably Nance O'Neil, with whom she had a rumor-filled relationship for years) about whether Lizzie actually committed the murders of her parents. The rest of the play is told in flashback -- "painting the background," the Actress calls it -- with the Actress playing Lizzie and Lizzie playing other characters. But there are shifts, too, and it's sometimes hard to follow on the page, and I'm a little bit concerned about this element of the play, how accessible it will be to follow the action when there is so much doubling going on.

However, in terms of complexity and dramatic elements, this doubling could provide some really interesting features to study and analyze for students. And the story is full of intrigue. Borden was acquitted for the murders because the evidence was only circumstantial, but the play takes a definite stance on who committed the murders. There's also a bloody scene in which Lizzie's father kills her beloved pet pigeons in a fit of rage. And, right away, in the opening moments, students will definitely recognize the closeted lesbian romance between Lizzie and the Actress.

The most interest aspect of the play, however, might be its distinctive feminist message, however. Lizzie (and her sister Emma) is clearly trapped in a man's world, and her only options are to marry (which she finds deplorable) or to fight for what she feels she deserves of her father's wealth. Much of the play revolves around her lack of agency. One of Pollock's stage directions (which are extensive) reads, "She smiles at him, there is affection between them. She has the qualities he would like in a son but deplores in a daughter." Earlier, Lizzie tells her father, "You have no idea how boring it is looking eligible, interested, and alluring, when I feel none of the three."

Pollock is painting a psychological portrait of a woman driven to want to do anything she can to escape the imprisonment of her life. It affecting, and the impact by the end is powerful. That being said, the play is slight (less than 70 pages) in length, and I worry a little bit if the students would have enough to write about. I also really wish I could see this one.

As far as I can tell, the play only exists within a collection of Sharon Pollock plays, which is rather expensive at $14.95. That's a drawback, and I worry about availability for as many as we need (150 or so).

But it's a definitely possibility, and offers some nice comparisons and contrasts with the other plays we've chosen -- villainy and gender in Richard III stands out, but I'm sure there are more (need to re-read R&G Are Dead).

from Epiphany in Baltimore http://ift.tt/2bfqXKN Book Review: Blood Relations by Sharon Pollock - Entrepreneur Generations

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