Drama Assignment

Yesi Susanti

A 320080150

D

The Lesson

    1.    Theme in The Lesson

The Theme in The Lesson is Power, personal or social, sex or sexuality,     education or educators, violence, totalitarianism, satire, politics, language, and psychology.

2.   There are three Characters in The Lesson, they are:

a.    The Professor       : the man the aged 50 to 60, he is temperamental, serious, hardheaded.

b.   The Young Pupil  : aged 18

c.    The Maid (Marie)  : aged 45 to 50, she is kibitz, disturber, kind.

3.   The setting in The Lesson

       The Lesson is set entirely in the Professor’s apartment office, which is    also a dining room, with a provincial buffet standing on the right. The time is the current day.

4.   The Meaning of The Lesson

The lesson is an hour-long exchange between a professor and a pupil, where information is reduced to meaningless and disturbing verbiage. The significance of this remark impresses itself in hindsight. The Lesson is concerned with the meaningless of meaning, the way to we embalm ourselves in knowledge. How much we are really understand and how much have we merely absorbed? The pupil gains nothing from her lesson, it is the audience who are supposed to learn.

For a play with no context and no meaning, in the conventional sense, set design poses a difficult question. The Wolfson Drama Society tackled the problem head on with commendable results. The stage is bare; in the centre two chairs face each other; against the far wall stands a small, white, house-shaped structure. From this house various maids (all called Marie) issue forth to give cryptic warnings to professor and pupil. This unremarkable set-up comes into its own as the lesson moves on to philology.

Inside the house the maids, silhouetted in a green light, deliver the lesson in an endless stream of words, rendered at speed above the sound of tearing paper. Trying to make sense of the complex sentences is exhausting. Yet this in itself becomes part of the distraction as our mind strives to make sense of it all, unable to accept that words - a professor's lesson, in fact - can be devoid of meaning. The end, when it comes, is abrupt and mysterious. Leaving the auditorium in looking and feeling more than a little bemused. Teachers are not supposed to dismiss our in a state of non-comprehension.

5.   The Message of The Lesson

From this story we can take the massage, as a human being we have feeling, from the professor’s attitude we should be calm and can controlling our attitude. Everyone have ability that is different with other. Like the pupil, actually the pupil is clever, but because the professor always gives pressure, so the pupil be confused and treated when the professor always continued the lesson when the pupil have toothache. He don’t care what happened to young pupil. We can’t impose of desire whoever to control of powers, in the story the professor who has an authority to control all of thing include the pupil but it should be done with his responsibility as well his title as a “Professor”, he shouldn’t be killed the student when they can’t verbalize what he said. He should not do this.

   

6.   The Synopsis of The Lesson

          The Lesson is story that beginning with a teenage pupil or young pupil arrives at the home of a Professor for a private lesson. She is ready to learn and eager to please.  But as she struggles to keep up it is clear that the Professor has something far more sinister in mind. Then they begin the lesson, they are learnt about arithmetic, language, act. The professor always give question to the pupil, if she can’t answer, he always impose at the people to answer the question. The professor considered to the pupil that she can’t answer the question, although the pupil tries to answer the question from the professor. Sometime, the Maid come to see their lesson and tries to answer the question from the professor, because the pupil can’t answer the question. Suddenly the pupil feel so pain, she gets a toothache, but the professor unmindful her, and he go on to the next lesson. The pupil repeatedly if she gets a toothache. She also gets headache, earache, and eyes ache. Every time the pupil complains, the professor ignores her. Meanwhile, the maid always warns the professor every time the pupil complains about her aches that the symptom already started, but the professor always ignores her warnings. The professor can’t control his emotion, until he kills the pupil with his knife.