Research Topic

For my research paper, I want to look at women who use plays or movies as their autobiographies. I want to go into what inspires them to put their life up to someone else's interpretation, how they cast their life, and things like that.

Lost in Translation

Since I did my presentation on "Lost in Translation", I know that I read it more thoroughly than I did the other three stories. I thought of the stories we read, even though it wasn't my favorite, I could definitely relate to it more than the others. Eva Hoffman's experience was obviously significant, but at the same time, they are the same as so many other people's. It made me think of my first few weeks of high school because I went to a huge public school where I didn't know anyone after I'd been at a tiny private school for eight years, and all of my friends went on to high school there as well. Hoffman's situation is much more extreme than mine was, but I remember how hard it was to try to adjust to this new group of people, who had all been friends before I came into their crowd. I remember trying so hard to be funny, and when I would say something and no one laughed, I would get so mad at myself. Hoffman's story is just so easy to identify with when she talks about her feelings of isolation, even though she is dealing with moving to a new country and adapting a new culture while I just went to a new school. Hoffman's focusing a lot of her writing on her struggle with two languages. It reminded me a lot of "Meatless Days" in the way that the author uses food to tell her story. I loved when Hoffman talked about having to decide if she wanted to write her diary in English or in Polish. It just perfectly captures her conflict of clinging to her past while trying to adapt a new lifestyle.

G.L. Horton's Stage Blog

As I said earlier, I did a lot of theater in high school, and I really love reading plays. So I chose to read G.L. Horton's blog. Horton is an actress, playwright, and critic. She writes about plays she sees and has written, but she puts a lot of her personality into her writing and writes about her personal experiences as well. Most of the perspective I have gotten on theater has come from my high school directors, and I think it's interesting to read someone else's ideas. Her opinions differ from mine a little bit. She talks in her most recent entry about not liking David Mamet. I'm kind of confused as to how anyone could not like Glengarry Glen Ross... I like that she mentions that she writes a lot of comedy. It seems like drama is perceived as high class while comedy is kind of the lower art, or something like that. But it takes just as much talent to write and perform comedy as it does drama, in my opinion at least. Comedy is overlooked so often, and it is just as worthwhile and interesting as drama. What I also really like about Horton's blog is reading what she has to say about a play from her position as a playwright. Her reviews are so insightful, and you can just tell she has had so much experience in the theater. The writing in her blog is just great, and I am definitely going to look into reading some of the things she has written.