In keeping with the undaunted customs of this class, we will have group presentations in the week of 4/20. (I know, funny, right?)

Here is the assignment, to be carried out in groups of three (3) or four (4). Once you are in your groups, you may divide the labor any way you wish among your members.

Invent or re-create an existing scene where the characters themselves carry out their dramas in a world transformed by social distancing. You may draw from the cast of characters from either or both of the dramas we have studied, or any of the novels. You can blend them, involve characters from multiple works. Your job will be to script and film a scene, or a short sequence of scenes, that tells a compact story.

Feel free to “discover” a lost, or cut scene, craft your own scene, or a adapt a existing scene, such as a sequence from the terraces. Feel free to stick with one world, or blend the characters. (For example, Don Draper meets Daphne and they talk about what it’s like to have a double life.) The idea is that they, too, are social distancing, but also being themselves. 

Your stage can be work, the “street”, home, in a bar, at a speakeasy (we now have virtual happy hours!), a garret scene, a dream scene, a flashback to childhood, a therapy session. You can imagine a science fiction scene where the Kodak “carousel” is suddenly a real “time machine.” You can do a talk show, a game show, a TicTok, a religious revival, an auction, a court trial, a news report.

You will have complete freedom. Just make sure the scene pops—that is, use the principles of good storytelling! Or, maybe it makes intelligent fun of the principles of good storytelling. But whatever you do, make it entertaining and have it reveal something about the plots, the characters, the worlds, that we can be thoughtful about.