Call Me Brick, Paul Newman

On Tuesday my class group and I did a presentation on the timeless Tennessee Williams play, "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Cat)." Our goal was to apply the current class themes of romance and class status and weave it to modern ideas and themes of today's romantic ideas channeled through media. So we did a Jerry Springer parody, Kerry Springer. We brought out the four/five most prominent characters on "stage" and enacted what would have been the cast of "Cat" on a trashy type talk-show. I channeled my inner Brick taking notes from Paul Newman's Brick as well as my own interpretation of Brick.

Brick And Maggie (click!)

Using my own experiences as a celebrated athlete but (somewhat) alcoholic, I did my best to act out a good drunk, harsh, but still loved washed-up man-boy. Having faced similar experiences, I felt good playing the role and the fact that most of Brick's text was one-liners it made it that much more comfortable especially since I had never done a southern accent. The presentation went well as each "guest" including Maggie, Mae, Big Daddy, and Big Momma, contributed a good role to make the show work competently and achieve our goal of representing failing relationships, gender, class in society, and the birth of a new topic I hadn't much explored until the ensuing class discussion, ambiguity. Brick's ambiguity is what kept Brick afloat as the main focus in the play. Was his relationship with Skipper homo- or heterosexual? Does Brick still desire Maggie? Does he love his family? The presentation was a success and the acting was fun, but it wasn't easy to construct.

Being the first group to present put pressure on myself as one of the group leaders to come up with something creative and intelligent that would get a quiet class to talk with no other presentations with which to compare it. It has to be said that there were not appointed group leaders so some of us had to take the buck and put in more work in order to make it a success, but understandably so. In a group project of multiple university students dividing time between work, a full school schedule, and minimal time to prepare, how could one possibly expect schedules to match? In the end all six of us showed competency and cohesion as a group once it came down to it and I'm proud of the work we did. Now here's an actual photo of the group and me preparing our presentation.

That's me in the front