Getting Out

Marsha Norman Marsha Norman’s work shows a raw clarity that exhibits pain in all its various forms, a true to life depiction of the life that goes on around us. Through my research into her work, I have discovered that she is a playwright I truly love, I just hadn’t known it yet. Her talents span different styles of theatre and she creates a resounding truth in her works that reach out and grab the audience by the heart. It is through her skillfully constructed text and heart wrenching characters that there is a chance we find a piece of ourselves within them. Born in Kentucky, you can see her southern roots deeply depicted in her work. It is no surprise that her first play Getting Out, takes place in Louisville and does an beautiful job of depicting the struggles of trying to recreate your life (Marsha Norman Collected Works). The story revolves around Arlene who has just recently gotten out of prison and is trying to start life fresh, but finds the events and people of her past still haunting her. Her ideas for the story came from the time she worked with kids at the Central State Hospital, a mental institution, and she drew on those experiences and fear she experienced there in writing the play (Playwriting: Marsha Norman). The main character is depicted by two different actors, one the older “Arlene” and the other the younger “Arlie” which lends…

Getting Out is a play about Arlene a woman who has just gotten out of jail for murder and prosititution and her struggles to start her life over again. Arlene wants to completely forget about Arlie and start over, but many people from her past make it very hard for her. The play outlines Arlene's inner conflict with her younger self Arlie and past people how have contributed to her mistakes which landed her in jail. Arlene just wants to start over again and possibly get study of her son joey…

The last couple of months have been dreadful. It was filled with exhaustion, boredom, false hope, and above all, plenty of freezing. It all started when we left the steamboat that brought Martin and me all the way from Seattle to the Yukon. The second we placed a foot on the ground, stampedes of other prospectors hurried along the harbor, as every moment that they were ahead of the others bought them a bigger chance in hitting it big in the mines. This is what they believed in the beginning, at…

Getting Out Performance Review On January 31st 2016 I attended the performance of Getting Out directed by Jeff Coussens. The Augustana College Department of Theatre Arts performed the production. The play is about a young woman named Arlie who is trying to deal with the horrors of her past and dealing with being apart of society again after being incarcerated. She tries to recreate herself by calling herself Arlene, but she soon realizes that it will take more then just changing her name to…

The Struggle of Becoming an Adult: Marcus Aurelius’ “On Getting Out of Be Marcus Aurelius wrote “On Getting out of Bed” from his book “Meditations”. This piece is a an effective motivational strategy that cues memories of receiving support and encouragement towards others. Basically, Aurelius reminds us that life isn’t just about feeling good or wasting time being inattentive. As a human we were made to experience different things. Nature demands that we must contribute something to this…

It seems like we’re always saying we want to get out of our comfort zones, take a bite out of life, challenge and change ourselves. But we rarely ever do. It’s one of those finicky things that sounds great in theory but, in practice, is actually very difficult. Think about it: Getting out of your comfort zone implies tearing your world apart for the sake of new experiences. It’s something we all aspire to do, say we’re going to do and then never really follow through with. We stay inside of…

Video Critique 3– Parole getting out and staying out This documentary gave an insight on the life of inmates in prison. How, many offenders go in and out of prison sometimes because they get “institutionalized.” The film follows the life inside the prison, transitioning out of prison, and how parole works once they make their way out of prison and back into society. (Parole: Getting Out and Stayng Out) This brought to light what it’s like for an offender to go into prison and the critical…

uprising in the controversial conversation involving whether college athletes should be paid to play or not. This has brought about many positive and negative concerns to both sides of the discussion. Some reasons for why players should be paid including how much money the university makes, how disposable the players can be, and how much attention a school can gain for athletes that are preforming on star levels. There are also very compelling reasons as to why they should not be paying college…

Barbara Ehrenreich spend a month in each of three places—Key West, Portland-Maine, and Minneapolis The novel Nickel and Dimed is written by researcher Barbara Ehrenreich, a middle aged upper-class woman. This novel details Ehrenreich’s study of the average, lower class, working woman. The author knows though, that she truly couldn't perfectly conduct this experiment to replicate her life as the “average woman”. She did not have children to bog her down and deplete her salary. The main point of…

Key West, Florida where she settles for a place that is $500 a month but far away from employment opportunities. She receives a call from Winn Dixie but decides to not take the job because of the measly hourly wage of $6 per hour and instead settles working at a hotel chain and being a waitress. On August 24th she decides to move to Portland, Maine were she stays at a Motel 6 were she is not quite used to the living conditions of staying in a small hotel. While in Portland she looks for cleaning…