Kong Xiong -- Reflection on "The Royal Family"

  Thanks for your honesty about this at least!  I can see that the play didn't
  really mean anything for you because you didn't have a good way to understand
  what it was about. And even if you had had that, you might have felt
  very much the same lack of connection given what you say about your reaction to live
  theater.

  What I mean is that there's just a disconnect here between your tastes and the play
  because the play is an affectionate satire about theater people, from theater people, 
  for an audience of people who go to the theater.  It's all very self-referential and 
  "meta-" in today's terms and that's probably why the exaggerated nature of the 
  speeches and the situations is what made the largest impression on you.  Even 
  though it's set in the 1920's, I think trying to make a connection with social 
  or historical themes is too much of a stretch.  This play isn't really *about anything* 
  other than a family of famous theater people and their quirks.  You almost have 
  to know and care intimately about the Barrymore family to get the point.

  So it seems to me that the best way to describe what George Kaufman and Edna Ferber 
  were doing in this play is that they are using the fact that the *actor*
  characters like Tony and Julie Cavendish don't have a very clear understanding 
  of the border between reality and fantasy to create the comedic aspects of the
  plot.  

  (Given all that, you might ask why we had the CHQ go to see the play!  The 
  reason is essentially that we made a decision that we wanted to support our 
  colleagues in the Theater Department.  I cannot honestly say that this had any 
  other connection with our cluster theme or the other activities or readings.)

  Content:  B

  Mechanics:  A