Assignment

3.3 Annotated Bibliography

You have just learned a bit about how environmental factors can influence text creators by looking at the examples of Mary Pinkoski and Aaron Paquette. 

Understanding an artist or writer’s environmental influences can sometimes help us better understand their work.  It puts their work in context by giving us a sense of how events in their lives, the time period, location, or culture in which they live might have shaped them as individuals and the work they do.

In your next assignment, you will be looking at what environmental influences might have impacted Bradley Hayward’s writing of the play Selfie.

In an interview for the theatre website samuelfrench.com Hayward admits that he gets many of his ideas for plays by just talking to teenagers directly. 

While working with a high school cast performing one of his plays, he’ll gather ideas for future plays.  He listens to the things they are concerned about and he tries “to pay attention to these stressors, such as cell phone bills and social networking online . . . and turn them into stories” (samuelfrench.com).  He gives the example of one teenager who influenced him to write the play High School for Dummies, saying that the play

was inspired by a student I witnessed in a book store.  [She] balances a huge stack of For Dummies books in her arms . . . threw them down onto the counter and in a frazzled state of mind she whimpered, 'there should be a book called High School for Dummies!'  It was a huge 'ah-ha' moment for me and I knew I had a play. (samulefrench.com)