『ビッグ・リバー』(デフ・ウェスト・シアター・プロダクション)鑑賞 : その教育的意義

抄録

In Making Mark Twain Work in the Classroom, Twain's scholars and educators introduce different ways of promoting the students' motivations to approach Twain's works. However, they do not discuss how the students' experience of watching the dramatized versions of his works on stage would affect the students' interest in reading his works. In his interview on the significance of children's appreciation of theatre as the audience, Asaya Fujita, a playwright and director, points out that children's seeing plays on stage is crucial to their human development. "Watching a play helps you find out about yourself," Fujita says. In this paper, I would like to examine the Deaf West Theatre production of Big River, a muscial adaptation of Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, first performed in October, 2002. I would discuss how their theatrical work would inspire the students' imagination on Twain's literary world and would enhance students' better understanding of art, literature and intercultural communication.