A Night at Gatsby's

By Richard Vigilante

A Night at Gatsby's is an invitation to attend one of Jay Gatsby's fabulous Jazz Age parties and learn his story by listening to the characters' conversations over six scenes. All dialogue is taken directly from the novel--no first-person or other narrative content from the novel is used. All dialogue spoken and all characters portrayed in this play were selected as being appropriate to take place at the single location of Gatsby's mansion. The play follows the novel's chronology from the initial rumors and lies about Gatsby, through his reunion with Daisy and confrontation with Tom, and ends with Gatsby's death and lonely farewell. Except for the concluding scene 6, all action unfolds over one night from early evening to just before the following sunrise.

The Great Gatsby is required reading in over half of the 31,000 U.S. high schools, with 2 million high school students in 80,000 English classes studying the novel annually. As an educational resource, A Night at Gatsby's may be used as a traditional stage presentation, a classroom teaching tool and a student study guide.

Stage Presentation. This one-act 40-minute play has fifteen speaking parts (8 male, 7 female.) But by taking place at one of Gatsby's lavish parties, it presents many additional performance opportunities for student musicians, dancers and actors, and may be easily expanded to an hour or more.

Teaching Tool. Teachers are always looking for ways to engage students in required subject matter. A Night at Gatsby's may be used for in-class dramatic readings, followed by discussions on how the dialogue supports the novel's larger narrative and story line. During a typical 2-week Gatsby lesson plan, for example, half the class might dramatize scenes 1-3 during the first week and the other half might dramatize scenes 4-6 during week 2.

Study Guide. Tens of thousands of students annually purchase Gatsby study guides. Gatsby teachers have long questioned the efficacy of 90-page study guides for a 180-page novel. Many teachers might instead encourage students to read a 25-page play that tells the story in Fitzgerald's actual dialogue as better preparation for the novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098348366