UNIT 1

Know the Playwright, Know the Works

After learning this unit, students will be able

to:

 Observe the general idea of the descriptive

text.
 Find the main idea of the descriptive text.
 Identify the main idea and difficult word.
 Analyze the detail information.
 Present the descriptive text in the correct
pattern.
 MAP OF CONCEPT

Descriptive
Text

Vocabulary

1
Builder about
Drama is art the
Know the descriptive
text
playwright,
know the
works

Grammar
Descriptive Review
text in drama "Simple
script Present
Tense"

2 UNIT 1 Know the Playwright, Know the Works

 PRE-READING ACTIVITY!

Look at the picture below. What can you tell about these people? What do
they look like? Discuss with your friends.

Picture 1.1 Picture 1.2

Picture 1.3 Picture 1.4

UNIT 1 Know the Playwright, Know the Works 3

 READING ACTIVITY

Read the following text.

The Best Playwright: Putu Wijaya

Do you know a playwright? Do you ever hear about it before?

A playwright creates scripts. Like other literary artists, playwrights tell stories through the
words and actions of characters. There are many famous playwrights in Indonesia and the
famous one is Putu Wijaya. He is one of the famous playwrights and poets in Indonesia
who produces many known works such as short stories, novels, and drama scripts.

The portraits of Putu Wijaya depict him with brown, reddish, or grey hair that always
covered by his hat. He also uses round glasses. Sometimes, he reads his own poem in the
stage and acts in his own plays because he probably possesses a reasonably good voice.
He is a good playwright and a good actor in the stage.

Can you imagine the Putu Wijaya’s physical appearance?

Do you also like reading a poem or drama script? What topic do you read?

A. Descriptive Text

The descriptive text tells about the characteristics of a particular thing, as follows:

 Talking or writing about a picture. For example, ‘This is a beach. These are lots of
umbrellas on it and boats on the sea.’
 Writing about a character or a place in a story. For example, ‘Theo in James
Valentine’s book Jump Man is an interesting character. He has spiky hair that
changes colour all the time and he wears a coat that speaks.’
 Reporting on an animal. For example, ‘A platypus is a monotreme. It has a bill and
sharp claws. It lives in and near streams and isn’t seen by people very often.’

Purpose

The purpose of the descriptive text is to tell about the subject by describing its features
without including personal opinions.

Social function

The function of the descriptive text is giving information.

Contextual factor or social context of this text is describing things that can be a person,
an animal, or a place (a specific thing like our friends, or person who we know well).

4 UNIT 1 Know the Playwright, Know the Works

Generic structure

a. Identification
Identifies the thing to be described
b. Description
Describes features in order of importance. There are important elements that can be
included in the description as follows:
- Parts/things about physical appearance.
- Qualities that can be the degree of beauty, excellence, value or worth.
- Characteristic that can be prominent aspects that are unique.

The descriptive text can cover the facts about various aspects of an object (parts, color,
shape, habits, behavior, personalities, etc.)

Linguistic features

1. Descriptive texts often used one of the forms be: present or past, and one of the
forms have. Tenses which are often used are present tense, but sometimes past if the
things are described as something which are lost (nothing again).
2. Frequent use of passive sentences.
3. Use of be (is, am, are, was, were) for the identification and showing qualities.
4. Use of verb “have” (have, has, had) in order to give detail description of the object’s
features.
5. Use of action verbs related to the topic, especially when describing behavior or
personalities (for persons). Action verbs are also used metaphorically to create
effect, for example, ‘Mia bubbled with enthusiasm.’
6. Use of adjectives in describing, especially, the qualities.

UNIT 1 Know the Playwright, Know the Works 5

 VOCABULARY BUILDER

ACTIVITY 1.1
Work in pairs.

Look at the words in the box. Do you know the meaning? Check your dictionary.

Careful Intelligent Confident

Extrovert Generous Diligent

Careless Stupid Shy

Introvert Stingy Lazy

Now, find other adjectives that describe people’s physical appearance

and/or personality.

6 UNIT 1 Know the Playwright, Know the Works

 Then, put the words into the correct group in the table.

Physical Appearances
Height Body Age Hair Face Eyes
… ... ... … … …

Note:

You can use these words above to describe a person’s physical appearance or
characters.

GRAMMAR REVIEW

SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE

Followed by a verb Followed by an adjective or Followed by a modal

(+) I play music.
Sinta reads a novel.
(-) I do not play music.
Sinta does not read a novel.
(?) Do you play music?
Does Sinta read a novel?
an adverb
Shakespeare is a playwright.
Sydney is in Australia.
He is not a playwright.
He is not in his house.
Is Shakespeare a playwright?
Is Sydney in Australia?
He can speak English.
The bus must go now.
They cannot speak English.
The bus must not stop now.
Can he speak English?
Must the bust go now?

NOTE: We use simple present to talk about things in general. We are not thinking only about now.
We use it to say that something happens all the time or repeatedly, or that something is true in
general. It is not important whether the action is happening at the time of speaking.

UNIT 1 Know the Playwright, Know the Works 7

 ACTIVITY 1.2

Individual works.

Study again about the grammar pattern and compete the sentences below.

1. The playwrights (write, not) __________ script every day.

2. It (take) ____________ a long time to finish a script.
3. Shakespeare (need, not) ___________ to (bring) ___________ the script he wrote. He (write)
__________ it in his office.
4. You may (become) __________ a playwright one day if you always (read) ___________
many references about drama from now.
5. Shakespeare (get) _____________ many awards from his works.
6. Writing (be) ________ the way of devoting our idea easily after getting inspiration.
7. An interpreter (translate) ________ from one language into another.
8. What does Shakespeare (do) _______ to get inspiration of his works?

Passive forms are usually used in the descriptive text. Study the note first. Then put the
verbs in brackets into passive forms.

NOTE: S + TO BE + V3 (PAST PARTICIPLE)

- It is issued by people to others for a set period of time.

- Two hundred people are employed by the company.

1. The item we bought should (check) ________ first before taken home.
2. People are now (spoil) by the conveniences of modern art.
3. It’s a big performance. The performance (watch) __________ by five hundred people.
4. A cinema is a place where films (show) _________.
5. Originally the book (make) ___________ in Spanish and a few years ago it (translate)
________ into English.

8 UNIT 1 Know the Playwright, Know the Works

 ACTIVITY 1.3

Work in pairs.

Read the descriptive texts below. Try to find the general idea of each text.

Shakespeare’s Masterpiece of Hamlet: The Prince of Denmark

Hamlet is the most widely play that is produced by

Shakespeare. Written during the first part of the seventeenth century
(probably in 1600 or 1601), Hamlet was probably first performed in
July 1602. Shakespeare borrows for his plays ideas and stories from
earlier literary works. The story of Hamlet comes from a twelfth-
century Latin history of Denmark compiled by Saxo-Grammaticus Identification
and a prose work by the French writer Francois de Belleforest,
entitled Histoires Tragiques. Hamlet is the story of a Danish prince
whose uncle murders the prince’s father, marries his mother, and
claims the throne. The prince pretends to be feeble-minded to throw
his uncle off guard, and then manages to kill his uncle in revenge.

Here, the character of Hamlet is the title character and the

protagonist. About thirty years old, Hamlet is the son of Queen
Gertrude and the late King Hamlet, and the nephew of the present
king, Claudius. Hamlet is melancholy, bitter, cynical, full of hatred
for his uncle’s scheming, and disgust for his mother’s sexuality. A
reflective and thoughtful young man who has studied at the
University of Wittenberg is often indecisive and hesitant but at other
times prone to rash and impulsive acts. Shakespeare emphasizes the
character of Hamlet as a philosophically minded prince who delays
taking action because his knowledge of his uncle’s crime is so Description
uncertain. Hamlet fits this pattern perfectly. He is a great nobleman,
and the well-being of the state is dependent on his well-being. He is
a Renaissance prince; he is a scholar, a swordsman, a lover of the
arts, a wit, and an athlete. He is concerned with the welfare of the
people of Denmark, and he is aware of his responsibilities. Hamlet
must make a moral choice in response to the evil actions of his
uncle. He knows that the choice he makes will ultimately mean his.
At the play’s end it is not even clear whether justice has been
achieved.

Adapted from Cliff notes Complete “Shakespeare’s Hamlet”.

UNIT 1 Know the Playwright, Know the Works 9

Questions:

1. What does Hamlet look like?

2. How does Shakespeare emphasize the character of Hamlet?

HOW TO FIND THE MAIN IDEA?

According to Phillips (2001: 362), there are some ways to find the main idea in the
text such as skimming the reading passage to determine the main idea and the overall
organization of ideas in the passage.
In addition, especially for main idea questions, you can look at the first line of each
paragraph. Then, look for a common theme or idea in the first lines. See the example
below:

A playwright creates scripts. Like other literary artists, playwrights tell stories
through the words and actions of characters. There are many famous playwrights in
Indonesia and the famous one is Putu Wijaya. He is one of the famous playwrights
and poets in Indonesia who produces many known works such as short stories,
novels, and drama scripts.

What is the main idea of the text above?

The answer is a playwright creates scripts and one of the famous playwrights in
Indonesia is Putu Wijaya.

Based on the explanation above, read again the Text A and answer the questions below:

1. What is the main idea of the paragraph 1?

2. What is the main topic of the paragraph 2?

10 UNIT 1 Know the Playwright, Know the Works

 READ!

ACT I
Scene 1
SETTING: We are in the basement of the
BRADLEYSON home, a nice looking
house in a residential area of the
Twin Cities. The basement, however, hints at
a more sinister story.
The entire room is taken up by an oversize
dog kennel of chain link construction – the
kind of dog kennel you would find if you were
to visit a police dog training facility.
This kennel is the last thing you would
expect to find in the basement of somebody’s
home.
A large dilapidated couch, water dish and
stacks of newspapers are the last things
you’d expect to find inside a kennel, but
there they are.
The effect is unspeakably creepy.

AT RISE: DONALD BRADLEYSON is curled up in a fetal

position on the couch.
Pages from today’s newspaper keep him warm.
On closer inspection we see DONALD is wearing
a locking dog collar, and he has been leashed
and locked to the back wall of the kennel.
The leash is long enough to allow DONALD free
reign of the space, but just short enough to
keep him from reaching the latch on the front
door of the kennel. DONALD whimpers softly.

This is the literary descriptions of setting and one of the characters from the story
the Boys in the Cage by Jane Doe.

Note how these types of descriptions have an informal structure because in the
setting of drama script there is no specific identification. The setting of a dramatic
work is general locale and the historical time in which its action occurs. It is the
particular physical location in which it takes place and the physical appearance of
the actors in a particular scene (Abrams, 2009: 157).

UNIT 1 Know the Playwright, Know the Works 11

 GRAMMAR REVIEW

Adjectives are describing words. Specifically, they describe nouns and pronouns, or
people, places, things, feelings and experiences. Adjectives tell us something more
about the quality of the noun or pronoun being used. Adjectives can help the reader to
imagine the characters and places that you describe by creating pictures in their minds.
For example, you might write a simple sentence like this:
Putu Wijaya is a famous playwright in my native country.
In addition, adding adjectives to your sentence to describe the nouns (‘playwright’ and
‘country’) helps to create a more vivid picture of what’s going on.
He has curly black hair.

ACTIVITY 1.4
Discuss the “Text B” with your group.

Then, answer these questions below based on the instructions.

1. Locate the adjectives from the text B “Act 1” and list them in the space below.

2. Referring to the text B again, write down the adjectives used to describe the
following.
a. the house in a residential area has a nice looking house.
b. the kind of dog kennel similar with . . .
c. inside a kennel, there are . . .
d. the effect is . . .
e. Donald is wearing . . .

3. Find two closest meanings of the words below. You can use a dictionary.
a. Nasty : malevolent, spiteful.
b. Sinister :
c. Creepy :
d. Dilapidated :
e. Fetal :

12 UNIT 1 Know the Playwright, Know the Works

 4. Use each of the following adjectives in a sentence with one additional adjective of
your choice.
obnoxious dangerous reliable generous

a. She is a generous beautiful woman.

b. ...
c. ...
d. ...

ACTIVITY 1.5
Work in pairs.

Read the text below. While both of you read it, discuss the words you do not know or
look them up in the dictionary.

Then, find the sentences that contain the difficult and descriptive words.

This is the notebook of the playwright, Arthol Fugard, who wrote Hello and Goodbye.

16/9/63
Last night before sleep, found myself thinking about Johnnie – the local street-corner
derelict I made a few notes about some months back. I remembered a thought I had about a
sister and suddenly I saw very clearly the germinal situation of a play. Thinking about it
this morning I am again excited.
Johnnie is living with his father in a two-room shack in Valley Road. The father is blind
and a cripple . . . . victim of a blasting accident when he worked for the South African
Railway. Johnnie looks after him – feeding, washing, dressing, and carrying. They exist on
an old man’s pension – old age or disability. One night, after ten or fifteen years absence, his
sister arrives back unexpectedly at the little house. All she possesses in the world she has
with her in an old and battered suitcase. Her purpose is revealed. She believes the old man
was paid ‘hundreds of pounds’ compensation by the S.A.R. for the accident. It is in a box
under his bed. She wants the money. Is ready to steal. Eventually, even prepared to kill the
old man to get it, none of these possibilities happens. She leaves Johnnie and the old man
together.

Adapted from: Athol Fugard, Boesman and Lena and other plays, Oxford University Press, 1985 in Lazar,
1993, p. 151

UNIT 1 Know the Playwright, Know the Works 13

 Difficult words

- Derelict : a person who has no home or money and often lives outside.
-
-
-
-
-
-
...
Descriptive words

- Johnnie as the local street-corner derelict.

-
-
-
-
-

ACTIVITY 1.6

Make group discussions.

Read the drama script below, and then answer the questions.

THE ZOO STORY

By Edward Albee
Characters in order of appearance:
PETER: A man in his early forties, neither fat nor gaunt, neither handsome nor homely.
He wears tweeds, smokes a pipe, carries horn-rimmed glasses. Although he is moving
into middle age, his dress and his manner would suggest a man younger.
JERRY: A man in his late thirties, not poorly dressed, but carelessly. What was once a
trim and lightly muscled body has begun to go to fat; and while he is no longer
handsome, it is evident that he once was. His fall from physical grace should not suggest
debauchery; he has, to come closest to it, a great weariness.
THE SCENE:
It is Central Park; a Sunday afternoon in summer; the present. There are two park
benches, one towards either side of the stage; they both face the audience. Behind them:
foliage, trees, sky.
[At the beginning PETER is seated on one of the benches. As the curtain rises, PETER is
seated on the bench stage-right. He is reading a book. He stops reading, cleans his
glasses, goes back to reading. JERRY enters.]

14 UNIT 1 Know the Playwright, Know the Works

JERRY : I’ve been to the zoo. [Peter doesn’t notice] I said, I’ve been to the zoo.
MISTER I’VE BEEN TO THE ZOO!
PETER : Hm?. . . What? . . . I’m sorry, were you talking to me?
JERRY : I went to the zoo, and then I walked until I came here. Have I been
walking north?
PETER : [Puzzled] North? Why . . I . . I think so. Let me see.
JERRY : [Pointing past the audience] Is that Fifth avenue?
PETER : Why ya; yes, it is.
JERRY : And what is that cross street there; that one, to the right?
PETER : That? Oh, that's Seventy-fourth Street.
JERRY : And the zoo is around Sixty-fourth Street; so, I've been walking north.
PETER : [Anxious to get back to his reading] Yes; it would seem so.
JERRY : [Watches as PETER, anxious to dismiss him, prepares his pipe.] Well,
boy; you're not going to get lung cancer, are you?
PETER : [Looks up, a little annoyed, then smiles.] No, sir. Not from this.
JERRY : No, sir. What you'll probably get is cancer of the mouth, and then
you'll have to wear one of those things Freud wore after they took one
whole side of his jaw away. What do they call those things?
PETER : [Uncomfortable] Prosthesis?
JERRY : The very thing! Prosthesis. You're an educated man, aren't you? Are
you a doctor?
PETER : Oh, no; no. I read about it somewhere: Time magazine, I think. [He
turns to his book.]
JERRY : Well, Time magazine isn't for blockheads.
PETER : No, I suppose not.
JERRY : I've been to the zoo.
PETER : Yes, I think you said so ... didn't you?
JERRY : You'll read about it in the papers tomorrow, if you don't see it on your
TV tonight. You have TV, haven't you?
PETER : Why yes, we have two; one for the children.
JERRY : You're married!

Source: http://www.gradesaver.com

UNIT 1 Know the Playwright, Know the Works 15

A. Fill each blank with any words from the drama script above.

1. Peter’s appearance looks as a young man because of his __________ and his
dress.
2. Jerry is not poorly dressed, but he is ___________.
3. Jerry is used to be a ____________ man, but recently he begun to go to fat.
4. Peter is ____________ the bench stage-right when Jerry comes.
5. Peter feels _________ when Jerry asks about the zoo.
6. Jerry gives the advice to Peter about his smoking habit because it can make him
get ________.
7. Prosthesis _____________ the cancer of the mouth and wears something as Freud
wore.
8. Jerry says that Time magazine is not for blockheads since Peter knows about
___________ from the magazine.
9. The scene of the dialogues above is taken when the sun is _____________.
10. Jerry will be at TV or paper after he visited ___________.

STUDENTS’ WORKSHEET

Type of activity : Group Task (three or four students)

Pay attention to the following instructions carefully!

1. Observe the previous drama script “The Zoo Story”.

2. Find the article or complete drama script.
3. Identify the detail information in drama script.
4. Write a short drama script of “The Zoo Story” by adding two or more characters.
5. Submit it to your teacher after a week.
6. Pay attention to the grammar, spelling, and pronunciation.

16 UNIT 1 Know the Playwright, Know the Works

 AFTER READING ACTIVITY

Drama is Art

A drama is a story which is performed in the theater, in which actors take the roles
of the characters, perform the indicated actions, and utter the written dialogue
(Abrams, 2009: 84). It is, therefore, different from short stories and novels which are
not made to be performed.
The basic elements of a drama are (1) setting which consists of the setting of time
and place, (2) characters which comprises protagonist and antagonist, (3) plot, (4)
theme, and (5) message.
a. Setting is the overall setting of a narrative or dramatic work is the general locale,
historical time, and social circumstances in which its action occurs, therefore, it
may add meanings (Abrams, 2009: 330).
Note that the setting of place may not explicitly refer to a certain geographical
sphere like France or Yogyakarta. It can refer to the places which are famous in
France or Yogyakarta such as Malioboro in Yogyakarta, The Gorge du Verdon in
France, and others.
b. Character is an invented person in a drama/play that is presented through the
description and discussion given by the narrator and other characters in the same
work. Basically, there are two types of characters, i.e. protagonist and antagonist.
1. Protagonist is the main character of a play, the one who is the center of action
and holds the attention. Usually, this character has good personality.
2. Antagonist is the character who causes problems for the protagonist.

ACTIVITY 1.7
Individual assignment.

Read the following instructions carefully.

1. Reread the drama script of “The Zoo Story” and the explanation of ‘Drama is Art’
carefully.
2. Write your own drama script by giving the description about the setting and the
characters (at least two or three characters).
3. After that, write at least 30 dialogs by giving some expressions of the characters.
4. Do not forget to give the title of your drama script.
5. Pay attention with your grammar.

UNIT 1 Know the Playwright, Know the Works 17

 REFLECTION

Reflect on your learning in this unit and write down your reflection in the space below.

What I like best in this unit:

What I don’t like in this unit:

The improvement I have made after learning English in this unit:

18 UNIT 1 Know the Playwright, Know the Works