Draft: this lesson was written with AI help and has not yet been read by a human editor.
1 What your class asks
This lesson asks you to compare and contrast how social values are communicated in different drama forms and styles of theatre from different times and places. The museum offers one case: the comedies of a playwright of the Caucasus. Further forms, and the live theatre itself, your class must bring. 1
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- B3.1 compare and contrast how social values are communicated in several different drama forms and/or styles of live theatre from different times and places […]
2 The lesson
Where does a value live: in the words or in the performance?
The expectation asks you to compare. Think about what a spectator at a comedy is given: characters and a plot. Decide what a spectator of another form would be given, and what you would look for in each, before you read.
Go deeper
The Encyclopaedia of Islam lists his six comedies by their stories: the alchemist Molla Ibrahim Khalil, Monsieur Jourdan the herbalist and the famous magician Mostali Shah, the vezir of a khan, the bear that caught the robber, the miser, and the attorneys in a lawsuit. 2 Read as a cast, they name an alchemist, a herbalist, a magician, a vezir, a miser and attorneys. 2 The Encyclopaedia says that in the plays and the narrative he put progressive ideas against feudalism, the corruption of justice and the superstition then widespread in the Caucasus. 3
Think about it
A comedy can let a value be spoken by a character, or let it show in what happens to a miser or an attorney. Which way would a spectator take in more easily, and what in a comedy would show you?
Into the museum
- Mirza Fath 'Ali Akhund-zada: the six comedies, their dates and the journal that printed several of them.
- Tiflis: the town where he worked, as the museum's older records describe it.
Try this
Read about Mirza Fath 'Ali Akhund-zada. Make two columns, one for him and one for a drama form your class brings, and write who is listening and what each form lets the performer say about how people behave.
3 Carry it further
Where this lesson leads in the museum.
4 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
In your own words: what does Mirza Fatali Akhundov have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
Comedies against feudalism and superstition. Mirza Fath 'Ali Akhund-zada wrote six comedies between 1850 and 1857 in Adhari Turkish, and the Encyclopaedia of Islam calls him the first writer of original plays in a Turkish idiom. It says the plays put progressive ideas against feudalism, the corruption of justice and the superstition then widespread in the Caucasus. How is a value spoken aloud in a comedy?
I can now