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“Trash Anthem” was a pretty funny read! I liked the personification of the boots as it was something I was questioning on reading the chapters. It itself is still a character although it sort of just bounces the woman’s thoughts. She is the one with the dilemma and the boots are trying to make sense of the whole thing. They’re innocent in all of this but work as a medium to the woman’s husband. The title is also fitting. We generally see unfaithful people as trash, this just being another musical composition dedicated to them. Although the same could be said for killers whom kill after they’ve been disgraced. And the boots belonging to a deceased man are literally trash themselves. There was a sense of comedy throughout the reading. I felt both characters emotion but every time there was a new line introduced, we’d get a hit of real-life conversation. Even though she is reflecting with a pair of boots, both characters feel like people and act the way people would in their situation. The woman represented as concrete, firm, loyal, stubborn, earthy and the man as the sea, a fluid, something without shape, fleeting, ever-changing was nice too.
ReplyDelete-Leonardo Torres
“Trash Anthem” by Dan Dietz was not what I was expecting but somehow was at the same time. I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed it anyway. I’m not sure what kind of tone I was supposed to get while reading this since there was some humor involved, but there were also some serious and dark parts throughout the play. I’m also not exactly sure how I predicted that the husband was probably cheating on his wife with a man, but I am positive that many other people were not expecting the neighbor that the husband was cheating with to be a man since there were no signs before that.
ReplyDeleteWhat the wife did was very extreme, and I will never understand how much rage someone has to feel to commit such a crime like this, especially to someone they claim to love. Like I said before, it was dark, but it also had some humor throughout it, or at least I thought it was humor. However, Dietz made a good job at mixing the darkness and humor well within his play. It didn’t ruin the play, it overall flowed along great. It’s impressive how much you can tell what a character is feeling just by dialogue.
Angela Milan
Trash Anthem by Dan Dietz was not that interesting to me. The play is about a woman that kills her boyfriend because he cheated on her with a man. I did not think it was very captivating or mysterious. Pretty much the whole play explains itself and the reader is not really left with any doubts or imaginative second thoughts. I liked that the woman has gone a little mad and is talking to her boots as if it was her man and that apparently the boots are talking back. I think that the boots part of the conversation is actually her self conscious and her guiltiness. She seems calm even when the police are on their way to pick her up. I think it is kind of cliche that a woman or a man kills out of rage for an infidelity. I can imagine her shock in finding her boyfriend with a man but seriously only crazy people kill even if it was a shock. I liked the craziness of the situation but other than that it was not very interesting to me. I disliked most of it.-Maria Ramirez Montoya
ReplyDelete“Trash Anthem” by Dan Dietz had me feeling different emotions all at once as I read through it. At first I was really confused about the talking boots but the wife’s song at the beginning made me think that those were here dead husband’s boots and she had them just to remember him by. As I read further along and discovered how her husband died I couldn’t help but giggle. The middle of the play is really humorous. It’s that typical/stereotypical angry woman who kills her husband because she caught him cheating on her with the neighbor. What I did not expect though was for the husbands lover to be a man. That was a really good twist that also added a little more humor to the play. Towards the end I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the wife though. She was “talking” to her dead husband and pretty much begging him to help her understand why he did it. Did he ever love her at all? He tries to reassure her by pointing out little details about her that not even she knew about herself. I do think he loved her but maybe not in the way you’d think a husband would love a wife.
ReplyDelete- Arianna Martinez
"Trash Anthem" by Dan Dietz was very interesting. It started off quite confusing for me since I had no idea why there were talking boots and why they were asking for help or why the woman was angry. Dietz sort of through us in the middle of something and which I then discovered the husband cheated on the wife. It was something quite unoriginal in the sense that that story has been told by many. Dietz did add a twist to by making the husbands lover gay which just made it a little bit more funny. The boots have a comedic vibe going on which makes me feel sorry for the wife since all she wants to know is if the husband ever loved her yet he's making jokes and stuff. The ending was also quite confusing for me. I don't understand how the woman and boots went from screaming at each other to dancing and why the woman was dancing on all fours with her hands in the boots, it kind of sounded creepy to me. It was also very interesting how the boots interacted with the audience by asking them questions and even "looking" at them.
ReplyDelete-Rebecca Muniz
The really cool thing I liked about this weeks reading was the unique perspective of things from the boots. The dialogue was very snappy between the two, it was very comedic and at times I was confused as to what they were talking about but I knew I was enjoying it. It was a pretty short play so it was a short read so the dynamic and witty dialogue flew by. The thing that threw me for a twist was the realization by the audience of the husband's infidelity. The author kind of turns that aspect of the story on its head when they make the discovery that it was a gay affair. Its something I wasn’t waiting for. I like when a play has you figured one way but then takes a slight left turn that makes you question the preconceived notions that you might be holding. In that way this play makes it feel fresh, instead of a carbon copy. Its use of humor in both dialogue and the choice of characters makes it so absurd but it recognizes that its so absurd so it plays off of that. And in that way it knows its tone its not going to try to be anything else but itself and in that way it works well in ways other plays might not work given the premise. - Jesús Iván González
ReplyDeleteThe reading assignment was the play “Trash Anthem” written by Dan Dietz. This play was not very appealing to me, I did not enjoy reading it and I did not like the fact that I had to read it over again to try to analyze it and make sense of it. Two characters are encountered in this play: a woman, a pair of talking boots; and two mentioned characters: the woman’s husband, and the husband’s gay lover. I understand the main theme and the conflict of the play: the theme consists of crime and unfaithfulness. The unfaithfulness happened between the woman’s husband and the lover (the neighbor who turned out to be gay). The crime then happened when the woman killed her husband out of rage and vengeance due to his treason, and throughout the play she is burying him. We can acknowledge that these events are happening because of the stage directions written and the play setting. I believe the actress who will portray the woman’s character has a lot of interactions with these stage directions. The only thing I liked about this play was that it started with the woman singing, and it ended with the woman and the talking boots singing in unison the “trash anthem”.
ReplyDeletePaulina Longoria
Trash Anthem was a play that I found certainly more suited to be performed than to be read judging by the complexities that would be much better seen in front of you, i.e, a woman on her hands and knees elbow deep in some boots while belting a tune. I found this play to be particularly successfully in what it does mainly due in part by the fact that the reader is simply tossed into a vat of chaos and confusion in trying to understand the woman and what exactly was going on, particularly with her relationship with (and the symbolism behind) the boots. Another thing that caught my interest is that I was under the assumption that this was a 10 minute play, yet the content itself seemed so brief. That being said, I would imagine this play to be performed slower, especially in comparison the the bell play we had read in class.
ReplyDeleteLastly, my favorite part of the play was the wording in the dialogue. It was humorous, it was dark, and some of how things said were realistic and grounding-- ironic considering the spiral towards insanity on the woman's part.
- Hannah Daniel
The use of cowboy boots served a couple of purposes in "Trash Anthem".
ReplyDeleteFirst of all the play was dealing with a serious subject matter of infidelity. Infidelity in the form of a homosexual activity. The seriousness was somewhat satirized by the use of a pair of talking boots. The boots and dialogue of a southern draw style gives us the impression of a taboo related subject such as cowboys are real men, and they would never be involved in homosexual activity. It seems as though that the man who owned the boots was a closeted gay who was struggling to cope with his behavior. Not totally being able to give himself totally to his woman thus being shot and murdered and buried in the back yard by that same woman.
Spiro Zagouris
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ReplyDeleteor
call/whatsapp:+2349057261346
i am ERIC BRUNT by name. Greetings to every one that is reading this testimony. I have been rejected by my wife after three(3) years of marriage just because another Man had a spell on her and she left me and the kid to suffer. one day when i was reading through the web, i saw a post on how this spell caster on this address AKHERETEMPLE@gmail.com have help a woman to get back her husband and i gave him a reply to his address and he told me that a man had a spell on my wife and he told me that he will help me and after 3 days that i will have my wife back. i believed him and today i am glad to let you all know that this spell caster have the power to bring lovers back. because i am now happy with my wife. Thanks for helping me Dr Akhere contact him on email: AKHERETEMPLE@gmail.com
or
call/whatsapp:+2349057261346