Presentation on "The Last Mama on the Couch" by George C. Wolfe.

      In our English 6B class we had a presentation on one of the play writes of the author George C. Wolfe. Wolfe has a book called The Colored Museum, which includes many selections of  or plays satirizing and symboling the African American culture. I was assigned to do breakdown the exhibit of "The Last Mama on the Couch" Since I organized this explanation through Power Point I just transferred the points here.

“The Last Mama on the Couch”
by: George C. Wolfe

SLIDE 1: What does CMama symbolize?

• Wisdom > Guides her family
• Strength > Holds the family together in times of chaos
• Nurturing > Loving and comforting
• Faithful > Commends herself to the Lord and prayer

SLIDE 2: What is the Author Satirizing?

• The author satirizing the idea of black womanhood. Historically she was portrayed by the white male assumptions as a large, dark black woman, who like the White True Woman sets aside her sexuality to devote herself to her children.

SLIDE 3: Brief summary on "A Raisin in the Sun" and "For Colored Girls" 

"A Raisin in the Sun" by Lorraine Hansberry

• Walter Younger:

can be really hard to get along with. For most of the first act, he's nasty to just about every other
character in the play. He picks fights with his sister, Beneatha. He says all kinds of mean things to Ruth,
his wife, and is even short with his long-suffering mother,
Lena.

• Lena Younger:  

Mama, totally rocks our world. She's a down-to-earth, hard-working black woman who doesn't suffer for
fools.

"For Colored Girls" by Ntozake Shange

• For Colored Girls brought to the stage a perspective on what it is to be female and black in the modern United States, that many in the Civil Rights Movement era found ground breaking. The poems deal with abandonment, rape, abortion, and love.

SLIDE 4: Connecting the Dots... 

• The Last Mama-on-the-Couch Play,” satirizes major black theatrical responses to oppression, from Lorraine Hansberry’s emotive realism and Ntozake Shange's poetic feminism to race-submerging classicism and the problem–denying black musical.

SLIDE 5: Related Idea’s Presented in Previous Scene

• The idea that has been presented in scenes “Git on Board" & “The Gospel According to Ms. Roj“ have also related to this scene in all three exhibits they satirize African dancing and singing in different forms.
• Also, the scene is loud and energetic, with characters talking over one another, emphasizing the chaos and contradictions that make up the museum.

SLIDE 5: Dancing to Live

• By "Dancing to live" the author is describing the importance of singing and dancing was to the African culture.
• In past history it was said that when the slaves where brought to America to work, the way they would communicate with each other and come together was through songs and dancing. It was a way to survive the atrocious life they where brought in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fuo8B7h54Y8