Discussion Guide
Grades 6-8
Grades 9-10
Grades 11-12

The Gospel of Eureka: Discussion Guide Discussion Prompts: Performance

Discussion Prompts: Performance

The film juxtaposes drag queen performances and the performance of the Passion Play. What parallels do you notice? How are the experiences of the performers and the audiences similar? How do they differ?

How does the history of Anita Bryant’s crusade against gay rights relate to the performances of the Passion Play and the drag show?

Performing the Passion Play requires actors to act out brutal violence. What do you think the impact of that is on the actors? How about on the audience?

What is “camp”? Would you label any of the performances in the film as camp? Does a judgment of camp depend on how seriously performers approach their work? Their goals? A set of techniques? Audience reaction? Something else?

The site where the Passion Play is performed was developed by a white nationalist, but, as the narrator points out, “The great statue of Christ he constructed faces away from his grave and the stage.” How does the current version of the play honor the community’s spirit without celebrating the founder’s history of hate? Do you think efforts to do so are successful?

Sources

About the author:

Faith Rogow

Faith Rogow, Ph.D., is the co-author of The Teacher's Guide to Media Literacy: Critical Thinking in a Multimedia World (Corwin, 2012) and past president of the National Association for Media Literacy Education. She has written discussion guides and lesson plans for more than 250 independent films.

Faith Rogow