User:K2sus/sandbox

=Responses From Teaching= The central character of this play, Arnold, is a sharp-tongued, nurturing, compassionate, vulnerable, and he is someone who is unable to act normal around his mother, his lovers, and his adopted son because he loves each so dearly. This play allows readers to look beyond the invisible cultural assumptions and make it a comfortable experience. A teacher from a high school in Texas decided to add Torch Song Trilogy in his curriculum. This play was particularly important to teach due to the comfort that society feels in being silent about subjects relating to sexuality. The teacher is convinced that silence can only hurt chances of young adults who are emerging whole during their school years. This play was chosen to educate the students that love comes in all forms. Not only did this play help expand conservative minds, but the play is magically structured so that the audience is invited to build a dialogue with the onstage characters. The writing of this play is innovative and the structure of the play itself is unique that it offers ideas for students to explore and expand their ideas on how to creatively write. Fierstein displayed the relationship between Arnold and his son, as well as his partner in a way that the society considers “normal”.

The theme of this play is love, which is a universal language. Although the teacher in Houston, thought that conventional parents would be opposed to the idea that their children are learning about homosexuality, most were open to the idea and spoke about real-life experiences their friends have lived through or they have seen. The student's parents helped their children to try to understand a world where the heterosexuals were the ones being treated the way the homosexuals were. Some students spoke about their friend's experiences about various sexual preferences and how this play helped them understand that homosexuality is not something to be afraid of. The risk of teaching this type of story was much less than expected. This play provides a forum to explore the differences between the taboo topics of sexual orientation and gender. The difference between sexism and homophobia is distinguished as well as identifying gender roles and the society’s preconceived notion of what a “drag”, “trans”, “gay”, “lesbian” “questioning”, “a-sexual” might be. Most of these students were a group of twenty-one-year-olds, who are politically correct, but there was concern that arose about teaching this type of literature in a public high school setting.