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Study Guide: F. Scott Fitzgerald'S
Study Guide: F. Scott Fitzgerald'S
Study Guide: F. Scott Fitzgerald'S
MONTANA
REPERTORY
THEATRE
STUDY
GUIDE
by F. SCOTT
Anna Dulba Barnett, M.A.
Bernadette Sweeney, Ph.D. FITZGERALD’S
CONTENTS:
PAGE THREE
SYNOPSIS
PAGE FOUR
THE PLAYWRIGHT
CAST / CHARACTERS
PAGE FIVE
DIRECTOR’S NOTE
PAGE SIX
DESIGN AND PRODUCTION Adapted for the stage by
PAGE TEN
WORLD WAR 1
SIMON LEVY
THE ROARING TWENTIES
PAGE ELEVEN
NOTES ABOUT
THE GREAT GATSBY
2015
NATIONAL
UMARTS
TOUR
College of Visual and Performing Arts
School of Theatre & Dance
University of Montana
Missoula, Montana 59812
M I S S I O N
Montana Repertory
Theatre tells the great
stories of our world
to enlighten, develop,
and celebrate the
human spirit in
MONTANA REP is funded in part by a an ever-expanding
grant from the Montana Arts Council (an agency
of state government), with support from the community.
Montana State Legislature, the University of
Montana, the Montana Cultural Trust, Dr. Cathy
Capps, Dr. Sandy Sheppard, The Dramatist Guild,
and The Shubert Foundation. PHOTO BY TERRY J. CYR
PAGE 2 / MONTANA REP STUDY GUIDE / www.montanarep.org 2015 NATIONAL TOUR / THE GREAT GATSBY
F. SCOTT
FITZGERALD’S
Iof think I can safely say I love The Great Gatsby. The power
the narrative, the accurate, haunting, and heartfelt
snapshot of the Roaring Twenties, and the sheer beauty of
the prose still take my breath away. I’ve discovered and
rediscovered this masterpiece over the years with new
perspective, joy, and appreciation.
I first read The Great Gatsby in one thrilling afternoon
on the Jersey shore during high school, and I have long
dreamed of bringing the novel to the stage. Only recently
has this become possible, with the publication of Simon
Levy’s masterful adaptation. Although there are several
movie versions of varying artistic merit, the stage offers a
new, exciting, and fertile ground for the story. On the stage
we can feel the energy of Jay Gatsby, the sensual allure of
Daisy Buchanan, and the Everyman complexity of Nick
Carraway.
As Montana Rep continues telling great American
stories, we approach The Great Gatsby with all the honor
and care such an outstanding work of art deserves. We’re
pleased to reintroduce and reinvigorate this classic,
bringing the beauty and poetry of this masterpiece––
living and breathing on stage––to a new generation of
theatergoers.
SYNOPSIS
ACT ONE: The Great Gatsby is set on Long Island, New ACT TWO: Act II opens on another big party at Gatsby’s
York in the summer of 1922. Nick Carraway tells the story mansion, however, this time both Daisy and Tom are
of his enigmatic neighbor Gatsby. The play does not have present. The love affair between Gatsby and Daisy is in
traditional scenes but rather each sequence shifts into the full bloom. Tom becomes increasingly suspicious of the
next as the stage is transformed into different locations and mysterious Gatsby’s intentions toward his wife. Daisy
settings. reveals to Nick and Jordan her plan to leave her husband
As the play opens, Nick introduces Gatsby as a person and run away with Gatsby.
with “a gift for hope, a romantic readiness.” Nick visits The next scene is at Tom and Daisy’s house where Nick,
his cousin Daisy, the wife of a wealthy man named Tom Jordan and Gatsby are all present. The atmosphere between
Buchanan. While visiting, Nick also meets Jordan Baker the lovers and the suspicious husband becomes more and
who is a friend of Daisy’s staying with her for the summer. more intense. Daisy tries to avoid the tension by suggesting
During their conversation Nick describes the big parties they all go into the city. They take two cars, with Gatsby
that Gatsby is throwing regularly at his mansion which is driving Tom’s car and Tom driving Gatsby’s car.
across the bay from the Buchanan’s property. After Jordan They gather in a hot stuffy hotel room in New York.
hints that Tom is cheating on his wife, Daisy opens up to Tom begins to get drunk and more aggressive toward
Nick about her unhappy marriage. Gatsby. Finally, Gatsby breaks the news to Tom about his
The stage then transforms to present three key scenes, romance with Daisy. In order to avoid a brewing fight, Daisy
which build the narrative. The first is the auto-shop and gas storms out of the hotel and gets into Gatsby’s car. Gatsby
station of Wilson and his wife Myrtle. Tom discusses buying jumps in the car as well and frantically they speed off back
Wilson’s car, and it is made clear by the furtive glances to Long Island. Along the way the car passes Wilson’s auto
and secret conversation while Wilson is out, that Tom and shop, where Myrtle and her husband have been fighting.
Myrtle are having an affair. The second scene transforms When Myrtle sees Gatsby’s car approaching, she thinks it is
the stage from Wilson’s garage to a New York apartment, Tom, because he had been driving that car earlier, and she
where we see a secret party thrown by Tom and Myrtle. As rushes out in front of the car to stop Tom. Instead Gatsby’s
the alcohol flows freely a dispute arises between Tom and car hits Myrtle, but doesn’t stop. Tom is following behind
Myrtle and Tom strikes her. The stage then transforms a with Nick and Jordan in his car. They come upon the
third time to Gatsby’s mansion where a huge party is taking accident scene and see that Myrtle is dead.
place. Nick has been personally invited by Gatsby and, At Daisy’s house, Gatsby assures Daisy that he will wait
while unaware of exactly who Gatsby is, Nick discusses for her to give him a sign that she is ready to run away with
with Gatsby their experiences during World War I. Across him. After they say goodnight, Nick and Jordan arrive.
the bay Daisy stares out from her dock and observes from Gatsby reveals to Nick that Daisy was the one that was
afar the lights of Gatsby’s party. She longs to be a part of driving his car when Myrtle was killed.
the nightlife of the Long Island residents, but her husband The stage transforms back into Gatsby’s mansion. Gatsby
disregards her desires. reveals to Nick the true story of his life and that the Great
As the action of the play progresses, Gatsby and Nick Gatsby is just an invention. He insists, however, that
take a ride in Gatsby’s hydroplane. During the flight Gatsby his love for Daisy is true. Nick says goodbye and leaves.
describes his life to Nick. Later over lunch Gatsby wants to Meanwhile, Wilson comes to Gatsby’s home bent on
make a request of Nick but, since the matter of his appeal revenge. He brings a gun and, finding Gatsby defenselessly
is so delicate, he has Jordan participate in the conversation. floating on an air mattress in the pool, shoots him and then
Jordan reveals to Nick the details of a romance that once turns the gun on himself.
bloomed between Gatsby and Daisy and tells him how, The play ends with Nick’s narration describing Gatsby’s
while Gatsby was off fighting in World War I, Daisy married funeral. No one showed up to mourn him, not even Daisy.
Tom. Now Gatsby wants Nick to help him reunite with All the crowds that had gathered at Gatsby’s mansion to
Daisy. party during his life failed to gather when it was time to
Nick invites Daisy to his house, where Gatsby anxiously honor him in death. Nick ends with a reflection on Gatsby’s
awaits her arrival. As Gatsby and Daisy meet the old spark romantic faith in possibilities. Gatsby had picked the site
of love is reignited and the lovers make new plans to for his mansion deliberately to be across the bay from the
arrange a future together and “repeat the past.” green light that blinked at the end of the dock on Daisy’s
property. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic
future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then,
but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch
out our arm farther …. So we beat on, boats against the
current, borne back ceaselessly ceaselessly into the past.”
PAGE 4 / MONTANA REP STUDY GUIDE / www.montanarep.org 2015 NATIONAL TOUR / THE GREAT GATSBY
MEDIA The mist, the blur, the reflections, the color spectrum.
DESIGN Media design
HUGH BICKLEY
I created this image with this thought in mind. It will be fully versatile
and shimmering for the projection on stage.
As Fitzgerald shepherded The Great Gatsby through its With Fitzgerald’s continuous marriage of light to illusion,
many drafts, an unheralded Spanish artist by the name of it’s no wonder that Jay Gatsby’s dreams are physicalized in a
Francis Cugat offered him an illustration for the book’s green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. When he tells Daisy
cover that so impressed its author that it earned a place in about the light, however, it occurs to him “that the colossal
the novel itself. “…don’t give anyone that jacket you’re significance of that light had now vanished forever.”
saving for me,” Fitzgerald wrote to his editor, “I’ve written it Compared to the great distance that had separated him
into the book.” from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching
The iconic image continues to adorn the novel ninety her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it
years into its print, as instantly recognizable as it is was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted
mysterious. Perhaps this image prompted the creation of Dr. objects had diminished by one.
T.J. Eckleburg: “blue and gigantic — their irises are one yard In an emerging culture of materialism, advertising,
high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of and post-war celebration, Fitzgerald mesmerizes us with
enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent the blurred and glimmering lights of this American
nose,” or, since the face is a woman’s, Nick’s description of Dreamscape, only to focus his lens and reveal its underbelly,
Daisy as a “girl whose disembodied face floated along the the crimes of its carelessness, the ash heaps that are left in
dark cornices and blinding signs….” Though it’s impossible the wake of personal conquests.
to determine what passage, precisely, this image inspired in As Projection Designer, I take my cues from this delicate
The Great Gatsby, it has similarly wielded its influence over illusion, constructed so carefully by painter and by author,
my own design concept as I embark upon designing media and intend to take full advantage of the distorted and
for the novel’s stage adaptation. illusory landscapes that Fitzgerald abandons us in before
pulling it all down on our heads.
COSTUME
The Great Gatsby
Book cover illustration by Francis Cugat. DESIGN
The fashions of The Great Gatsby are the visual
representation of a seismic break from women’s clothing
styles prior to 1920. Before the Great War, Paris had been
the epicenter of world fashion. Women of means or social
status would travel once or twice a year to Paris to purchase
seasonal wardrobes that were created especially for them.
With the advent of the war, the limited contact between
the United States and Europe choked the influence of
dominant fashion houses and opened the door for a number
of new French designers to create fashions that were more
simplistic in design and that consequently appealed to the
American public. The tubular style that emerged in the
early 1920s could be copied, produced, and sold to a woman
from any level of society. Because the garments glided over
the body and were not contoured to it, the style could be
mass produced in a seemingly endless variety of fabric,
prints, color combinations and adornments.
MYRTLE
TOM
MRS. McKEE
Costume sketches
KAREN HUMMEL KINSLEY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
NOTES: