A Night at Gatsby's

A Night at Gatsby's is a dramatic experiment, a play of constraints. It is constrained by Place, Time, Cast, and Language. Readers and viewers of this play are guests at one of Gatsby's parties. As such, they are present at his mansion (Place) for just one night (Time) and as nonspeaking participants they hear or overhear the talk of other guests. All guests portrayed in the play are those likely to be at a Gatsby party (Cast.) And all the play's guests only speak the novel's colloquial dialogue, not its lyrical narration (Language.)

The novelette section in this book restores the relevant surrounding narration for all the play's dialogue—exactly as it appears in the novel. It also restores the omniscient narrator-character role of Nick Carraway in the novel, providing readers with an interesting contrast to his character-only role in the play. Nick's narration in the novelette may also provide actors with cues from the novel's text that suggest stage direction, tone and emotion for performing the play's dialogue.

The Great Gatsby is required reading in over half of America's 31,000 high schools and 4,300 colleges and universities. In the high schools alone, 2 million students in 80,000 English classes study the novel annually. As an educational resource, A Night at Gatsby's may be used as a traditional stage presentation, a classroom teaching tool and a student study guide.

Stage Presentation. This one-act 40-minute play has fifteen speaking parts (8 male, 7 female.) But by taking place at one of Gatsby's lavish parties, it presents many additional performance opportunities for student musicians, dancers and actors, and may easily be expanded to an hour or more.

Teaching Tool. Instructors are always looking for ways to engage students in required subject matter. A Night at Gatsby's may be used for in-class dramatic readings, followed by discussions on how the dialogue supports the novel's larger narrative and story line. During a typical Gatsby lesson sequence, for example, half the class might dramatize scenes 1-3 and the other half might dramatize scenes 4-6.

Study Guide. Tens of thousands of students annually purchase The Great Gatsby study guides. Gatsby instructors have long questioned the efficacy of 90-page study guides for a 180-page novel. Students might instead be encouraged to read a 30-page play that tells key aspects of the story in Fitzgerald's actual dialogue as better preparation for the novel.

Richard Vigilante is a retired university professor and administrator with 30 years of experience in developing and directing online degree programs at Columbia, New York and the U.S. Jesuit universities. While his academic field is information systems not literature, he has a careerlong interest in both Fitzgerald and education. He lives in New York City with his wife Lois.