Lowbrow Group project for Mythologies

I would talk about the project for this class but I don't want to give anything away so I'll discuss a project for a different class. For my Mythologies class we too are doing group projects. Obviously we are doing a much different project than the type for this class but some of the themes are overarching (as they should be). Our text that we are focusing on is the Mesopotamian story the Epic of Gilgamesh-- a text rich in some themes that would become highbrow. Our presentation style is going to include the lowest of lowbrow presentations-- the sock puppet theatre. We are doing some really interesting moves that should make it a memorable and informational presentation though.

To place our presentation in a larger frame I plan on acting as a narrator who is telling the story to the class in ancient times. We will have the class come around and use some lighting effects for more dramatic appeal. Hell, we even have a kid playing a keyboard! Obviously, despite the lowbrow humorous overtone, we plan on depicting the story to try and give the class a feel of what it would have been like to hear the story. Often when reading these stories we forget that they extend from the heart of oral relation and then came into writing much later. To give these stories a more accurate (somewhat) contextualization through a more accurate medium is to experience them in a way that is possibly more true than it is otherwise.

One of our more entertaining gimmicks includes a sacrifice of a goat (pinata) at the beginning to bless our production. Then we will proceed to pass around some cookies and some liquid drink like kool-aid-- not the bad kind but the good kool-aid. While this is funny and off-the-wall it will give some setting to our presentation that others may have lacked.

It's been really fun to think how I can integrate some highbrow themes with the overall lowbrow quality of our production. It should be pretty fun and it is kind of a relief that we are going first and have the whole hour and a half to do a 20 minute presentation. I have a feeling that we might run over a bit!