Assignment-4

Drama Analysis for the Play Dubbed Tender Offer ed by Wendy Wasserstein in the year 1991, Tender Offer is a short drama play based on a conversation shared by a girl named Lisa with her father Paul. Set in a dance studio, the play opens with Lisa rehearsing some dance moves by herself when her father arrives on the scene to pick her up on his way home. As the plot unfolds, Lisa reveals how she has grown upset due to his father’s failure to spend some quality time with her. The main theme featured within the play is the importance of maintaining a healthy parent-child relationship despite all the day to day distractions such as work (Whiteson, Valerie, Horovitz 65-66).
As they both argue, other characters not present on the scene are referred to under varying circumstances to reinforce the theme. For instance, Lisa talks of her friend named Talia Robins who claims to be happier living without her father present at home. However, Lisa later depicts Talia as an unhappy bully of sorts as result of her father’s absence. Symbolism is also featured in the play adequately as a means to outline the theme as well. Among the symbolized items in the play include a trophy, a computer and a trash bin just to cite a few (Whiteson, Valerie, Horovitz 65-66).
Lisa’s trophy represents the rewards of her personal conquests that she wishes her father would make time to celebrate with, while the trash bin she tosses it into expresses her disappointment in her ever busy father. Elsewhere, Paul tells her daughter Lisa of how her friend Daria Feldman got a computer from her cruel parents as a devise to preoccupy her thereby ridding them of her attention. Symbolically, the computer represents Daria’s parent’s selfishness (Whiteson, Valerie, Horovitz 65-66).
Works Cited
Whiteson, Valerie L, and Nava Horovitz. The Plays the Thing: A Whole Language Approach to Learning English. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Print.