Student Worksheets, 4e & 3e

  1.
Circle the adjectives that best describe each character, and the situation they're in.
Ben : patient, kind, professional, intelligent, crafty, menacing, understanding, proud, sneaky
Gus : smart, professional, dim-witted, sly, curious, anxious, tense, composed, slow, annoying
The situation : complicated, strange, easy, funny, confusing, interesting, time-consuming, disturbing

  2. Group discussion
1. What is the relationship between Ben and Gus ? Has it changed from the way it was in the past ?
2. What role does the dumbwaiter have in the play ?
3. Who is their boss ? Discuss each character's relationship to this person and their loyalty to 'Him'.

  3. Group discussion 2
What happens at the end of the play ? Use expressions like "I think..."; "I feel...", to justify your hypothesis.

  4. Linguistic Comprehension :
Grammar tool : Giving orders. Read the selections from "The Dumb Waiter" and discuss the following :
Who gives the orders in this improbable dynamic duo ? Why ?
Find as many orders as you can within the selected texts. Use them later when creating your dialogue/or scene
Using the orders that you've found, transform them into indirect speech.
Ex. Ben: Make the tea, will you ? = Ben asked Gus to make the tea.

  5. Theatre Writing Activity :
"Pinter's dialogue is as tightly - perhaps more tightly - controlled than verse," Martin Esslin writes in The People Wound (1970). "Every syllable, every inflection, the succession of long and short sounds, words and sentences, is calculated to nicety. And precisely the repetitiousness, the discontinuity, the circularity of ordinary vernacular speech are here used as formal elements with which the poet can compose his linguistic ballet."
Pinter refuses to provide rational justifications for action, but offers existential glimpses of bizarre or terrible moments in people's lives.

ASTON - You said you wanted me to get you up.
DAVIES - What for ?
ASTON - You said you were thinking of going to Sidcup.
DAVIES - Ay, that'd be a good thing, if I got there.
ASTON - Doesn't look like much of a day.
DAVIES - Ay, well, that's shot it, en't it ?

(from The Caretaker)
Exercise 1 : Find a similar exchange from " The Dumb Waiter "
Exercise 2 : Write a dialogue that might be spoken between Ben and Gus using a maximum amount of questions. Use the present perfect progressive (for 2e-1er); tag questions (4e-3e); combine a variety of past tenses (all sections);
Exercise 3 : Re-write a scene using questions ONLY (select the best questions from the previous activity and if there aren't enough-- improvise ! - or add more..)

  6. Vocabulary Practice :
Check that you understand the language that Pinter uses, underline or make a list of words you don't know and discuss them in class with your teacher.
Learn how to make inferences based on context and similarities in language (i.e. cognates = les mots apparentés). Watch out for " faux amis "!