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    A Study Guide for Lee Blessing's "A Walk in the Woods"
    A Study Guide for Lee Blessing's "A Walk in the Woods"
    A Study Guide for Lee Blessing's "A Walk in the Woods"
    Ebook39 pages28 minutes

    A Study Guide for Lee Blessing's "A Walk in the Woods"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Lee Blessing's "A Walk in the Woods," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama For Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama For Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateAug 12, 2016
    ISBN9781535817479
    A Study Guide for Lee Blessing's "A Walk in the Woods"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Lee Blessing's "A Walk in the Woods" - Gale

      09

      A Walk in the Woods

      Lee Blessing

      1987

      Introduction

      A Walk in the Woods is set in what turned out to be the last years of the cold war, although Lee Blessing could not have known that when he first presented the play as a staged reading in 1986. At this time, the nuclear arsenals of both the United States and the Soviet Union were bursting with weaponry of massive and incalculable destructive capacity, a circumstance that caused widespread and international anxiety.

      A Walk in the Woods was originally produced by the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1987, and was later produced on Broadway in New York, New York, in 1988. It is a two-character play composed in the form of a dialogue between United States and Soviet negotiators in a serene wooded area in Switzerland. A country known historically for its order, social peace, and neutrality in international conflicts, Switzerland, consequently, is an ideal venue for negotiations between hostile powers. Despite its political themes and geopolitical context, however, A Walk in the Woods is less concerned with particular political issues than with the climate of alienation generated by the cold war. The encounter between the negotiators becomes a study of how two personalities deal with the frustration and hopelessness that the arms race generated in people of conscience. The two must go through the motions of attempting to negotiate an agreement that, ultimately, neither of their governments will authorize. Although A Walk in the Woods is entirely fictional, Blessing derived the idea for the situation of his play from an actual event. Formal arms control negotiations took place in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1982, and U.S. negotiator Paul Nitze and Soviet negotiator Yuli Kvitsinsky met in a wooded area to approach the issue privately. In this peaceful environment, they drafted a proposal for arms reduction that was later rejected by both the U.S. and the Soviet governments.

      A Walk in the Woods was published in 1988 by Dramatic Play Service and reprinted in 1998.

      Author Biography

      Lee Blessing was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on October 4, 1949. He received a B.A. from Reed College in 1971, and after graduation, he traveled to the Soviet Union. Upon his return, Blessing enrolled in the University

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