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A Goodbye Without an Audience

Compare a winter school-closure story with a stage adaptation, analyzing lighting, sound, staging, and changes in emphasis.

Grade 7ELAInteractive · Printable

Aligned toRL.7.7

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What’s included

Single worksheet
Auto-graded online
1 Common Core standard
Printable answer key
13 questions
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Details

Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 7
Subject: ELA
Question types: Multiple choice, Circle the answer, Sorting, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students compare how prose and a stage adaptation present the same characters and events.
Students analyze how lighting, sound, and staging affect an audience's understanding.

How to use

Read both versions before answering. The production script describes an imagined performance; students do not need a recording or live performance.

Curriculum

Common Core standard covered

RL.7.7

Compare a text with its audio, film, stage, or multimedia version, analyzing effects like lighting, sound, color, or camera focus.

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Name Date

A Goodbye Without an Audience

Compare an original story with its stage adaptation.

Read Both Versions

Read the story and the production script. In the script, stage directions explain what an audience would see and hear.

The Unopened Banner

1Dorian had folded the farewell banner so carefully that none of its painted letters touched. On Friday, Laleh would leave school for the last time before her family moved across the state. Dorian had arranged a lunchtime gathering, collected signatures, and persuaded the office to lend him a microphone. He imagined Laleh standing beneath the banner while everyone applauded. It would be a goodbye large enough to remember.

2But overnight, a winter storm covered the streets. At breakfast, the school sent a closure notice. Dorian stared at the message, then at the banner resting beside his backpack. Laleh's family was leaving on Sunday, after the roads were cleared. There would be no second chance to fill the cafeteria. He opened the class group chat and typed, “Everyone record a farewell message.” Then he deleted it. Another project would take hours, and he wasn't sure what Laleh actually wanted.

3He called her instead. For a moment, neither spoke. Dorian could hear a strip of packing tape being pulled from its roll. “I had something planned,” he said. “Was it a speech?” Laleh asked. Dorian looked at the folded banner. “There might have been a microphone.” She laughed, but not in the way people laughed when they wanted more. “I was worried I'd have to say something clever in front of everyone,” she admitted. “I've been trying to think of something all week.”

4Dorian sat down on the floor. He had spent three afternoons planning a moment she had spent a week dreading. “You don't have to make a speech to me,” he said. Laleh asked whether he remembered their first lunch together, when neither knew where to sit. Soon they were correcting each other's memories. The conversation wandered past lunch, homework, and the terrible squeak of Dorian's locker. When they finally hung up, the banner was still folded. Dorian placed it in a mailing envelope and added a note: “For your wall, if you want it.”

The Unopened Banner: Production Script

1Before the action begins, two rooms are visible on opposite sides of the stage. Dorian's room contains a backpack, a folded banner, and a desk. Laleh's room contains packing boxes and a roll of tape. A narrow, unlit strip separates the rooms. Dorian rehearses an introduction into a hairbrush. Recorded cafeteria chatter and applause swell around him, although the stage contains no classmates. He bows toward an imaginary crowd. Laleh's side remains dim.

2A phone alert cuts through the applause. The recorded crowd stops abruptly. The words SCHOOL CLOSED appear above Dorian's room, while white patterns move across the back wall like blowing snow. Dorian lifts the banner, then puts it down. He types on his phone, pauses, and erases his message. No narration explains his decision. After looking across the dark strip toward Laleh's room, he presses CALL. Laleh answers while holding the tape.

3Separate circles of light now illuminate both students equally. The snow patterns disappear, but the rooms do not change. The audience hears packing tape peel away from its roll, followed by a long pause. “I had something planned,” Dorian says. “Was it a speech?” Laleh asks. When he mentions the microphone, she gives a short laugh and admits that she has been worrying about speaking. Dorian lowers himself from his desk chair to the floor. “You don't have to make a speech to me.”

4The students begin recalling their first lunch. Their lines sometimes overlap as each corrects the other's version. No music accompanies the conversation. The light around Dorian slowly widens until it joins the light around Laleh across the empty strip. Both actors remain in their separate rooms. After the call, Dorian slips the banner into an envelope and writes his note. The lights on the rooms fade, leaving the shared band of light across the strip for one final moment before darkness.

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