Question

the latest play at the westside community theater, orin hillyards drama crossing the river, starts out pleasantly enough. josie, daughter of the ella and josiah jones, sits on the edge of the stage, reading aloud from her diary. when a story - reading marathon begins in the audience, understandably enough, josie gets bored. enter henrietta hopkins, family friend. here is a real pioneer, a woman who, with her husband and children, made the long journey to the plains as josies ancestor. her story, told mostly through her painfully long journal entries, is a tale of how she endures terribly hard times as they make their way out west. to much of the audience, though her best - with the stilted words, but the playwright has not given her much to work with. though hillyard says he did years of research to make the story true. instead, we get humdrum tales of josies most compelling bits of the pioneer story to life. much preferred to know what strange sights the pioneers met along the way. even the mundane events - what strange sights and crossing the plains with her brothers. i, for one, would have play - described in her journal could have been dramatic in the hands of a more skilled playwright. hillyard breaks the first rule of good storytelling, and certainly of good drama: he tells us rather than shows us. ella jones, played admirably by veteran actress lana barton, has no less daunting a challenge: to make something meaty out of the spare dialogue. simply grunting under the weight of water pails shes hauling and agreeing to every harebrained idea her husband proposes is not exactly make great characterizations. amazingly, even bartons considerable talent is not enough to josiah (rueben knowles) has at least been given some moving dialogue, as he struggles to keep his family alive on the grueling journey, but the plot meanders like the rolling river the family tries countless times to cross. what we are left with is a sense that pioneer days were excruciatingly long, but only because no one ever had anything interesting to say. 31. which sentence best describes the authors attitude toward lana barton? a. he thinks a better actress could have improved the play. b. he thinks the other actors far outshone bartons simple performance. c. he thinks shes a great actress who wasnt able to save the play. d. he thinks her acting made a mediocre play into a great one.

Explanation:

The text mentions that veteran actress Lana Barton has a challenging role and that Barton's considerable talent is not enough to make great characterizations as the dialogue is sparse. It implies that she is a good actress but couldn't save the play.

Answer:

C. He thinks she's a great actress who wasn't able to save the play.