In both Accidental Death of an Anarchist and One for the Road, Dario Fo and Harold Pinter respectively orient their stories around violent actions which are never truly witnessed on stage. Pinter has described One for the Road as bordering upon agitprop, and indeed, the play’s brutal yet vague examination of an interrogation is a hauntingly accurate portrayal of government-sanctioned torture. Given the violent nature of the story that Pinter creates, the script could very easily call for gratuitous amounts of unsettling and gory on stage interactions between Nicolas and the family he is interrogating. However, Pinter manages to distance his play from becoming a spectacle-laced social commentary by allowing violence and brutality, the driving forces behind the plot, to only exist on stage through implication. Pinter, whose performances often focus upon overtly political commentary about matters such as government oppression or violation of human rights, understands that creating a performance with liberal usages of on stage violence has the potential to obscure the overall meaning of his work.
Indeed, if Pinter truly depicted actions such as the rape of Gila for the entire audience to see, their attention would be drawn to the spectacle of the moment rather than to the underlying social criticism that such an action is intended to embody. Rather, the audience is only informed that Gila is raped when Nicolas asks her “have my soldier been raping you… how many times have you been raped?” (p. 70-71). Likewise, the death of Nicky is only conveyed to the audience, and in effect, Gila and Victor, by Nicolas’ usage of the past tense when he says that, “Your son. I wouldn’t worry about him. He was a little prick.” (p. 79) Rather ...
... middle of paper ...
...-ended. While it appears that she allows the officers to die, the Manaic comments that this would not be seen as an appropriate ending in the eyes of the “critics,” and thus, she sets them free. In perhaps the ultimate twist of irony, as soon as the police officers are freed, they realize that Maria knows enough information to indict them, and thus, handcuff her to the desk and condemn her to death. In this sense, it is Maria’s avoidance of violence that ultimately seals her fate. In this final exchange, Fo reasserts his question of whether violence should be utilized as a method of enforcing morality, and illustrates for the audience the complexity of such a decision. When the Maniac comments, “some questions just can’t be resolved gradually,” it can be seen as Fo’s final request to the audience to wholly consider the overarching question of the play (p. 74).
Throughout the tale of time, thoughts of revenge have corrupted even the most innocent of minds. In Andre Dubus’ “Killings”, Matt Fowler is conflicted by two opposing forces: his own desire and his wife’s demand for the death of their son’s murderer. Through her manipulative words and her emotional meltdowns, Matt Fowler ultimately succumbs to his wife’s request and commits the gruesome act, which causes the audience to reevaluate the appropriateness and cost of vigilante justice.
On Saturday night 10/17/2015, I attended the theatre at Tarrant County College North East Campus, the comedy drama God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza, translated by Christopher Hampton and was directed by Stephen Thomas. “God of Carnage,” which is poised somewhere in between, definitely delivers the cathartic release of watching other people’s marriages go boom. A study in the tension between civilized surface and savage instinct, this play is itself a satisfyingly primitive entertainment with an intellectual veneer.
The conclusion of the play ends in Scene Nine, when the woman discovers the man attempting to steal away in the dark. She confronts him with their obvious desire for and need of each other, but the man persists in leaving. The woman hangs herself as soon as he is gone. Her death thwarts the man's love for her forever, ensuring that she herself will never have to surrender to a man only to be deserted by him. She is dead and does not see that the man does return to her, his love for her stronger than his fear of love.
Beaumont's failed comedy, 'The Knight of the Burning Pestle', is a unique play that seeks to satirise and burlesque the theatrical and social domain. Crucial to this satire is the collision of two concurrent plots that vie for the audience’s attention. These collisions allow the audience to see opposing ideologies in contrast through the dramatic effect of the breakdown in the boundaries of theatre. It is arguable that this play encourages one to question hierarchy and tradition through exploration of ideology, disputed genres, and Rafe's potential rebellion.
‘Titus Andronicus ‘is a play by William Shakespeare that went to become very popular during his time. The play was performed in Rome after the defeat of the Goths by the Romans. The Goths were people from German who invaded their country. Throughout the play, violence can be seen inform of brutal murders, sexual violence and mutilation, suicide, wars and conflicts. This is normally heightened by the urge of the characters to revenge. Examples of such cases include: the raping and mutilation of Lavinia, Titus’s daughter and the killing of Alarbus. Shakespeare presents stage violence that makes the audience concentrate and understand in a better way.
My work proposes a broader view of the theatre-film interface, one that relies on intertextuality as its interpretive method. I believe it is valuable-both pedagogically and theoretically-to ask broad questions about the aesthetic, narrative, and ideological exchanges between the history of theatre and contemporary film and television. For example, this paper will study how the "Chinese Restaurant" episode of the sitcom, Seinfeld, intertextually reworks Samuel Beckett's modernist play, Waiting for Godot. In each text, characters encounter an existential plight as they are forced to wait interminably, and thus confront their powerlessness at the hands of larger social forces. As a pedagogical matter, this connection encourages the students to see academic culture in the guise of having to read Beckett's play for my course, not as foreign and alienating, but instead as continuous with their understanding of leisure activities like watching sitcoms. As a theoretical matter, this intertextual connection allows important ideological matters to come into bold relie...
It is this selfishness that makes it hard for the reader to be empathetic towards her later in the play, as it is evident in this scene that her hardships were brought on by herself. If she hadn’t insisted on the murder, she would not be driven insane by guilt, which would eventually lead to her death.... ... middle of paper ... ... As we saw, it was plaguing her dreams, and taking a heavy toll on her mental health.
Identity and Insanity in The Accidental Death of an Anarchist and The Government Inspector In the plays "The Accidental Death of an Anarchist" written by Dario Fo, and "The Government Inspector", written by Nikolai Gogol, identity' and insanity' play vital roles. The Maniac, who is the protagonist of "The Accidental Death of An Anarchist", is seen changing his identity throughout the play, pretending to be various other people. Khlestakov, the protagonist of "The Government Inspector" lands in the position of being an inspector by chance, and throughout the play he thoroughly exploits this opportunity by making the most of this particular identity. It is this characteristic of both protagonists that drives the audience to a point where they may start doubting the sanity of these two characters. These two ingredients' of insanity and identity have been blended with perfection and the audiences appreciate both plays, their motives and the impeccable characterization.
Bernardo dies trying to defend Maria’s honor. Not wanting a marriage to ensue between Maria and Tony and out of vengeance for her brother, Chino takes it upon himself to kill Tony. Bibliography Bernstein, Leonard, and Arthur Laurent. West Side Story: A musical. New York: Random House, 1958.
At first glance, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Tony Kushner’s Angels in America appear to serve as two individual exercises in the absurd. Varying degrees of the fantastical and bizarre drives the respective stories, and their respective conclusions hardly serve as logical resolutions to the questions that both Beckett and Kushner’s characters pose throughout the individual productions. Rather than viewing this abandonment of reality as the destination of either play, it should be seen as a method used by both Beckett and Kushner to force the audience to reconsider their preconceived notions when understanding the deeper emotional subtext of the plays. By presenting common and relatable situations such as love, loss, and the ways in which humans deal with change and growth, in largely unrecognizable packaging, Kushner and Beckett are able to disarm their audience amidst the chaos of the on stage action. Once the viewer’s inclination to make assumptions is stripped by the fantastical elements of either production, both playwrights provide moments of emotional clarity that the audience is forced to distill, analyze, and ultimately, comprehend on an individual level.
Exploitation is central to Marxist analysis, 1 which makes it an ideal angle through which to view The Truman Show; the extras, main cast and members of the studio are unlike Truman, in that they have a choice. They are handsomely compensated for their hours2, but they sacrifice their daily lives to live a 'fake” life under strict control of perfectionist director Christof.3 Thus in essence they sell their life experience for financial gain. The ultimate exploitation, of course, is ...
...m, though they are quite safe behind a large facade of iron bars. This technique corresponds to the menacing way that the characters address the camera throughout the performance, and creates the necessary feeling, for the viewers, that no such barrier is available to protect them as they are drawn in uncomfortably closer to the inmates by Brook’s camerawork. We begin to question whether or not the soliloquies, spoken directly into the camera instead of to the protected aristocrats who originally played our ‘part’ of the audience, are still merely just a theater convention, or if the insanity of the performers is used as a catalyst for we, ourselves, to feel threatened directly by what is spoken. We also begin to question whether or not the inmate is even looking at the camera to address the audience, or is simply insane, and addressing the air around them, adding yet another layer to such complex characters. Creating such questions within the audience’s mind also seems to create, for most, the aura of discomfort and skepticism that Brook was aiming to achieve, and reached quite successfully.
In conclusion, the narrator finds her sense of hope, security and faith being shattered when she undergoes trauma after she loses her husband and four year old son in a terrorist attack. She has her emotions break her down; however, she stands against them only to have her faith in society shattered once more. Finally, she opens up her eyes to reality which in turn sets her free from her misery. Overall, sometimes the truth might be painful, but knowing can be beneficial in the long run.
...onal connection. The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht is a perfect example of the conventions Epic theatre uses to alienate the audience form emotion connection in order to allow an objective viewing of the themes and issue presented. These being ones of social order: is the social structure and legal systems providing fair and just rulings and procedures? By examination of Post World War Two damages we see the effects of war then as a result consciously attempt to prevent it and change our situation. This is an effective way of challenging and informing the contemporary audience as it is visual and audibly dynamic as well as informative, the medium of live theatre is intense and it allows audience members to ascertain meaning together. This sparks discussion which will lead to the individual assessing and attempting to change the way in which society works.
Throughout his life, Pinter has written about and protested against social pathologies like war, human rights violation, terrorism, discrimination and totalitarianism. Having first-hand experience of the horrors of World War II and growing up at a time of Holocaust which caused large scale extermination of Jews in Hitler’s Europe, led Pinter to voice against all forms of social pathologies and the totalitarian institutions which inflict social evils or diseases. The trauma that Pinter went through in the early years of his life made him comprehend and relate with the physical and mental trauma that victims of social pathologies go through. His plays especially the early comedies of menace and the later overtly political plays exhibit his concern with post-war man’s egotism, hopes, feelings, struggles, crises, aspirations and objections against dominion, power, self-obsessed government, menace, suppression, coercion, injustice,