Comparison of Dramatic Technique in Philadelphia, Here I Come! and a View from the Bridge

Stage directions are used during the play to reveal even more of the personality of each of the characters. The extremely-confident personality of Nick is made clear in the first scene, when Nick, Lucy and Lewis first enter the darkened theatre, and Nick starts to toy with Lucy in the dark, pretending to be a ghost. Stage directions can also be used to reveal the feelings of characters. When Lucy and Nick leave, and Lewis is left with Roy, you can tell just by watching the way Lewis holds his body, and moves about the stage, he feels betrayed by Lucy, and by Nick.

Priestley sets out a sequence of stage directions at the beginning of the play, he applies them successfully as a dramatic device. He uses the stage directions to show the audience that the Birling family are cold and distant, and how supposedly capitalism has affected their lives. Highlighting he gap between

The plots are quite similar in both plays, both the film and the play tell a story about a man who meets 3 people, in the

The end of Act 1 closely resembles a Greek Tragedy. In the boxing scene, Eddie begins to make bold moves and does things that are out of the ordinary. “Feints with his left hand and lands with his right”. He starts making mistakes without realizing it as he decides to physically hurt Rodolpho by punching him. This is just the beginning of his path towards self- destruction as he makes his fatal flaw later on in the play. The other characters in the play are all slowly turning against him. Catherine decides to be rebellious in front of Eddie, “You wanna dance, Rodolpho?” Marco challenges Eddie by asking him, “Can you lift this chair?” Beatrice criticizes Eddie for being too overprotective and his unnatural affection towards Catherine, “Well then, be an uncle then.” Rodolpho tries to reason with Eddie, “I have respect for her, Eddie.” “All right, sure. But I can’t stay in the house all the time, Eddie.”

‘A View from the Bridge’ is a play written by Arthur Miller. Miller’s inspiration for this play is close to his heart. He grew up in New York City; his parents were illegal immigrants into the United States looking for work. Alfieri is a key component, not only is he a character he is also a narrator. He acts as a chorus to the play and an aid to the audience. Alfieri plays many small roles to combine and create a depth and understanding to the play such as the connection to the title of the play, how he is utilises time-switches and the effectiveness of them, how he behaves as a chorus of the Greek tragedies and how he

Marco’s action suggests he’s protective of his “little brother” and is quite threatening from the aspect that he rises to defend him if necessary. This is significant to the audience because it foreshadows that Eddie’s impulsive behavior will be the reason he loses Marco’s respect as well as It will be the reason “he won’t have a friend in the world.”

Occurring frequently throughout the play, but particularly predominant at the end of Act I is the use of stage directions to

and conflict appear in both of these plays, they’re both really similar in the grand scheme of things.

Priestley uses stage directions as another dramatic device which helps show the way the characters speak to each other. It shows how the characters must act, directs emotion and creates tension. An example of this is:

In Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics,” he defines art as both “any human activity that doesn’t grow out of EITHER of our species two basic instincts: survival and reproduction” (164), and “the way we assert our identities as individuals and break out of the narrow roles nature cast us in” (166). Although McCloud was discussing graphic novels in his work, I think that these quotes and his argument apply to any type of visual rhetoric. As a former theatre minor at Marquette, I have had the opportunity to be privy to this argument in the form of theatre. Watching a play unfold onstage has an effect on the participating audience, largely due to the intricacies of each scene. While a good play must start out

[1] Since it opened in 1984 the theater has won worldwide acclaim for the quality and scope of its productions. [2] Those productions range from all-male casts (such as the one shown on the next page) performing works in the sixteenth-century Grand Kabuki tradition to U.S. premieres of contemporary works by leading Japanese choreographers. [3] The theater doesn't just book productions; it works closely with the artists, whom it presents. [4] In fact according to the managing director for programs between 60 and 70 percent of the theater's presentations 396 are developed in partnership with the artists. [5] In 1988, for example the theater staged the first, Broadway-style Japanese musical, Utamoro: The Musical which is Tako Izumi's story of the eighteenth-century woodcut artist Utamoro.

The interactions that Sam and Willie have are usually done in a slightly crude joking manner, as the joking is usually oriented about Willie beating his wife Hilda Samuels. Sam has good intentions, but his jokes and comments are not always welcomed or seem in the way that Sam had made them out too be. He was only trying to add constructive criticism, but it came out more harsh as if Sam was making fun of Willie. The stage directions show where to go. No stage directions, then there wouldn’t be any formality. It would just be chaotic. Stage directions show you where to go and exact movements and cues on personality, vocal tone, body language, and facial expressions. Without stage directions, you would be lost on what to do. The stage directions

In Alfieri’s final speech to warn Eddie that this problem could go further than his immediate family, he tells Eddie that he “won’t have a friend in the world” and “even those who understood will turn against you, even the ones who feel the same will despise you!”. He says this to make Eddie feel bad for the upcoming actions and to bring some reality to him. Miller makes use of several exclamation marks to add a sense of desperation and urgency to Alfieri’s tone of voice to urge Eddie to rethink what may become a catastrophe. Alfieri also goes on to say that “that is my last word Eddie, take it or not, that’s your business”, to inform Eddie that he is giving up with helping him and does not want to be involved anymore, its Eddies choice if he will come to a catharsis or not. Arthur Miller also uses stage directions, in this section of the play, to foretell that Eddie Carbone’s end is near and little can be done from others to prevent it, only Eddie alone.

Broadway is famously known for its forty theaters and the major productions that it puts on. Broadway was created in the early 17th century by the Dutch. Since that time Broadway has grown in length as the city developed from a small settlement on the S tip of Manhattan Island and now extends 27 km (17 mi) to the city’s N boundary in the Bronx.

A view from a bridge is a play written by Arthur Miller in the 1950's. Miller wrote the play as a modern day Greek tragedy in New York Brooklyn. Arthur Miller captures the audience with a true story twisted in his own words from which emerge the controversial ideas of incest, cultural obligation and masculinity. The part in the play where Alfieri mentions ‘it is not what but how' means that even though we know the end result its how the end result happens in such an unexpected but inevitable way that it grips us and leaves us in shock even after the end.