Cosi by Louis Nowra - Text Analysis Essay

Insane Asylums in the 1920-1930’s were disturbing places to live. Men and women were held in different wards, each ward had up to fifty patients (D’Antonio). Patients lived incredibly close to one another. Not one patient knew what

The stage directions reveals “The Theatre.The performance is over.Lewis,tired and sweaty but pleased is talking to Justin who shakes his hand”. Following this, Justin's repetition in “marvellous. Just marvellous” proves that Lewis’ work with the mental patients was successful. His ability to gain friendships and develop a deeper understanding of the patients, suggests his growth and transformation was a success expanded as lewis’ sense of identity strengthened as he grew closer to the patients.This is further proven as roy addresses the audience “Next year, a greater triumph awaits us, Jerry.The Don!”. Roy happiness at the end of the play cements the idea of Lewis’ transformation by demonstrating how much Lewis has impacted on the patients, giving them a border outlook on life and providing them with a sense of belonging to the world.When Lewis directly addresses the audience “Yes, Roy. There was no next year. The theatre mysteriously burnt down a week after the performance….. time to turn out the lights”.Thus breaking the fourth wall the illusion of the theatre is broken down.This highlighting to the audience the directors dramatic intent of the play Cosi which was to spark a change in social attitudes towards mental illness but not only that but to come to his own terms with contextual issues and experiences of the mental illness and

In the play Cosi Louis Nowra challenges the important themes of love, fidelity, sanity and insanity within a range of dramatic techniques. Cosi is set in Melbourne, during the early 1970’s. Numerous political and radical events were occurring. The Vietnam War protest was raging, the sexual revolution was rolling, and mental illness was still misunderstood and mistreated. Due to these contexts, love, fidelity, sanity and insanity are big issues that surface throughout the play. Nowra comments on society’s issues. Firstly, he uses dialogue to convey the characters various thoughts and feelings towards these issues.

A distinctly visual aspect of demonstrating the experience of the characters kindles curiosity in the audience to involve and instill emotional understanding of the context. Through the use of distinct and unique techniques, composers create an emotional response that can have a significant effect on the responders’ attitude on the world. The play ‘The shoe-horn sonata’ explores the crisis of circumstances as John Misto depicts the forgotten history of the women captured and imprisoned during WW2. Misto explores the experiences of the Australian nurses and the government’s response to their pleads of salvation, to emotionally bind the audience and the characters. Likewise, David Douglas Duncan involves the audience by evoking a feeling of pity and empathy in his Korean War photograph. He creates sentiment for the loss of innocence and employs distinctly visual elements to convey the horrifying nature of war. He profoundly highlights power in the photograph to explore the despair felt by the weak fleeing Korean citizens. Hence, both authors elevate the context with a visual representation of the individuals’ struggles to create curiosity and emotional rapport with the audience to improve the understanding of the characters experiences.

Many composers use various techniques in which they communicate the distinctly visual. John Misto’s ‘The Shoe-Horn Sonata’ and Alexander Kimel’s ‘The Action in the Ghetto of Rohatyn, March 1942’ represent significant issues in our world by using various literary and dramatic techniques. Through using these techniques it is evident that the composers of these texts allow the audience to ‘see’ with our eyes as well as with our minds. The many literary and dramatic techniques have the ability to create a visual that

Nowra’s play is set in a ‘burnt out theatre’. Discuss the importance of setting and imagery in conveying Nowra’s idea on 'Cosi'.

The burnt out theatre in Nowra's play 'Cosi' represents the life inside an asylum, a life that the characters know all too well. Life inside an asylum is portrayed as a dark, cold and isolated place, where the outside world is not often talked about and for others almost doesn't exist. Most of the characters cannot handle reality but for Nowra is is about exposing the hard times and the difficult lives of the patients. Lewis is fresh out of university and took on a job as a play director at the asylum, but is a bit unsettled when he first inspects the theatre that they will be

. What narrative structure does the author use to tell the story? John Boyne uses imagery in his book.

Richard Van Camp's, The Lesser Blessed, contains elements that classify the novel with both Indigenous and Modern genres. Featuring both genres in a text can lead to contradicting themes that form a binary. This binary has the potential to limit the extent readers can connect to the story, suggesting the presence of a barrier. Barriers hinder the readers' lack of understanding or relatability to either Indigenous or Modern works of literature. This paper will serve to analyze how Richard Van Camp deconstructs the binary by having the sides work together rather than against one another. Furthermore, this paper will discuss how by breaking down the binary, Richard Van Camp is allowing his novel to be accessible to all readers.

with genuine hurt at the fact that Lucy is ‘sleeping’ with him but ‘having sex’ with

"Nowadays the plays' meaning is usually blurred by the fact that the actor plays to the audiences hearts. The figures portrayed are foisted on the audience and are falsified in the process. Contrary to present custom they ought to be presented quite coldly, classically and objectively. For they are not matter for empathy; they are there to be understood and politely added

Milos Forman's "Amadeus" is one of the most hazardous bets a producer has taken in quite a while - a rich film about Mozart that challenges to be anarchic and saucy, yet still gains the significance of disaster. This motion picture is in no way like the bleak instructive representations we're accustomed to seeing about the Great Composers, who appear to be cobwebbed profundities overloaded with the weight of virtuoso. This is Mozart as an eighteenth-century Bruce Springsteen, but (here is the virtuoso of the motion picture) there is nothing shoddy or unworthy about the approach.

“Theatre makes us think about power and the way our society works and it does this with a clear purpose, to make a change.”

Dramatic stories of people with mental health conditions appear pervasively in almost every media outlet, beginning generations ago, and continuing steadily in modern society. These themes--of violent madmen, hysterical witches, insane criminals, and every other generalization of the mentally ill--perpetuate the harmful misrepresentation and stigmatization of mental illness, which is a common element in modern everyday life. One of the greatest factors contributing to this situation today is the presence of said misconceptions in printed media--not just modern works, but also the appraised classics, such as William Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth and Mary Shelley’s gothic novel Frankenstein. Even as centuries pass and contemporary society advances, it is evident that ultimately, as the reader analyzes both Macbeth and Frankenstein, definitive British literature strengthens the negative stigma surrounding mental health, as it similarly misrepresents the legitimate issues regarding mental illness.

Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème, an opera in four acts, premiered in 1896 (towards the end of the Romantic era) and established Puccini as a leading composer of his time. The opera, originally based on the 1851 Scènes de la vie de bohème by author Henri Murger, was transformed by Puccini into a musical masterpiece, while the libretto was written by dramatist Giuseppe Giacosa and poet Luigi Illica. The opera, set in the Latin Quarter of Paris during the 1830s, examines realistic relationships within the scope of romanticism. The scenes depict the struggles of survival, poverty and illness amongst bohemian artists, but most of all, La Bohème shares a story of deep love between a poet and a seamstress. They are known as Rodolfo and Mimí. I witnessed this operatic love twice at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera (Friday, October 6, 2017 and Friday, October 27, 2017, both conducted by Alexander Soddy and produced by Franco Zeffirelli), and in this paper, I will examine the final moments in Act III (D’onde liter uscì? and more specifically Dunque è proprio finita?). I aim to explore how Puccini’s female characters are portrayed, especially in their relationships with the men, and I hope to shed light onto the possible stereotypical representations of women within La Bohème.