Making Of A Melodram Style Swap

The audience is able to instantly understand what is happening in a scene and how it impacts on what has happened and what is occurring in present time. The play uses its style perfectly with its use of extended dialogue to convey meaning and tell the story. The audience can get lost in its story as there are no confusing abstract themes to throw them, everything the story is about is laid out before them and this helps with understanding the dramatic meaning as the dramatic meaning is very serious and realistic, just like the storytelling style.

Graphic depictions develop a strong clarification, which enables the audience to illustrate illusions of reality. Misto illuminates social realism through the use of props such as the motel room; fridge, bed, table and suitcases, creating a realistic scene which also develops stage direction and setting. This intrigues the audience into a “real life” re-enactment developing the feeling of being a part of the play and the reality of war. Misto manipulates our emotions through the use of stage directions exposing a certain mood, mastering characterisation throughout the playwright. This creates an instant connection to the past which adds immediacy to the actions occurring, providing the audience with a profound understanding of Bridie and Sheila. Misto’s clique use of costumes for the women express individuality of Bridie and Sheila, insisting the audience that the two women have respect for themselves and always appear presentable, such as Sheila with her gloves, illuminating the women’s age and era the play was set in. The composer illustrates vivid images to support the theme and context of war. Distinctively visual images represent and secure the audience’s mind and emotions.

This very much represents the physical crossing from the ‘normal’ world into a world which is not seen from the outside, and pushed to the edge of society, and further resembles a glimpse of hope for the patients’ recovery. In the later scenes of the play, during the performance of Mozart’s opera, the entire theatre has been transformed into something completely different, with its white walls, the bright, colourful costumes, and Mozart’s “music of the spheres” echoing within the once dark and dismal place. The new theatre in all its splendour metaphorically resembles the transformations of the characters themselves, and from this, the audience is encouraged to realise the significance and therapeutic nature of art, in this case theatre and music: “the music of this opera will keep the world in harmony”, especially in contrast to hopeless treatments such as shock therapy. Through his play, Nowra also encourages the audience to agree with his personal view that war is unnecessary, and in a way is a kind of madness itself, due to its chaotic and uncontrollable nature.

The term metatheatre is used to refer to any instance in which a play draws attention to itself as a play, rather than pretending to be a representation of “reality.” Various uses of metatheatrical devices can be found in the works of William Shakespeare. One of Shakespeare’s favorite such devices is the “play-within-a-play.” With this device, the theatre audience finds itself watching an audience (on stage) watching a play. The play-within-a-play is thus a self-reflexive device that addresses the question of where audience reality ends and theatrical illusion begins. Shakespeare often incorporated the device as an integral part of his plots. A famous example can

various moods in the mind of the audience, in Act I. In Act I we

The overall dramatic meaning of this play has been successfully shown by the elements of drama. The

The Theme I will be exploring in this play will be family. In this play you come across many scenes that are more focused on the family getting together and being

The dramaturge explores the inner and outer world of the play and how the use of Design can be appropriate to the plays context and accurately portray the playwright’s intention while still conforming to the conventions and practices of the period.

As regards the delineation of the characters on stage and outside, the spectator is invited to pay attention to what is said and what is left unsaid, to what is revealed consciously or what is betrayed by the delivery of each of them, their gestures whether coordinately or impulsively performed.

We then talked about the essence of how this grand type of story could be effectively performed in a small wooden theater. We talked about the bond between the author, actors, and audience that exists in the theater. We also talked about the text of the prologue in which the chorus simply asks the audience to use their imaginations by requesting that they suspend disbelief. In this the Chorus essentially pleads with the audience to view the representations presented to them as what they are intended more than what they are. For this to be effective the triple bond comes into play, the writing, acting and audience participation are all required to properly appreciate the story as it was intended.

"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

This ending to the play helps develop the catharsis that both the audience and characters feel after the events have occurred. The idea of the play raising “emotions of pity

[Melodrama is] a form of presentation which will be forever equated with the banal, the superficial, the shoddy and the plain ridiculous. Trite sentiments, artificial pathos, circumscribed characterisation, and second-hand plots trotted out time and time again must have made play going a painful experience for the quality. (Kilgarriff, p.18)

A real event described at the beginning of the drama has exercised a profound influence upon the whole imagery of the play. What is later metaphor is here still reality. The picture of the leprous skin disease, which is here – in the first act –

Shakespeare has a difficult task entertaining the rowdy Elizabethan audience, especially during the exposition of the play, which sets up the entire plot. The audience needs to be engaged and invested in the play, otherwise many of the Elizabethan audience would throw food and furniture on stage or vandalize the theatre in response. Shakespeare employs a variety of techniques throughout the exposition of the play in order to do this, by creating tension between characters, introducing scandalous plots and unresolved issues right at the beginning of the play leaving the audience waiting for an answer. This essay will explore Shakespeare’s techniques and methods of engaging his Elizabethan audience.