The Pillowman

in his work and he implements the surprise by having the humor be dark and gallows humor. Dark and gallows humor, and gruesome descriptions are especially apparent in McDonagh’s play The Pillowman. Let’s explore critical and personal responses to McDonagh’s work, including: The Pillowman and Hangmen. The Pillowman was written to shock, and shock it did. Initially, I was very shocked at Ariel and Tupolski’s initial treatment of Katurian when he first enters the interrogation room, leading to feelings

The Pillowman is a dark comedy written in 2003 by British-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh. First staged in 2007, The Pillowman returns to the stage, once again deftly helmed by Tracie Pang and an incredible cast and creative team of the company, Pangdemonium!; set design by Eucien Chia; lighting by James Tan, music and sound by Darren Ng. The Pangdemonium’s production at the Victoria Theatre runs for 3 hours. Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman is a dark drama that takes place in a nameless totalitarian

becomes a kind of purification or salvation. Even though life is full of difficulties, people try to get spiritual solace and relaxation by exposure to art. Thus, plenty of scripts were formed to discuss how people look upon the nature of art. In The Pillowman written by Martin McDonagh, the main character, Katurian creates lots of impressive stories as the only treasure he left after he died. In the movie The Legend of 1900 directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, the leading character “1900” dedicates all his

In Pillowman I was the Assistant director, so is my point of view as the assistant director for Pillowman. First thing I quickly found out was the roles of the leads who are two brothers were to be played by women. At first I did not know that could work out, because of how the playwright specifically mentioned two brothers. As I read through the script, I would wondered how challenging it was going to be for Katurian one of the leads to take the brutal beatings. These are such brutal beatings that

In a review of Martin McDonagh’s 2003 play The Pillowman, Jonathan Kalb, a Professor of Theater at the City University of New York, wrote, “Its twists and complications, its games with truth, even its trendy sensationalism and nihilism, are all in the service of larger and more important aims” (Kalb). The larger and more important aims that Professor Kalb mentioned are the underlying conceit that is perpetuated throughout the play. Through the plays use of characters descriptions, genre, and repetition

The Pillowman and Antigone in New York illustrate storytelling as a central role regarding the character truth. The impact of storytelling influences the actions and behaviour that the police officer’s observation affects the way the characters perceive themselves. Katurian in The Pillowman and the homeless, Anita, Sasha and Flea, in Antigone in New York represent the act of storytelling as a way to escape their realities. Storytelling examines the influence from the past to represent the problems

bad? Thinkers of all stripes have struggled with this question and attempted to provide answers. Two people who have explored this question are Simon Blackburn and Martin McDonagh. The former in his book Being Good and the latter in his play The Pillowman. In his play, McDonagh packs his prose with moral questions and ethical dilemmas. The

becomes a form of physical and psychological torture that the characters try to escape. There are two perspectives that torture illustrates in the plays. Torture as a form of storytelling is sharing the stories, but also how stories are told. The Pillowman forms storytelling as torture when the Tupolski and Ariel interrogate Katurian to expose his identity through his stories. The push of storytelling as torture becomes a central focus when the use of language and words direct a physical and psychological

The relations between art and life is explored throughout Martin McDonagh’s play, The Pillowman and Muriel Spark’s Loitering With Intent. They explore these relations through discussing the stylistic features of their characters and how these characters are perceived in real life. Both authors explore how the preconceived ideas of what a character should be is dismantled and the line which distinguishes between art and life is becoming less clear. Another way in which these authors explore the link

However, during the 20th Century, novelists like Spark and McDonagh were making an attempt to dismantle these preconceptions that readers had. This same idea of preconceptions is presented throughout Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman as Katurian refuses to tell Ariel and Tupolski what to think of the characters in the fictional texts that he has written. This, is evident in Act 1, Scene 1 when Katurian responds to Tupolski and Ariel interrogating him with regards to the father