“The conflict between virtuous mediocrity and feckless genius took hold of my imagination” (“Shaffer, Peter 1926”). The quote by Shaffer himself, helps to explain the reasoning for his plays; both the good and the bad. Throughout the past few decades, Sir Peter Shaffer has brought numerous plays to the stage, with each challenging society to be open minded to change. Sir Peter Shaffer has forever impacted the theatre world by bringing topics such as sexual choices, religion, and family values to the stage that challenged the ideals set by society through his use of plays as a means to help him answer many of his own questions about life.
Shaffer used his own family structure in his stage debut play to challenge what society thought was the family ideal. Shaffer felt he had to show society the flaw in a common family structure. In his play Finger Exercise he depicted a typical British family and its conflicts to help make more real his feelings. He felt it was his way of “expressing [his] social protest” (“Peter Shaffer 1926-“). He was able to show his childhood as broken since his parents divorced which he thought was not acceptable. Through this he “invokes [a] tortured past” (Seigel) which helps him to emphasis his discontent. Overall he showed the theatre world how wrong family values had become when people were allowing themselves to believe verbal abuse and divorces were common and acceptable in families today.
Shaffer used his experience growing up during WW2 and the challenge to his faith that it brought as a base for many of his plays. Throughout his childhood, Peter Shaffer was forced to move numerous times during WW2 as a result of living in Nazi, Germany, and at one point was even caught by the Nazi army and abused....
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...rce society to talk about adult topics that were previously left alone as ways to challenge the typical views of a narrow-minded society. Shaffer was able to depict “mankind’s true metaphysical status” (Giana Karis) as more than what society believed it could be by forcing them to see their flaws and fix them; and for this he should be revered.
Works Cited
Galens, David. “Peter Shaffer.” Drama for Students. Vol 5. 1999; Gale: Detroit. Print.
Giana Karis, C.J. “The Artistic Trajectory of Peter Shaffer.” Peter Shaffer A Casebook. Ed. C.J. Giana Karis. Garland Publishing, Inc, 1991. 3-23. 28 Feb 2010. Online.
Kaye, Helen. “Theater Review.” Jerusalem Post. 11 Dec 2008. 5 Feb 2010. Online.
Seigel, Naomi. “Gifted, Yes, But Not Enough.” The New York Times Online. 8 Jun 2008. 5 Feb 2010. Online
“Shaffer, Peter 1926-.” Proquest Literature. 2002. 12 Feb 2010. Online.
Osborne, Harold. The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Art. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.
When deciding what element a play should contain, one must look at a large variety of options. These options can alter how the audience depicts the play and change their overall opinions. Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” is a play set around 1895 where the protagonist, Jack Worthing, takes on two identities in order to avoid social obligations. This play’s era affects how the characters are dressed and how their households appear.
...ly progressed from a way to tell stories about kings and gods to a way to tell stories about ordinary human beings. By moving our focus off of nobility, the language of plays became the language of every individual, and eventually, due to America’s “melting pot” culture, the language itself became individual. The unique language of American dramatic characters represents not only the diversity of the American people, but also the diversity of all human beings. These dramatically dissimilar differences were not typical of older plays when they were written, but now, they are what make American drama so valuable. Our acceptance and love for characters with different values than ours is representative of the love we can develop for those who are different from us. It represents the worldview that our current culture idealizes and strives to achieve: acceptance for all.
To conclude, reading the plays of Shakespeare is not only about an entertainment, there is more about learning manhood and the importance of the role that morality plays in everyday life. That is the reason of Shakespeare’s plays are so popular because through his work, he illustrates that: life is a play, which is performed on the earth stage, and his world stage will continue influences the past, modern and further.
Brecht argues that the ultimate purpose of play is to induce pleasure and to entertain, and that--because of this purpose--play needs no justification. Plays should not be simply copied from or seen through older performances, but need to develop on their own to better relate to a new audience. Through the use of alienation which aims to make the familiar unfamiliar, play and theatre can be seen under a new perspective, and the actor can feel more free to perform under a new guise.
1. Hunter, Sam and Jacobs, John. Modern Art, 3rd Edition. The Vendome Press, New York, 1992.
Not all plays are character-driven, in fact a great many are not. So if the characters are not what keep the audience intrigued, well then what does? There are many possible answers to this question. Paper Wheat uses the history of a group of people, a specific message commenting on a time period, spectacle elements such as song and dance, and the genre of comedy to keep its audience both engaged and entertained.
This paper is a critique of a production of The Last Night of Ballyhoo, a play written by Alfred Uhry, which was performed and produced by the Ball State University Theatre. Gilbert L. Bloom directed the production and was very successful with producing a truly entertaining, comedic play with an important message about the personal dilemmas that we as individuals with different beliefs and values must encounter in our daily lives.
This play shows the importance of the staging, gestures, and props making the atmosphere of a play. Without the development of these things through directions from the author, the whole point of the play will be missed. The dialog in this play only complements the unspoken. Words definitely do not tell the whole story.
On stage, these points were, looking at the opinions of a majority of both the audiences and the critics, presented successfully by Brook and the cast he worked with. From the prison guards who loomed in the background, clothed in butcher aprons and armed with clubs, to the half-naked Marat, slouched in a tub and covered in wet rags, forever scratching and writing, to the small group of singers, dressed and painted up as clowns, to the narcoleptic but murderous Charlotte Corday, Weiss and Brook offered a stage production that both engaged and amazed the audience, while at the same time forced them to question their role as the audience; no better exemplified than at the very end of the play, where the inmates, standing menacingly at the edge of the stage, actually begin to applaud the very people who applaud their performance, aggravating and confusing some, but forcing most t...
Author unknown (2003, February 24). Schools seek gifted among minorities. The Washington Times. Retrieved March 10, 2003, from http://washingtontiems.com/metro/2003224-14635946.htm
Shakespeare has created stories that are so powerful, emotional, comedic, tragic and romantic that they are still continuously remembered and studied in the modern era. Though the essence of his talents does not lie in the simple themes behind his plays, but more so in
The name most associated with excellence in theatre is William Shakespeare. His plays, more than any other playwright, resonate through the ages. It may be safe to say that he has influenced more actors, directors, and playwrights than any thespian in the history of the stage. But what were his influences? During the Middle Ages theatre was dominated by morality, miracle, and mystery plays that were often staged by the church as a means to teach the illiterate masses about Christianity. It wasn’t until the early sixteenth century that Greek tragedy experienced a revival, in turn, inspiring a generation of renaissance playwrights.
As the roles were essentially cemented into the culture, manipulations such as crossovers provide a source of conflict and intrigue into the narrative of the plays. Two of Shakespea...
The content of the morality plays is what played a hand in the persuasion of its audience. They taught their audiences because their main object was both religious and ethical and easy to grasp for the uneducated population whom largely went to its productions. (Warren 1). The plays also often examined the Christian character so that the flaws and strengths can be pointed out. (1). The plays were centered mainly on faith, dogma, and the application of the Christian doctrine to common folk life. (1). The characters of the morality plays were usually abstract qualities such as greed, friendship, love, death, etc. (1). There were many other cases when the characters of the morality plays were not abstract qualities. These alternative roles were ones of angels, devils, priests, doctors, fools (found usua...