Epic Devices in Eight Men Speak
Eight Men Speak by Oscar Ryan et al presents a variety of epic devices employed throughout its composition. We see “the essential truth in every word of these six acts”(Foreword 5) come to life in this thought provoking presentation of didactic literature. Through the use of Epic Drama we see the effects of our corrupt government as it is brought into perspective using the epic devices of using the audience as active participants, using narration rather than action , and political engagement. These epic devices play a key role in portraying the didactic message of the play. The play causes the reader not only to be a present member of the audience, but to have presence of mind as well; to not only hear what the characters are saying, but to take initiative if they wish to see change.
Throughout the piece, we see the use of audience as active participants to amplify the didactic message of the play. In the literature we see many instances where the author uses this cognitive distancing as a way to disrupt the stage illusion and make the audience active members of the play. Forcing the audience into an analytical standpoint as opposed to passively accepting whats happening in their conscious minds. This occurs time and time again in the fourth act of the play. The characters repeatedly break down the fourth wall and engage the audience with open participation. We see this in the quotation from the end of the fourth Act of the play:
Carr (pointing out through the bars): “In your support lies the strength.”
Boychuk (pointing through the bars): “In your support lies the will”
Popovich (pointing through the bars): “In your support lies the power”
All: “To free yourselves.”
Carr: “To free the...
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...political agenda. This epic device helps to elaborate the didactic message used in Eight Men Speak.
In Eight Men Speak we see a variety of techniques used portray the didactic message, including the use of the audience as active participants, the use of narration rather than action and political engagement. In this epic drama by Oscar Ryan et al we see the combined effect of these epic devices coming together to potentially create some change in Canada. If this country wishes to initiate this change they will have to work together and think outside of their normal cognition. We have been raised as a society to fall into line and do as we’re told; to conform to the social norms and be well behaved parts of society. If there is to be any change, we need to work together to make it happen and this play gives us the information to do so with its take on didacticism.
Mark Lambeck uses the drama’s setting to relate Intervention to the audience. Specifically, he uses a vague yet understandable modern time. An audience can relate knowing they could experience the same thing on any given day. The location of the play is also a place an audience could easily find themselves. It is vague place that could represent almost anywhere, perhaps in where the audience is. In the current world, one could easily find themselves walking down the street on their cell phone. The characters are constant...
He also greets and dismisses the audience at the beginning and end of each act. The stage manager interrupts daily conversation on the street. The Stage Manager enters and leaves the dialog. He is also giving the foresight of death in the play. His informality in dress, manners, and speech, connects the theme, universality, of the production to the audience.
The first main area of art and reality colliding in the play is the existence of characters who are referred to as Characters. Pirandello stretches the bounds of meta-theater by having actors portray Characters who swear they are not actors, when faced with other actors playing actual actors and a Director. The layers of unraveling of reality are astounding. The Characters must try and convince not only the Actors and the Producer of their true nature, but also the audience. Pirandello must convey his beliefs about the essence of art through the mouths of Characters seemingly unattached to the actuality of the theater around them. In the play, the Producer acts on stage in place of the author, questioning the sincerity and the true nature of the Characters, who become his r...
Over the course of his career, Brecht developed the criteria for and conditions needed to create Epic Theatre. The role of the audience can be likened to that of a group of college aged students or intellectuals. Brecht believed in the intelligence of his audience, and their capacity for critical analysis. He detested the trance-like state that an Aristotelian performance can lure the audience into. Plays that idealize life and humanity are appealing to an audience, and this makes it easy for them to identify with the hero, they reach a state of self oblivion. The spectator becomes one with the actor, and experiences the same fantastical climax that is unattainable in real life.
First impression of the play when I first walked in was one of confusion. The stage design was not distinguishable. I could not tell what was going on or what it was supposed to be. One thing I could
My work proposes a broader view of the theatre-film interface, one that relies on intertextuality as its interpretive method. I believe it is valuable-both pedagogically and theoretically-to ask broad questions about the aesthetic, narrative, and ideological exchanges between the history of theatre and contemporary film and television. For example, this paper will study how the "Chinese Restaurant" episode of the sitcom, Seinfeld, intertextually reworks Samuel Beckett's modernist play, Waiting for Godot. In each text, characters encounter an existential plight as they are forced to wait interminably, and thus confront their powerlessness at the hands of larger social forces. As a pedagogical matter, this connection encourages the students to see academic culture in the guise of having to read Beckett's play for my course, not as foreign and alienating, but instead as continuous with their understanding of leisure activities like watching sitcoms. As a theoretical matter, this intertextual connection allows important ideological matters to come into bold relie...
Bertolt Brecht was a German playwright, theatre critic, and director. He created and developed epic theatre with the belief that theatre is not solely for entertainment but also tools for politics and social activism. Previous theatre performances offered a form of escapism. The audience would become emotionally invested in the performance. In contrast to the suspension of disbelief, Brecht never wanted the audience to fall into the performance. He wanted the audience to make judgments on the argument dealt in the play. The aim of epic theatre is to detach the audience from any emotional connection in order for them to critically review the story. The ultimate goal of this theatre is creating awareness of social surroundings and encouraging the audience to take initiative on changing the society.
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.
As the storyline of Stepping Out is based heavily on the uniqueness of each character and their motivation to dance, it was extremely important for the actors to portray their characters well for the audience to interpret. An aspect of the performance that was confused, was the use and misuse of the fourth wall; the space in which separates the performer from an audience. As the play was set in the dance studio, it was evident that fourth wall was in fact a mirror. This was easily identified when Olivia Brodzink and Kerri Gay would stand in front of the audience and pretend to fix their hair or put makeup on. However, Wimmer did not abide by the fourth wall and spoiled this effect for the entirety of the performance. For example Mavis would look up and directly into the audience at the back of the theatre, making direct eye contact with audience members. This action was highly obvious and as a result the remaining characters in the room were upstaged by Melissa Wimmer, as she became the unnecessary focus of the scene. This aspect connects with Wimmer and her facial expressions and body language in response to her fellow characters. Throughout the whole performance, Wimmer stole the attention from moments not concentrated on
The play that we read for this unit is Too Much Punch For Judy, by Mark Wheeller. It is a form of Verbatim Theatre, meaning that it is based on the spoken words of real people. This play is about the story of a young woman who kills her sister in an alcohol related accident. When I first read the play I couldn’t empathize with the story as I haven’t experienced such a shocking event before. In this essay I will describe, analyse and evaluate both my work and the work of other actors in my group, focusing on the mediums, elements and explorative strategies of Drama.
Plays are a unique form of entertainment and literature, for they typically include scenes in which characters acknowledge and address the audience directly through various monologues and soliloquies. This adds an extra interactive layer of involvement where the audience can influence a character’s decisions. For instance, in Shakespeare’s Othello, the main character, a wily young man ironically dubbed “honest” Iago stops to tell the audience about his true intentions just as often as he tries to undermine other characters. Naturally, Iago would need some release from his deceitful planning. Therefore, the audience, by silently abiding through Iago’s speeches, must be his sidekicks – albeit unwillingly – the only people Iago trusts and feels
...s killing us!” (p.56). This contrast between the two views enhances the audience’s understanding of the play.
of the audience. One of his main aims in the play was to present the
He went beyond the traditional dialogue-based theatre that everyone knows, since he wanted to create more intimate experience with the audience. For him the dialogue- something written and spoken- it does not belong to the scene, but to a book. Certainly, a scene is a physical and concrete place that requires to be occupied by speaking certain language. But that certain language, regardless the words, must satisfy all five human senses and those thoughts and feelings go beyond the domain of the spoken language. Those thoughts, which words cannot express, find their ideal expression nowhere but in the concrete and physical language of the scene.
...m, though they are quite safe behind a large facade of iron bars. This technique corresponds to the menacing way that the characters address the camera throughout the performance, and creates the necessary feeling, for the viewers, that no such barrier is available to protect them as they are drawn in uncomfortably closer to the inmates by Brook’s camerawork. We begin to question whether or not the soliloquies, spoken directly into the camera instead of to the protected aristocrats who originally played our ‘part’ of the audience, are still merely just a theater convention, or if the insanity of the performers is used as a catalyst for we, ourselves, to feel threatened directly by what is spoken. We also begin to question whether or not the inmate is even looking at the camera to address the audience, or is simply insane, and addressing the air around them, adding yet another layer to such complex characters. Creating such questions within the audience’s mind also seems to create, for most, the aura of discomfort and skepticism that Brook was aiming to achieve, and reached quite successfully.