Prompt 3: Conduct of Life

It is obvious that Fornes chooses to strip away at his scenes until they are sharp and jarring to the audience. Unlike Trifles and Overtones which are both detailed in their own way, The Conduct of Life purposely lacks the details that create a fulfilled world. Fornes wanted to leave his audience dissatisfied and curious. It’s like people watching in a way. You get a small glimpse of someone’s behavior, but the rest of their existence is left to the imagination.

I found myself almost entranced with these characters. Fornes places a huge emphasis on the social environment of the play, and she makes the Dramaturgical choice to create two opposing psychological levels in each character. First we have Orlando, who speaks often of the problems in his government, yet he never seems to notice his own personal problems. His wife, Letitia has this big speech about how she could never stand to hurt a deer, and when she sees a poor girl who is obviously suffering, she does absolutely nothing to help her and even forces the child to take her blame when she murders her husband. Then we have Nena, herself, who doesn’t speak at all in the play until almost the end, when she voices the most eloquent and beautiful monologue in the script. Finally there is dear Olympia. All throughout the story, it is hinted that she has some sort of mental handicap, yet she turns out to be wiser and more kind-hearted than any of the other characters. These distinct, double personalities were specifically chosen to make the audience reflect upon themselves and how they truly are.

One of the definitions of conduct is the direction or management of something (how it is executed). At first I thought that the play’s title reflected Orlando’s conduct (as in personal behavior), but after closer thought, I concluded that the title reflects the actual conduct of the character’s lives. In this play, we see how these characters choose to manage both themselves and their surroundings. It is not titled after the characters behaviors but more how they choose to live based on the people around them.

Prompt 2: Trifles

I first imagined the possibility of a production of Trifles with an abstract, minimalist design with skepticism. This play has so many details that are all important to the plot. The story is meant to show their significance when most people would miss them in comparison to the big picture. The men overlook so many things that are learned to be critical in determining Mrs. Wright’s motive. I thought of a version of this play without the visual details, and, at first I thought that it would lose this effect. The more details that the production contained would make the women’s discoveries less apparent. I then thought more about the text, itself. In the proposed production, the simple set would put more emphasis on the actual words and the descriptions that they provide. This would leave what is not shown to the imagination. If you read the script, you can see that every important detail is described thorough words. The physical details of the world are merely supplementary to the script and are not necessarily integral to the audience’s experience.

The only reason that I would have trouble with this alternative production is the intention behind it. If the stage was more simplistic in order to add to the audience’s imagination, the austere set would serve its purpose. The director, however, wants his production to, “Focus on the people, not on things," and that goes completely against Glaspell’s intentions. The play is supposed to make the audience concentrate on the details most. I can imagine a production with a stripped-down set, but not or the reason that the director wants. 

Prompt 1: Overtones Response!

By the third time I read Alice Gerstenberg’s play, Overtones, I found that the rules of its artistic world had become somewhat comprehensible. The world was developed so that the psyche of it's characters is split into two, physical beings. Harriet and Margaret, the controlling personalities, are visible to everyone in the world, including their inner desires and the desires of other egos. Each primitive personality, however, are never seen by the civilized personas and can only be heard by their own egos and other inner desires. This rule is described in the stage directions and dialogue of the play and is shown to the audience through the fact that Harriet and Margaret never look at Maggie and Hetty while the later duo speak directly to their egos. The audience can see which inner nature is connected to which ego by the costumes they wear. Each primitive personality wears a darker version of their complement’s attire, but they wear the same color. When the ego is trying to hide their shadowy inner nature, the unsophisticated personalities cover their faces with veils close to the light colored ensemble. The stage directions describe that, “Chiffon is used to give a sheer effect, suggesting a possibility of primitive and cultured selves merging into one woman.” This makes the true intentions of the controlling personality shielded from both parts of the other character’s psyche.

There is a rule to this world that is not directly stated like the others, but it can be inferred though the actions and stage directions of the play. This rule describes how the two unrefined personalities can see and communicate with each other. This phenomenon does not occur all the time, but they reveal themselves under certain circumstances. When Maggie and Margaret are about to arrive, the stage directions state that, “As HETTY moves in the following scene the chiffon falls away revealing now and then the gown of deeper dye underneath.” This made me wonder if Hetty and Maggie could reveal themselves to each other by intentionally or unintentionally disturbing their veils. Of course, Margaret and Harriet could never see them; otherwise Harriet would look at Hetty at the beginning of the play. I then realized that every time Hetty and Maggie communicate, they are either moving or purposely addressing the other directly.