Prompt 8: Buried Child

                Buried Child is seemingly realistic, showing a piece of everyday life for a pretty regular, albeit incredibly crazy, dysfunctional, farming family. On the outside, you’d expect it to be fairly true to life since it deals with everyday events, and horrible, but still possible, secrets. The problem with this play, however, is that through closer inspection, there are things that just don’t make since in the lifelike setting. There’s mysterious corn, for example, that none of the characters have planted. At first we think they are crops that Tilden stole from the neighbors, but at the end we hear Halie exclaim that there are all sorts of crops growing outside. This is left completely unexplained, and ambiguous. Another thing that does not seem to fit into the realism of the play is Vince’s speech about running away. He says that he was driving, but then he saw the reflections of his family members, even people he hasn’t ever seen before. Now, until this point, Vince has been a fairly normal guy, but this incident changes him drastically. He becomes like a new Dodge. Finally, there is the fact that upon Vince’s first arrival with Shelly, no one recognizes him except Halie. It leaves many questions. Why does his own father not recognize him and why is Halie the only one that does? These strange occurrences that don’t exactly fit into the illusion of realism blur the lines between the family’s insanity, and the physical world of the play. The audience is left uncertain of what was and wasn’t “real”.

Prompt 7: Noises Off

A motif that I found while reading Noises Off would definitely be sardines. Not only are there many references in the story about sardines, but the characters and the characters they play all running amok create a sense of crowdedness like a can of sardines. The appearance of sardines throughout the craziness of the play seems to enhance the action and affect the relationships.

For a tag like, I’d like to repeat one of Lloyd’s lines, “…and curtain, perhaps?” I love this line and I feel like it describes the craziness of this show. There are so many points in the script when things are going wrong when I’d literally yell at the script telling them to just bring down the curtain and go home. The fact that the tag line is a little uncertain makes it a reaction to everything that happens in the story, almost like they don’t even know what to do to end the chaos.

Prompt 6: Glass of Water

In most plays, the audience can easily determine which character the protagonist is. This is the playwright’s intention, so that the character’s goals and objectives are better understood. For plays such as Glass of Water, however, the fact that there is not a clear protagonist is also intentional. Scribe does not want the audience to focus their attention on the struggles of a single character. He wants the audience to sympathize with Abigail and Masham’s love story, but he also makes Bolingbroke equally important, for the story is motivated the most through his actions.

If I were to choose which of these three characters the protagonist is, I would have to go with Bolingbroke simply because of how much the other character’s stories depend upon his presence. The plot is driven by his ambition and the manipulation he uses to gain political power. He helps his friends along the way, but it isn’t clear whether or not this was intentional. The point is, that without Bolingbroke’s influence, Abigail and Masham’s story would be stuck and they would not have fulfilled their goals. A protagonist moves the story forward so that they can eventually attain their objectives. All three characters do this, but Abigail and Masham could not without Bolingbroke.

I honestly don’t feel that finding the protagonist is necessary in this story. Abigail and Masham’s love and Bolingbroke’s quest for power are equally important, and Scribe meant for the audience to focus on all of the characters’ desires and how they achieve them.