Hamlet Blog Post #3

Soliloquy Analysis

Imagery:

Referring to the uncertainty of death:

·         "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer/The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,/Or to take arms against a sea of troubles" (3.1.57-59).

· "For in that sleep of death what dreams may come/ when we have shuffled off this mortal coil,/ must give us pause" (3.1. 67-69).

· "But that the dread of something after death,/The undiscover'd country from whose bourn/No traveller returns, puzzles the will" (3.1.77-80).

· "Puzzles the will and makes us rather bare the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of?" (3.1.80-82)

Referring to the negative experiences of life:

·         "Suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take action against a sea of troubles"(3.1.58-59).

·         "The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks/That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation" (3.1.62-63).

·          "For who would bear the whips and scorns of time," (3.1.70)

·         "To grunt and sweat under a weary life," (3.1.77)

Appeals:

Pathos used to convince/motivate audience:

Hamlet appeals to the emotional interest of the audience by showing them the difficultly of the decision that he is trying to make:

· "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer/The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," (3.1.57-58)

· "For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,/Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely/The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,/The patient merit of th' unworthy takes," (3.1.70-74)

Ethos:

Hamlet establishes credibility with the audience when he shouts out with emotion so we can realize that although Hamlet seems to have control over is mad façade, he may not which establishes the honesty in his soliloquy:

· "And lose the name of action- soft you now!" (3.1.88)

Logos:

Hamlet uses logos by creating an opposition to his wish of death by contemplating the consequences of his actions:

· "But that to the dread of something after death, the undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveler returns, puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of?" (31.78-82)

Hamlet uses logos to convince/motivate audience:

· "And makes us rather bear those ills we have/Than fly to others that we know not of?" (3.1.81-82)

Literary Devices:

•     Paradox: In the soliloquy, paradox appears in the form of an invalid argument. He describes how terrible and painful life is but he also considers the fact that his afterlife could be just as bad or worse so he would put up with life.

•     Parallelism: "Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay, the insolence of office and the spurns" (3.1.71-73). It emphasizes the struggle in life that Hamlet faces.

• Synecdoche: Hamlet uses synecdoche to characterize and focus on the question that Hamlet is pondering.

• Tone: The tone of this speech is depressed because Hamlet is struggling with his emotions of sorrow and fear of death.

• Diction: Words like "whips", "scorns", "spurns", "dread", "oppressor", and "sicklied" to create the depressed mood.

• Metaphors:

Death is sleep: Hamlet compares death to sleep in order to make it seem more natural and less intimidating for him to try and ease his own fear of death. He also compares his uncertainty of his afterlife to the dreams that come in sleep.

· "For in that sleep of death what dreams may come/When we have shuffled off this mortal coil," (3.1.67)

· "And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--/No more--and by a sleep to say we end/The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks" (3.1.60-63)

Death/life is an abuse/sickness: Hamlet's compares the hardships of his life to slavery. He endures the pain of slavery everyday and wants to escape his "slavery" by death.

· "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer" (3.1.57)

· "For who would bear the whips and scorns of time," (3.1.70)

· "To grunt and sweat under a weary life," (3.1.77)

· "Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," (3.1.85)

· To die, to sleep: to sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; for in that sleep of death what dreams may come" (3.1.64-66).

Comparisons:

• Life on earth to the afterlife: "To grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death, the undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveler returns" (3.1.77-80)

• Humans and thinking:

• "Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; and thus the native hue of resolution is sickled o'er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pitch and moment with this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action" (3.184-88)

• The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks/That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation/Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--" (3.1.62-64)

· Afterlife: "The undiscovered country, from whose bourn/No traveller returns, puzzles the will,/And makes us rather bear those ills we have/Than fly to others that we know not of?" (3.1.79-82)

· Death: "For in that sleep of death what dreams may come/When we have shuffled off this mortal coil," (3.1.66-67)

Oppositions:

• Hamlet is unsure if he will go to Heaven or Hell.

• He would not be able to avenge his father's death.

• Afraid letting death take him would make him look like a coward

• Death could be more torturous than life

Philosophical Questions:

Hamlet ponder the eternal question of what will happen after death?

He also wonders if it is better to die than to live?

• "To be or not to be: that is the question: whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?" (3.1.56-60)

• "For in that sleep of death what dreams may come" (3.1.66)

• "To grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that to the dread of something after death, the undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveler returns, puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of

(3.1.77-82)

Conclusions:

Hamlet is too afraid of the repercussions of going to Hell to allow death to take him as seen in the last line, "Be all my sins remembered." (3.1.89) This shows that Hamlet knows that it would be a sin to kill himself and he doesn't want to commit it. It also alludes to his intentions to instead of killing himself, go and kill his uncle which would also be considered a sin. He is religious but it is questionable what his morals are.

Acting Analysis:

Kenneth Branagh: Minimal editing is used in this scene as the camera angle is continuous until Hamlet is finished with his soliloquy. It makes the soliloquy smoother and emphasizes it's importance over other speeches in the play. The camera angle is very clever as it shows Hamlet's reflection in a large mirror with only the tip of his shoulder visible in front of the mirror. This shows that Hamlet is reflecting deep into his thoughts and analyzing his own sins and morality and whether or not he would go to Heaven or Hell. It also  creates a sort of dominance between the mirror and Hamlet as it captures only his reflection speaking, emphasizing that Hamlet is losing control of himself and his emotions and is at a loss for what to do. The only diegetic sounds in the scene are Hamlet's voice in a whisper and it's echo and the sound and echo of his footsteps as he walks closer to the mirror. The echoes create an eerie tone and the silence behind them emphasizes the seriousness of the words and leave no distractions that could turn their focus away from Hamlet. The only non-diegetic sound was soft classical music that played to signal the audience that Hamlet had reach the climax of his soliloquy in towards the middle-end of the speech. It also brings out the sorrowful aspect of Hamlet's predicament. In this version Hamlet is dressed in a black suit which signifies that he is still mourning his father's death and is in a state of darkness. The props used were the mirror and the castle background to add to the solemnness of the scene and most importantly, he also holds a dagger which show the audience that Hamlet is serious and that it is a very close and tough decision to make whether or not to die.

Laurence Olivier: The scene begins with many choppy, edited shots of stairs up to a tower, tumultuous water, and Hamlet's head and face close up as he peers over the side of the tower. These images set the dark mood of the soliloquy to follow. When the camera reaches the ocean, Hamlet suddenly appears in the shot and the audience sees him watching the ocean, looking as if he is debating whether or not to jump.  After Hamlet begins to speak, there is little switching of angles or editing to interrupt his monologue. The diegetic sounds in the scene are the sounds of the water and wind to set the mood and Hamlet's voice. His mouth is only moving for some of the words that he speaks to show that the contemplation is mostly in his thoughts. The non-diegetic sounds is violent violin music in the beginning to set the fearful mood and in the middle of the soliloquy when he brings the dagger close to him to create suspense and surprise. Intense violin music also plays at the end of the soliloquy as Hamlet is walking away to show that he has come to a conclusion to live. The main prop is the dagger which he moves farther and closer away from his body to show whether his thoughts are leaning closer to life or death. After about a minute, Hamlet drops his dagger and the camera switches to show the dagger as it falls into the ocean, gone forever. This serves to represent Hamlet's ultimate decision to not commit suicide and instead try to fight his problems. Hamlet doesn't appear to be wearing and makeup. And his costume is disheveled and distressed looking which shows his current mental instability.

Mel Gibson: Hamlet is captured walking down a large set of stairs into a very dark, dungeon-y room. In some shots, the camera angle is of the room as a whole or Hamlet wondering around the room.  These shots usually occur when Hamlet is changing his mind in his speech and going from life to death or from death to life. The other shots are close ups of Hamlet's face to capture his facial expressions in the peak emotional parts of his soliloquy. The diegetic sounds are the sound of Hamlet's voice and its echo as well as his footsteps and their echoes as he paces around the room, which preludes to his loneliness. There are no non-diegetic sounds to distract the readers from the content and meaning within the words, like there were songs in the other videos. The only props would be the tombs of dead bodies, which are used to set a dark mood and show that Hamlet is close to death and also his envy of those that are dead. It looks as if Hamlet is wearing eye makeup to draw attention to his eyes and the emotions of sadness and melancholy that they will show throughout the soliloquy. Hamlet's costume is dark and blends in well with the shady background, which shows his currently dark mood and thoughts. It also shows how he is still mourning the death of his father.

Ethan Hawke: The scene opens with Hamlet standing in a store that looks to be similar to a Blockbuster. The setting makes the scene much more modern although Hamlet is still speaking in Old English which is a contrast. The shots of him walking show the continuity of the soliloquy until the end when the shot stays on a close up of his face as he stops walking and comes to a resolution. Hawke uses medium shots, long shots, and close up shots throughout the scene to capture Hamlet's emotion, which in this version comes off as very dazed and confused. He is dressed in a suit and winter hat, which symbolizes death, relating back to the Foster chapter, since that is exactly what he is contemplating about. The diegetic sounds are the sound of his voice and footstep to create a solemn mood and limit the distractions as much as possible to keep the attention on Hamlet. Part of Hamlet's words are said out loud and part of them are just a voice over which indicates that his soliloquy is mostly full of thoughts. There is also intense background music, and sound effects of guns, whips, chains, etc. He is walking down the Action aisle most of the time because we can see the Action labels repeated in the selves at his sides. This is almost mocking him in the fact that he has not just taken any action to avenge his father. It is ironic that there is a sign behind him that says “Leave Home Happy”. At about one minute, the sound switches from non diegetic to diegetic and Hamlet is captured speaking. He continues to speak throughout the rest of the scene and at the very end of the scene, a TV screen with a man burning in fire is captured.

After viewing all of the scenes of my love Hamlet speaking his famous soliloquy, I thought that it was absolutely ingenious the way that Hamlet is only shown through a mirror. I believe that this shows a level of self-analysis and reflection that none of the other scenes did. The way that Hamlet spoke all of the words and did not rely on voiceover and also the harsh whisper that he used made the scene more relatable and believable. Kenneth shows in this scene as Hamlet with the way he speaks the words and inches closer to the mirror and utilizes the dagger on his reflection show that he has brought down his walls for a moment and is actually falling apart behind his façade. Him being dressed in his normal attire also give the scene honesty and show Hamlet's humanness and vulnerability. The silence and the echoes, while present in many of the other scenes, spoke the most to me in this particular scene. The only thing I would have changed was the music because I thought it distracted from the soliloquy and trying to get the meaning of what Hamlet was saying, it was also a little cheesy. Overall, the scene was very tasteful and well thought out. It showcased not only Hamlet's words but his inter conflict and deep emotions of sorrow in his mental instability.

The modern interpretation of Hawke's scene was very interesting but also a little bit confusing. I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be comical or not with the strange hat and Blockbuster background. If it was supposed to be comical then I think that there should be more props or sounds to show that. That scene was also lacking some emotion compared to the other portrayals which I am not sure was intentional or not. It took back a lot from the meaning of the soliloquy and overall lost me. I guess there was some good symbolism but it was just to modern for the whole soliloquy, which is really the most important part of the scene.

 

Hamlet Blog Post #2

 "I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you."-Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson)

After reluctantly agreeing to let his 17-year-old daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace), go to France with her best friend, Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) is horrified to hear that she is kidnapped by an Albanian gang whose specialty is prostitution rings. Bryan rushes to France to save her with only 96 hours to go before he'll never find her again. As a former CIA agent, he has all the skills necessary to rescue her -if he can only find her. He goes all around Paris and outside Paris looking for his daughter and hunting down the man who took her. He stops at nothing and is willing to kill anybody who gets in his way, which he does.
Revenge. It is awful isn't it but still very common in our lives. I guess little things overset people in different ways and can lead us to an extreme, like killing. In my life right now there is a lot of revenge going on between my crazy boyfriend, Hamlet, ever since he saw that Ghost who told him that Claudius, his uncle, killed his father. Hamlet said to the Ghost, "Speak; I am bound to hear." He meant that it is his duty to listen to the spirit of his father. The Ghost replies that it is also his duty to take revenge: "So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear"(1.5.7). A moment later, the Ghost repeated the message, but more strongly. He said that if Hamlet ever loved his father, he will "Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder" (1.5.25). Hamlet promised to prove his love and do his duty. He told the Ghost to tell the story of the murder, and the revenge will follow: "Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift / As meditation or the thoughts of love, / May sweep to my revenge" (1.5.29-31).I am in the middle of this confused on how to help him or if he loves me. I know he has bigger things to handle but I feel like maybe he would feel better if I returned his tokens of love. It is weird because Claudius and my father are trying to use me to spy on my love, Hamlet and figure out why he has those crazy scary eyes. To be honest I am a little fightened by him but I will make sure to try to show him my love for him. Hopefully it works out and he doesn't kill anyone just yet like Bryan Mills in Taken. Ophelia

Hamlet Blog Post #1

It is hard loving someone you can't really trust or have no idea how they feel about you. Hamlet is always so confusing or he is playing hard to get. I just have no idea and to make things harder my brother, Laertes, advised me before he left that I should "hold it a fashion and a toy in blood/A violet in the youth of primy nature/Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting" (1.3.7-8). He believes that Hamlet is playing around with my feeling flirtously but believes it won't last because it is a temporary youthful phase. It hurt that he said this to my face with no regard to my feelings. As my big brother I understand that he is only trying to protect me because he doesn't want me to get my heart broken but sometimes he needs to understand how harsh he can be. Hamlet is the love of my life and I wish he felt the same way about me. And barely minutes after I received my brother's hurtful advice my father agreed that he was trouble and forbid me to see him ever again. My father, Polonius, told me that that I am foolish "That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay/Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly/" (1.3.105-107). He means to say that I should respect myself more rather than waste my affection on someone who doesn't give enough back to me. He went on to command me not "in plain terms/from this time forth/Have you so slander any moment leisure/As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet/Come your ways"(1.3.133-135). My father forbids me to waste any more of my time with him and I, like always, said I would obey. I have always obeyed my father and brother's command but I question sometimes if I should break free and follow my heart. I ask advice from anyone in the same position as me. Sincerely yours, A desperate girl torn between loyalty to my family and passion for my everlasting love, Hamlet. Ophelia

Hamlet Character Choice #12

I chose Ophelia as my perspective to blog from because as a female I think could relate better with her and with her problems. Most men would probably just see her as a whining and over-obsessed girl but to someone who can relate to heart break or a crush I think I could definitely get a better perspective. I have always wanted to learn more about this particular character because although she is known to be one-dimensional and static I still believe she is a major character and quite interesting. She is deeply in love but still faithful to her father and her brother's orders, which I think is very admirable because I don’t think that would be the case for teenage girls in this century. I think she symbolizes rarity now in this century but at the same time very relatable so I think writing in her perspective could be very fun and enlightening for my blog.

American Drama Project Synopsis & Rationale #11A

The Glass Menagerie Synopsis

A General Synopsis: The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams is an autobiographical "memory play," , anchored by the aging southern belle Amanda Wingfield, who hopes for her son Tom to fulfill her dreams of finding the perfect “gentleman caller” for her shy and damaged daughter Laura.

Playwright Background Information

Playwright Tennessee Williams was born on March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi. After college, he moved to New Orleans, a city that would inspire much of his writing. On March 31, 1945, his play, The Glass Menagerie, debuted on Broadway. Williams described his childhood in Mississippi as pleasant and happy, but life changed for him when his family moved to St. Louis, Missouri. His new urban home forced him to leave his carefree boyhood, and as a result Williams turned inward and started to write. His parent’s marriage was often strained and his home, at times, was a tense place to live. This situation, however, did offer fuel for the playwright's art. His mother became the model for the foolish but strong Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie.

Primary characters:
Amanda - The mother of the family, a southern belle with a bubbly personality. Amanda is paranoid and often lives in her past.
Tom - Son of Amanda and narrator of the piece. Tom craves “adventure,” and goes to the movies every night. He wants to run away because he is fed up with his family’s oppressive dependence on him
Laura - Daughter of Amanda. She has one leg shorter than the other (disability) and is painfully shy. She dropped out of high school and business college and is obsessive about playing her “victrola” and with her glass collection.
Jim - The “gentleman caller” set up by Tom for Laura. A high school hero who is ambitious. However, he turns out to be engaged to “Betty.”
The Father: Never actually appears, but is talked about. His portrait hangs in the apartment and he left the family years ago because he “fell in love with long distances”.

Setting

The family currently lives in a cramped apartment in a lower-class part of St. Louis in the years 1930s, the time of Depression. Tom, from an indefinite point in the future, remembers the winter and spring of 1937.

Fire Escape: Used as a way of escaping life in the apartment.

Key Plot Moments

• Fmily resides in St. Louis with Tom working at a warehouse and Amanda, who never states where she works, involved in different organizations and activities such as DAR. Laura, who secretly dropped out of school, helps her mother around the house and plays with glass figurines.


• Amanda confronts Tom about him being too much like his father. She confesses she is worried about him, while Tom states that he is out late at night at the movies because he craves adventure. Amanda then pleads Tom to find Laura a “gentleman caller” or future husband.


• Tom brings a “gentleman caller” named Jim for dinner one night. Jim went to high school with Laura and was her secret crush.


• Jim and Laura dance after dinner in the living room, but breaks Laura’s glass unicorn horn that was part of her figurine collection. Jim confesses to Laura that he is engaged, abruptly gets up and leaves.


• Amanda blames Tom for bringing Jim over to dinner despite Tom not knowing Jim was engaged. Tom becomes very upset and reaches his breaking point. He packs up his stuff and leaves the house to end the play.

Key Quotes

• "I'm going to the movies" - Tom (7.135)


• "Blow out your candles Laura - and so goodbye..." (7.137)


• “Poor little fellow, he must feel sort of lonesome.” (7.122)


• “Well, if he does, he doesn’t complain about it. He stays on a shelf with some horses that don’t have horns and all of them seem to get along nicely together.” (7.122)

Symbols/Motifs

• Abandonment; the words and images on the screen; music. Picture of the father.


• Laura’s Glass Menagerie-Laura’s collection of glass animal figurines represents her personality. Like the glass figures Laura is delicate, fanciful, and somehow old-fashioned.The menagerie also represents the imaginative world to which Laura devotes herself—a world that is colorful and enticing but based on fragile illusions.


• The Glass Unicorn-represents Laura’s peculiarity. The fate of the unicorn’s fate foreshadows Laura’s fate in Scene Seven. Laura cannot become normal without somehow shattering.


• “Blue Roses”- Jim’s high school nickname for Laura, symbolizes Laura’s uniqueness yet allure. Associated with Laura’s attraction to Jim and the memory of their unusual acquaintance. Also, recalls Tennessee Williams’s sister, Rose, on whom the character of Laura is based.


• The Fire Escape- an escape from the frustration and dysfunction in the Wingfield household. Laura slips on the fire escape in Scene Four which highlights her inability to escape from her situation. Tom, on the other hand, frequently steps out,foreshadowing his eventual getaway.

Themes

• The difficulty of accepting reality-


• the impossibility of true escape-


• the unrelenting power of memory-

Stylistic Devices

• Williams found realism to be a flat, outdated, and insufficient way of approaching emotional experience.


• The Glass Menagerie is fundamentally a non realistic play.


• Distortion, illusion, dream, symbol, and myth are the tools by which the action onstage is unraveled.


• A screen displays words and images relevant to the action for example “[Screen Image: Blue Roses.]” (2.44)


• Music intrudes with melodramatic timing


• The lights rise or dim according to the mood onstage, not the time of day


• The play’s style is expressionistic—underlying meaning is emphasized at the expense of realism.


• The play’s lack of stylistic realism—Tom’s memory, yet it still has some elements of reality to make it relatable.

Emotions like Tom’s boredom, Amanda’s nostalgia,Laura’s terror, the tension between Tom and Amanda and the quiet love between Tom and Laura are conveyed realistically.
Similarly, the lower-middle-class life of the Wingfield family is portrayed with a great deal of truth to historical and social realities.

Rationale
Prompt: 1990. Choose a novel or play that depicts a conflict between a parent (or a parental figure) and a son or daughter. Write an essay in which you analyze the sources of the conflict and explain how the conflict contributes to the meaning of the work. Avoid plot summary.

Thesis:
In Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie, Amanda’s desire to prevent Tom from becoming like his father and her desire to force Laura to become more like Amanda creates conflict, illuminating the fact that the more Amanda tries to shape the lives of her children, the more they deviate from what she wants, exemplifying that only a shattering of an individual's “glass menagerie” - their idealized perception of reality - is enough to create a change in a character’s personality.

 Amanda is constantly nagging Laura to be more outgoing, more like she herself was as a young woman in Blue Mountain. With Tom, Amanda’s main worry is that he will turn out like his father - a drunkard who abandons his family - so she constantly tries to keep him at home. However, despite having a modicum of success with Laura by showing her that there is more to life than old records and glass, Amanda fails to break Tom’s idealization of a life of adventure, and he ends up leaving the family out to dry when he joins the Merchant Marine.

Another point in favor of choosing this prompt is that it addresses the complexity of the relationship between the characters in the text. Although Laura did become more outgoing, it was not a direct result of Amanda’s constant nagging, but rather a consequence of Jim (the “Gentleman Caller”) kissing her, and breaking her “glass menagerie.” Prior to this occurrence, Amanda’s attempts to change Laura (signing her up for business school and sending her to the church’s “Young People’s League”) backfired by causing Laura to lose confidence in herself and close herself off to socialization even more. Also, the more Amanda tries to control Tom, the more he tries to gain independence by staying out late at the movies, and eventually not paying the bills and leaving the family entirely.

In choosing the scenes to use for the video presentation, we tried to choose scenes that would exemplify the familial conflict and explore the complexity of the play. Scene 1 introduces the conflict between Amanda and Laura by showing Amanda’s fear of Laura becoming an “old maid” and the conflict between Amanda to Tom when she micromanages Tom’s every move. Scene 4 further develops the conflict between Amanda and Laura as Amanda expresses her concerns about Laura’s lifestyle to Tom. By expressing her concerns about Tom’s night-owl habits and tendency to drink, the scene adds more tension to the relationship. This scene was chosen because it is the main turning point for family, with Tom agreeing to find Laura a “gentleman caller,” and the revelation that Tom is unhappy in the apartment and has plans to leave. Scene 7, contrary to expectations, does not resolve the conflict, but brings it to its logical conclusion. Laura’s gentleman caller is revealed to be engaged to marry somebody else, and Tom leaves the family in the dark (literally - he neglects to pay the electric bill). The encounter with Jim was not a complete failure, as the symbolism of the glass menagerie is brought full circle, with the breaking of the unicorn coinciding with the breaking of Laura’s perceptions of herself (that her “clump” is horrible and she is inferior to others).

The portrayal of the selected scenes was made doubly important by the time constraints, so stylistic choices had to be very deliberate and effective. Some of the more important choices were camera angle, lighting, and the modern lens through which we reenacted the play.

A common camera angle we used was the over the shoulder shot. This angle allows the viewers to focus on a specific character, allowing for a greater degree of acting and plot interpretation by the actor.  Similar to this angle, the point of view shot allows the audience to “become” a character, in that they can experience a conversation from the point of view of the character. Once in scene 7, the point of view is that of the glass unicorn lying broken on the ground, allowing the audience to more closely feel and understand the conversation between Jim and Laura. The basic, mid-range shot is frequently used to accurately and objectively convey the goings-on of the play. When the camera is below the characters, looking up, the characters become more powerful, as seen once when Tom and Amanda are arguing in scene 4. The effect on the interpretation of this sequence is that the audience can see two strong-willed characters in conflict, and feel the tension the way a little kid feels the tension when their parents are arguing.

For most of the play, the lighting is natural, and the camera angles are relied upon to explore the nuances of the plot and theme. Scene 7, however, is an important exception. In scene 7, the lighting is dimmer, almost like mood lighting, to emphasize the intense emotional battle going on within Laura - she is terrified by Jim because of her shyness, but she likes him. Then, once out of her shell, she is crushed to find out he is engaged to another girl. Similarly, in the sequence on the floor around the broken glass unicorn, the lighting is from below, illuminating Jim’s and Laura’s faces. This difference is important in that it draws more attention to an important part of the play, and highlights Laura’s realization that she is not inferior to others. She sympathizes strongly with the unicorn because its horn sets it apart from other horses, while her clump sets her apart from other people. The breaking of the horn symbolizes her acceptance of her difference.

The modern lens through which we reenacted and interpreted the play was the reality show Keeping Up with the Kardashians. This was fitting because of the family conflict that appears in both the play and the show, and the fatherless families in both. In addition, the mother of both families is a strong character that tries to control her children, perhaps illuminating an effect of a missing paternal presence.

American Drama Project Storyboards #11

Storyboards:

American Drama Project Video #10