Customer Description: Explore the ways which male and female are represented on stage in the work of any two contrasting
playwrights. Question why the British society might desire these representations.
Paper Body:
"All the world's is a stage, and
all the man and woman merely players"
In this work I'll try to explore the ways, which male and female represented on the stage in the work of any two contrasting playwrights. Besides this I'll pay your attention on the question why the British society might desire these representations and I think the answer to it will be in our modern life.
First of all I'd like to say that both male and female actors stir our imaginations and touch our souls through their acting. To prove this I'd like to mention here the words of the actress Julia from famous novel "Theatre" by Somerset Magham. In my opinion they exactly shows the role of actors in our life and society.
"We, the actors, are reality. People are our raw material. We are the meaning of their lives. We take their silly little emotions and turn them into art; out of them we create beauty. They are the instruments on which we play and what is an instrument without somebody to play on it? It's only we who do exist.
People are shadows and we give them substance. We are the symbols of all this confused, aimless struggling that they call life. They say acting is only make-believe. That make-believe is the only reality". True words, don't you think so?
Speaking about the roles and ways, which male and female actors represent on stage, I'd like to say that they greatly differ nowadays in all countries of the world. And it is no wonder as the plays of modern playwrights also differ from the plays of classic playwrights. What is the reason of this situation? I think the answer is obvious.
The world has changed and life has changed as well as our views, morality, ideas and feelings. Thus, the audience demand another way of representation of life stories and heroes. In my opinion they want to see more freedom in the plays as well as the role of woman and man in this changed world.
No wonder all this raises a few problems for those who are writing plays for twenty-first century audiences and theatres. First of all, modern plays are often short in length. But this is not the main problem. I think everybody will agree that the most important thing is that the male pronoun excludes half the population. However, the twenty-three hundred-year-old male patriarchal definitions don't feel right today, do they? Thus re-definition is required.
Clearly every playwright has its own point of view on how to represent male and female actors on the stage nowadays. Some of them want to show the reality of our cruel world, true relations between men an women, changes in their mentality today and other serious tragedies in our society. Others try to avoid all these, showing high-colored life and believing in families and good relations and feelings. What is best? It is difficult to answer this question as every side has its advantages and disadvantages.
In this work I'll try do it, comparing works and heroes of two contrasting playwrights - John Osborne and Neil Simon.
But before it I'd like to give a short survey on the works and characters of some contemporary writers as I think it is necessary for better understanding today's discussion of the theme.
Let's take Suzan-Lori Parks as first example. What is her point of view on modern plays and heroes?
In her play In the Blood Parks creates Hester, a homeless mother of five, a complex and contradictory character. She is definitely an anti-hero. Let's avoid the decidedly retro and diminutive word "heroine". When viewed by the classical, Aristotelian definitions, Hester comes up short. Although a likeable and loving person, she is hardly a brilliant noble character for us to emulate or respect. No doubt Hester is a helpless victim, totally un-empowered, who does not grow through increased self-knowledge.
However, Parks has written a character who, with her story, mounts one of the strongest indictments of male abuse, sexual predation, greed in a Capitalistic society and shameful power of money over the human soul. In my opinion she discloses to the spectator the touching and truthful tragedy of the whole mankind.
I think it's real life an we can't avoid truth however we want. And no doubt such plays are written to teach people not to act like Hester In the Blood. It is extremely necessary to write such plays, otherwise we'll forget about everything beautiful that surround us, about feelings and our hopes. Then, in one word we'll die.
The second example is famous English playwright Harold Pinter, known for his so-called comedies of menace, which humorously and cynically depict people attempting to communicate as they react to an invasion or threat of an invasion of their lives. He is also noted for his unique use of dialogue, which exposes his characters' alienation from each other and for his deep psychological examination of his characters.
As for his play The Dumb Waiter, it is about two hired killers employed by a mysterious organization to murder an unknown victim. In this play, Pinter added an element of comedy, provided mostly through the brilliant small talk behind which the two men hide their growing anxiety. Their discussion over whether it is more proper to say "light the kettle" or "light the gas" is wildly comic and terrifying in its absurdity.
Speaking about his play The Birthday Party, I'd like to say that it centers on Stanley, an apathetic man in his thirties who has found refuge in a dingy seaside boarding house, which has apparently had no other visitors for years. But when Goldberg and McCann (characters reminiscent of the hired assassins in The Dumb Waiter) arrive, it soon becomes clear that they are after Stanley. It is important to note that Pinter refuses to provide rational explanations for the actions of his characters. Are the two men emissaries of some secret organization Stanley has betrayed? Are they male nurses sent to bring him back to an asylum he has escaped from? The question is never answered. Instead, the two men organize a birthday party for a terrified Stanley who insists that it is not his birthday...
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