Blog #3: Eurydice

I thought that this play was very charming, interesting and funny. However I was definitely confused through most of it! I felt that Sarah Ruhl's elements of realism conflicted with her elements of the surreal. I was never really sure when they were talking "in the language of the dead" or when they actually understood each other. I thought she did a very good job of taking the myth of Eurydice and turning it into a charming play. I found it a little difficult to follow because of the purely unrealistic conversations between the characters. I also thought the man character was very weird; however I think I am under the correct understanding that he was the one who killed her?
I thought this was an interesting take on the myth however. I really liked that Ruhl used many different forms of theatre through her writing. She mostly had the characters conversing in dialogue however occasionally she threw in a letter or a monologue or even a scene with no verbal presentation. This allowed for a more diverse play. I think that if characters converse in the same patterns through out the whole play it can make a play very boring. I really liked the use of the letters especially. They were able to establish feelings that the characters have toward each other without having to express them through a monologue to the audience or in a dialogue. I think this helped eliminate unneeded characters. Every character has a purpose, even the old grandmother. I liked that there were scenes with just the grandmother walking by even before the audience knows who she is. This is one of the disadvantages of reading the play, because the stage directions tell you who she is before the audience would generally find out when seeing this show in a theatre. This element of having characters that are unknown to the audience keeps the audience on their toes. I know that I would be curious to her purpose if I didn’t already know that she was the grandmother through the stage directions.
I think when a playwright models another story in his or her play, it is important to make it their own. I think Ruhl completed this task effectively. The myth always takes place from the man’s point of view. Not just in Orpheus’ case but also in Hercules, Odysseus and many other Greek stories and myths. I liked the relationship that Ruhl developed between Eurydice and her father. I also liked that the audience learns so much more about Eurydice because of this relationship. I do not think this would have been as effective if it were not that Eurydice did not remember her father. However, I was confused of how she suddenly got to know that her father was her father. I think that if one is going to take a story line and make it into their own you need to make sure that all your new relationships; characters and situations do not pull the audience out of the story.
I think that everyone has such a picture perfect image of what the lord of the underworld is like. I thought Ruhl’s interpretation was very out of the ordinary but an interesting take on this character because of the innocence that is usually affiliated with children.
Overall I thought it was an interesting take on the story of Eurydice. I liked that she wrote it mostly from the perspective of Eurydice herself, and I liked varying format of the play. I think one very important thing is keeping the relationships and actions of the characters work with the rest of the story, and to make sure you are not confusing your audience.

Blog #2: Dialogue is a conversation

I’ve read through all of the dialogues and honestly I’m not sure what was happening in many of them because I have not read most of the plays that they were taken from. Unlike monologues, dialog has to do with context. Characters do not immediately tell you who they are, what their intentions are and what they are feeling at any given moment. All of this is shown through the conversational tactics of the character and the actor. These characters do not tell you what they are doing, or what they are trying to do. They are not reflecting on an event or telling their perspective or ideas about something that has happened in the past. They are living the action with the audience as if it is being said for the first time. Dialogue must be naturalistic from a conversational standpoint. For example, in Closer by Patrick Marber, there is an interesting progression of the conversation between Larry and Anna. The segment of the play begins when they are happy together, but then it jumps to a time where Larry travels a lot and Anna has been sleeping with Dan for a year. At this point in the play Dan has already told us that he has been sleeping with Anna. Because the audience already knows this, we understand Anna’s attitude toward Larry when he comes home from the business trip. She does not have to tell us that she loves Dan because we already know this from earlier scenes. I think it is important for playwrights to use foreshadowing and give the audience an omniscient perspective in order to be able to understand both the history of the characters and the things that the characters themselves don’t know about yet at various points through out the play.
The play I am the most familiar with that is in this selection of Dialogues is Angels in America. After reading, analyzing and performing segments from this play last year in Geoff Proehl’s Dionysus class, I found this play invigoration for its intense subject matter, unique characters and extremely sad story. Because I am familiar with this script I was able to understand the context from which this segment was taken. From a playwright’s standpoint, characters have to reveal things to each other through conversation. Harper assumes that Joe is a homosexual, and shows him she is angry with him through passive aggressive statements. “Not my dinner. My dinner was fine. Your dinner. I put it back in the oven and turned everything up as high as it could go and I watched it til it turned black. It’s still hot. Very hot. Want it? When speaking with another individual in a play, a character does not need to say straight out what they mean. When writing, you have to take into context of what exactly characters would say if this was a first time conversation and the actors didn’t know the ending to the play. When caught in the heat of the moment whether angry or happy, characters are not going to be able to get right to the point. Like any real argument, in Angels, they are stubborn, passive aggressive. Even in Henry the IV, where Shakespeare has a tendency to have the characters exclaim their feelings right out, there exquisite cleverness in the interaction between Hotspur and Prince Henry. The characters are playing each other in a game of power. “Nor shall it, Harry; for the hour is come/To end the one of us; and would to God/Thy name in arms were now as great as mine!”.
In dialogue I feel that characters have to be more realistic than in monologues. Emotions should not be directly stated, but instead should be reflected in the statements that they make and the actions that they take. Dialogue must also have a forward movement. Unless used to make a point, the dialogue from the plays that we have read do not have a lot of circular repetitious movement. Even in the arguments, the conversations have an obvious build, climax and resolution.