Drama Techniques
Your essays for this topic must focus on visual techniques, but in a play, this includes:
In The Shoehorn Sonata, this means you cannot just describe the slides or the way the stage is set up . You have to include the ways the relationships are set up by the dialogue, and the way the props and costumes symbolise these relationships.
- setting
- dialogue
- props
- costumes
- blocking and gesture
- special effects such as projections
In The Shoehorn Sonata, this means you cannot just describe the slides or the way the stage is set up . You have to include the ways the relationships are set up by the dialogue, and the way the props and costumes symbolise these relationships.
Techniques to look for in dialogue
1. Register
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A character's register refers to their use of formal or colloquial language and may include jargon (technical language) or profanity (swearing).
The level of language tells you lots about the power relationships between characters. Characters who speak more formally either have more power or education than others, or are trying to assert (get/use) power over the other characters. Characters who speak colloquially (informally) usually have lower status than characters who speak formally (just like real life). Colloquial language can also be used to show that a character is a teenager, or to create a character that the audience can easily empathise with. Jargon is used to show that a character belongs to a specific group or has specialised knoweldge and authority about a particular subject. This could be a career group (eg. engineers who use very scientific language) or subculture (eg. teens who use slang that is specific to their era, or a cultural group which uses words from another language in their English sentences - wallah!). In The Shoehorn Sonata, the use of Japanese terms can be viewed as a type of jargon because they show the characters' familiarity with a specialised situation and are used to include/exclude other people (including the audience). Profanity is usually used to express emotion, especially anger or frustration. It can also be used to assert dominance (power) over another character. |
2. Ellipsis...
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Ellipsis refers to three dots at the end of the sentence... It has two very different functions:
It can show that someone is not very confident because their voice gets quieter and quieter and they stop talking before the end of the sentence. It can also show that someone is interrupting the speaker. The person who interrupts either has more status than the first speaker (whose sentence ends in ellipsis) or is trying to assert dominance over them. |
3. Questions
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If one person is asking all the questions and someone else is answering them, then the person asking the questions has higher status than the person giving the answers.
The questions might be rhetorical questions (which don't need answer). These are usually used by people in positions of authority such as parents or teachers. |