Theatre essays

Exploring of the players involved in Henrik Ibsen's 'A Doll's House,' discloses the core trial confronting Nora and other women of today who are victims of men's judgments. Most assumptions that men make regarding women conclude that women are blameless and fragile, just because of the term female. Form Ibsen’s play, Nora Helmer is viewed as being childish, and this serves as an example to signify women who live in symbolic 'doll houses.' However, as the play nears the end,...

Introduction A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen is a 19th century Norwegian play with a lot of controversial parts to it. This means that historical context matters a lot when understanding the play. Social class, gender roles and status at the time of the play all change the understanding of how the play was received back when it was originally produced. From the interactive oral, I discovered that the context of the time period affects the audience and reception of...

Henrick Ibsen’s “A Doll House” tells a story of women's roles in society and their suppressed individuality in the 19th century. The author explores social convention in roles of woman and reflection upon relationships. Henrick Ibsen’s title “A Doll House” has a significant representation to convey Nora Helmer and her image. She is conceived as a subservient, easy to handle and under control by her husband Torvald. Nora is depicted as a lovely doll in a lovely house that Torvald...

Analytical Essay Look closely at Blanche’s monologue in Scene One on page 12 from A Streetcar Named Desire, starting with ‘I, I took the blows in my face and my body!’ until the end of the scene. Discuss in detail the way in which Tennessee Williams presents Blanche in this extract, considering how it reflects her characterisation in the play as a whole. Throughout A Streetcar Named Desire Tennessee Williams characterisation of Blanche DuBois presents the audience with a complex...

Many audience members go to plays to get out of their homes for a few hours, and to experience an older form of performance art. Some go simply for the emotions that live actors can portray, such as drama and romance without thinking of the deeper meanings and portrayals of different aspects of the play. For the author of the play there is almost always a deeper meaning to many of the details within their works beyond what is shown....

Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 play A Doll’s House is a domestic drama in which tension is built through the threat of Nora Helmer’s secret of having committed financial fraud being revealed to her husband, Torvald. It is set in nineteenth century bourgeois society, where the role of and expectations for women were clearly defined. A woman’s place was at home in the domestic sphere, where she was to be a wife and mother, self-sacrificing and passive. Her most sacred duty was...

Throughout the many stories we read and the few movies we’ve watched this semester, there have been forms of violence in every one. I found that in most of the stories we read, men have been the offender of this violence. There have been some female offenders, but I’ve noticed that the reasoning of their violence is due to the actions of men in their life. The violent actions of the men offenders in these storylines are usually not justified,...

‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ written By Tennessee Williams in 1947. In A Streetcar named Desire Williams uses a range of drama devices to present Blanche’s deterioration mind. Drama devices are techniques used by playwrights to substitute for the reality presented to the audience through performance, and ‘give the audience information they could not get from a straightforward presentation of action’ (Efpatridis, N.D.). Williams uses drama devices to present Blanche’s deteriorating mind through Language, Props, Set, Music, Costume and through other...

For decades, the topic regarding mental health has been looked down upon, with many considering it as a taboo that should not be discussed or mentioned. But as more awareness is raised, society becomes increasingly aware of those in distress, encouraging many worldwide to end the stigma and discrimination that still lingers today. In the play, A Streetcar Named Desire, the author Tennessee Williams explores the negative feedback society gives towards mental health. With his play, he presents the tragic...

The mid-twentieth century was a period of extraordinary social change. The two world wars had placed power into the marginalized groups, and for a brief timespan the perceived leverage between the sexual orientations had shifted. However by the 1950s, men had taken back the advantage. It was into this setting Tennessee Williams brought his dynamic dramatization, A Streetcar Named Desire into the world. This violent and severe play talks about the battle among genders inside American culture. Tennessee Williams closer...

This essay will develop a brief critic and analysis of the play ‘A Doll’s House’, written by the playwright Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen wrote this play when he was in Rome and Amalfi in 1879 and he published it the same year. The play can be seen as a modern tragedy, as it has an unhappy ending and revolves around complex, problematic and sorrowful issues. Now, let us have an expeditious look at the plot’s background to try and understand better...

The issue is that the men have disregard for ladies' jobs and think about homemaking a useless occupation. Different characters were in stun about Mrs.Wright killing her significant other Mr.Wright.The creator composed Plays in the mid 1900s - when Ladies Testimonial wasn't begun at this point. It just appears another homicide riddle however the play has progressively significant importance behind it. I will talk about how the creator sabotages the demeanor of the men towards the ladies through the span...

Modern Drama- as it is known as despite the fact it is more than a century old came to be called so because it rejected traditionally accepted conventions. After the death of Shakespeare, neither Congreve, nor Sheridan or Goldsmith could restore drama to the pedestal that had been achieved by their predecessor. The Restoration and the Sentimental drama of the seventeenth and eighteenth century respectively, was clearly lacking in literary quality. But the late nineteenth century not only restored drama...

The word symbol, derived from the Greek verb symballein, ‘to throw together’, is an animate or inanimate object that represents or ‘stands for’ something else.1 They use a concrete image to express implicit ideas or emotions, to be interpreted by the reader. In the 20th Century, for instance, the United States used Uncle Sam as an easily recognizable symbol in order to recruit soldiers for the Second World War. In “The Catcher in the Rye”, J.D. Salinger uses symbolism to...

Subsequent to the great depression, America’s economy quickly collapsed and many lives were taken during the time. This led to many individuals being left homeless with little to no money on hand. Today the great depression is remembered as a big mistake and downfall of America which claimed many lives. Many authors have portrayed the events after this moment including Tennessee Williams. Through the play, “A Streetcar Named Desire”, Williams shows that all female characters fall prey to society’s expectations...

All human beings have a sacred duty to themselves. A Doll’s House, a three-act play written by the profound Norwegian author Henrik Ibsen, challenges the entire fabric of marital relationships. The play originally written in Norwegian, was published in 1879 before being republished “of an anonymous, undated English translation published by Bartholomew House” (Ibsen, ii). Ibsen, born into the upper-middle class, reveals the scandalous effects of a deceitful relationship and sheds light upon the sacrosanct institution of marriage, in particular...

This research paper primarily explores the impact of absurdism in Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot. Absurdism as a philosophy stands on the idea that the whole universe is irrational and meaningless and that the look for order brings the person into conflict with the universe. During the period of the two world wars, the mass killing of millions of people makes the writers of the age believe that the universe is meaningless. Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot lavishly...

What does Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot suggest about the effectiveness of language as a tool of communication? Discuss, supporting your answer with evidence from the text. Waiting For Godot is centered around the idea of hopelessness. Consist of two acts, the story revolves around Vladimir and Estragon who are waiting for Godot by the roadside. Waiting For Godot was written by Samuel Beckett and is considered to be part of the Theatre of the Absurd. There’s really no a...

The existential play Waiting for Godot, explores themes of absurdity, in particular, the absurdity of life, and furthermore how our actions to ascribe meaning to life is futile. Beckett displays the absurdity through irony and characterization of the characters. The play begins with no aforementioned context, with two tramps like character, Vladimir and Estragon. During the play, they are perpetually stuck living their days waiting by a dirt road for a man named Godot, while waiting they encounter two men,...

Waiting for Godot is a play composed by Samuel Beckett in French between 1948 and 1949. It first premiered in 1953 in Paris and later, in 1955, in London. The theatre of that time consisted of plays, which mirrored everyday life. They were, above all else, grounded in reality. Beckett’s play, compared to its contemporary theatrical counterparts, was quite detached from any “traditional realism” rules. Realism in the sphere of theatre was a movement which began in the 19th century....

Introduction Often, we fall as victims of our indecisions in our plight to please and fit in society. We fail to contemplate that self- realization, independence, and subtleness also count. In Ibsen's play, A Doll's House, the protagonist Nora is tied by family and societal issues that eight years later, she realizes her life is incomplete. She abandons her marriage and sets off to find her real self (Ibsen 123). Having lived a fake life where there were no love,...

Ibsen's implementation of female sacrifices in A Doll's House brings to light the prominence of prescribed gender roles during nineteenth-century Norwegian society. Female sacrifices are one of the many ways that Ibsen conveys the realistic situations that women were facing during that time, such as gender discrimination, which were mainly supportive of men disallowing women basic rights. The distressing aspects of gender role distinction and how they came about are presented through these female sacrifices; personal opinions and desires, materialistic...

Over the course of our class we have read and discussed two one-act plays: “Trifles” and “Everyman”. After analyzing each we can tell that there is a significant difference in the complexity of character development and theme in comparison to the longer plays we analyzed. Throughout this paper, I will explain key aspects of both “Trifles” and “Everyman” as one-act plays in an attempt to explain the benefits of shorter plays for both the audience and the playwright. In “Trifles,”...

Many playwriters use Symbolism as of technique in their plays to obtain a dramatic affect and allow playwrights to give their audience a more meaningful understanding of the play on a different extent; this makes the play more fascinating. Symbolism can be used to add tension to a scene, to foreshadow certain events in a play or even to give us a deeper understanding of a character. In Shakespeare “Hamlet” and in Tennessee Williams “A Streetcar Named Desire” the use...

The absurd theatre refers to a specific kind of plays that were famous for the first time in the year 1950 and 1960s. The Absurd theatre is based on the advanced works of the 1920 and 1930s. The absurd elements firstly appeared in the wild comedies, the old comedy and wild humour, and shortly after the need of Ancient dramas. Medieval morality plays can be seen as the man of the theatre of absurd, which are the type of characters...

On September 19th at the Orpheum Theatre, I saw Hamilton, The show follows the remarkable life story of Alexander Hamilton, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Its creator and star, Lin-Manuel Miranda, retells the tale using rap music and lyrics that tackle even political deal-making: “Two Virginians and an immigrant walk into a room/Diametric’ly opposed, foes/ They emerge with a compromise, having opened doors that were/Previously closed/Bros.” This cast, which calls itself the #AndPeggyTour, lives up to...

Cross-dressing was explored by William Shakespeare in his plays, deconstructing the gender stereotypes from the Elizabethan era. In the Renaissance world, a world governed by men, women were not allowed to act on stage, so they were played by young boys whose voices and appearances were not well defined yet. This patriarchal society believed women to be inferior to men, and thus, their rights were not the same. They had to obey the male figures in their life, whether we...

Absurdity means meaninglessness, purposelessness, silly, strange, incongruence, ridiculousness, bizarre, and nonsense. An absurdity is a thing that is awfully unreasonable, so as to be foolish or not taken seriously or the state of being so. The Theater of Absurd is, a form of drama that emphasizes the absurdity of human existence by employing disjointed, repetitious, and meaningless dialogue, purposeless and confusing situations, and plots that lack realistic or logical development. In a simple word a type of drama that tries...

‘Trifles’ is a play written and composed by Glaspell Susan in the year, 1916, and mirrors the writer's distraction with culture-bound thoughts of sex roles and gender. In accordance with the title of the play, ‘Trifles’ by G. Susan recommends that the worries from the women are always viewed as simple trifles, insignificant issues that bear practically no significance to the genuine work of society, which, obviously, is being done by the male counterpart. Susan questions, and in this manner...

In Samuel Beckett’s absurdist play, Waiting for Godot, written in 1949, through the individual characterisations and the portrayal of the relationship between Vladimir and Estragon, Beckett provides insight into the human condition through an emphasis on the interdependency present within relationships and its subsequent effects on individuals. During the period of time following World War II, in which society was recovering following the devastation caused by the war, individuals found that suffering was a constant, with hope being a futile...