Open Prompt -- October 14, 2012

Open Prompt -- October 14, 2012 

1975. Unlike the novelist, the writer of a play does not use his own voice and only rarely uses a narrator's voice to guide the audience's responses to character and action. Select a play you have read and write an essay in which you explain the techniques the playwright uses to guide his audience's responses to the central characters and the action. You might consider the effect on the audience of things like setting, the use of comparable and contrasting characters, and the characters' responses to each other. Support your argument with specific references to the play. Do not give a plot summary.

Edward Albee -- The American Dream 

Edward Albee may be thought of as a very "different" playwright based on his writings which often fall under the Theatre of the Absurd category, but like all playwrights he cannot use his own voice to direct the audience's response to character and action within his plays. Because of this, in his famous play The American Dream, Albee relies on a commonplace setting, the contrast between Mommy and Grandma, and Grandma's response to the arrival of the Young Man.  

The American Dream is set in a living room of an apartment.  There's truly nothing special about the setting, and that is what makes it work.  Everyone knows what a living room is -- it's the center of the home, and so it makes sense to stage a play about a family right in the middle of where they live.  The audience can relate to this common setting, and therefore can relate to the characters and their actions within that room.  The family room is never left throughout the entire play, and this isolated world becomes the foundation for the audience's response to the action that takes place.

Grandma and Mommy are two very different characters who constantly clash.  Mommy is middle-aged, manipulative, and concerned with getting her fair share of satisfaction.  Grandma, her mother, is refreshing, old, loud, and not afraid so speak her mind.  The audience leans towards favoring Grandma throughout the play, and become sick and tired of pathetic Mommy as the play goes on.  By having this be, Albee guides the audience's response to favor Grandma's solid ideals, as opposed to Mommy's materialistic ones.  There's no "this is what I think and how you should think" but instead, the audience naturally sides with Grandma, supporting Albee's ideas.

The audience also gets a glimpse of what Albee is trying to say with the Young Man's interactions with Grandma. The Young Man is a fresh, new character who arrives towards the end of the play.  Many sides of Grandma have been seen, and when this new character comes along, her reaction helps the audience know what to make of him.  At first Grandma does not want to come into close contact with this flashy "American Dream", but admires him and tries to find him a job nonetheless.  The Young Man opens up to Grandma later, and her gentle response helps the reader understand him without Albee directly coming in to explain. 

Writing a play has considerable challenges that writing a novel doesn't, but they can be overcome in a remarkable way.  Using the setting, contrasting characters, and character's responses to one another, playwrights like Edward Albee can create works in which they themselves don't need to hold the audience's hand the entire time.