Samuels imaginative use of dramatic techniques and stagecraft Essays

Samuels imaginative use of dramatic techniques and stagecraft Essays Samuels imaginative use of dramatic techniques and stagecraft Paper Samuels imaginative use of dramatic techniques and stagecraft Paper we, as spectators know the answer and reason as to why Helga is acting this way towards her child. Shortly after the relationship between Eva and Helga is portrayed, a cross-cut with the parallel story of Faith and Evelyn is then revealed. During the play Samuels creates a dual time frame and flicks the story between two time periods, through the introduction of more modern, recently invented props such as televisions and the stage directions instructing that only Evelyn acknowledges Eva and Helga, yet she ignores them due to her repression of past memories, Samuels suggests the juxtaposition to the audience. She does this to show the deep similarities between the two relationships, the situation with Faith and Evelyn seems to echo the past of Eva and Helga, to give a more dramatic impact of the interaction between the characters. Furthermore, another reason as to why Samuels makes use of this technique is again linked to her method of dramatic irony and placing the audience in an all-knowing position as the happenings of Eva and the things she experiences give us insight as what Evelyn is thinking and shown her secret past and memories, a gift the rest of the characters are not granted. Evelyns character shows powerful connections with Helgas disposition, both mothers are reserved and show little emotion. Although as the play progresses Helga becomes more vulnerable to her love towards her daughter and loses her control and self restriction, a defining moment in the play is shown when Eva gets on the Kindertransport train ready to depart to England and through her dialogue and subtle description of her parents actions at the time, for instance Youre knocking too hard, your knuckles are going red. The audience is made aware that both mother and father have gone from calm, controlled personas, to hysterical, distressed and desperate at the concept of losing their daughter, perhaps forever. Simultaneously, whilst Helga does not abandon her emotional repression until the very last minute when Eva leaves, Evelyn in turn stays restricted throughout the play until towards the end of the play as she finally confronts her past and instinctively battles with her former self a nd fears. A slight amount of her emotional repression has been chipped away and the audience may have sympathy for Helga during the scene as she has been stripped away of her whitewash and endured the very thing shes always feared the most, reminiscing her painful memories. As she earlier remarked, Evelyn has now been pricked into exposing her weaknesses and the audience is left to wonder whether or not she will recover from these emotional scars at the end of the play or will she bleed forever. Both daughters within the play, Eva and Faith long for their mothers to show love and sentiment. Neither children truly wish to leave their childhood homes and leave as many possible opportunities for their mothers to abandon all responsibility and efficiency, and want their daughters to stay with them. Much of Evelyns characteristics can be revealed through Samuels use of props within stage directions. Throughout almost the entire play, Evelyn continuously polishes glasses, if not cleaning other thing s. Whenever faced with strong subjects with any relations to her past or emotions, she begins to polish a glass, for instance, as Faith becomes indecisive as to move out of the family home and clearly hints for her mother to ask her to stay, Evelyn disregards and ignores what she has to say, Evelyn concentrates on polishing and replacing glasses. This can be seen as a symbol Samuels employs to show the basic survival methods of Evelyn, that her obsession with cleaning is a way of controlling her emotions and direct her energy into something else. Evelyn appears to unconsciously often compare her own personality with connotations of a glass, such as A chipped glass is ruined forever Here Samuels is suggesting that this new, reformed, diverse identity Evelyn has created for herself is delicate, and implies that it will be destroyed to be remained with her younger self, Eva. This is a terrible thing in the eyes of Evelyn, as her re-invented identity is a form of protection, a barrier against her emotional pains.