PDF file: Drama - Higher - Lovers - Education Scotland

14
OVERALL DIRECTORIAL INTERPRETATION AND DRAMATIC COMMENTARY
• She seeks reassurance.
• She is not in the same league as Joe intellectually. She reverts to
attacking Joe’s class as a way of balancing the scales.
• As in Episode One, Mag goes through the gamut of emotions. In this
episode she is huffy, resentful, happy, doubtful, angry, spiteful,
loving, romantic, positive, carefree and elated!
• At times she feels isolated from Joe. Towards the end of the Episode
we learn of her isolation from her school mates.
• Mag ends the Episode in a romantic mood. ‘The flat’ll be lovely and
cosy at night.’
• In our last glimpse of Mag we see her joie de vivre.
Why might Episode Two be important in your production of
the play?
• How does this Episode develop your overall directorial
interpretation?
• How will you balance the comedy with the pathos of the play?
• How will you point up the irony of the play?
• What does this Episode tell us about Friel’s attitude to love? How is
this shown in Mag and Joe’s exchanges?
• What development in his character would you want to show in the
acting of Joe? How will you show his internal conflict? (His anger and
frustration, his love for Mag, his ambivalent attitude towards his
father, the love and respect he has for his mother, his hopes for the
future, his love of learning, his lack of experience, his vulnerability?)
• Joe has three monologues in this Episode. How will you get the actor
to deliver these to maintain the audience’s interest and to enable
them to gain an insight into the internal conflict mentioned above?
• What developments in her character would you want to show in the
acting of Mag? How will you show her increasing sense of isolation?
Her vulnerability? Her dependency on Joe? Her hopes for a
successful, married family life?
• How will you point up the division between Mag and Joe?
DRAMA