PDF file: Drama - Higher - Lovers - Education Scotland

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6 OVERALL DIRECTORIAL INTERPRETATION AND DRAMATIC COMMENTARY parents. Her speeches reveal the importance of religion in her life. We see that she is deeply in love with Joe. We see her contradictions and experience her isolation. Joe • Joe is used as a contrast to Mag. Friel states the following: ‘Joe is seventeen and a half. He is a serious boy, a good student, interested in his books. He is at the age when he is earnest about life; and he has a total and touching belief in the value and importance of education.’ • This scene establishes Joe’s character. He is quiet and reflective in comparison to Mag. He shows that he is proud and independent. He is conformist. • He has started to find practical solutions to their problems. • His mimicry reveals the frustration that he feels at living in a restrictive environment. • We see flashes of rebellious youth in the slaughterhouse sequence when he pretends to shoot the pillars of his community. Man/Woman • The Man/Woman (The Commentators) are used as a catalyst for the dramatic irony in Winners. Their formal, unemotional, impersonal, impartial style is in complete contrast to Mag and Joe’s lively naturalistic interaction. • They are used as an alienating device which builds dramatic tension. • They are also a symbolic representation of the restrictive, repressive, rural Irish society in which Mag and Joe live. We are told that they are in their fifties. The fact that they are so much older than Mag and Joe is significant. This age gap helps to reinforce their symbolic representation. Establishes central themes and issues • Frustrated love: Mag’s pregnancy has forced the young lovers to conform to society’s expectations. Mag’s romantic rhetoric contrasts with Joe’s pragmatic attitude towards his studies. Mag has doubts about marriage to Joe and her future happiness. She needs reassurance. Mag gives an insight into the dysfunctional marriage of her parents and is determined not to end up like them. Joe’s angry outbursts reveal a deep-rooted resentment at finding himself caught in the predicament of having to get married because of Mag’s pregnancy. • Frustrated Christianity: Mag and Joe live in a Christian community and yet the majority of people in this community have shown them no benevolence, understanding or sympathy. They get little in the way of support outside their families. They are ostracised by their schools and by certain factions in their community. DRAMA
OVERALL DIRECTORIAL INTERPRETATION AND DRAMATIC COMMENTARY • The inevitability of repression: Mag and Joe are forced into marriage. • Moral responsibility: Joe accepts that it is his duty to look after Mag. • Overbearing rigidity and domination of a restrictive environment: Mag’s stories of nuns, Joe’s mimicry of Old Kerrigan, the sequence with them shooting (the President of St Kevin’s/Sister Paul/Philip Moran’s mother/Skinny Skeehan/Mother Dolores) reveal that they live in such an environment. Friel paints a highly negative picture of Irish society. • The influence of the Catholic religion: the nuns at Mag’s school are depicted as dogmatic, authoritarian and inflexible. Interestingly the priests in Joe’s school are shown in a slightly better light than the nuns. His school is run by the clergy of the diocese – not by an order – so the implication is that they are marginally more human and open minded. • Uncertainty about the future: Mag’s doubts. Her need for reassurance from Joe. Mag’s concern about her father’s loneliness. Mag’s own loneliness comes across in her wild imagination and the ridiculous stories she tells for effect. She is desperate for attention. Why? Joe indicates that he does not share Mag’s romantic views about a flat which looks into the slaughterhouse yard. • Hope: Mag’s constant romantic views of married life with Joe. Joe’s assertion that he will get a degree and become a teacher. • Imposed divisions: Mag goes to a school for girls. Joe goes to a school for boys. Mag lives in a better area of Ballymore than Joe. The class division between Mag and Joe. The theatrical representation of the Commentators compared to the theatrical representation of Mag/Joe. Why would Episode One be important in your production of the play? • As a director, how will you ensure that your audience will understand the social and political background to the play? How will you get across the notion that the period of the play is significant? • How will you bring out the rural Irish Catholic attitude towards Mag’s pregnancy? • As a director how will you establish the mood you want to create? • How will you get across the isolation that the couple feels? • How will you communicate the restrictive, repressive, environment that they live in? DRAMA 7
Page 1 and 2: INTRODUCTION In 1993 Scottish CCC p
Page 3 and 4: OVERALL DIRECTORIAL INTERPRETATION
Page 5: OVERALL DIRECTORIAL INTERPRETATION
Page 45 and 46: DIRECTORY OF ACTING PIECES Mag. The
Page 47 and 48: DIRECTORY OF ACTING PIECES Hannah.
Page 49 and 50: Winners, Episode One Page reference
Page 51 and 52: Losers, Extracts Two and Three Page

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