Throughout Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, I continuously found myself attempting to picture how it would be transformed into a live performance. Although I recognize the importance of all elements of theatrical production, I believe spatial relations and lighting would play the most important role in effectively portraying the plot and essence of the play.
- Spatial relations: A successful production of this play would need to have extremely dynamic placement of the actors, props, and scenery throughout the dialogue. Throughout the play, the interpersonal emotions and conflict are significant and I think that the appropriate portrayal of these elements depends partially on spatial relations. For example, during the second act when Biff catches Willy cheating on his wife with another woman, I can picture Biff slowly stepping further away from his father and closer to the door as his father scrambles to get the woman out. This would help the audience recognize Biff’s extreme shock and anger as well as exemplify a drastic shift in the play.
-Lighting: Throughout the play, the setting of the play often switches from present to past. These flashbacks aid in representing Willy’s increasing depression and insanity. Although this shift was apparent in the text form of the play, it may be somewhat harder to portray to a live audience. In order to prevent viewer confusion, I would consider using different lighting to indicate if the current dialogue/acting is taking place in the present or past tense. For example, in the scene where Willy flashes back to the day of Biff’s championship football game, I can picture the light being brighter and more vibrant than the previous scene. It would be interesting if the lighting of the flashback was always a variant of the lighting from the previous present tense scene. This would help signify the important relationship between them.
I agree with you completely Kristi! I feel like lighting and spatial relations are very important in this play. Like you said, it might be very hard for an audience member to tell whether it’s a past event or present event. I think costumes can help tremendously with this problem also. In lecture we discussed that all the main characters had a “present costume” and a “past costume.” I think with those different costumes along with lighting and spatial relations, the audience members shouldn’t have too hard of time following the play :) This also reminds us how important elements of theatrical production are!
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