Bronte, the play, is a recent work, with one of its very first productions being staged at the Oxford Playhouse. The idea of it was to provide the audience with an insight into the lives of the three Bronte sisters

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Will Bray                                                                                                 Theatre Studies

From Bronte what skills did the performers have to make the production effective?

        Bronte, the play, is a recent work, with one of its very first productions being staged at the Oxford Playhouse. The idea of it was to provide the audience with an insight into the lives of the three Bronte sisters, Emily, Charlotte and Anne. They of course wrote books themselves, including Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. Renowned of course for being secluded, they wrote at a time when women writers were scorned by publishers; their only way of expressing themselves was indeed through their work. However, whilst the play was written by Polly Teale so that it showed the hardship that the sisters each had to endure in order to have their work published, I will be seeing whether the performers helped this any further.

        Right from the very start, we as an audience were given a different view on the actual play. The three sisters were in fact standing on stage in normal modern day clothinhg. They said at this point that they did not want the audience to believe this as a real play, and that they were just playing the Brontes- and in doing so showing the audience very similar to what their life may have been like. This I believe was extremely effective, as it was interesting. It was interesting because it allowed the audience to genuinely watch the play almost like a critic and see the ways in which the actors and actresses depicted the lives of the Brontes and of those around them.

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        The most noticeable connection between the actresses was, I thought, how close they actually appeared as sisters. This was especially well done as for most of the play when one was in a scene, the other two would almost certainly be there. They were indeed united on all fronts, such as the way in which they tried to stand up to their father. Also, there seemed to be an informal pecking order within the sisters. Diane Beck and Fenella Woolgar, playing Emily and Charlotte respectively, seemed to be vying for the dominance, whilst Anne (Catherine Cusack) was very much the ...

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