The form and structure of 'Greek' is one of many factors in which Berkoff has decided to put across his intentions to an audience.

Authors Avatar

Gemma Singh

GREEK By STEVEN BERKOFF

FORM AND STRUCTURE

The form and structure of ‘Greek’ is one of many factors in which Berkoff has decided to put across his intentions to an audience.

Form can be defined as a shaping principal either in its widest sense (where it is overlapped with genre) or in its specific sense, where it was a discoverable organising principal within a work. Structure can be defined as the action of building. The word carries the sense of the process of building, organisation (scenes, episodes etc.)

‘Greek’ is considered to be an epic play (spanning a lot of time and distance – as it manages to cover 10 years), structured as series of episodes taking the form of a story in its own right.

The play consists of 2 Acts. Act 1 is comprised of five scenes and Act 2 is comprised of four scenes.

‘Greek’ has a combination of short and long scenes covering different periods of time. The idea of utilising different scene lengths is to ensure the audience is engaged, allowing them to think and follow the action, in other words motivating them instead of ‘serving it straight on a plate. For example, a short scene is when Eddy’s mum and dad discuss the plague of the city (Act 1 scene 3). An example of a long scene is the last scene where Eddy’s mum and dad come to visit Eddy and his new wife and end up confessing the truth about how they found him at the “River Thames”, (Act 2 scene 4).

Join now!

The main structure of ‘Greek’ is Eddy’s story as he narrates his point of view.

One of the techniques utilised in ‘Greek’ as part of the structure is “flash back”. This represents the passage of time, enabling the audience to explore the memories depicted throughout the play, providing the audience with a deeper insight to the characters. We are shown that Eddy’s memory is fuzzy – he only has suspicions of his early childhood, where his pseudo parents’ memories are crystal clear. A prime example of a use of the ‘flash back’ technique is when Eddy’s dad depicts ...

This is a preview of the whole essay