How do the dramatic techniques use in the play help the audience to understand the importance of Shirley's transformation? You should refer to the significance of the play's social and historical (settings, attitudes to women

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Asim Macci                Shirley Valentine

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SHIRLEY VALENTINE

Task: How do the dramatic techniques use in the play help the audience to understand the importance of Shirley’s transformation? You should refer to the significance of the play’s social and historical (settings, attitudes to women, attitudes to marriage, expectations of life, etc) context and the literary context (kitchen-sink drama, comedy, tragedy, drama, etc).

The play ‘Shirley Valentine’ was written by Willy Russell. Russell was born in 1976, near Liverpool. He left school when he was fifteen and did a variety of jobs before becoming a writer. Originally he used to be a songwriter, performing in his late teens. By the time he was twenty he decided to become a playwright rather than his desired option of teaching. In his first eighteen months schools loved his work and he decided that he was successful enough to do it fulltime.

“Shirley Valentine”, is the story of a middle age woman living in Liverpool and her change in life. Russell explores the usage of different dramatic techniques to tell a complex story. We the audience are in contact with Shirley from the beginning, because she talks to the camera. This forms a friendship between Shirley and the audience. We become her confidante. Other dramatic techniques used by the playwright are the use of Flashbacks and Voiceovers. In flashbacks Shirley would be doing something and would drift off talking about something that had happened earlier on in the day or a previous day, so we would get all the background information, on what has been going on. It also highlights the important events in her life to show us how she got to this point in her life. In Voiceovers Shirley would express her true feelings about someone whilst they would be talking about the thing that Shirley is expressing her feelings about.

The opening credits depict a series of fifteen sketches that show Shirley doing her everyday routine of domestic chores, with no enthusiasm. Shirley if cleaning and cooking, this tells us what her life is like, boring. You could see that she is tired of living out her life in an ordinary marriage, with very little going on, she has all this Unfulfilled Potential which she desperately wants to overturn. The words of the soundtrack are very cleverly adapted to the sketches shown. They tell the everyday life story of a woman that has ended up in a place where she does not want to be. A woman who has so much unused ability, and whose ‘dreams’ have stayed as just ‘dreams’, “when dreams were broken”. This shows that Shirley is just another one of those typical middle-aged women anxious to get out ‘there’.

The film opens with Shirley returning from her regular, daily shopping trip from the shops, which fits, into part of her daily, reoccurring life. Shirley walks into her kitchen and shuts the door then sighs. Shirley then places her shopping bags on the kitchen table and starts a conversation with her kitchen wall. This shows how fatigued Shirley is of her daily routine and that she wants to ‘break out’ of this strenuous routine and be adventurous. We also come to the conclusion that Shirley Valentine is a lonely person because she is talking to the kitchen wall, even though she is married. We understand this when Shirley says “Hello Wall”. The playwright uses dramatic monologues to enable the audience to understand why she does this and also to make us feel sympathetically for her.

The play is organised into Flashbacks so that the audience can grasp what Shirley’s life was like and to help us identify why she made her decisions. Russell uses flashbacks to help the audience relate to Shirley. As an involved narrator Shirley tells us her story. In this way the audience is able to learn more about Shirley as a person and know why she does what she does in a positive manner. In the flashbacks we see when Shirley and Joe were both joyful together and then when they started to quarrel like how conventional married couples do. The decline of Joe and Shirley’s marriage is easily traceable through the Flashbacks of Shirley her twenties, thirties and up to the present. We see that Shirley and Joe’s relationship wasn’t always so dull and bland. We see Shirley and Joe in 1965, when they are newly married. They are both happily painting their kitchen wall, while having a discussion. Whilst painting the wall they start having a romantic paint fight. This is an example of Russell using visual humour. The quotes, “You’re a bloody head case! You . . . you are loop the loop!” and “You’re a nutcase, you are.” Suggest that they both have love of each other’s mischievous and adventurous attitude. The quote, “I love you . . . Shirley Valentine.” Shows that Joe loves her, he uses her maiden name because to him she is still “Shirley Valentine” and has not turned into “Shirley Bradshaw”, They can communicate and are passionate about being with each other, they are happy with their marriage. In contrast their marriage is now ‘worn out’, they cannot communicate with each other and are always ending up in arguments.

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Through flashbacks, one is also able to view the changes that have occurred in Shirley since she was a teenager. As a teenager Shirley is humiliated in the school hall, and her self-confidence wounded by her Head Mistress. The Head Mistress asks everyone a Question, “What is man’s most important invention?” No-body knows the answer, not even the cleverest girl in school, Marjorie Majors. Shirley puts her hand up. The Head Mistress ignores her, and asks others; still no one gets it right. Then finally the Head Mistress asks Shirley Valentine, “Miss… it was – the wheel!” She knows ...

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