Two scenes from the play "Whose Life Is It Anyway" and how I would direct them.

Authors Avatar

Vaqas Aslam                                                                                   01/05/2007

2 Scenes From The Play “Whose Life Is It Anyway” And How I Would Direct Them If I were To

        

In the following essay I am going to show how Brian Clark would want the play directed “Who’s Life Is It Any Way.” I will exhibit the way Brian Clark intends to show emotions by body language, tone of voice and facial expression. Ken Harrison in the play is a paralysed individual who is determined there is no meaning to life as it is imposed on him. Ken’s will is for the doctors to let him die, by turning of his life support machines, but the doctors can’t and won’t let his patient die as he is a proud doctor who believes that his job is to save lives and not put an end to them. Ken is an individual dependent on Doctors, nurses and machines. If his machines were to be turned off i.e. the catheter was to be removed, Ken would be poisoned by his own blood and die. The whole play is centred around, Ken showing him as a is paralysed individual with life going on around him but for him it having stopped.

Staging would be a major problem in this play because seen as Ken is portrayed as a paralysed character and would be unable to get around the stage. As a result of this I feel that Ken should be positioned in middle of the stage and all the other characters working around him. As nearly every scene in the play is based in Ken’s room except the odd one or two scenes which are in Dr. Emerson’s office and in the preparation room. Ken would be based in the middle of the stage and all the other rooms used in the play would be around him but they could only have three sides because of the problem with the spectators not being able to view the stage directly. The director tries to symbolise that life has come to halt for Ken. Even if not a complete halt but his options are seriously limited, he represents this, for example on page 9 Nurse Sadler has to feed him his coffee sip by sip, this show Ken as being an invalid.  He can not do even the simplest tasks by himself.

Another problem, which the director opposes, is that Ken doesn’t have the ability to move nor do anything aside from use his voice. So the director has to display all of Ken’s feelings through his voice. Ken can only do this by using the tone of his voice and by facial expressions. This is a very difficult obstacle that defies the director. The director has to be intensely precise on how Ken delivers his speeches because even the smallest change of delivery could alter the whole intention of it. Ken has the most strenuous personification in the whole play. Ken can no longer use his sexual organs ever again as he is paralysed from the waist down so he uses sexual innuendo towards the nurses and doctors (female). Ken takes a different reaction to all the different characters in the play. He is frolic towards the characters that treat him like a human and irate towards those who consider him an invalid. He doesn’t talk about his personal life throughout the play until Mrs. Boyle, the hospital social worker interviews him. Even when she does this he exhibits emotional behaviour towards the break up with his fiancée. The one time his parents come to visit him he tells them not to come and visit him again and he informs his mother of his intentions of taking his life.

The director also has a hard job of presenting the characters. The characters are shown to be simple but Clark structures him characters very arduous. Even the most simplistic characters have a real complex background.

The first scene that I choose is the Valium scene located from page: 13 to page: 23. This is the scene when Dr. Emerson injects Ken with Valium without Ken’s consent. I will show how the scene has and should be directed and show how Clark makes the most crucial parts seem so simple on text but much more complex once thought about it.

Join now!

In this scene Clark explores Ken’s nature. As any good director would do Clark chooses a very powerful issues to exhibit this.  The director should show the incapability of Ken to prevent anyone doing something to him (his body)

This scene starts off with Dr. Scott asking Sister whether she’d got the Valium for Ken. Instead off Sister giving Ken the medication Dr. Scott tells her that she’d give him it. As she enters the room she say’s “I’ve brought something to help you.” Whilst saying this you wouldn’t have Dr. Scott really cheerful and happy. You would have ...

This is a preview of the whole essay