How does the dramatic technique used in the play help the audience to understand the importance of Shirleys transformation?

Authors Avatar

How does the dramatic technique used in the play help the audience to understand the importance of Shirley’s transformation?

 

Shirley Bradshaw the main character in the play is a housewife in a working class environment. Unable to stand the monotonous lifestyle she is forced to live in she embarks on a journey to rediscover herself. She does this by going to Greece, searching for a new life and adventure. Willy Russell uses dramatic techniques to symbolise the importance of Shirley’s transformation. He uses devices such as voiceovers, flashbacks, dramatic monologue and humour these help portray Shirley’s opinions, beliefs and it also helps by finding her aspiration. By the end of the screen play the audience will see Shirley as a woman who has fulfilled her dreams and achievement as she no longer will be the depressed dutiful house wife.

Similarly Willy Russell was born into a working class family like Shirley. He was born in Liverpool in the year 1974. He left school at the age of fifteen much like the character of Shirley, who also left school early because she had no hopes in her academic career. This may have been due to stereotypical views that came with living in Liverpool in the 1960s especially for working class people. Another reason can be that students from working class families were not encouraged to pursue their academic careers. Russell had an opportunity to learn about the lives of working class women during this period as it aided him in writing his plays; he knew what was happening in everyday life and what went on in the lives of working class women as well. Following this he did a variety of jobs, including stacking stockings in the warehouse; this is probably why he portrays the working class family simply as helpless victims. By the time he was twenty he wanted to become a poet and eventually went on to become a play write.

Russell wrote the screenplay in 1989, the genre that ‘Shirley Valentine’ belongs to is kitchen sink drama. Kitchen sink drama is straight-laced realism with a focus on working-class life, social problems and relationships. In the screenplay these problems are emphasised in Shirley’s life. Furthermore, Russell takes the idea of kitchen sink drama in the first scene because Shirley’s peeling potatoes in the kitchen. Moreover, women are usually seen as victims because of their fragility and as they are women they are automatically associated with household chores, for they are the nurturing parent.

In ‘Shirley Valentine’ Russell has subverted a woman’s role as a protagonist emphasising the importance of women and conveying them as breadwinners instead of housewives. Russell uses a variety of dramatic techniques in the opening credits in order to establish Shirley’s character and to engage the audience. He does this by the use of diegetic and non-dietetic sounds. In the title sequence use of diegetic sounds such as the background anthem, ‘…A girl who used to be me she could fly she was free…’ implies Shirley’s transformation, also the tone of the ballad is regretful and sad. The lyrics also evoke how Shirley was once free and independent and has now obviously changed. This also suggests that the protagonist was able to achieve more but wasn’t encouraged enough in her early life. The use of editing and camera work portrays Shirley’s dull lifestyle and the sequence of drawings showing Shirley doing varieties of domestic activities also conveys the tedious atmosphere. Her life is illustrated in a series of drawings, which indicate her unfulfilled dreams and wishes. The rear scene is very dreary and blue; this reinforces her monotonous life and her misery. The sketches then dissolve into a long shot of Shirley carrying shopping bags and walking along a dull and gloomy suburban street, further conveying her mundane life.

Join now!

As Shirley first enters her semi-detached house she is established in a mid shot, this immediately implies her working class status because of the setting, which is a claustrophobic house. As she walks inside the passage into the kitchen, putting her shopping on the table, she turns away to talk to the wall. This first scene is set in the kitchen, which is hinting at the kitchen sink drama, as if she is trapped and the kitchen is her jail.

Straight away she engages in a humorous dialogue with the wall, ‘Hello wall.’ This dramatic monologue implies to the ...

This is a preview of the whole essay