Common Denominator In The Things We Do And Get It Together

“The Things We Do” and “Get it Together” were very impressive plays written by Boston College students. I was incredibly surprised by the talent of the actors, as well as the meticulous script that the playwrights came up with. Although the two one-act plays are strikingly different, I noticed a common denominator between the two. They both represented the basic aspects of how it is to be a person in the world, and how easy it is to feel on the outside. During the first play, “The Things We Do”, I tried to pay attention to the stage directions, time and place of the action, and the character interactions. The exposition of the play revealed that the characters are stuck in what the playwright called “the realm”. The realm reminded me of

This state of in-between was illuminated by a boarder of bright white lights. The edges confided the characters to the small space in which they were stuck in, ostracizing them from the domain. The white lights that lit the stage (and the audience) added to the sense of emptiness. The backdrop was also all white with a circle that opened up. Each character would enter and exit the stage via this circle. The opening circle acted as a prop in this play because it was the door to their escape, the piece of the puzzle that they were trying to find. The circle also represented the cycle that the actors were stuck in: they would fall three times, forget everything, and then start all over. The circle acted as a metaphor for the infinite cycle that they were stuck in. It changed throughout the play by the color of the backdrop behind it when it opened. At first, the backdrop was green when they would go through to fall. However, by the end of the play the circle’s backdrop turned blue with smoke coming out to represent the opened gate. When the characters would enter back into the realm, they would jump into the circle and fall on the ground to represent the fact that they have previously been “falling”. Their