ipl-logo

Overtones Analysis

1740 Words7 Pages

Alice Gerstenberg wrote Overtones in 1913 for the Chicago Little Theatre, but it was first performed by the Washington Square Players in New York in 1915. It became an immediate success upon staging and since then has remained a popular choice for many performers in and outside the United States. With it Gerstenberg became an innovator of theatrical form presenting small, inexpensive productions that experimented with form and style previously unseen by most audience. Overtones was Gerstenberg’s most popular and most widely produced play and to date remains one of the finest examples of the dramatization of the Unconscious on the stage.

Multiple performances by amateur artists, drama students and professional theatre companies have kept …show more content…

Harriet and Margaret play traditional roles of women of the 1920s in American society through their dependence upon their husbands for social status and economic stability. The staging of their outer and inner selves as a construct of the play, mirrors Freud’s concept of the struggle of the ego and the id. What remains perpetually “contemporary” is their poignant desperation for a life they do not have, their regret over choices made, and their longing for love. Hetty and Maggie express all of these emotions that Harriet and Margaret cover over in a veneer of politeness and amiability. This relevant, contemporary theme is presented through modified semiotics by the contemporary production. The play’s semiology does not concentrate simply on one system of signs but identifies a body of signs making up a whole. In the context of the characters’ duality the use of costume, voice modulation, kinesics and proxemics by actors play an important role in bringing about a contemporary, post-modern interpretation of a modern …show more content…

Costumes do not simply form part of the overall visual system, but also reflect the status and individuality of different characters. Overtones uses costumes as symbolic of the material and mental conditions of each character. In Gerstenberg’s text the predominant colours for the costumes of the protagonists are shades of green and purple. The colours give a unity to the themes of jealousy on Harriet’s part with her sheer green and feigning wealth by Margaret with her royal purple. Their counterparts wear a darker shade of their respective outer self’s costume colour as Gerstenberg

Show More
Related
1098 Words | 5 Pages

Response to Elemeno Pea The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s production of Molly Smith Metzler’s Elemeno Pea was a comedic yet thoughtful portal into modern class structures, personal values, and interpersonal relationships. The program promised that the play, a recent rewrite of the original version, would challenge audiences “to question what we might be missing through our quick judgements of each other,” and the show delivered; with the playwright’s portrayals of complex characters, situations, and issues, the audience was allowed and encouraged to examine and reexamine their first impressions before the show ended and left viewers with their final thoughts on the events that had transpired within the Martha’s Vineyard estate. It

Read More
704 Words | 3 Pages

The costumes represent the rank in society for these characters. An example is Desmond, who wears extravagant clothing showing she has money. Mostly, throughout the film, she wears black clothing, which represented her sadness, and anger of accepting her time in Hollywood that ended many years back. Another example, Gillis, who in the beginning wears lower class clothes because he cannot afford anything else. Eventually, he becomes a gigolo and ends up wearing expensive suits that many people cannot afford.

Read More
931 Words | 4 Pages

In such time of the Great Depression and gender equality, this novel presents the character of sexism, Curley’s wife, to show how her dreams has been achieved through death. During her talk with Lennie, she tells him that she “‘[...]never get[s] to talk to nobody [and that she] get[s] awfully lonely’” (Steinbeck 86). Even though she is depicted as a flirtatious, “‘[...]purty [...] bitch’”, her true life was lonely and segregated from the male ranchers (Steinbeck 32). Steinbeck applies this paradox in the story to picture the reader about how a character’s identity can either encourage or ruin his or her reasons to live and achieve a future.

Read More
907 Words | 4 Pages

These selections from the novel show how, similar to Myrtle, many women, both in the 1920’s and now, use their bodies to feel confident. Instead of relying on their intelligence and personalities, women rely solely on their sexuality and assets to set them apart from others. This thought was not only prevalent in the 1920’s, it still

Read More
801 Words | 4 Pages

In the nineteenth century, woman had no power over men in society. They were limited in their freedom, as their lives were controlled by their husbands. Some women did not mind this lifestyle, and remained obedient, while some rebelled and demanded their rights. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, are short stories that exposes the lifestyle women lived in the nineteenth century. The protagonists from both stories, Jane and Georgiana, similarly lived a male dominated lifestyle.

Read More
1995 Words | 8 Pages

This play centers around the servant Pseudolus, a Greek name which means ‘liar’. It is an apt name for him because he is a skilled liar and a master of mischief. Pseudolus is also extremely intelligent, often more so than his upper class masters Simo and Calidorus. The play Pseudolus is interesting as it depicts a slave (Pseudolus) as

Read More
607 Words | 3 Pages

They show the harsh and cruel reality of the surrounding environment that women live in without framing that reality in beautiful frame. This is obvious in William Dean Howells’s “Editha” and Henry James’s “Daisy Miller”. Both Editha and Daisy share the same characteristic of the New Woman. These two women redefine the feminine ideology of women who suffer from following the social norms of their culture. They believe that women should have freedom as well as men, and they are responsible for making decisions in their lives without under

Read More
358 Words | 2 Pages

Women’s Issues in the Past In both Trifles and A Doll’s House the reputation and appearances of the two women are examined within nineteenth century marriages. The men believe that the women only focus on trivial matters. These two poems are so powerful because of the metaphors, emphasis on gender roles, and tone the narrator uses to convey the way women were treated in the nineteenth century.

Read More
1622 Words | 7 Pages

The Stepford Wives sum up almost every man’s “perfect” image of a woman. These women are controlled by a remote their husbands can turn on and off. This remote can enlarge a wife’s breasts, shut her down, allow her to rewind, and focus only on one thing: keeping the house clean and maintaining her body image. We get to see how women are portrayed in a Bourgeoisie society. “The basic plot of The Stepford Wives concerns men who discover the ultimate method of controlling women.

Read More
1285 Words | 6 Pages

The play An Ideal Husband was written by Oscar Wilde in 1895 in England’s Victorian era. This era was characterised by sexual anarchy amongst men and women where the stringent boundaries that delineated the roles of both men and women were continually being challenged by threatening figures such as the New Woman represented by Mrs Cheveley and dandies such as Lord Goring(Showalter, 3). An Ideal Husband ultimately affirms Lord Goring’s notions about the inequality of the sexes because of the evident limitations placed on the mutability of identity for female characters versus their male counterparts (Madden, 5). These limitations will be further elaborated upon in the context of the patriarchal aspects of Victorian society which contributed to the failed attempts of blackmail by Mrs Cheveley, the manner in which women are trapped by their past and their delineated role of an “angel of truth and goodness” (Powell, 89).

Read More
885 Words | 4 Pages

The play ‘A Doll’s house’ is a three act play written by Henrik Ibsen. - BLABLA BLA-. The story, however could be interpreted differently by different readers greatly depending on their cultural context. In this essay will be discussed how a Freudian and a Feminist reader might interpret the plot, the character relations and the ending differently. A Feminist might argue that the story’s underlying message is to unveil the power dynamic during the 19th century between men and women.

Read More
897 Words | 4 Pages

In Louis May Alcott’s Little Women, four young girls in nineteenth-century New England live in a society where marriage comes before profession, and passivity is valued over independence. Financially challenged, the March sisters struggle to fit in when they are exposed to lavish events or are treated condescendingly on account of their family’s income. In Little Women, Alcott utilizes the symbols of gloves, burns, and flowers to explore the contrast between abiding by the traditions of society and staying true to oneself.

Read More
831 Words | 4 Pages

The times that we live in heavily influence our understanding of people and the literary characters we get to know of. The Reader Response theory revolves around the central idea that the context any reader resides in, influences the reader 's understanding of and the response to characters. This is the case in 'A Doll 's House ' by Henrik Ibsen too, where, Torvald Helmer, the protagonist 's husband evokes different responses by different readers of the play. While a Victorian Era reader will sympathize with the character of Helmer as he holds a his "dignity" above all, even the woman he "loves", the modern reader of the 21st century is outraged by Helmer 's blatantly sexist remarks about a woman 's "duty." The readers ' receptions of Helmer 's character varies greatly due to the different values they believe in and their social context.

Read More
614 Words | 3 Pages

The two women further differ in their view of the men in their life. The actions of these two women bring their similarities and differences out for the audience to see. Nora and Kristine are very independent for women in the 1800’s. Kristine is a widow of three years, and has yet to remarry. She touches on this in Act I, while speaking to Nora about being a widow.

Read More
1567 Words | 7 Pages

In 1880s, women in America were trapped by their family because of the culture that they were living in. They loved their family and husband, but meanwhile, they had hard time suffering in same patterns that women in United States always had. With their limited rights, women hoped liberation from their family because they were entirely complaisant to their husband. Therefore, women were in conflicting directions by two compelling forces, their responsibility and pressure. In A Doll’s House, Ibsen uses metaphors of a doll’s house and irony conversation between Nora and Torvald to emphasize reality versus appearance in order to convey that the Victorian Era women were discriminated because of gender and forced to make irrational decision by inequity society.

Read More

More about Overtones Analysis

Related Topics

Open Document