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Overtones Analysis

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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

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