Dramatic Interpretation of Death and the Maidan and They Dance Alone :: Drama

Dramatic interpretation: 'Death and the Maidan' and 'They Dance Alone' RESPONDING The strategies that we have used in Death and Maiden, 1984 and They Dance Alone are cross-cutting, non-verbal means role play and freeze frame. We used cross-cutting in Death and Maiden, non-verbal means in They Dance Alone, role play in 1984 and freeze frames in most of the performances. Cross-cutting is a technique used especially in filmmaking in which shots of two or more separate, usually concurrent scenes are interwoven; it can also be called inter-cutting. We used this technique in the Death and Maiden piece of Drama where we had five different scenes; two past, two futures and one present, and we started the piece in the future then past, then present, then past and finishing on future. This technique was used many times in this performance and resulted into being very effective. It was effective because in our performance we cut in and out of different scenes showing Paullina’s life in the past and in the future, but depending on what was going to happen in the present depended on which future was going to happen. The two different future scenes were two completely different outcomes; one being her talking to a councillor about her week and her past with the doctors. She is still paranoid that people look at her because they do not like her and she panics about the slightest noise or incident which might be taking place, and the other was her getting married to her partner. The future of Paullina would only happen depending on her past, which was her attending an opposition leader’s meeting which resulted in her being found out and the other scene which was Paullina starting in a mental hospital being supervised by medical staff. FUTURE PAST PRESENT PAST FUTURE Nonverbal communication includes facial expressions, tones of voice, gestures, eye contact, spatial arrangements, and patterns of touch and expressive movement. Research suggests that nonverbal communication is more important in understanding human behaviour than words alone - the nonverbal "channels" seem to be more powerful than what people say. Non-verbal means is being other than verbal; not involving words: nonverbal communication this could include involving little use of language: a nonverbal intelligence test. But for our non-verbal means performance we did not use any verbal communication in any of the scenes. Our performance was one scene because making the performance non-verbal decreases the chance of engaging the audience into the scene. We used simple repetitive movements and sounds to engage the audience which was very effective.