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“Visual action can be as important on stage as speech”How far do you agree with this claim? Refer to 2 or 3 plays you have studied.

Visual actions on stage in terms of physical reactions of the characters in response to specific stage directions are a vital part of a play. Essentially, plays are different from novels in that they include this visual action as an important part of the storyline. In investigating the importance of visual action on stage, the two plays Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller are especially useful.

Both plays are written by American playwrights and are set around the same time period, Death of a Salesman was written in 1948, while The Glass Menagerie had Williams toiling with the idea from the late 1930s and finally completing it by 1944, when it was first shown at Chicago’s Civic Theatre. The time period when these playwrights wrote their plays is an important factor, in explaining why visual action was given almost as much, if not more importance on the stage, as speech. Theatre was increasingly becoming a glamorous, enjoyable and accessibl...

Posted by: Shelia Olander

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