BFRealism

The Cherry Orchard: The actors come on stage laughing to a rather realistic looking scene and everyone is catching up with each other coming back from a long trip. The actors and actresses are a little more dramatic and overdone than in the more recent clips. The clothing is very realistic for the time period they’re portraying and the house is decked out with all sorts of furniture.

Hebba Gabler: The costumes are rather realistic, elaborate and nice looking. The set is very elegant and the music is dramatic in the opening. They’re talking to each other like in a somewhat dramatic way but more like a normal conversation than The Cherry Orchard. You can even see outside and it’s very nice looking and seems real. The music sets the tone during the end and there are sound effects from outside as well. The movements are a little dramatic even though the talking isn’t as much.

Miss Julie: In the opening, what looks like a picture turns into the set. There are a lot of furniture and households items lying around like in a normal house. A man arrives from outside where the set also looks rather realistic. You can see a nice looking patio walkway and some shrubbery and trees. There’s background music playing quietly in the background and there looks to be real food and drink on the table since he even takes a bite.

Iceman Cometh: The setting is realistic but the actors sitting at the table don’t seem to be paying attention to the man giving some sort of anecdotal speech. The dress seems fitting to the time and the tavern Hickey is giving his monologue at looks like a real pub restaurant.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night: Edmund’s speech is seems pretty realistic. You can hear some sort of sound effects, though I’m not sure if they are meant to go with his speech or the background of the scene in general, though they seem to be near a harbor. The setting is realistic and they really did add a lot of things to make things look real like lights that light up the windows like boats passing by or a lighthouse shining on them.

Death of a Salesman: In the Interview of Arthur Miller and the reading of the opening scene, Arthur describes the everyday things that go on during Death of a Salesman that matter to the play and the changing of the times. The opening scene sounds like an un-staged conversation of a man telling his wife what happened during his day relating things to his life.

The Glass Menagerie: In this play two characters are arguing angrily like a real conversation. The background has many rooms and depth and looks like an actual house. The man is wearing a robe and the woman is wearing a nice blouse like they are comfortable at home. The man dresses in front of the audience so he doesn’t have to go up stairs. There’s a door leading outside and windows. Music plays to convey how the man feels about shattering the glass horse of his sister’s.

The older plays have extremely realistic sets complete with lots of depth to them and many props to give place. Fences is rather different than the older plays since the set isn’t an entire room or show the actual house behind the man and his son talking but just a porch and a black background. Oleanna also doesn’t have a complete room as a set; the room they are in has no true walls, just darkness to show the end of the floor.

Oleanna: In Oleanna the set for the scene consists of a modern desk made to look used by a school teacher and very real with scattered papers and books one would expect to find there. He is sitting in a rolling chair and the student speaking to him is in a metal chair typically found I teacher’s offices. Both the student and teacher are wearing modern normal looking clothing and event he ground looks typical of a school. The actors are not being overly dramatic and it’s like they’re in a real life situation. The language isn’t particularly flowery and the situation looks like it could happen in real life.

Gengarry Glen Ross: The scene is set in a bar room and looks like a typical bar room. They’re using terms apparently typical to what they do. The scene is very confusing and they’re saying the same things over and over again because it’s looped and varied, but I get the point that they’re in a realistic looking place using real life dialogue with accents typical to whatever state the movie is supposed to be in.

True West: The scene is set in a kitchen or living area of some sort. One of the characters is smoking and you can see the smoke coming from it and drinking and picking his nose and you can even see the outside porch and car outside the window. The other guy is actually spraying plants with a water spray bottle. There are sound effects from outside that sound pretty real such as birds and skateboards and kids playing outside. The kitchen has a lived in feel with lots of mugs and appliances.

Fences: The scene is set in front of a porch and there is wood and a sawhorse. They’re using a dialect typical of where they are from and the time period they live in and they’re wearing working class clothing. The set may be minimalist but the focus is the character and it keeps the audience from getting distracted by a large decorative set.