Masters Theses

Date of Award

3-1984

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

English

Major Professor

John Manchip White

Abstract

In writing these plays, I wanted to investigate relationships, the interdependence of people, and the limitless frontiers of these associations. The plays are communications of the mind; they rarely foray into the boundless horrors of physical violence, except when it appears as an intrusion as it does in the first play. Violence, especially in humor, must be assumed, yet the anger that humor helps to assuage must be explored. The conflicts of our inner being are as challenging, perhaps more challenging in some respects, than those of war, poverty, starvation, or catastrophe of any major proportion where the question becomes how to survive, as the central character realizes in the first scene. These plays deal with those who are not generally threatened by outward misfortune, but by the insecurities of being alone, being needed, wanting companionship, and disdaining it. It all gets mixed together: friends become lovers, lovers become friends; friends demand more love, lovers demand more of everything.

I chose for this project a core of characters who reappear in each play. The plays are a series of vignettes that can be presented together in one performance. The first revolves around a burglary, the second around a wedding ceremony, and the third around the reunion of a brother and sister. They are ordinary events depicted in rather ordinary lives. But the lives are bound by intimacy and and the fear of the pain that has to be endured even in the best of relationships.

There is no one conclusion in this project. There are many conclusions/ and they are always changing and vital.

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