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Working with images and abstract concepts

October 12, 2020 By Brigid Panet

Images exist in plays in order to make abstract concepts more concrete. Shakespeare does this for us frequently. He uses concrete images of real things to describe otherwise abstract ideas.

When preparing a scene with lines that contain images, be sure that first, you understand the image. What does it represent? What does it mean? And second, create a clear representation of that image in your mind. Can you see it? This level of understanding will communicate to you the force of the text.

There is also the idea that the physical action of speech (a concrete action, as is the physical act of writing/seeing the word on the page) transforms an immaterial idea into a concrete physical action. The point of this is that thought = action. The whole self is involved, getting actors out of their heads.

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