Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

Theatre 219
Realistic plays do not necessarily require realistic scenery. In Alfred Uhry’s Driving Miss Daisy, the elderly southern Jewish
woman of the title is driven around town by her African American chauffeur; over the years, they develop a profound—
though mostly unstated—emotional relationship. It would be impossible to stage the moving car realistically, so this vital
element must simply be mimed. But the costumes, dialogue, and acting are acutely realistic. Patricia Fraser and Ernest
Perry Jr. are the actors in this 2000 Utah Shakespeare Festival production. © Photo by Karl Hugh/Utah Shakespearean Festival
OLGA: You come from Moscow?
VERSHININ: Yes. I studied in Moscow. . . . used to visit you in
Moscow.
Masha and Vershinin are destined to become lovers;
their deepening, largely unspoken communion will
provide one of the most haunting undercurrents to the
play. And how lifelike is the awkwardness of their first
encounter! Vershinin’s enthusiastic clichés (“How time
passes!”) and interjections (“Aie-aie!”) are the stilted stuff
of everyday discourse; the news that he comes from Moscow
is repeated so that it becomes amusing rather than
informative, a revelation of character rather than of plot.
Masha’s first exchange with Vershinin gives no direct
indication of the future of their relationship. Theirs is a
crossed communication in which one character refuses
to share in the other’s memory. Is this a slight insult,
or a flirtatious provocation? The acting, not simply the
text, must establish their developing rapport. The love
between Vershinin and Masha will demand that the actors
who play them express deep feeling and subtle nuance,
through the gestures, glances, tones of voice, shared
understandings, and sympathetic rhythms that distinguish
lovers everywhere. It is a theme that strongly affects the
mood of the play but is rarely explicit in the dialogue.
NATURALISM
Naturalism represents an extreme attempt to dramatize
human reality without any appearance of dramatic form.
The naturalists flourished primarily in France during the late
nineteenth century. Émile Zola (1840–1902) was their
philosopher-in-chief. The naturalists based their aesthetics
on nature, particularly humanity’s place in the natural
(Darwinian) environment. To the naturalist, human
beings were merely biological phenomena whose behavior
was determined entirely by genetic and social circumstances.
To portray a character as a hero, or even as a