Los cuatro pilares de la educación

‘Like a Long-legged Fly’ is a short story written by Ursula Dubosarsky. The title refers to a quote by William Yeats that starts the story and alerts the reader to important themes in the story. The two main characters are Snow and Martin, two high school students who sit together in English class. The plot is relatively simple: Snow introduces us to Martin, whose main characteristic is that he doesn’t talk much, he invites her to his house where she meets his British grandmother and on the way back, Martin tells Snow that his grandmother is dying. The story is mainly about communicating, through words, actions and silence.

The story is not structured as a typical narrative, where a problem is concretely resolved. This sort of unresolved narrative is becoming increasingly popular as writers and fi lm-makers are embracing a more realistic approach where there is no clear-cut resolution. The knowledge that Martin’s grandmother is dying leaves the reader at fi rst unsatisfi ed. However, the reader later realises that the resolution is that Martin is no longer alone. He now has Snow.

Another unusual feature of the story is that the author never formally introduces and describes her characters. She prefers instead to allow their actions and responses to speak for them. For example, we could have been told that Snow is an unusually self- confi dent girl with a generous nature, but the fact that she continues to reach out to Martin despite the fact that he gives her little confi rmation of their relationship gives us this information. This again makes the story more realistic and gives the reader a chance to form their own perceptions as we do in real life. Despite this, however, the author does give descriptive hints, which help us form an image of the characters. For example, the sentence describing the long relationship between Snow and her best friend, Viv, ‘Two little terrifi ed girls in blue fl oppy hats, holding hands. Now they sat like confi dent cats ...’, tells us that Snow is a normal, popular girl who has no social incentive to reach out to Martin. Likewise, Martin’s actions of washing up and settling his grandmother for sleep tell us that he is responsible and gentle.

Description of the settings also help us to understand the characters and their worlds. The description of Martin’s neighbourhood, ‘The houses were small and pale and had a furtive look, as though they were hiding behind the trees and the bushes ...’, gives the reader a clear image of Martin’s daily surroundings and isolation.

The main theme of the story is communication. Martin chooses not to talk often and when he does, he doesn’t elaborate. The reaction of Snow’s friend Viv demonstrates the natural human reaction to fi nding somebody who doesn’t like interacting with others; we tend to think they’re strange or scary. The other characters, Snow and ‘the boys at school’, do not seem to be as bothered by this. This shows that there is not just target audience all playing a crucial part in the creation of the performance and the

performance itself. The Year 9 Event Theatre performance at Newtown High School of the Performing Arts Environmental Day included a variety of techniques to engage the imagination of the audience and to project a clear message/concept.

The challenge of Environmental, Street and Event theatre is unlike traditional theatre. It must be more intimate, more confronting, and the connection between the audience and the performers must be extremely strong and identifi able. During the planning, making, devising and performance of our group’s piece at NHSPA Environmental Day, we had to incorporate this idea as well as use specifi c theatrical techniques. This particular performance had to be based on an environmental issue that was also relevant and relatable for the audience of NHSPA and, therefore, to fulfi l our goal of engaging the imagination of the audience and to project a clear message/ concept to our specifi ed audience, certain theatrical techniques were vital throughout.

The most basic technique we used in our group’s piece at NHSPA Environmental Day was exaggeration. Exaggeration is a very important technique in Environmental, Street and Event theatre because of the kind of audience that are present, and the actual dimensions of the performance space means that things need to be bigger and simpler to be understood. Exaggeration was most obvious in the way the props were made. Every prop was made to be larger than life, and having the appliances strapped onto headpieces meant that the props were easier to manipulate and gave the props a sense of character.

As well as the props being exaggerated, the whole performance was exaggerated to keep the audience interested and to give a clear/entertaining performance. In this type of performance, vocals cannot be relied on to narrate the story and so big gesture and movement is very important. The theatrical technique of exaggerating every element of the performance engaged the audience because it made the performance clear and the larger-than-life atmosphere of the performance was very entertaining.

Another very important theatrical technique that we used to engage the imagination of the audience and to initially grab the audience’s attention was that of music. Using an electrical guitar to amplify some of the images in the performance engaged the audience because it forced them to be completely focused on the performance. (They must listen as well as watch.) The sounds of the guitar also helped to illustrate the actual idea/message of the performance and made the piece more relatable because the instrument was recognisable and familiar.

For any piece of Environmental, Street or Event theatre to be successful, extensive planning of every detail (performers, place and time) is absolutely essential. In our group we started off by developing a story around an environmental theme. For this type of theatre to work, the narrative couldn’t be too complicated and the progression of the story relied completely on the images we were creating. Rehearsal of the actual performance was also important. This type of theatre is unpredictable and unreliable, and with so many variables in the one performance every element of the performance must be rehearsed. The planning, making and devising of the performance is important for the audience because unless every image/performer is working comfortably and in harmony, the piece will fall apart and won’t have the desired effect on the audience.

Symbolism is a theatrical technique that was an integral part of our performance in all stages of devising the piece. Symbolism is a vital tool in capturing the imagination of the audience and building a connection between the performers and the audience. Symbolism was used in our production to make the piece more relatable to the intended audience and to make the message being conveyed more theatrical. In our piece we used the ‘powerboard’ to symbolise the earth and had ‘electricity’ symbolising the people around the world who are using too much non-renewable energy.

198 Appendices References 199

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one way of communicating; that different kinds of relationships depend on different kinds of communicating.

A second important theme is loss and how we deal with it. Martin is about to lose his grandmother, who is (we guess) his last relative and therefore the only human he has much contact with. In the face of this, Martin fi nally reaches out to Snow. This is a comment about how no human ever wants to be truly alone.

Despite the rich descriptions and relevance of the themes to young people, however, the story itself seems a bit hollow. Even though we learn about the characters through their actions, we don’t learn enough about Martin or his grandmother to be able to empathise when Martin tells Snow, ‘She’s got cancer. She’s going to die very soon.’ We don’t know enough about Martin and the thoughts he shares with Snow; ‘About colours’, ‘About Brazil’ etc. are just haphazard ideas that don’t lead anywhere. These could have been used to enlighten the reader about the plot and make Martin enigmatic instead of just underdescribed. Even when we see how he lives and meet his grandmother, it doesn’t say much about who he is.

This story uses modern storytelling techniques to make it more identifi able to the reader. However, it could have been more poignant if it was longer and we came to identify with the characters more. Although, as the reader delves more into the story and fi nds more meaning, even a resolution of sorts, when the story ends, the reader is left wanting just a bit more.

Appendix 2

Common prepositions used to introduce adverbial phrases

Location in place or time Other (manner, contingency, role, matter) around, between, during, from, in, near, on, to,

under, up

about, as, because of, despite, due to, like, with

Common conjunctions used to link clauses Linking two independent clauses

and, but, or, so, yet

Linking a dependent clause to an independent clause

Time Concession/contrast Cause/condition

after, before, ever since, once, until, when, whenever, while

although, even though, though, whereas, while

as, because, since, so … that, if … then