Modern playwrights, most notably Brecht, use this somewhat unsettling technique in order to shatter the audience’s complacency and cause viewers to feel some responsibility toward the issues presented onstage. She continues to address the audience from time to time, and even shouts out a cue to the other actors at one point. Cancer patient Vivian Bearing addresses the audience directly with the question, “How are you feeling?”, mocking what she later calls the “feigned solicitude” of the medical profession. Right from the opening line it is clear that Edson will not heed the conventions of old-fashioned realism. Composed with a delicate touch, it also reads well, and deserves to be reviewed as a written text. This chamber drama has had a long and successful run in New York City. Aside from being eye-catching, the typographic liberty is meant to tell us something about the protagonist, Professor Vivian Bearing, whose ordeal with terminal cancer is the subject of this moving play. Consider the semicolon you see in the title of this Pulitzer-winning play as something like a logo.
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