Ruby Moon

When reading the play "Ruby Moon" it is easy to pick up on the personal and social tensions between characters. The descriptive nature of the stage directions and the very act of reading as opposed to just seeing on stage, being able to take time to look over each line, means that a reader can see which scenes accentuate the tension between both Ray and Sylvie or the characters they have created. Stage directions in the play plainly describe when a pause on stage is to be tense, or what the vibe is supposed to feel like during a particular scene. Bringing these tensions onto stage, however, is a more difficult task. An audience in a theatre cannot simply read that a silence is supposed to be tense; it is up to the actors and their use of the stage, as well as the lighting, set and audio. When considering how to highlight the personal and social tensions in Ruby Moon, we must consider what particular tensions play an important role and which characters the tensions are between. It may be that a character’s interactions with their surroundings are tense or that their relationships with other characters are very tense. To bring them to the stage these social and personal tensions must be identified. Cameron’s “Ruby Moon” explores the tenuous and often shallow relationships of suburbia. In writing “Ruby Moon”, although it is in essence a surreal play, Cameron attempted to draw attention to very real issues, including the nature of suburbia, and how when it comes down to it it’s difficult to know who to trust. Bad things can happen to anyone, and not everyone is as normal as they appear. Not only this, but underneath the eeriness of this play lies a very real, deeply tragic story of two parents who have lost their child and gone mad to cope with the grief of never knowing what happened to her. So much so that the reject every opportunity to find out for fear of it being bad news, in favour of keeping up the game they play with each other. The tension between