Ruby Moon Research Paper
Researching the text
What do you know about Matt Cameron? What influenced him to write Ruby Moon? * Matt Cameron is an Australian playwright who is known for writing Absurdist play. He puts an absurdist lens on things and distorts the everyday. Cameron has a lot of recurring elements in his work. Some of these things are the use of doors, disturbing images, and the co-existence of comedy and dark moments. In his play Ruby Moon, Cameron holds up a lens to suburbia, presenting it as distorted and nightmare-ish. * Matt Cameron wrote Ruby Moon in response to a number of stories in Australia about children going missing. The idea that children can just disappear and never return threatens us all as a universal issue and taps into our subconscious fear of the unknown. That fear of the unknown and sense of venerability we experience as a child is what Cameron wanted the audience to connect with. Cameron wrote Ruby Moon in the hope of reminding society of the fragility of life.
Discuss form and style and the main conventions of the form * The style of Ruby Moon is presentational and therefore makes no attempt to suggest that the audience is viewing life. More often than not, one thing will stand for another. * The form of Ruby Moon is absurdism, a non-realistic form of theatre. Absurdism is based on the ideas of Existentialism, which is the belief that life is meaningless. Absurdist plays highlight the absurdity of life, shown through its conventions. Such as; no sense of time and place, unusual characters, meaningless/repetitive dialogue, strange occurrences and no resolution. Ruby Moon includes all of these absurdist conventions. For example Ray, throughout the whole play, repetitively asking Sylvie for a kiss which she never gives him, is one example of repetitive dialogue or actions. The text has no resolution which is also an absurdist convention. Cameron decides not to give his audience a fairy tale happy ending as endings give comfort. Cameron
What do you know about Matt Cameron? What influenced him to write Ruby Moon? * Matt Cameron is an Australian playwright who is known for writing Absurdist play. He puts an absurdist lens on things and distorts the everyday. Cameron has a lot of recurring elements in his work. Some of these things are the use of doors, disturbing images, and the co-existence of comedy and dark moments. In his play Ruby Moon, Cameron holds up a lens to suburbia, presenting it as distorted and nightmare-ish. * Matt Cameron wrote Ruby Moon in response to a number of stories in Australia about children going missing. The idea that children can just disappear and never return threatens us all as a universal issue and taps into our subconscious fear of the unknown. That fear of the unknown and sense of venerability we experience as a child is what Cameron wanted the audience to connect with. Cameron wrote Ruby Moon in the hope of reminding society of the fragility of life.
Discuss form and style and the main conventions of the form * The style of Ruby Moon is presentational and therefore makes no attempt to suggest that the audience is viewing life. More often than not, one thing will stand for another. * The form of Ruby Moon is absurdism, a non-realistic form of theatre. Absurdism is based on the ideas of Existentialism, which is the belief that life is meaningless. Absurdist plays highlight the absurdity of life, shown through its conventions. Such as; no sense of time and place, unusual characters, meaningless/repetitive dialogue, strange occurrences and no resolution. Ruby Moon includes all of these absurdist conventions. For example Ray, throughout the whole play, repetitively asking Sylvie for a kiss which she never gives him, is one example of repetitive dialogue or actions. The text has no resolution which is also an absurdist convention. Cameron decides not to give his audience a fairy tale happy ending as endings give comfort. Cameron