Our Country's Good : How Does Theatre Convey the Exploration of Identity ? Essay Example
Wertenbaker’s dramatic exploration of identity in Our Country’s Good - How does theater convey the exploration of identity?
The play Our Country’s Good, written by Timberlake Wertenbaker, illustrates the characters’ exploration of identity, whether through their belonging to a society, through theater and thus language, or through the social experiment the setting up of the play represents. The word drama, first used in the course of the 16th century, comes from the Greek drama, meaning “action”, or “to do”. In Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good, one of the aims of drama is to exhibit a picture of human life, and consider some of the difficulties a human being experiences in his life, such as finding one’s genuine identity. Our Country’s Good enables the spectator and the reader to follow the main characters and the way they evolve thanks to the play’s influence. As Whisehammer states “a play should make you understand something new”, that is, in this case, understanding and choosing who one really is.
In his play, Wertenbaker explores one of the main universal issues: the way an individual builds his identity according to the society he belongs to. Indeed, any human being is influenced by the values of his society, but is still able to develop his own identity within it. Our Country’s Good, thanks to the characters chosen by the author, as well as the setting of the play, enables an in-depth exploration of this theme. First of all, the characters all identify to a certain extent to the British society, as it is their mother-country and the civilization they belong to. This is mirrored in Act two Scene one with Liz’s black humor, when she answers Arscott’s claim that “There is no escape!” by “That’s English. You know things”, which shows they deeply identify to England. They both tell Caesar, who wants to escape, that he has to “think English”, and realize he is ensnared in Australia. This highlights the characters' identification to England, as they
The play Our Country’s Good, written by Timberlake Wertenbaker, illustrates the characters’ exploration of identity, whether through their belonging to a society, through theater and thus language, or through the social experiment the setting up of the play represents. The word drama, first used in the course of the 16th century, comes from the Greek drama, meaning “action”, or “to do”. In Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good, one of the aims of drama is to exhibit a picture of human life, and consider some of the difficulties a human being experiences in his life, such as finding one’s genuine identity. Our Country’s Good enables the spectator and the reader to follow the main characters and the way they evolve thanks to the play’s influence. As Whisehammer states “a play should make you understand something new”, that is, in this case, understanding and choosing who one really is.
In his play, Wertenbaker explores one of the main universal issues: the way an individual builds his identity according to the society he belongs to. Indeed, any human being is influenced by the values of his society, but is still able to develop his own identity within it. Our Country’s Good, thanks to the characters chosen by the author, as well as the setting of the play, enables an in-depth exploration of this theme. First of all, the characters all identify to a certain extent to the British society, as it is their mother-country and the civilization they belong to. This is mirrored in Act two Scene one with Liz’s black humor, when she answers Arscott’s claim that “There is no escape!” by “That’s English. You know things”, which shows they deeply identify to England. They both tell Caesar, who wants to escape, that he has to “think English”, and realize he is ensnared in Australia. This highlights the characters' identification to England, as they