Distinctly visual texts through various techniques depict an environment with great clarity so that to allow the audience to picture a vivid mental image just the way the composer intended it. A couple of examples of distinctly visual texts are the famous play “the Shoe-Horn Sonata” which uses lighting, project images, music, and the use of Japanese language and customs. A text doesn’t have to display pictures or play pictures to paint a picture for its audience or to be distinctly visual. Douglas Stewart’s poem “Lady Feeding the Cats” uses emotive language, visual imagery and poetic devices to assist the reader to understand the circumstances surrounding an old lady and the stray cats she feeds.
The play “The Shoe-Horn Sonata” is focused on the troubles of two women, Bridie and Sheila, endured in the aftermath of being a prisoner of war. These women weren’t only affected physically and emotionally but also psychologically. Misto conveyed these images through lighting, project images, music, and the use of Japanese language and customs.
Misto uses projected images depicting men and women during war, many in uniforms and many displaying the effects of starvation throughout the course of the play. This is to show the audience past times, places, conditions and they also used to help tell the story of Bridie and Sheila’s life before and during World War II. Act one scene seven “We see photos of some women POW’s – emancipated, haggard, impoverished.” These photographs appeal to us not in the usual way we see them as insights into this past horrific world to which we can’t comprehend but can now relate to the stories Bridie and Sheila tell us. This distinctly visual technique gives us great clarity of the world of “the Shoe-Horn Sonata” and how relationships were formed between these women.
Music as a dramatic technique to support dialogue is used frequently throughout play. The ability that music has to change tone, evoke emotions, and