Some Specimen & Critical essay: the secret life of Some Specimen

The following thesis submission contains a full-length play Some Specimen written for the stage. It also contains a critical essay entitled ‘The Secret Life of Some Specimen.’ In this essay I argue for the importance of the concepts of dramatic secrecy and the stage-image in the development of the s...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Ward, Shane
Other Authors: Grace, Fraser, na
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/5035/1.hassmallThumbnailVersion/Ward14MRes.pdf
http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/5035/
http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/5035/1/Ward14MRes.pdf
Description
Summary:The following thesis submission contains a full-length play Some Specimen written for the stage. It also contains a critical essay entitled ‘The Secret Life of Some Specimen.’ In this essay I argue for the importance of the concepts of dramatic secrecy and the stage-image in the development of the script. I outline some of the challenges faced while writing the script and discuss the theoretical and practical implications of those challenges for the writer. The play Some Specimen is set in a research facility in Antarctica. When two research scientists discover a creature buried deep in the icecap, their world and their personal histories get turned upside down. Taking the isolation of the two central characters as its starting point, the play will confront the question of man’s relationship to its own extinction. This is both a personal extinction and the question of the possibility of extinction as a species.