Having A Dying 80-Year-Old Woma Bearers Of Light

1. What is this play about? Consider textual, subtextual and contextual layers of the dramatic text. Consider all of the elements of drama.
Textual:
Both Marion, an eighty-year old women, and a young girl also named Marion, sit in a park as they both do every morning. Through conversation, it becomes apparent that they are in fact the same person at the opposite ends of one shared life cycle. The younger Marion, simply referenced as ‘girl’ in the playtext, represents the beginning of their shared cycle of life whilst the older Marion, who does not remember such encounter when she was young, represents the end of such cycle. This revelation comes out of the sharing of a name, the linking of their fathers and the agreeing that they are the same person throughout the dialogue. Ultimately, the play explores the notion of having a dying eighty-year-old …show more content…
This is reflected in the representation of the young Marion and the older Marion as they show the opposite ends of this cycle. The playwright, Daniel Keene, strongly employs this cyclical concept as to present the human context particularly through roles, relationships and tension. The roles of both characters, as being at opposite ends of a shared life, is used to show the cyclical nature of life by presenting both the beginning and the end of such cycle. Thus the relationship between them provides an overarching view of the cycle of life as while one (the girl) is beginning the cycle again, the other (Marion) is ending it and being replaced by the other. Whilst this play’s tension is quite stagnant in parts as there is little ‘at stake’ within the situation, the audience is challenged through the confrontational notion of life as cyclical and the way in which it is presented within the