The Cuban Swimmer Essay

In the play The Cuban Swimmer, written by Milcha Sanchez-Scott, the general staging plays a big part in moving the story along. Stage directions, lighting, and sound effects work together to make The Cuban Swimmer a submersible one-act play. These properties of staging make the audience use their imagination to assume what the playwright is referring to. As the result of this, the play makes the audience feel like they are a part of it. At the beginning of the play, the setting and time are introduced. Stage directions then show the movement of a boat. “Pacific Ocean. Midday. On the horizon, in perspective, a small boat enters upstage left, crosses to upstage right, and exits. (Sanchez-Scott 1048) These directions show the detailed movement …show more content…
From the beginning of the play the stage directions mention, “Live conga drums can be used to punctuate the action of the play.” (1048) From there on, sounds of these drums are to signal the audience of Margarita’s rhythm and heartbeat while swimming. The sounds of these drums show the progress and state of being Margarita is in when the dialogue is focusing on her family, so the audience always knows how Margarita is doing just by listening to the drums beating. In one case the drums begin to beat faster. “Pause. We hear Margarita’s heartbeat faster now.” (1054) This subtle increase in Margarita’s heartbeat allows the audience to picture how she is doing, and the audience realizes that she is having a hard time keeping up. This makes the audience feel worrisome about Margarita, and they wish that the focus of the play would return to her. The audience is left in suspense and is left recreating her swimming profusely to catch up to the boat in their minds. The audience has this feeling of anxiousness about Margarita’s well-being because of the way Sanchez-Scott uses sounds to heighten the emotional impact of this scene in the