Wit: Play Analysis

The students that performed Margaret Edson’s play, Wit, put on a fantastic show. The student who played the lead roll did an excellent job portraying a sickly cancer patient in the beginning and throughout parts of the play. While I sat with the audience waiting for the play to begin, I thought to myself that I really did not know what to expect out of this play. I noticed the sickly patient in the middle of the stage with dim lights, and I thought about how that could be the main character, Dr. Vivian Bearing, discussed earlier in class. As the play began, the lady in the bed revealed that she was at her last stages of battling cancer and that she was Vivian Bearing. I observed that the stage did not have anything else or anyone else on it except for a Vivian in a hospital bed. I felt like that was the only think that the director wanted us to focus on. The focus was on Vivian and her life throughout the whole play, but at the beginning, when all attention was on her it was made clear that she had been put through a lot during her battle with cancer, the actor who portrayed Vivian, looked and sounded exhausted. Throughout the play, I felt like Vivian’s doctor started to treat her more as a research study rather than a human being facing her death. However, I do feel like there were people that treated her …show more content…
However, I realized that the play was more than just about Vivian’s cancer journey. I felt that the play was about life itself. From all the experiences and relationships that Vivian encountered with her Nurse Monahan, Dr. Jason Posner, Dr. Ashford, and the few others, I took away from the play that life is about the types of relationships you have with people. I also took away from the play that life could be more about how you live life with the types of relationships you have with