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Ruby Moon

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Ruby Moon
How could the personal and social tensions between characters in the plays you have studied be expressed on stage?
Australian plays make any normal situation intriguing and unique while exposing Australia’s cultural, social, political and personal issues and concerns. This influences the way in which audiences understand and respond to the subliminal messages that different Australian practitioners use. The playwrights of both Ruby Moon By Mat Cameron and Stolen By Jane Harrison use dramatic forms, performance styles and techniques to establish strong personal and social tensions between characters in both plays. Social issues are anything that effects a large part of society for example, the stolen generation, suburban paranoia, discrimination ect where as personal issues refer to issues that affect an individual in relation to things like grief, loss and identity.
The play “Ruby Moon” by Matt Cameron explores strong issues and fears that have accumulated throughout post modern and modern society today. Cameron creates a sense of loss and grief by using the story of a young girl called ruby who goes missing on her way to her grandmas. Cameron purposefully makes all the characters in the play who are involved in the mystery of the girl are dysfunctional and the play ends up making no logical sense but still elicits a range of emotions from the audience.
Although the play may not make logical sense Cameron uses several dramatic techniques that convey issues that individuals may face in everyday life, namely the issues of grief and loss and how these emotions can be dealt with this is especially clear between the characters of Ray and Sylvie as the dialogue and positioning between the characters is quite cold and distant for example when Ray waits for a kiss ‘that never comes’ and they ‘stare cold at each other’ these stage directions are created by Cameron to establish the strong tension between both the characters which suggests that the way in which they

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