these are just notes from my teacher in class but i hope they help some how!
goodluck
“Ruby Moon”- NOTES
Thematic concerns:
Ø Who can you trust today?
Ø How well do we know our neighbours? “Who would you trust with your child?” – sonny Jim to Sylvia
Ø Creates a metaphor for the prevailing fear of contemporary society
Ø “Little lost child” e.g. Azaria Chamberlin * Australia’s unforgiving landscape, anything can happen.
Ø The obsessive nature of guilt
Ø Cameron writes about the urban landscape * he sees suburbia as a jungle “forest of suburbia”.
Ø urban isolation
Ø A climate of fear is created.
Ø Anxiety and mistrust
Dramatic Form/structure:
Ø episodic
Ø character driven
Ø mysterious/ambiguous
Ø cyclical
Ø presentational form
Ø open to reinterpretation
Ø stylistic
Use of production elements:
Ø Sound effects
Ø Lighting
Set:
Ø Piles of old furniture * like an attic
Ø Not definitive * confusion, ambiguity
Dialogue:
Ø Repetition of “fairytale”, beginning and end * cyclical
Characterisation:
Ø 2 actors playing all roles * creates confusion
Ø Larger then life, almost grotesque characters
Metaphors within the play:
Ø Mannequin * a surrogate for Ruby, parents can’t let go
Ø Doll* Physicalisation of their fears * destruction of child hood
Ø Cul-de-sac * dead end, cyclical
What is real?
Ø Nightmare logic * nothing is certain, what is real in this world?
Ø Was there ever a Ruby Moon? * We begin to wonder if she was ever real.
Ø It is never specified how long she has been missing for
Ø Ambiguity of situation * no background to characters.
Ø Most questions never answered, no definitive ending * repetitive cycle
By the conclusion we see that this whole event will carry on again the next night, and has done before.
Ø Bizarre and macabre
Ø Gothic, nightmarish ambiguity
Ø Characters are frightening and weird * Grimm’s fairytales