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Happy Days; A Woeful Actress in the Wilderness Stage

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2004, 17(1), pp.53-65
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama

Hwang, Hoon-sung 1

1동국대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Happy Days is a kind of monodrama. By fabricating the imaginary stage, Winnie invokes on-lookers, characters whose conversations are actually transpiring in her mind. Her theatrical gestures create three different levels of fictional/real audience. i)Mr. and Mrs. Cooker and Shower; ii)Willie on stage listening to his wife's monologue with patience; iii)the real audience. The aesthetics of this dramatic piece is wholly dependent upon the tension generated in the conflict and clash between the corresponding three different dimensions of existence: i)external life; ii)inner life; iii)the theatricality of life. The crux of this play lies in the textual fissure where the theatricality of human existence oozes out. The powerful strategy of stage is to foreground the playfulness in the guise of both theater as ludus and theatrum mundi. Like woman warrior Winnie braves intense heat and light and gravity which look insurmountable; however, she is “not there” where something vital is happening like Hamm. She is no more than an actress on this stage as we roam and fret about on this world stage as actor/actress in the dark. We also ramble and cite from axioms and allusions from classical literature without being awakened to their significance relevant to our life in its genuine sense. In this light, Winnie is our self-portrait hewn out of rougher marble that is us.

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