The Shoe-Horn Sonata

by John Misto

Currency Press, Sydney, 1996 (reprinted 2000)

This unit was prepared by Pauline Byrne

Historical context

John Mistos play, The Shoe-Horn Sonata, was inspired by the real-life experiences of Australian
nurses taken prisoner by the Japanese Army after the fall of Singapore in l942, during World War 2.

From l942 to the end of the war in August 1945, they lived in primitive, at times desperate
conditions. Only 24 out of an original 65 were eventually brought back to Australia in October, l945.
Many had drowned or been shot dead as they were being evacuated from Singapore when the
Japanese forces captured it. Others died of malnutrition and illness in the prison camps. Supplies
sent to them by the Red Cross, including food and necessary medicines, were almost always
withheld by their captors.

The writer, John Misto, wanted to make Australians aware of the heroism of these nurses. He
believed that it was disgraceful that, fifty years after that war had ended, Australia had still not set
up any memorial to its army nurses, even though many of the Australian troops owed their lives to
their care. Misto handed over all the prize money he won with this play in l995 to the fund to build
such a memorial.

Sources of information

His play is itself a touching memorial to them. It was inspired by the most famous account of their
experiences, the diary of Betty Jeffrey of the Australian Army Nursing Service, published as White
Coolies in 1954 (reprinted l999, Angus and Robertson). Misto read this book when he was a
teenager, and has said he could not forget it. Many years later, he interviewed many of the surviving
women as he researched the background for his play. In his Authors Note (p.16) he tells us:

Although the characters of Bridie and Sheila are fictional, every incident they describe is true and
occurred between l942 and l995.
There was even a Shoe-Horn...

The same book, White Coolies, formed the basis for the movie Paradise Road, written and directed
by Australian Bruce Beresford, and released in l997. He too did further research into these events
and experiences, and found hours of tapes prepared by Norah Chambers for the BBC before her
death. An English woman with a glorious voice, she organised a voice orchestra; the parts for the
instruments in the orchestra were written out by an interned missionary teacher, Margaret
Dryburgh. Betty Jeffrey was a member of this group.

To learn more about the background to this drama, a good start would be to read White Coolies or
view and read about Paradise Road

Warning: be very careful not to confuse the storylines. Each of these three writers bases the text on
the similar historical facts and personal experiences, but presents the stories of the characters from
different angles. Mistos main characters (the protagonists, Sheila and Bridie) are fictional, but the
play refers also to real people.

A very easy-to-read account of Australian soldiers living as prisoners of the Japanese - including
working on the infamous Thai-Burma railroad - is given in the diary of Stan Arneil, One Mans War,
found in many school and public libraries. (now out of print). A young man from Sydney, he was only
21 when he began to keep it. Other accounts are listed on page 15 of the play text.

The Australian War Memorial Web Site holds records of Sister Mavis (E.M.) Hannah, (Accession
Number: 3DRL/7474) whose photograph appears in the play text
Making drama out of reality
Misto, a well-known writer of documentaries, did not wish to present the story of the
imprisoned Australian nurses as a documentary, but as a drama. He had to craft the story so
as to manipulate the emotions of his audience, and to keep their interest to the end. Out of so
much material, he had to make a deliberate choice, to achieve a narrative arc with elements of
suspense, surprise, confrontation and a final resolution. There had to be tension to grip the
audience.

The basic story is a grim one of a fight for survival, and of the traumatic consequences of
such suffering to the victims later lives. To hold an audience. however, he needed to have
elements of humour. Like Bruce Beresford when he researched and wrote the screenplay for
Paradise Road, Misto found that humour and music were two of the main ways the nurses
and their fellow internees helped themselves to survive. Another was strong supportive
friendships, based on the Australian value of mateship. All these elements Misto used in his
playscript.

To care about the fate of the nurses, the audience has to come to know them and feel empathy
for them. Further discussion of the ways he does this is in the Characterisation file.

Solving the problems 1: Resources

Misto has written this play for the requirements of contemporary theatrical productions. A
filmmaker may have literally hundreds of extras (as Bruce Beresford did in Paradise Road).
A school major production can often use fairly large numbers of actors, depending on the size
of the stage and the rehearsal time available. But modern commercial theatres have to pay
their way and they work on tight budgets. Some of the plays they decide to present during a
year will have perhaps six or eight actors, but others will have only one or two, to help
balance the theatres budget.

The Shoe-Horn Sonata, with only two characters on stage and an off-stage voice, is an
attractive script for a professional theatre to produce, and it has been seen in a number of
productions in Australian cities and in London. It requires only two sets: a rudimentary
television studio, indicated by the On Air sign and a microphone, and a hotel room, with a
bed and mini bar. Minimal props are needed, including a suitcase, the Shoe-Horn, some
photographs and embroidery.

The first problem: keeping the play affordable for theatre, Misto solves by casting only two
actors, and using a simple set.

Solving the problems 2: Keeping the audience interested

His second problem is how to keep an audience entertained and interested if for the whole
performance they are watching only two characters on stage. He does this by using a wide
variety of modern dramatic techniques.

Misto writes extensively for television and in this stage play he has used his familiarity with
the use of photographic images and voice-over to support the actors dialogue. He also uses
the power of music to support his script. The images and music provide constantly changing
focuses for the audiences attention. They support the highly emotional material that surfaces
from the memories of the central characters.

The use of song and of instrumental music has several purposes. First, it shows in actuality to
the audience the soothing and uplifting power of music. Music was a crucial feature of the
life support system in the camps. It also adds variety and emotional sub-text to many of the
plays scenes. It places them also in their historical context. On some occasions it suggests
the irony of the situations the two women faced.

No photographs exist of these women in the prison camps, but a wide variety of other images
appear on screen as background to the dialogue. These include:

photographs taken of male P.O.W.s when they were liberated

photographs of the nurses arriving in Singapore from Belalau
contrasting images of Singapore: the affluent, confident imperial city before its
fall, and the bombed and burning city afterwards
the famous scenes of crowds in Martin Place, Sydney, when the war was declared
over [while the audience knows the women in Belalau were still prisoners, destined
for death]

Credibility

Such images are credibly part of the script because the central situation Misto sets up is the
making of a television documentary. The unseen presenter-interviewer, Rick, has brought
together to share their experiences a group of women survivors of the camps. It is credible
that the producer of such a program will have done extensive research and assembled an
archive of images.

Sometimes as backing to the photographic images, at other times to support some of the
womens spoken memories, Misto uses excerpts from more than a dozen songs from the
period, and such orchestral items as The Blue Danube Waltz and Danny Boy. Particularly
moving for the two characters and for the audience is the recreation of the Captives Hymn,
written in the camp by Margaret Dryburgh and sung every Sunday by the women, and the
playing of Ravels Bolero, one of the items the voice orchestra presented at camp concerts.

The male voice of Rick adds variety to the sound texture of the play. The use of spotlights,
linking the use of harsh lighting by the prison guards and the strong lighting of the television
studio, is another effective dramatic technique used.

The action of the play moves between the television studio where recollections of the past are
fairly formally presented by the women as Rick interviews them, and the hotel, where the
tensions between them appear in their outwardly casual conversations and are eventually
resolved. This resolution is eventually made public in the cathartic last interview.

Solving the problems 3: Making it bearable

A third problem, maybe the major one Misto faced, is how to make bearable for a modern
audience a play about suffering, cruelty, deprivation and death. This same problem has been
faced by writers and filmmakers dealing with such overwhelming tragedies as the Nazi
holocaust. The approach Misto took is similar in some ways to those taken by Roberto
Benigni in his movie Life is Beautiful and by Stephen Spielberg in the movie Schindlers List,
based on the Thomas Kenneally book, Schindlers Ark.

Humour is used, as indeed many victims have used it , as a defence mechanism against
despair and hopelessness. We see this when the Prime Ministers message finally reaches the
Australian nurses: Keep smiling! and, facing death in appalling conditions, their reaction is
to break up in helpless laughter at the irony of the message. The contrast between the prim
British schoolgirl Sheila, and the more practical Sydney nurse Bridie provides another source
of humour.

The other method used is the device of distancing. The characters and their audience are
distanced in time from the events recalled and presented in the play. The women in the play
have not only survived the camps, they have lived through the subsequent years and have in
some ways dealt with the trauma. Now as survivors they can look back.

Misto makes no attempt to reproduce on stage the appalling brutalities carried out in the
camps. We the audience do not see the rotten food or the beatings or the women left to die on
the forced marches. We do not see the graves or the grave-diggers. Instead Misto presents
these as reports remembered by Bridie and Sheila.

He treats them as the classical Greek dramatists did: as obscene --literally to be off-stage--
and therefore reported to the audience in eloquent words, not shown. The Shoe-Horn Sonata
uses words, reinforced with pictures and music, to establish these horrors in the imaginations
of the audience.
Structure and characterisation
The structure of the play

The Shoe-Horn Sonata is divided into two acts: the longer Act One, with eight scenes, and a
shorter Act Two, with six scenes.

It follows theatrical custom by providing a major climax before the final curtain of Act One,
which resolves some of the suspense and mystery, but leaves the audience to wonder what
direction the play will take after the interval. The action cuts between two settings: a
television studio and a Melbourne motel room.

The opening scene, with Bridie demonstrating the deep, subservient bow, the kow-tow,
demanded of the prisoners by their Japanese guards during tenko, takes the audience straight
into the action. As the interviewer, Rick, poses questions, music and images from the war
period flash on the screen behind Bridie, and the audience realises they are watching the
filming of a television documentary. The time is now, and Bridie is being asked to recall the
events of fifty years earlier.

This scene establishes who Bridie is, and introduces the audience to the situation: the recall
and in a sense the re-living of memories of the years of imprisonment. This and the following
scene carry out the function of exposition.

The extreme danger the prisoners faced is indicated by Bridie during this exposition: over-
crowded ships sailing towards an enemy fleet, the unpreparedness of the British garrison in
Singapore for the invasion, the fear of rape for the women. Misto thus sets up some of the
issues to be confronted during the course of the play between the Australian Bridie and the
former English schoolgirl Sheila. Sheila appears in Scene Two, and the major conflict of the
play begins to simmer.

Sheilas arrival at the motel from Perth introduces immediately one source of friction
between the two: they clearly have not been in touch with one another for many decades.
Each is just finding out such basic information as whether the other ever married or had
children. The audience sees, too, that the warmth of Bridies greeting: Gee its good to see
you is not reciprocated by Sheila. The audience wonders why not. The revelations by the
end of Act One will finally show the reason. The body language described on page 26
indicates the deep underlying tension between the two--yet the scene ends with their lifting
the suitcase as they used to lift the coffins of the dead: to the cries of Ichi, ni, san---Ya-ta!
Their shared experiences are a strong bond.

Journey through memory

For the rest of Act One, the shared memories of Bridie and Sheila become those of the
audience, through the dramatic techniques Misto uses. [outlined in Making drama out of
reality].

In Scene Three, the audience is reminded of how young Sheila was when she was taken
prisoner. The voice of a teenage girl sings part of Jerusalem, the stirring and visionary song
with words by English poet William Blake, and the mature Sheila joins in. (Later Bridie and
Sheila sing it together.)

Bridies attitude from their first meeting as shipwreck survivors drifting in the sea is
protective of Sheila. She sees her as another stuck-up Pom, and hits her with her Shoe-
Horn to keep her awake. Sheila has been taught by her snobbish mother to look down on the
Irish, the label she puts on the Sydney nurse from Chatswood because of her surname.

Further differences between the two surface in Scene Five, when the officers club set up
by the Japanese is described. But by the end of this scene they are recalling the choir and
orchestra of womens voices set up by Miss Dryburgh. Scene Six opens with Bridie and
Sheila in a conga line singing the parodies of well-known songs theyd used to taunt their
captors and keep their spirits up.

Pain and tension

Soon they are arguing, focusing on their differing attitudes to the British women who in
Bridies view were selling themselves for food to the Japanese. The tension rises as more
and more is revealed about the deteriorating conditions for the prisoners and the relentless
number of deaths, especially in the Belalau camp.

At the end of the Act, in a dramatic gesture, Sheila returns the Shoe-Horn. She had claimed to
sell it for quinine to save Bridies life--but in fact as she now reveals she had been forced to
sleep with the enemy to buy the medicine. She extorts from Bridie the implicit admission that
she would not have made that sacrifice for her. Bridie says nothing, but cannot face Sheila.
Sheila is shattered by the realisation:

All these years Ive told myself that youd have done the same for me. [Calmly] I was
wrong, though, wasnt I?
Act Two opens back in the studio, where Bridie and Sheila explain on the documentary the
appalling conditions in the death camp of Belalau. Suspense is built by the revelation that
orders had been given that no prisoners were to survive to the end of the war. The audience
wants to know how there could have been survivors.

They also want to know how or if the tension in the relationship between the two women can
be resolved. It becomes clear that the traumatised Sheila cannot in civilian life face any
sexual relationship; nor has she felt able to return to Britain or to face remaining with her
family in Singapore. She has led a quiet life as a librarian in Perth. Her nights are filled with
nightmarish recollections about Lipstick Larry, and she drinks rather too much.

In contrast, Bridie had been happily married for years to the cheeky Australian soldier who
had waved and winked at her at Christmas behind the wire. She is now widowed and
childless.

Ambush and resolution

Misto is preparing an ambush for the audience. By Scene Twelve, Bridies disgrace is
revealed. Spooked when she is surrounded by a group of chattering Japanese tourists in
David Jones Food Hall, she runs away with a tin of shortbread and later pleads guilty in court
to shoplifting. I still lie awake cringing with shame she tells Sheila. She could not explain
the truth about her phobia to the court or to her family and friends.
The effect on Sheila is more than Bridie expected. She now decides that she can be at peace
only if she faces the truth in public. She explains:

There are probably thousands of survivors like us--still trapped in the war--too ashamed to
tell anyone.
Bridie urges her not to.

But in Scene Thirteen after they have recounted how they were eventually discovered and
rescued, days after the end of the war, it is in fact Bridie who reveals the truth of Sheilas
heroism and self-sacrifice. She then finds the courage to ask Sheila to explain about her
shoplifting arrest

The scene ends with the declaration Bridie has waited fifty years for:

And Id do it all over again if I had to....cause Bridies my friend...

The tensions between the two have now been resolved: the secrets are out, both the personal
ones and the long-hidden information about the experiences of the women prisoners and
internees. The brief and cheerful last scene shows their friendship restored, the Shoe-Horn
returned to its rightful owner, plans made for a Christmas reunion, and, finally, the peacetime
dance they had promised one another in the camp. The Blue Danube plays:

It is the music of joy and triumph and survival.

Characterisation

Characterisation can mean two things:

1. The nature of a particular character as it is presented in a text. This would include

age, appearance, temperament, past life experiences, personality traits, characteristic
ways of expression, values and ideals, motivations, reactions to circumstances,
responses to other characters.

2. The methods the composer of a text has used to project this character to the audience
or reader. These would include, among other things, the words they use or others use
about them, their decisions and actions, their body language, responses to others
words and actions, the motivations they reveal.[See Activities]

The plays structure is based on the differences in character and temperament between
Bridie and Sheila which are gradually revealed to the audience. The action of the play
revisits their past hardships and terrors, but the final focus is on the trauma they have suffered
afterwards.

The revelation of the crises they have each faced is presented as a healing action, which
leads to the resolution of their differences and a satisfying closure to the play.

Mistos own motivations for researching these events and writing the play is made clear in
his Authors Note (p.16). His perceptions of Australias neglect to honour such women as
Bridie is suggested when she says:
In 1951 we were each sent thirty pounds. The Japanese said it was compensation. Thats
sixpence a day for each day of imprisonment.

Themes and concerns

The healing power of truth

Every drama takes its audience on a journey. The ending of the plays action not only gives a
sense of closure and completion, but also usually indicates what for the playwright is of
major importance.

Throughout The Shoe-Horn Sonata Bridie and Sheila have uncovered events and emotions
they have kept hidden for half a century: Sheilas desperate gesture of swapping herself for
the medicine to save Bridies life. Bridies constant but hidden terror of the guards, which is
shown when she runs from the shop when she is surrounded by the harmless Japanese-
speaking tourists.

Up to the time of the plays action, neither has been able to reveal what has shamed her so
deeply. Meeting again eventually allows them to reveal and face the nightmares that have
traumatised them since their captivity. They also have to alter some of the attitudes they held
when young.

They tell one another the truths they have been suppressing, and then give each other the
courage to reveal them to Rick and the world through the television documentary.

The ending is therefore not a false upbeat and cheerful scene to leave the audience
forgetting the horrors they have learnt about. A sonata is a musical piece for two
instruments, and during their captivity Bridie and Sheila literally and metaphorically made a
musical duo. Now their declarations of friendship and their dancing as the stage darkens
shows the audience that they have finally faced, together, the horrors that have given them
nightmares. We realise that facing these realities has made them free to live their
remaining lives at peace with one another and with themselves.

Mateship and resourcefulness

Anecdotal evidence from the memoirs of Australian prisoners-of-war suggests that they had a
higher rate of survival than other nationalities taken by the Japanese. [This is to be a theme of
the new Australian television drama, Changi, being produced in 2001 discussed in The
Sydney Morning Herald, the guide, Feb.5 to11, 2001] Their strong sense of mateship, which
involved constantly looking out for one another, is claimed to be one reason for this.

Another reason given is their can-do approach, and their resourcefulness in making the most
of whatever they had at hand. They were considered to be more independent and practical
than soldiers of other countries, not likely to wait for orders-in fact more likely to challenge
authority.
The Shoe-Horn Sonata shows that the Australian nurses and others in camp with them (but
not all) also shared these qualities. The play shows that in camp Sheila and Bridie worked
together as best mates, and their support for one another was a major reason they survived in
circumstances where many didnt. This involved enormous self-sacrifice on Sheilas part.
Their knowledge of health and best practices to maintain it without any of the resources they
were used to also helped them survive.

The power of art

The power of music to lift the prisoners spirits is made clear from the title of the play. The
womens amazing resourcefulness in creating an orchestra consisting entirely of human
voices-and one Shoe-Horn-has become one of the great legends of captivity. Bridie and
Sheila create their own sonata, a medley of familiar music, when the choir has been
disbanded because of deaths and weakness.

They recall the surprise and delight one Christmas when the Australian men visited and from
the outside of the barbed wire fence sang O, Come All Ye Faithful, and the womens choir
sang a carol in return.

The power of words is also made clear in the play. The women sing The Captives Hymn at
the opening of Act Two, but as they tell of their last dreadful months of captivity, they recall
the parodies of popular songs they sang in defiance of their captors:

One day I killed a Jap/Killed a Jap/I hit him on the head/ With a bloody lump of lead...

Revealing injustice

Misto has said that one purpose of his play is to show the injustices he believes have been
done to the memory of the nurses, and of the thousands of other women and children who
suffered with them. His Authors Note (p 16) makes this clear. Their compensation
afterwards was inadequate, and for fifty years no memorial was organised for them. The
bombing of ships full of women and children and the shooting of nurses and Australian
soldiers, breaking the international rules of war, was in fact what is now called a war crime.

In particular the evidence given that medicines provided by the International Red Cross lay
unused outside the camp boundaries when children as well as women like Sheila were dying
inside is a chilling reminder of the inhumanity of war.

Student activities

1. For each of the themes listed above, find one quotation from the play as an example
of the way it has been presented by Misto. Then note down one scene where this
theme is clearly presented to the audience.

2. Discuss with fellow students your own reaction to the messages the play gave you.
What other concerns of the play also make an impact on you?

3. Survival is a popular theme in modern books and television shows. What qualities are
needed for survival, according to this play?
Activities and writing tasks
Activities

1. Re-read the notes on characterisation [see Structure and characterisation]. Prepare

your own character outlines for Bridie and Sheila. Allow one to two pages for each.

On the left-hand side list the important points you have noted about each woman.
Opposite, give the evidence from the text to support this point. The evidence could
be lines or phrases of dialogue, their actions, current or past, or their body language as
described in the text.

2. As you re-read each scene, write a very short summary (no more than three sentences)
outlining the spine of the scene, that is, the most important actions in this scene
which propel the play along. Ask yourself what would be lost if this scene had to be
cut out.

Then write out in full (to help you recall them) two of the main quotations from this
scene which you would want to use in explaining it.

If you do not have sufficient time to do all of the fourteen scenes, do at least five of
the ones you think are the most memorable.

3. Re-read the section, Making drama out of reality. Find five examples of Mistos use
of documentary photographs in the background of scenes. List them, and for each
provide three quotations from the accompanying scene, which link with the images
shown.

Explain how Misto uses the photographs for emphasis, and what you think the effect
on the audience would be.

4. What was the Shoe-Horn sonata in the play? What other significant parts did the
Shoe-Horn play in the story? In what ways is it used symbolically?

5. Many unfamiliar words and concepts are used by Misto to add to the feeling of reality
in the play. Opposite each of those given below, write its meaning as used in the play:

saki

Belalau

Lavender Street

tenko

Changi

dengue
 troppo

loin cloth

6. The subject of The Shoe-Horn Sonata is a grim and tragic one, but Misto lightens
the play with some humour. Find three moments in the play when you think an
audience would laugh, and try to work out why. Are any humorous lines or actions
placed near (juxtaposed with) moments of high tension and stress? Why would this be
done?

7. Music is used in the play to give the sense of the historical period, and also to create
an emotional tone. Find three songs used in the play, listen to them, and explain why
they are appropriate in the scene theyre featured in?

Writing tasks

8. The last line of the play reads:

It is the music of joy and triumph and survival.

In what sense is this a play about the triumph of the human spirit?

9. Conflict is the soul of drama. What are the main sources of conflict in this play, and
how are they finally resolved?

10. Imagine you are Sheila. In your motel room the evening after the final taping, write
your diary entry. You should explain what has happened during your visit to
Melbourne, and the impact the events and revelations have had on you.

11. You are asked to direct Scene Eight of The Shoe-Horn Sonata for your schools
annual drama day. Write the briefing talk you would give to your actors and stage
crew at your first meeting with them, explaining what impact you want this scene to
have. You will need to include a brief introduction to the plays action so far.

12. I do not have the power to build a memorial. So I wrote a play instead.

How successful is this play as a memorial to the Australian nurses and other women
taken prisoner?
[Look up the dictionary definition ofmemorial before you plan your answer.]
 13. Imagine it is two years in the future. You are a young backpacker travelling in an
Asian country. You have been imprisoned on a false charge of drug smuggling. At the
end of the first week, write in your travel diary an account of the pressures you are
feeling, and the inner resources you have which you hope will make it possible for
you to survive until your family and the Department of Foreign Affairs can organise
your release.

Group Activities

14. Hot seat.One member of the class is chosen to play Bridie; another, later, plays
Sheila. Other members of the class fire questions at Bridie or Sheila, particularly
establishing their motivations, their reactions to the reunion with other survivors, their
feelings at the conclusion of the play, their worst moment--and any other relevant
questions. The person in the hot seat must stick to what is established in the play or
what is clearly compatible with it.

15. Scenes with commentary. A class is divided into threes and scenes are allotted. Each
group is to act out for the class the scene or a significant part of it. Some class time is
spent rehearsing the scenes; the commentary is prepared as homework.

Each group then presents its scene. Students give a short introduction to explain
where the scene comes in the play. A detailed commentary is given after the
presentation, focussing on the main concerns of this scene, the character development
shown, the language used and the music, props, and projected images that would be
used in a professional production.

16. Quiz show [a good end of term activity]. Each student prepares two factual questions
on the play (e.g. Who said this?) for homework. The class is then divided into two
teams. In turn, each team asks the members of the opposing team one question. If the
allocated person answers it, the score is one point; half a point if another member of
that team answers. The quiz may run more smoothly if each teams collection of
questions is prepared on computer.

Getting ready to face the examiner

Scoring well in the HSC examination is not a matter of luck. Its more like playing in the
finals of any sport. Training is crucial, and if youve done your training as thoroughly as you
can, you can feel relaxed and confident.

Training has two main parts

Getting to know what youll have to do

Practising doing it.

This section looks at drama questions from the viewpoint of the HSC markers What do
they hope to see in your answer and what will they reward with good marks?
1. You have to show them that you know this play thoroughly.

You do this by referring closely to what happens in the play, including actions, projected
images and sound effects as well as the spoken dialogue.

How do you get ready to do this?

You have to find out what works for you. Some students make tapes of important speeches,
and play them over and over again till they know them well. Others put important speeches
on wall charts. You can make a chart of all the photographic images, linking them to what is
revealed in the play at the point theyre shown. See more details in Activities and writing
tasks. Play some of the songs over several times to get the emotional tone of them.

It is vital to make your own diagram of the action of the play, identifying the spine of each
scene: the crucial happening that propels the action forward, the major confrontation in each
scene. As this play has only two main characters, Bridie and Sheila, the revelation of their
earlier relationship and the development of their relationship during the timespan of the play
are the main dramatic focus. For the modern audience, also, the play reveals to us the nature
of war for captives.

2. You have to deal with a playscript as an example of the genre we call

drama.

You have to make it clear to the marker that you recognise the particular characteristics of
dramatic form.

Students who refer to The Shoe-Horn Sonata as a novel are suggesting to the markers that
they have not achieved one of the most vital Syllabus outcomes: to
learn about the wayslanguage forms and features, and structures of texts shapemeaning and
influence responses (H4)
The task of the playwright is to manipulate the emotions of the audience and students have
to be able to explain how the particular play they are studying does this. It has to be clear to
the marker that you understand that this is a playscript, that it is a recipe for performance. In
other words, a play is constructed to happen ideally on a stage in front of a receptive
audience-it is not like a novel or poem designed to provide an imaginative experience that
takes place primarily in the mind and emotions of a solitary responder. The composer of a
play aims to influence the responses of a collective group.

How do you show the marker that you do recognise the genre of drama?

As you write about the play, make clear that you know it is NOT static. It moves through
time, one thing happens after another, and may be the consequence of another. There are
causal connections and links; as the play proceeds, feelings and past events are revealed and
characters clash, change and develop. You need to write about these developments. It helps to
visualise important scenes in your imagination as you write. Think about how these scenes
would make the audience respond.

Be sure to know in detail, and to refer to, specific scenes. If you find it hard to recall the
numbers (e.g. Act 1, Scene 8), give each scene a tag or nickname by which you remember it.
A good answer is usually supported by reference to three or four important scenes.
[Do NOT stick to scenes from the first quarter of the play only unless you are explicitly asked
to do so. A play moves forward towards a destination, and you want to show the examiner
that youre aware of this progression.]

3. You must answer the precise question given to you.

First, check whether youve been asked to give a critical response or a creative response.
Then craft your answer in the appropriate form. A critical response is structured as an
argument or debate and follows a case line. This is the type of response you would give to the
question on the Board of Studies specimen HSC paper:
How does John Misto present Bridie and Sheila as much more than tragic victims of war?
An imaginative response requires you to create a situation, based on the text, or to write in a
particular form, or to do both. For instance, you could be given this task:

Imagine you are a journalist preparing a feature article to be published in a weekend

newspaper before Ricks documentary program goes to air. Interview either Bridie or Sheila
about her reactions to doing this program.

You will be expected to show accurate knowledge of the play, but also to write in the form of
a newspaper feature article. It is important to stick closely to the facts of the characters life
and emotions as revealed in the play. You could where appropriate use direct quotations from
the plays dialogue.

Read the question very carefully and make certain you answer every part of it.

4. Your supporting references to the play need to be accurate.

You need to spell the names of characters and places correctly. You need to remember the
order in which things happen, because this is how the playwright has built up suspense or
added surprise. When you quote, get it right-when a marker sees hundreds of exam scripts,
the student who seems to be making up the quotations and has no idea of accuracy looks very
obvious. If you are not sure of the exact words used but you are sure of the meaning, use a
paraphrase. (That means, you express the meaning in your own words in reported speech as
in, She told him that...)

To improve your knowledge and practise answering HSC questions, go to Activities and
writing tasks.