Didactic Fragmentation in 'Scenes from the Big Picture' (2003) by Owen McCafferty

摘要

Brecht's dramatic theory helps demonstrate that the contours of contemporary Northern Irish drama have been reshaped. In this respect, Owen McCafferty's play Scenes from the Big Picture has Neo-Brechtian resonances. The audience is presented with fragments of lives of people, bits and pieces of a whole picture. This play exemplifies Brecht's idea of a didactic play in so far as the audience is called to learn about the Northern Irish Troubles from the play through the device of fragmentation: the uneven background of McCafferty's play - i.e. the Troubles - is peopled with traumatised individuals, proportionally fragmented. The play is built on fragmentation to mirror the fragmented environment as truthfully as possible, but it also sheds light to tensions between disruption and continuity giving the play a dialectical dimension that enables it to become didactic. This didactic dimension could not be completely reached without the intervention of the spectators and some awareness on the actors' parts.