Back to Fences! I do like Fences.

Fences as a modern day tragedy.
I disagree when the book says that some people do not believe modern day tragedies are true tragedies. It's true that they do not have a central character that is a king or queen, and that they are written in prose rather than poetry. Yes there is a difference between traditional tragedy and modern tragedy, but that does not make modern tragedy a different genre all together. The same underlying principles are present. Suffering in the old way is not a different feeling than suffering is today.

Fences I believe plunges into the depths of this genre, as defined by Prof. Fusi "It is a progression of emotional events in the daily routine." (By the way, I would have never known that Prof. Fusi had not prepared for this lecture if he had not told us. That just proves that passion can take you a long way.) Fences takes the audience into a world of it's own. By understanding the characters Wilson helps the audience to feel the emotional pull that the characters feel. This is powerful. Speaking of power...

Media: an art of manipulation. Theatre encompasses some of the same characteristics as the media. The playwright has the ability and the opportunity to shape the style of a piece, and highlight for the audience the central theme and the message that he wants the audience to get out of the play. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, only I know that it's scary to think that someone has the power to selectively feed information to people as a whole. With this I guess it's important to carefully analyze all the information that anyone tells you because their could be a different side of the story, or a different interpretation of the same story.

Each person who reads Fences may identify with different characters. They have the opportunity to identify with Troy, or to reject the idea of Troy. Each person has the chance to take get different things from this interpretation. That is the reason Wilson wrote this play, so that people could take things away from it.

Out of all the genres in theatre I've found that I enjoy comedy, and that I have an appreciation for it because I have learned that it is much harder for me to write a comedy than to express my emotions in a tragedy.