Style
The style of Fires in the Mirror is a unique, post-modern play. Fires in the Mirror is a collection of multiple voices and points of views. It is a hybrid of theater and journalism. Smith went out and interviewed all of the characters and recorded their words, their physical appearance, and their surroundings to give an accurate description of who these people were. Afterward, she arranged the words to fit into shorter monologues, while maintaining the essence of what they were trying to put forth in their words and emotions.
Smith is very detailed in how each interview was attained. She gives information as to where each one was done, including the settings and environment, other people that were near, and when the interviews took place. This adds emphasis to the fact that this play is very immediate and real. Nothing is fake or made up and everything is 100% real life.
The play is written out in verse. Smith tries to emulate through the use of lines, ellipses, and other notation, exactly how things were said in each interview. This adds emotion to plain text and when read, gives evidence into how things were actually said by each character during the interviews.
Fires in the Mirror is a post-modern play. According to David Rush, characteristics of a postmodern play include there being no “author”, its purpose is to engage the audience rather than show, there may be multiple narratives interacting with each other, the structure departs from the conventional play pattern, and the play is usually fragmented. Fires in the Mirror encompasses all of these characteristics.
Read more about this topic: Fires In The Mirror
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on the cuckoo clock style of architecture.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It pays off slowly, your agent will sneer at it, your publisher will misunderstand it, and it will take people you have never heard of to convince them by slow degrees that the writer who puts his individual mark on the way he writes will always pay off.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“To write well, to have style ... is to paint. The master faculty of style is therefore the visual memory. If a writer does not see what he describes—countrysides and figures, movements and gestures—how could he have a style, that is originality?”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)