THE SHADOW BOX

The Shadow Box by Michael Cristofer

The Shadow Box by Michael Cristofer

Introduction

Michael Cristofer is said to be a man of many talents who loves drama in all of its varied forms: He has been an actor, a screenwriter, a playwright, a producer, and a director. Although he got his start writing plays such as The Shadow Box in the 1970's and returned to the theater with Amazing Grace and Breaking Up in the 1990's, Cristofer never ignored the “big screen” the motion picture industry because of any single-minded devotion to theater (Wallace, 2010) (Gordon, 2009).

Thesis statement

The paper critically evaluates about Michael Cristofer's “The Shadow Box” (Gordon, 2009).

The Play

The Shadow Box is actually three one-act plays intertwined together around a common theme. Since the play is set in three cottages that are connected to a large hospital and contain a terminally ill patient in each, the assumption is that this is a hospice or experimental program for dying patients and their families. Michael Cristofer never specifies the illness, but most critics have assumed the characters all have cancer. Tying the three plots together are interviews conducted by an unseen doctor, who questions the patients and their loved ones about having to confront death and their reactions to the process of dying. The time is linear with occasional lapses, covering one twenty-four-hour period. Scenes switch rapidly from one cottage to another, and sometimes lines alternate from character to character without regard to scene. The cottage inhabitants, however, never show an awareness of one another. At the end of the play, the characters speak directly to the audience in an almost chant like delivery of similar lines, reminding the audience that “this moment” is all anyone has for certain (Ladekarl, 2004).

Themes and Meanings

In describing The Shadow Box, one might say it is a play about death, as anyone might suspect of a play focusing on three terminally ill patients. Michael Cristofer, however, never reveals the illness from which his characters suffer because the play is not about their disease; it is about people and human emotions. Although there is a lot of conversation about dying and what it feels like to face impending death, most of the dialogue is about the joy of living (Ladekarl, 2004).

The play's title indicates the meaning of the play. A shadow box is a picture frame in front of a recessed box on which shadows of objects can be displayed for viewing. The patients in The Shadow Box are not only on display for the doctors, who are studying them, but also for the audience. Even though the play is set in an experimental program, it does not focus on the program or the doctors involved (Kelley, 2009).

Dramatic Devices

Most of the play's critics concede that The Shadow Box uses many unique theatrical devices that increase its emotional power in performance. The first and most obvious is Cristofer's intertwining of three short plots into one cohesive play. This episodic structure allows the audience to concentrate ...