Dracula 16

Why are some scenes naturalistic and others not?

There have been artistic decisions throughout the play to have some scenes very naturalistic and others very unnaturalistic. Similarly there are some very dark, disturbing scenes and some very light hearted scenes. The reason for this is simple: contrast. If the play is exactly the same throughout, dark, unnaturalistic and extreme then the audience would become desensitised.  They wouldn't be as effected by the content of the play and it wouldn't be as effective. It can also be very boring to watch the exact same thing for 2 hours straight. 

The style and practices we're studying and incorporating in the play - Surrealism, Theatre of Cruelty and Antonin Artaud - mean that we can play around a bit. in naturalistic theatre you must rigidly stick to the style or the play would be thrown out of context and it just wouldn't work. In the styles we're using, however, you don't have to follow the rules so strictly, you can play around and mix things up.