Night, Mother Response

Hi hypothetical director, dramaturg here to keep you on track.

 wholeheartedly agree that an important question of the script and one that our audience will keep firmly in their heads throughout the play is the debate of whether or not Jessie will actually kill herself. However, I think this will not serve our play best as the “major dramatic question.” I think solely focusing on the possibility of suicide could change the play into something Norman did not intend it to be, which would somewhat of a suspenseful show. From just a brief summary, the play may come across as suspenseful but the complexity of the exchanges between Mama and Jessie make it much different than that. The two get into issues like Jessie’s divorce, Jessie’s child, crime, the death of Jessie’s father and Mama’s husband, resentments never previously spoken about, etc. Sprinkled in between discussion of these deep-seated issues are Jessie’s instructions to Mama for how to take care of herself once Jessie kills herself. These instructions make up a good portion of the dialogue and I don’t think Norman added all that in just to have something for the characters to talk about. I think he made Jessie stress these things to Mama to give Mama the chance to change Jessie’s mind. This brings me to what I think would be a better major dramatic question for our production: “Can Jessie be convinced to not kill herself?” or more broadly, “Can a person be talked out of something they have made up their mind about?”. Shifting the question to this would engage the audience more in what I think Norman intended the audience to be engaged in, which is the dynamic relationship of Mama and Jessie and the strength of love. These are two people who have a deep physical connection having lived together for many years but as we find out in the script, their emotional connection was not always there. When I read the script, I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe Jessie and Mama could emotionally find some common ground, maybe Jessie wouldn’t feel so alone and feel the need to end her life. I am most interested in the play retaining the intent of the playwright and this shift in the MDQ would assist in that.