The Price by Lena Kitsopoulou- an initial response to the play

When we read through the play the first thing that struck me was the characters. They are just man women and later on checkout girl. This made me think about how Brecht often just named the characters after their role, gender or job title as a way of presenting them as a section of society as opposed to a three dimensional character. 

The play takes place in very ordinary every day place - a supermarket. When presented onstage of course there wouldnt be a whole supermarket. This would help to make the audience aware of how they are watching a play and make it more unrealistic. It starts off seemingly normal, a couple complaining and arguing about money. The women seems to be being more worried about it. This could be the idea of women having to look after men and be more responsible for the home.

This sense of normality soon fades after the conversation turns from speaking about the price of tea turns into discussing the price of the children on the shelf. I think this this is the writers way of presenting an idea to the audience about the value we place on materialistic goods and what is worth spending money on, and how much a life is worth. When they can buy a disabled child for cheaper it made me question, is a disabled life worth less? Does society really see it that way? I thought about how I totally disagreed. From a totally economic perspective disabled children cost more. Even with an NHS system in this country it's still costly both for individuals and families to receive the help they need. If you were to look at an emotional perspective often parents find themselves more attatched to their disabled child because this is the child that needs them more.

The man and women are arguing about wether they would rather have an able bodied child or a good quality of life in terms of material goods but have a disabled child. This makes me question what the more important things in life are. How we in society often look at people who are living off benefits and wether they should be allowed to have lots of children even if they can't afford to keep them.

This play was written this year about the current economic climate. This means we as a class will be able to relate to it more and are more likely to have our own opinions and personal experiences of the issues it raises. This should make it an interesting piece of text to use as a stimulus. In terms of a script, it gives us a pretty blank canvas in terms of what we could do with it or how we could stage it. If we are to do any work straight from the page then it would still leave us with lots of devising oppurtunities.