Since there is no “objective truth” because every person is entitled to their own interpretation of a text, identifying the “most likely interpretation” can be challenging. This makes me wonder about the director’s role: how can he be certain that audience will grasp his interpretation of the story?

In “A Beginner’s Guide to Textual Analysis”, Alan Mckee explains that understanding the context is essential to make sense of the main text in question. He highlights three levels of contexts: the “rest of text, “genre of text” and “the wider public context in which the text is circulated.” Generally speaking, it is necessary to identify the social circumstances surrounding the media article and how its creation is influenced by other related articles.

This leads me to realise how the concept of time plays a key role as well, specifically the way past and present affect each other. We can only understand the past from our present context. From where we stand, we evaluate how past events culminated in the present. Therefore, when we are recounting, we can only affect the audience based on present-time interpretations of history.

Going back to the idea of directing, the artiste can only predict his/her audience’s most likely interpretation based on the present context. It is not possible to create something for a target audience in the 60s. People from that period have already evolved with time. This idea reminds me of how in photojournalism elective, we learnt that the value of a story is based on its “newsworthiness”; i.e. how relevant and important it is in the present context.

This week’s reading about  “‘Perspective’ in Speech, music, sound” explains the importance of creating sonic “layers” to enrich our listening experience. By choosing between lo-fi or hi-fi sounds and adjusting their amplification, the artiste is able to mix multiple sounds together and direct their order of importance: figure, ground or field.

I remember, my acting teacher had said that our sense of smell is the most powerful tool for actors to drop into character. From the audience’s perspective though, we hardly engage our nasal glands. In a conventional theatre/cinema setting, I think the viewer’s sense of hearing becomes the most powerful tool to empathise with characters in the story, especially having watched The Illustrated Auschwitz (Jackie Farkas,1992) during our Cinema Screening (Contextual Strand).

The Illustrated Auschwitz utilises an audio recount of a survivor from the infamous concentration camp, accompanied by visuals of objects and snippets from Wizard of Oz. Even though we never see the protagonist’s facial expression and body language, her speaking voice is enough to paint a colourful picture of her experiences, successfully evoking sympathy from the audience.

There is also an intimacy and connection viewers have with the character. Jackie Farkas and Liam Egan achieve this by amplifying her soft and hoarse speaking voice to close the social distance between speaker and listener. We are drawn to feel as though we are in an enclosed space where she is physically within our grasp, vulnerable and generously sharing her story.

This technique is effective in drawing listeners in. I hope to incorporate this in PB3. Similar to The Illustrated Auschwitz, the project is a recount of someone’s experience.