Torn -The questions, challenges and themes

Torn:

Torn was fist performed on Wednesday the 7th of September 2016 until Saturday 15th of October 2016, when i read Torn i personally didn't like it whatsoever, it was very hard for me to understand what was going on even if i re-read the scene more then once i just didn't understand. I also found it hard to keep track of the characters and who was related to who. Even in the end i still didn't have a clue on what was going on until we discussed it in class, but nearly everyone in my class found it difficult. However i do feel like the issues it tried to bring to the light were very big ones that people don't talk about, but for me i feel like it could of been done in a much clearer way for people to understand. 

Questions raised in Torn:

• Why is angel is being ignored?
• Why is family fake 
• why are some family members treated better the others?/Why is there an hierarchy?  
• What do they not want to talk about?
• Why are so many people determined not to talk and speak up about the issues but would rather push them under the rug?

What are the challenges in Torn?

• There are a lot of characters talking at the same time in the script so it becomes difficult to pay attention to both and know what they're talking about. 
• It's hard to know the relationships between all the characters/ who is related to who, however we can solve this issue by drawing a family tree to make things more clearer. 
• The way that Torn was written made it very difficult to understand what was going on throughout the scenes. 
• The name of the characters could have actually been names, only three of the had proper names,  however we discovered that the named characters had the closest relationship with the protagonist Angel, whereas the others were stereotypical family members e.g. Aunty, Couzin. 
• In one scene there was two different conversations going on at the same time but they were from two different periods in time which made it hard to understand, there has to be an establishment to see that they're two different conversation. -The play is a build up of conversations that don't happen. 
• It doesn't have linear narration (not chronological)
• It will be a challenge presenting the flashbacks. 
• The structure of how its written is hard to understand. 
• The scenes never have a beginning nor end. 
• All the family are always present and are often talking over each other causing a confusion of words. 
• The form is confusing at the expense of understanding, but that's okay if the actors understands the background and what they're trying to say to the audience. 

Themes:

• Family 
• Race 
• Ageism 
• Mistrust 
• Neglect