Spatial Excavation of Psyche and Family Dynamics in Stephen Karam's The Humans: A Psychogeographical Reading
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33806/ijaes1089Keywords:
family, primal scene, psyche, psychogeography, spatial analysisAbstract
The American playwright Stephen Karam explores the human psyche and relationships in The Humans (2016) by employing the spatial operations of the props on the stage. The play presents the gathering of the Blake family in their daughter and her boyfriend's new apartment on a Thanksgiving dinner. The article examines how the description of the details of the place reflects the characters' fear, pain, trauma, relationships and secrets. It aims to show how the characters' psychologies are depicted through the physical setting of the dark apartment and its menacing atmosphere. The study follows the theory of place in approaching the text. It tries to analyze the relationship between the place and the characters and how it develops a type of a discourse operating reciprocally to make the unseen layers of the characters' lives visible. The dramatic spatial and technical innovation will be the core of the analysis.
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