The Pillowman- Martin McDonagh


Martin McDonagh is an Irish playwright, screenwriter, producer and director. His plays follow a darkly comic style which challenge the aesthetic surrounding modern theatre. The Pillowman was his first non-Irish play and is followed by works such as The Hangman and the screenplay Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri.

For our acting and performance unit we are studying The Pillowman alongside the theories of Stanislavski. In order to get a better understanding of the style, I did some research into some of McDonagh’s other work.

Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri shared the darkly comic style of the play. The story follows a mother deeply determined, and willing to do anything to get justice for her daughter. She comes into conflict with the police throughout most of the film, but in the final scene she sits side by side with the very person who we assumed was the worst of them- ready to do something terrible.

The film is a great parallel to the play for understanding the complexities of McDonagh’s characters. The policemen in the film are particularly great examples. Dixon is introduced as a corrupt cop, having beaten a black man held in custody. He is a character created initially to be despised, however as the film progresses and he loses his position, we gain a deeper sense of his character- for example when he takes a beating to try and further the Angela case. Like the characters in Pillowman, I do not believe his actions offer him redemption, but rather give us the understanding that all people are complex and often have conflicting traits, motives and objectives.

This will be important to remember when studying my role in the Pillowman. In the plays setting, it would be easy to assume there is a clear division between good and bad. That either the accused is the criminal and the detectives the hero, or that in fact the accused is the innocent. But this would not help me to create a strong character in my final performance.

So it will be important to analyse the lines of the play carefully in order to establish the different traits and motives of my character. What is else, I will also need to look at the whole of the play in order to look for character arcs, like that of Dixon but perhaps more subtle.
 

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