In the poem ‘Disabled’, Wilfred Owen presents life of an injured veteran after the war, he portrays life to be a constant reminder of their traumatic experiences. In my transformation I wanted to highlight how veterans relive their traumatic experiences on daily basis. I conveyed these experiences through Owen’s perspective as he himself was diagnosed with shell shock and was referred to Craig Heart war hospital where many soldiers were treated for shell shock. I chose to write my transformation as a monologue within a play script so I was able to express Owen’s emotion through body language, facial expression, stage positioning and lighting.
I decided to show Owen’s entry on stage in an authoritative manner to give the impression to the audience that Owen was an employee at the hospital as a cleaner/carer and is different to the patients in levels of society and sanity. The audience would be able to distinguish Owen from the other veterans as he has a uniform on, I directed Owen to address his uniform the draw the audience’s attention to his clothing.
In the scene where Owen ‘briefly focuses his attention on the walls in a daze’ I wanted to display that when Owen observes the men in a cogent way and able to describe their current state but whilst Owen is observing the men, it sends him into a state where he briefly withdraws his attention from the men as it triggers his own flashbacks of war. Throughout the play I have structure Owen’s dialogue and stage directions to interchange between reality of the hospital setting and memories of the battlefield. I did this to show the audience that Owen has trouble with dealing with every day events without it triggering flashbacks.
Owen switches from observing the men whilst in a state of clarity to being deluded in his flashback of memories. I wanted to display that when Owen observes the men he is in a state of reality as he is able to describe their current state but whilst Owen is observing the men, it sends him...