Interpretive Analysis

MEANING
Super-objective of the Play (aka “The Ruling Idea”)
When our ability to communicate and express ourselves becomes restricted, we find new ways to connect with each other and say, “I love you”.

Lemons could be a dystopia in the same vein as 1984 or Fahrenheit 451, but its domestic setting and two characters positions it in the genre of a romantic comedy. The play chooses not to hide that the restrictive Quietude Bill succeeds in Parliament. In fact, the first scene takes place sometime after the law has taken effect. What the play wants us to see is that even under these restrictions, the resilient characters have found new ways to communicate, using morse code, an invented abbreviated language, and other modes of reaching each other like eye contact. The play reminds us that oppressors and silencers never win because love, hope, and communication are essential to the human condition.

Relevance/Personal Connection
The emotionally debilitating limits in the world of Lemons paired with the spirit of protest and putting everything on the line for a cause remind me so much of the Summer of 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement. I was 18 during that summer and eager to find my place in the world, but the restrictions and safety concerns prohibited me from having many opportunities people my age got. I still look back at those times and wonder how I spent that entire summer going back and forth from my house to my job at a gas station. On top of that, the country was reckoning with its systems that uphold white supremacy, and the Black Lives Matter movement worked to put pressure on these systems to increase accountability and rectify bigoted policies. I had many experiences going to protests and marches in my area and hearing about many more, but I always had a sense of hopelessness and that no matter how hard I protested, there would be no change at a systemic level and that my efforts to inspire change were futile.

I also connect with the play in the way that in many of my relationships, my social anxiety holds me back from being an effective communicator. I’ve always had trouble being vulnerable and communicating my needs with my parents, friends, and romantic partners, and to me the play speaks to some of the barriers I’ve faced and grown out of in recent years. Especially with COVID in the recent past, the ideas of isolation, anxiety for the future, helplessness, and lack of control resonate with me.

Social Relevance: Why do this play?

Lemons is socially relevant in two aspects. First, and perhaps more glaringly, it is a play about a corrupt government that enacts laws to censor its citizens while creating loopholes and establishing systems to protect itself from its own laws. Currently, books are being banned across the country that highlight the experiences of people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and women, and curriculums at every level in the public school system are being revised to erase and silence the history of these marginalized groups. Today’s audience would be acutely aware of this situation and therefore understand Oliver and Bernadette’s frustration as they fight to prevent something entirely out of their hands.

In another aspect, audiences will resonate with Oliver and Bernadette’s relationship. Their love story is charming, and they are easy to root for and relatable, even when their differences and the impending Hush Law put barriers between them. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic placed barriers in communication that everyone faced and became familiar with for the better part of 2 years. Face-to-face interaction was extremely limited, even with the people we were used to seeing every day, and because of it our lives became much smaller and restricted. Audiences will resonate with Oliver and Bernadette’s troubles and will even be inspired by their willingness to keep moving forward even when the path is unmarked. Their relationship is a hopeful message to audience members that when even when our typical means of communication and connection are restricted, we still find ways to say “I love you” and tell each other about our days.

INTERPRETATION

Problem

A law is passed limiting the number of words each person can speak or write to 140 per day, severely hindering the characters’ ability to communicate with each other.

Through line of Action/Climax

As Oliver and Bernadette grow and develop in their relationship, the Quietude Bill goes into effect, and they navigate alternative methods of communicating and connecting to preserve their relationship. The climax occurs when Oliver and Bernadette reveal everything that they’ve been holding back from each other just before the law goes into effect.

The play’s dramatic structure is linear but nonchronological. Each scene develops their relationship further, but the order in which the audience experiences each scene disagrees with the way the characters do. This aspect of the play represents the disorientation that the characters face after the law passes and isolates them and makes them outsiders in their own lives. The through line of the play where Oliver and Bernadette conceive of new forms of communication reflects an innate human impulse to connect and have companionship. After the climax of the play where the law goes into effect and they test their system of communication, they find that it works with relative strength, allowing them to communicate, but it ultimately hinders their ability to connect with each other by the end of the play where they feel isolated even from each other.

Tone Goal

Through the progression of the play’s major units, the audience should move from anxious to hopeful. That emotional journey follows Oliver’s development from someone who confronts, controls, and challenges to make his opinions valued, but eventually learns to be vulnerable and honest to earn respect and be heard. Bernadette develops from someone who punishes and hesitates to escape other people’s definitions of her but eventually learns to project her authentic self to embrace who she is and who she wants to be. As the action begins, the audience should feel disoriented but curious about the progression of events but hopeful and curious about Oliver and Bernadette’s relationship. Then, as Oliver challenges Bernadette’s opinions on Quietude and Bernadette punishes Oliver for his judgements of her before he goes on the space noise march, the audience should feel frustrated and concerned. Finally, after the law goes into effect, widening the gap between Oliver and Bernadette and testing the foundations of their relationship until the end of the play when Oliver reveals he cheated on Bernadette with Julie, the audience should feel melancholic and lonely. During the final scene, however, where Bernadette and Oliver convince themselves that they can weather Quietude together, the audience should be left with a glimmer of hope.

IMAGES

The play exists within a conceived space for Oliver and Bernadette where they are free to pursue alternate forms of connection through movement. The phrase “all dressed up with nowhere to go” comes to mind when I think of the world, metaphor, and characters because they are eager and bursting at the seams with ambition and visions for their lives together, but they are imprisoned by the world limit. We will develop a language or vocabulary for physicalizing each scene that aids in telling the story, particularly where along the timeline each scene takes place.

World of the Play

The action of the play takes place in a space that Oliver and Bernadette have created for themselves after facing isolation and loneliness when Quietude traps them in their own minds and makes them outsiders in their own lives.

Visual Metaphor

Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons is Edward Hopper’s painting Morning Sun.

The world of the play creates a space that Oliver and Bernadette navigate and conceive of new ways to express themselves despite the world’s restrictions, embodying the ruling idea that the characters will reconnect. The metaphor embodies the isolation and loneliness the characters face and a glimmer of hope for the future if they can just wait and watch out for it.