Death of a Salesman is a play that addresses the painful conflicts within a family, showing how Americans are tackling issues regarding their national values within real means. Miller therefore depicts America as selling false myths founded around capitalist materialism, and nurtured by the postwar competitions. During this time, most American families had centered their ways of life on material ownership, often with attempts by individuals to be equal to their materialistic neighbors (Death of a Salesman).
For mastering the structure of the play, that is, to understand and interpret the script and casts he should rehearse and work closely with designers and others who can bring the play into fruition. To illuminate on the structure, the director has to unite symbols such as diamond, to represent tangible wealth and women stocking for sexual infidelity and betrayal with themes and motives of the play. After the script has been produced, the director should also work closely with others in creating scenes. In this regard, he will be ensuring that only appropriate lighting, costumes and sounds are recorded. For instance, when curtains fall, only blue light should fall upon the salesman’s apartment, which should be trapped in an angry glow of orange color to reveal the angry conflicts going on in it. To be sure that the play espouses the properties he wants, the director will have to be the first audience, by watching it first, to realize how it will look in the eyes of the general audience. For this work to come into fruition successfully, he will need to collaborate with other people working closely with him such as designers, composers, music director among others (Death of a Salesman).
It is important to note that throughout the play, the spine should not be affected by the directorial concepts. There should be always an overriding theme that shows how individuals are desperately wishing to amass material wealth, without self knowledge why they exist, and only to fall as tragic heroes. In this regard, while acting as Willy Loman, the director can clearly show that while the hero understands himself as a salesperson with the fundamentals of salesmanship, he fails to know his own weaknesses or limitations to achieve his goals of materialism. Being obsessed with materialism that he cannot achieve, he can be seen just daydreaming to the extent that he cannot realize the love offered to him by his family members. Obsessed with his family being materialistically well, to the level of his neighbors, he decides to kill himself so that his son can use money from his life insurance cover to begin a business (Death of a Salesman).
Work Cited
Death of a Salesman. Dir. Miller. A. Kermit Bloomgarden, 1949. Film.
