Shoe-horn Sonata
MODULE A: Distinctively Visual
- An Introduction -
Context
• World War II
• The war in the Asia Pacific - the Japanese
advance
• Stretched from 1941-45
• While the U.S. and its allies were occupied in
Europe with the gradual defeat of Nazi Germany,
the Empire of Japan attacked America’s naval
‘centre’ - Pearl Harbour - and commenced an
invasion of the Asia Pacific toward the north
coast of Australia
The Asia Pacific
The Japanese advance
Sumatra and Singapore - the historical settings
in Shoe-Horn
Shoe-Horn
Historical Context
John Misto’s play, The Shoe-Horn Sonata, was inspired by the real-life experiences of
Australian nurses taken prisoner by the Japanese Army after the fall of Singapore in
l942, during World War 2.
From l942 to the end of the war in August 1945, they lived in primitive, at times
desperate conditions. Only 24 out of an original 65 were eventually brought back to
Australia in October, l945. Many had drowned or been shot dead as they were being
evacuated from Singapore when the Japanese forces captured it. Others died of
malnutrition and illness in the prison camps. Supplies sent to them by the Red Cross,
including food and necessary medicines, were almost always withheld by their captors.
The writer, John Misto, wanted to make Australians aware of the heroism of these
nurses. He believed that it was disgraceful that, fifty years after that war had ended,
Australia had still not set up any memorial to its army nurses, even though many of the
Australian troops owed their lives to their care. Misto handed over all the prize money he
won with this play in l995 to the fund to build such a memorial.
Source: http://hsc.csu.edu.au/english/standard/language/elect2/shoehorn/hist.html
‘The Unacknowledged’
• Before reading and analysing the play, read
Jane McCarthy’s preface, ‘The
Unacknowledged’, as a class
• Extract key points from the preface that may
be used later on when analysing themes,
language, and their exploration of meaning
and context
Act One | Scene One
• Opening image of Bridie standing “at complete attention”, reenacting the bow performed to Japanese POW camp guards “in
a spotlight”
• This image of submission and powerlessness reinforces how her
war-time memories remain ever-present over 50 years on
• Bridie’s anecdotal dialogue reveals that the “us” she refers to the imprisoned women after Singapore’s fall - would stand
bowing “for hours…in the middle of the jungle”
• This commences the audience’s visualisation of the context that
enforced Bridie’s submission and powerlessness. This
visualisation of the women’s imprisonment will gradually be built
up by Misto’s theatrical style and use of devices throughout the
play
• “…several 1940 posters for the Women’s Army” are projected onto a
screen
• Projected also are photographs of the women “disembarking at
Singapore…excited and quite happy”
• The projected images of war recruitment posters
and excited nurses arriving at Singapore are
juxtaposed against Bridie’s account of the city’s
invasion. The imagery in her dialogue provides mini
vignettes (short, impressionistic snapshots) of
war’s encroaching horror
• “Hundreds” of Japanese planes flying over “in V
formations”
• Hospitals “overflowing” after the bombs start
falling, “wounded people everywhere”
• Sailing away from Singapore, they “stood on
deck…and watched the city burn”
Misto’s Theatrical Style
• The play’s opening scene illustrates Misto’s use of projected images
and music, which he will also combine with voiceover, to support the
often highly emotional material that is represented in the characters’
journey through memory
• This stimulating theatrical style allows Misto to create images on
stage that convey the play’s cornerstone ideas and experiences of
suffering and mateship. The audience is also prompted to visualise a
range of distinctively visual scenes as a means of empathetically
connecting to the hardship being endured in the characters’ past and
present
• Throughout the play, the distinctively visual is harnessed to generate
an acute sense of ‘pathos’ in the character-audience relationship
PATHOS
The emotional appeal of what the composer is representing—the appeal
to the responders’ sympathies and imaginations
Requires the responder to identify with the composer/characters, and
often to imagine their experiences (especially of suffering)
Present in the values, beliefs, and understandings of the composer, as
represented through the meaning being conveyed
The power with which the composer’s message moves the responder to
a decision or action or state of enlightenment
Often relies on vivid, emotional, and sensory language