Plays "Pressure Cooker" and "Dream Job"

I have been studying two plays. These are The Pressure cooker and Dream Jobs. The Pressure Cooker is written by Steve Skidmore and Steve Barlow and Dream Jobs is written by Graham Jones.Dream Jobs was set in 1979 were as The Pressure Cooker is a contempary play. Both the plays are set in non-specific locations in England. They are both set in comprehensive schools, but one scene in The Pressure Cooker is set in a house.In both plays most of the characters are of the same age.

They are teenagers.

There was only one character that wasn’t a teenager and that was Andrea’s mother in The Pressure Cooker. She is in her late thirty’s, early forty’s. Most of the characters in The Pressure Cooker are aiming quite high in life. Andrea wants to do well in life and go to Drama College. Graham couldn’t care less about his future and wants to go on the dole.

Dawn wants to do well as well. The girls in Dream Jobs are ambitious but will not fulfil their dreams. In both plays it talked about relationships.

In The Pressure Cooker communication is strained in Andrea’s house, she lives with her mother and brother, though because she is not close to them she has not got a good relationship with her family, even though her mother cares about her and her future as she wants her to do well like her brother. We know that she is not close to her mum as in the script she is anxious/worried about talking to her mum and sends a letter into an agony aunt in a problem page of a magazine.

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This tells us that she is troubled and feels that she cannot talk to her family or friends. Dawn lives with her parents.The play indicates that her parents do not care about her wellbeing as they allow their daughter to have parties. Her friends are always at her house so this tells us that she is quite popular. In their spare time the teenagers are always out socialising. This is the same as Dream Jobs as the girls are always out socialising with boys in their spare time. The girls mostly all have boyfriends and were talking about them throughout the play. In both the plays the area in which they are from seems to be of working/middle class.

This suggests that the characters are quite well off.The Pressure Cooker is a naturalistic play. This is because the effects happen in chronological order. In the play there is lighting effects and sound effects. The lighting effects are used throughout the production. There are sound effects at the beginning as music is played. In Dream Jobs there are quite a lot of dream sequences.

This means that the play has naturalistic elements within it. There are four dream sequences these are when the teenagers act like nurses, models, dancers and airhostesses. To signify those dreams there is lighting effects and sound effects used. Lighting effects introduce and conclude the dreams and the sound effects accompany the dreams.