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• Leave Taking is written as a play and intended to be performed.

• It is a realist play, which means it focuses on the everyday lives of ordinary people.

• The narrative of the play is linear, which means all the scenes are presented in chronological order.

• The author, Winsome Pinnock, uses a range of language and dramatic features to fully develop characterisation.

Remember

It is important to talk about the effects of language and dramatic techniques, as well as identifying them.

Leave Taking is a play. It can also be referred to as a drama. It is intended to be performed, not just read.

A play can use time very effectively.

• Changes in sound and lighting can show a move from day to night without any description or dialogue.
• A moment can be frozen on stage and the audience can see lots of details simultaneously, without the need for lots of written description.
• Actors can control the pace of the dialogue, whereas a reader of a novel can read as slowly or as quickly as they want.
• A play can also establish many aspects of a character quickly through their costume and facial expressions.

Leave Taking is a realist play, which shows most of the action happening in real time to ordinary people. Its messages are mostly presented through characterisation, instead of a series of inciting incidents.

Leave Taking could also be categorised as a domestic drama.

There are just two stage settings in Leave Taking:

1. Mai’s bedsit
2. Enid’s living room.

There will be visual similarities between the two settings, as both are apartments in 1980s London. However, Pinnock uses stage directions to signal clear differences between the two settings. Mai’s bedsit is "very messy" with "playing cards scattered all over". In contrast, our first impression of Enid’s home in Scene Two shows Enid "cleaning up, scrubbing at the floor".

The play moves back and forth between the two settings, with each one having a symbolic power. Mai’s home represents liveliness, creativity and freedom, whereas Enid’s home represents order, hard work and respect. It is not surprising to the audience when Del moves to Mai’s as, despite her attitude in Scene One, it is clearly somewhere where she feels more ‘at home’.

Lighting is also important to both settings. Some scenes are in partial darkness, symbolising grief or loss, which is especially evident after Enid’s mother dies.

Even though there are many allusions to Jamaica and the Caribbean, there are no scenes set there. This keeps the audience grounded in the reality of the London setting and means that our judgements about life in Jamaica are limited to what the characters say.

Leave Taking is split into eight scenes. There is no division into acts which enhances the realist feel of the play.

Pinnock does not specify an interval, but most productions place it after Scene Four after Enid reflects on her mother's death, inviting a pause for audience reflection. Scene Five takes place a few weeks later.

Changes between scenes are shown through changes in setting, lighting and character positioning.

There are temporal elisions where events happen off-stage, for example when Brod wakes up at Mai’s the night after an argument with Enid. Characters who never appear on stage, such as the Pastor and Enid’s sister Cynthia, are used to move the plot forward.

The narrative is linear, with no flashbacks. This enhances the realism of the play.

Leave Taking uses different aspects of language to convey a range of messages.

All characters use patois throughout the play, sometimes for emphasis or to assert their identity. An example is Brod’s description of another Jamaican migrant as:

Man mad walk street no shoes, no socks, shirt open down to him navel.

Patois is sometimes used in the play to show strong emotions in a character. Additionally, it gives the characters more ways of expressing themselves than in Standard English.

Actors and directors can interpret the lines of the play in many ways. For some lines, the playwright will carefully shape the tone so that their intentions remain clear. This line, from Del, is a good example:

Here we go again. I'll make breakfast.

The first sentence suggests a dismissive tone, maybe even with Del rolling her eyes. The second sentence tells us that Del is more amused than angry, as she then takes responsibility for a caring action. This use of tone gives complexity to Del’s character and shapes the audience’s impression of this moment.

Stage directions are another tool for playwrights to use to make sure that their vision of the play is clear to actors and directors.

Most of the stage directions in Leave Taking are practical, showing when a character should enter, or when they should pick up a prop. At other times, they add meaning to the words being spoken.

For example, the stage direction "It isn't easy for Enid to say what she has to say" gives the actor and director clear instructions about how carefully Enid’s next line should be delivered and how difficult she is finding the conversation.

Pinnock indicates where there should be short pauses in the dialogue too. For example, in Del's line:

I'll get dressed. (Beat.) I couldn't sleep.

The "beat" is a short pause which suggests a change of attitude or a shift to a different type of conversation. Pinnock uses this stage direction at key moments throughout the play.

When writing about the language of a play, it helps to look at a small extract first.

• Read the extract more than once to make sure you have fully understood it.

• When you are reading the extract, highlight key words and short phrases that you think you could explain the effect of.

• Think about similar examples of language elsewhere in the play.

Writing your ideas about language down in short sentences or on a mind map can help your revision.

The words written by the playwright form the foundation for how the director and actor interpret the text, as well as the choices made for lighting, costume, scenery, and other technical elements.

Three of the most important aspects of dramatising a play are casting, performance and staging.

One of the first jobs for the director of a play is to choose a cast. Pinnock is imprecise about how her characters look, only giving clues about their ages, relationships, and a few items they have in their homes. This gives the director more freedom when casting and can be helpful if, for example, they want to update the setting from the 1980s to the present day.

Leave Taking has an ensemble cast, which means that the cast members must work well together and be clear about their characters’ relationships with one another as they have roughly equal amounts of time onstage They must be able to convey a range of emotions, especially Del and Enid, who change the most.

Question

Look at these three images from different productions and rehearsals of Leave Taking. Which characters do you think are in each image and why?

In rehearsals, the director and actors will look closely at language and stage directions. They will build up a sense of how they should each move around the stage, and their tone of voice. They will also have to be clear on what motivates their character and how they interact with others. The key themes of the play will be considered.

Pinnock includes clear instructions about specific props, pauses and changes in lighting. The rest is left to the interpretation of the director.

The play takes place mostly in real time and in two similar locations. Both settings are realistic and allow space for characters to move around and have engaging conversations. The most detailed information is the description of Mai’s bedsit at the start of the play. This tells us a lot about Mai’s character, but it also gives the audience an idea of why Enid is there, and why Del and Viv do not take Mai seriously at first.

Pinnock does not give us specific details on most of the characters’ costumes, which can help modern-day directors reimagine the play for a new audience. Alternatively, using costumes that would be typical in the 1980s can help the audience understand that the play is an older text, set in a different time and with a contemporary context.

Test your knowledge of the language, structure and form of Leave Taking by taking this multiple-choice quiz.