Role playing in Blood Relations
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Playwright's often use "role-playing" in their drama's to express their themes and visions to their audience. In "Blood Relations", Sharon Pollock uses "role-playing" to give us a different view towards a murder case in 1892 involving a young woman named Lizzie Borden. In the introduction to the play, Pollock tells us that Lizzie was "accused, tried, and acquitted of axe-murdering her parents in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts" (684). As we read the play, "role-playing" plays a significant part in opening our eyes to several other issues that overshadowed the case during the time that it happened. By revealing these other issues to us, Pollock is not trying to prove Lizzie Borden's innocence. She is trying to help us formulate our own answer to the question, "Lizzie, did you?" (2.1.565).
During the play, many characters are used by Pollock to establish her interpretation of the events leading up to the murder's of Mr...