Shakespeare’s Coriolanus is still relevant to a contemporary audience

(I had started writing an essay in which wasn't part of the final coursework needed for this unit but thought i was post it as it talks about some interesting factors of the play.)

In this essay I am going to discuss how our performance of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus is relevant to a contemporary audience.

Throughout Coriolanus you see three contrasting political groups journey through a struggle for power and survival, The Romans, The Volchsians and The Rebels. Each group have fought to gain their power and place in a broken, post apocalyptic world and each want the chance to overrule Coriolanus. This is the story line of our version of Coriolanus at it's simplest and yet you can see already that there are common themes in which a contemporary audience would be able to relate to or understand on a general level.

A contemporary audience would be aware and often educated about moments in history such as World war 1, World war 2, the ongoing conflict is Gaza, the cold war etc. This knowledge would help a contemporary audience begin to understand the themes of Coriolanus such as loyalty, friendship, group mentality and hierarchy as they have seen from history how power and greed can lead to conflict or the basic ins and outs of how a war is played out and the aftermath. The idea that Coriolanus highlights the brutality of war makes the play still relevant today as contention is an ongoing problem in society and shouldn’t be forgotten.

Not only would a contemporary audience be able to link Coriolanus to famous moments in the past but would also be able to link themes to the present. Every audience member at some point in their lives may have struggled with conflict, found friendship, experienced or seen the effect of a group like mentality. In fact all audience members are surviving on a daily in the world we live in today. So the themes in this play still very much relate to a contemporary audience, they are just magnified to a larger, global scale.

For example, if you look at Coriolanus and his mother Volumnia in the play you can see a disjointed, difunctional relationship where Volumnia manipulates the Coriolanus brothers and is extremely proud of the people which they have killed. Some may believe this situation is entirely un relate able for the audience, as it is unlikely that anyone would have been forced to kill by their mother however, you can see small similarity's in which an audience member may be able to relate to, like a friendship where you have felt over powered or a situation where you have been made do something without your willingness or control. These are the underlying feelings in which an audience member could understand which leads them to emphasise with the characters. The problems and themes I have been discussing are ongoing and will always exist within the world as we are human and it is in human nature to experience struggle or sin, the fact that these problems are on going means the plays relevance is on going because Coriolanus speaks about universal issues.

In addition to this, overall our production of Coriolanus is contemporary as we have used various forms of multi media such as, video projection, lighting and sound effects this creates a sense of modernity. The 21^st century audience live in a technological age and therefor will be able to identify with the world and setting better if they see things in which are normal to them. Perhaps If we were to have set our play in ancient Rome and made the decision to use no sound effects, projections and minimal lighting the audience may feel even more detached from their normal world and therefor may have been less able to relate to the play.