According to Stella Adler, theatre 'is a spiritual and social x-ray of its time.' Discuss, in relation to 2 or more plays you have studied.

Due to the broadness of this question, there are a lot of approaches in how to answer it. It is important for students to understand what exactly the quote is saying and what the question is asking. Essentially, it is asking us how theatre operates within the contextual framework it is created in. However, the scope must still be narrowed down. The student should take a particular strand of their plays to focus in on and continually relate it to the "spiritual and social" aspects it reveals. Some suitable and simple answers could include: what relationships onstage reveal about that era's understanding of gender roles and power, how/if the central themes of the plays are reflective or representative of the time they were created in, and so on.Personally, I would answer this question using Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts and Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot, as they were both plays that caused a huge disruption in the artistic and even public world, as they explored what is considered appropriate to stage. Understanding why they caused such a shift in the artistic world also gives us an insight into the artistic world that it is shifting away from. When engaging with the quote, I believe understanding these reasons give way to the most rewarding analysis, as it allows for a productive exploration of the plays on a close-reading level while also being related to a much broader and general question. If I were to continue answering the question, I would discuss Ibsen's Naturalism and Beckett's Absurdism and his manipulation of time, and the effects this had on the audience.