Prompt 1-- "Overtones"

First, Gerstenberg states in the opening stage directions that “Harriet never sees Hetty, never talks to her but rather thinks aloud looking into space. Hetty, however, looks at Harriet, talks intently and shadows her continually. The same is true of Margaret and Maggie.”  This actually creates some interesting questions about what is actually happening in a world where Hetty and Maggie are not corporeal creatures.  After all, the opening scene is just Hetty and Harriet speaking to each other; would an observer who could not see Hetty just see Harriet’s responses? Would he see Harriet acting out both sides of the conversation? Is Harriet’s inner dialogue all in her head? If so, is she just staring vacantly while her mind undergoes its schismatic crisis?  Perhaps none of this is relevant, as, for the purposes of this play, we do see Harriet and Hetty converse, but I still find it very interesting.  Also, Hetty and Maggie can converse to each other sometimes, which has really interesting implications—is their collective unconscious so powerful that they are essentially telepathic?  My interpretation is that Hetty and Maggie can hear each other when they want to be heard, like when the stage directions say “(to Hetty)” or “(to Maggie),” but they cannot hear each other when it is unspecified, as the characters are just speaking their basic thoughts, such as “I’m so hungry.”  I am not certain, but I believe that this rule fills many on the exceptions of whether or not the primitive selves can speak to each other.  This is entirely reliant on the playwright’s helpful stage directions noting to whom each line is spoken; this information is obviously not available to the audience, so it is up to the director and actors to make sure that these distinctions are clear.  Still, though, in my opinion, it is not very difficult to tell who is being spoken to in any moment; the rules of these characters’ existence seem pretty clear to me, and I do not think it would be too complicated to recreate it for an audience.