Brandon BedoreTheatre 101"In the Forest, She Grew Fangs" by Stephen Spotswood and "Trifles" by Susan Glaspell both, despite having a little over a hundred years of separation, share some similarities in form, genre, and style. Due to this separation there are naturally many differences as well especially in style seeing as that is highly unique to every playwright. The main separation is a temporal one seeing as "Trifles" was written in the early 1900's and "In the Forest, She Grew Fangs" was written extremely recently. Despite the differences, both playwrights have managed to create wonderful pieces of theatre. Firstly, we will analyze form.The first comparisons of form can be made almost as soon as you look at both scripts. Firstly, "Trifles" was based on a real crime scene report that Glaspell felt strongly about just as "In the Forest, She Grew Fangs" is based loosely on the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood which can be seen in the titles of each scene as well as the story Ruth tells about the Elk lake horror. Both dramatists used previously existing stories to begin the formation of their plays. Next, both plays have very little description of their main characters aside from physical attributes. This is seen by Glaspell's description of Mrs. Hale as be a larger woman and Spotswood's description of Lucy as being extremely plain. They reveal more about them later on through dialogue and interactions rather than just telling us up front in the initial character description. Although in form they do have a few similarities on the whole they are very different."In the Forest, She Grew Fangs" uses more monologue length speech with instances of short conversation whereas "Trifles" uses entirely conversational dialogue to further the plot. This creates an entirely different feel when it is read because in "Trifles" the characters each speak rather short lines generally under two sentences in length while in "In the Forest, She Grew Fangs" we mostly see full paragraphs from one character describing their thoughts and feelings. Next is the difference in setting and the level of detail that differs between each play. "Trifles" has an extremely detailed and specific set almost as if Glaspell wanted to recreate the crime scene she'd based her play on. Spotswood, however, leaves his set open to creative imagination so open in fact a set or specific directions are hardly necessary unlike in "Trifles" where the set and stage directions are crucial to the story. The last difference I noticed is the use of scene separation that Spotswood uses that Glaspell does not. Throughout the entire arc of events in "Trifles" there is only one scene. "In the Forest, She Grew Fangs" we see multiple scenes focusing on specific characters and each of these broken scenes combine to complete the entire story arc. The differences and similarities in form also transfer to genre as well.The plays each share a similar genre, but the specific type varies. For instance, both plays are murder mysteries with suspenseful elements, but "Trifles" is more of a murder solving play while "In the Forest, She Grew Fangs" is watching the murderer before and during the murders rather than analyzing the crime scene like the aforementioned play. The genres each playwright chose created feelings of suspense using different tactics as well as their styles of writing.The writing styles of each dramatist is a unique thing, but Spotswood and Glaspell do share some similarities. Each writes their dialogues so there is a separation between characters. Glaspell does this by having the men and women rarely interact to show the inequalities between the sexes. Spotswood separates Lucy from most of the characters until she is turned into the beast because at that moment she goes from being a nobody to becoming a powerful instrument of death. Spotswood also has them separated to keep focus on the information the character is delivering to us because it is a glimpse into the private thoughts and feelings of the character. Next, both writers use a style of dialogue that matches normal conversational patterns. For example, the lines the characters speak aren't long and full of strange vocabulary like a Shakespearian dialogue. Naturally there are going to be more differences in style than similarities, but even over the century gap continuity can be found. The most obvious difference is the word choice. Where Glaspell is using the vernacular of a small farm town in Iowa in the early 1900s, Spotswood uses 21st century language and makes references to pop culture items such as High Definition television quality and Google. Glaspell also does not swear in her play where Spotswood, keeping with modern day language especially teenage vernacular, is very free with his use of curses. Another unique aspect of "In the Forest, She Grew Fangs" is the use of onomatopoeia. When Ruth has her heart attack as she tells us of her concerns for Lucy, we simultaneously hear Lucy describing the erratic heartbeat of Ruth. Having only read this play and not heard it I can't accurately describe why Spotswood made this choice, but I imagine it would add a sense of urgency and suspense. Another way Spotswood creates a sense of building urgency is in Scene 15 where Lucy recalls the smell of Jenny and the sound of her voice repeating her name in short list like sentences. This may be off base from Spotswood's idea, but I interpreted this scene as an almost sexual experience for Lucy. The concise sensory details along with the name repetition all lead up to the climax, if you will, of the scene finally ending with the ellipses on the last three lines Lucy speaks that end in a silence. Where Glaspell uses her characters to create the story Spotswood uses his dialogue to also act as memories, dreams, and past events. He puts dialogue in parentheses and in the beginning notes that the only important thing about the dialogue in parentheses is that they are transmitted to the audience, he doesn't care how just so long as it is done. This goes along with his open-ended setting and minimalistic stage directions to show his openness to creative license. Glaspell does not encourage as much freedom in her play. Being a crime scene she sets it precisely the way it must be to follow the story, it is based on and to allow for the characters to find the evidence as she has written. Glaspell believed more in specific scenery, stage direction, and the overall plot line to carry her vision rather than what Spotswood does, but clearly each have created, in my opinion, two masterpieces.Glaspell, Susan. Trifles.Spotswood, Stephen.In the Forest, She Grew Fangs.