TEAM Analysis of "Things I Know to be True"

 Tension- In this amazing piece of art, tension is felt and seen in almost every scene of the play. Rosie's sudden return was unexpected and because of that, her family had mixed feelings as to what exactly was wrong. Fran (her mother) has a very strong and no-nonsense personality, she deals with issues in ways that she believes would help her children but does not care about hurting them in the process, She is very sharply mouthed, and as we see her children all go through their respective life scenarios, her personality brings out the tension as sometimes her children tend to also be sharply mouthed like Pip. As they have grown older, Fran and her husband Bob realize that their kids might not be as easy to control as before. They were starting to do things that were not ordinary but masked their issues and problems so everything seemed fine. But when these issues and problems were let out, they had festered for too long and everyone began to feel the tension.

Emotion- In "Things I Know to be True" the various amount of emotion shown is incredible. It whether it was pain, love, lust, or even anger, these emotions was broken down even more into different types. For example, the pain Pip went through when her mother pulled out her hair is diffferent from the type of pain Mark felt having to hide his sexuality for 20 years. Another one is love, the love Rosie had for her supposed "man of her dreams" is different from the love Fran for her children, and how these different emotions were expressed was jaw dropping. The emotion shown by each character to accompanied the story telling, and at some times carried it and took it to new heights. Raging emotions build tension and the way the characters expressed they're anger like Pip and Fran, or they're pain like Rosie and Mark, it helped to understand the story more and fit perfectly witht the theme.

Atmosphere- There were multiple atmospheres at the begining of the play but I personally think it all morphed into one towards the end. At the start when Rosie came home, it seemed like we were viewing the home of a happy family that stay in tough and love each other so much. But sooner rather than later we see the cracks in the family start to show, and the atmospehere becomes very tense and melancholy, especially in the fight with Fran and Pip. As wach sibling began to release their emotions and come out to their true selves, the tension amplified and changed the atmosphere even more into an uncomfortable argumentative feeling. The atmosphere in the scene that Mark came out to his parents and Rosie, was cold, lonesome, brutal and outlandish. 

Meaning- Diving into the meaning of this play would be very hard, especially as it could be seen from different perspectives. Where I might try and look at the events of the play from Fran's point of view, it eould vary from who someone woulf view it from Pip, Ben are Mark's point of view. I generally think the made message this play delivered was not all families seem to be as happy as they appear, and in delivering that message, they used a variety of new world problems and really realistic and emotional topics