The Wild Duck - Journal 1

“Visual action can be as important on the stage as speech.” How far do you agree with this claim? In you answer you should refer to two or three plays you have studied.

I would agree to this claim to a pretty large extent, theater in itself is a visual medium, the audience can the actions taken by individual characters and these movements can inform the plot, characters and even themes. Oedipus the King and The Wild Duck use stage directions of differing magnitudes to achieve separate but substantial effects.
In The Wild Duck, Ibsen's stage directions are very detailed, fully describing both the settings in which the play takes place and almost every action and word spoken by the characters. This excessive direction would, in a theater, give the director and actors very little ability to change their portrayals of the characters and themes and force them to stick to an authentic version of Ibsen's vision. Within the play, especially when reading it, the stage directions serve to create a more fleshed out and detailed scene for the audience to connect with. The directions allow for greater depth in the portrayal of Ibsen's ideas. It is as if you are looking in on an actual family with lives removed from the play rather than watching actors stand and speak with little motion or backdrop.
Oedipus the King is more traditional in regards to the use of stage directions. They are sparse and simplistic and portray mostly the entrances and exits with few descriptions of specific character actions. It is in these actions that I believe we can find significance, for Sophocles to have included them they must of held some sort of importance. An example of this is when Oedipus is questioning a messenger and he references Laius, here the stage directions indicate that "Jocasta turns sharply". This simple action stands out in a play that has little depicted action within it and thus gains importance. Jocasta has not been shown to have any knowledge of the blood relations between herself and Oedipus and here, in the visual action upon the stage, it is suggested the possibility has dawned on her and from this point her attitude toward the whole investigation changes.