nt of spectacle used in the play to engage the audiences interest. At the end of a scene entitled Leo, two tap dancers are used to symbolically show the formation of the Wheat Pool in 1924:Man enters. Starts to tap, then realizes he has only one shoe on. Girl enters-same thing but missing shoe on opposite foot to Mans. Idea strikes. If they tap together, the alternate shoes will make it sound as if one person was tapping. The dance goes from slow and tentative to frenzied ending with the old-fashioned theatrical tam-ta-ta-tam-tamtan-tam. They finally turn their backs to the audience, and their two T-shirts together make up the following message:WH EATPO OL19 24By using dance, a spectacle element, during this crucial scene, the audience is forced to pay attention to the importance of the scene.Paper Wheat relies heavily on comedy to captivate the audience. Comedy is a very alluring genre. If you can make an audience laugh then you can keep their attention. So the key is to find out what will make your audience laugh and then use it to entertain them. Paper Wheat does this quite well on several occasions. In Act I, the second scene is entitled Welcome to Saskatchewan. In this scene, the audience is introduced to the comedy of the play when Vasil, an immigrant, is taken advantage of by a local shop owner, John Pearson. The audience is kept laughing as the exchange between the two men progresses half in English and half in a gibberish form of Ukrainian. Here we see that the comedy throughout the play will focus on making fun of immigrants. Another scene entitled Breaking the Plow illustrates this point. Sean, an Irishman who has recently immigrated, delivers a hilarious monologue in which he lovingly coaxes his oxen, and then berates them for not plowing a straight line. He repeatedly refers to them as Protestants, as this is the worst thing he can think of to call them!There are many different elements that can be use...
