John Schumann's The Shoe-Horn Sonata

Distinctively visual texts are able to manipulate the emotions of the audience to influence the responses of a collective group.

John Misto, the person behind the play The Shoe-Horn Sonata, uses his distinctively visual text as a memorial for the Australian Army nurses who died in the war, as they were refused one by the government. “I do not have the power to build a memorial. So I wrote a play instead.” This drama illustrates the way the women were treated in the Japanese prisoner of war camps, during World War II through the two main characters Bridie – an Australian army nurse and Sheila – an English woman. The different dramatic techniques used in this play aid in the manipulation of the audience’s emotions and sway the preconceptions of the group. Misto utilises projected images and the emotive dialogue to create a vivid image in the viewer’s mind that is both distinctively visual and evokes emotions from the audience.
Misto is not the only author to have used this technique in his work, John Schumann’s I Was Only 19 is a song that also
Misto is able to do this by projecting images onto a screen in the background. “Projected onto the screen is a photograph of row upon row of captured British and Australian women bowing to the Japanese.” These images contribute to the creation of a physical, distinctively visual element in the drama. The confronting images shown forces the audience to reconsider their understanding of the prisoner of war camps in Japan. The audience begins to visualise the conditions the women faced and this leaves an impact on the viewer. Through this, Misto is able to convey his message to his audience through the distinctively visual images, not only projected on the screen, but shaped in the viewer