Night, Mother

I Think that the Major Dramatic Question of the play would have to be something more thought provoking than "Will Jesse Kill Herself?" Of course, from an audience's standpoint, it is what they are wondering. But, because Jesse does choose to take her life does not mean that the final conversation with her mother was for nothing. I think a more effective question would be "will Jesse and her mother reconnect?". Evidence in the text states that they have become strangers under the same roof. Jesse has grown complacent in her own skin, while her mother is living a controlling yet dependent mirage of a pleasent life. Their relationship has not been honest. I think that through this final conversation and even in Jesse's death, they have reached a genuine understanding of eachother, outside of the seemingly tragic circumstances.

A drawback of choosing such a question is the challenge it presents when trying to effectively communicate this question to an audience. This is not a goal of a MDQ, but I think that if the acting was presented with enough care to construct the guts of the relationship between Jesse and her mother, the audience wouldn't walk away feeling like they had seen such a tragedy. Wrather that they witnessed a reunion of two separated people.