Dramatic Methods: Direct Address and Dual Narration
A Story Told from Two Sides
One of the defining structural choices in Dominic Cooke's stage adaptation of Noughts and Crosses is the decision to share narrative authority equally between the two protagonists. Sephy and Callum each step out of the dramatic action to address the audience directly in alternating monologues, and then step back into scenes that sometimes unfold in ways that contradict or complicate what they have just told us. This creates a layered experience: the audience watches the drama while simultaneously receiving two subjective, unreliable interpretations of it.
This structural device is worth understanding clearly before approaching questions about staging or design, because almost every practical choice in the play — from lighting to performer positioning — is shaped by the constant interplay between narration and dramatic action.
Dual narration in Cooke's adaptation gives equal narrative weight to Sephy (a Cross) and Callum (a nought). The audience receives both perspectives before and after scenes, making them active witnesses rather than passive spectators — a device with clear Brechtian dimensions.
Direct Address as a Staging Choice
Direct address requires specific staging decisions. When Sephy or Callum turns to narrate, a performer must decide where to stand, how to orient their body relative to the other actor or set pieces, and how to signal the shift from character-in-scene to narrator. Typically, a director might bring the narrating performer downstage to a near-neutral position — perhaps centre stage or downstage right — while other performers freeze or fade into shadow behind them.
The lighting state for these narration moments is a critical design choice. A tight lighting special could isolate Sephy or Callum from the wider scene, suggesting their interiority even while they face outwards. Alternatively, a gobo wash broken across the stage floor might suggest a fractured or contested world around the narrator.
Bertolt Brecht argued that theatre should prevent audiences from losing themselves in emotional identification. The narrator figure — someone who steps outside the story to comment on it — is one of Brecht's most recognisable devices, used to remind the audience that they are watching a constructed account of events. In Noughts and Crosses, the dual narrators perform a similar function: they prevent the audience from simply siding with one character. Each time Sephy frames a scene, we are primed for her perspective; when Callum then narrates, we are forced to revise our reading. This productive discomfort is political: the play wants the audience to interrogate which perspective they instinctively trust, and why.
A key staging question is whether the performers playing Sephy and Callum should break the fourth wall fully — making direct eye contact with individual audience members — or whether they should address a general mid-distance point above the audience's heads. The more confrontational the production's political intent, the more likely the director will want full eye contact. This makes the audience complicit, not comfortable.
News Bulletins and Broadcast Voiceovers
Alongside the narrators, Cooke's text uses news bulletins and broadcast voiceovers as soundscape elements that build the alternate Britain. These are moments of non-diegetic — or at least quasi-diegetic — sound: the audience hears official voices presenting the world as Cross society sees it. When a protest or arrest is reported in clipped, authoritative tones, the contrast with what we have just seen in the intimate Sephy/Callum scenes creates irony. The sound designer might use a slightly distorted radio texture, a newsreader's RP (received pronunciation) accent contrasted with the warmer tones of the narrators, or a fading-in sound cue that bleeds across a lighting transition to mark a shift in time.
News bulletins in the play are not neutral information — they are the voice of the Cross state. A sound designer using a crisp, over-amplified broadcast voice against a dimming general lighting wash can signal to the audience that what is about to be described is a constructed narrative, not objective truth.
Letters and Subtext
Letters function as another layer of direct communication in the play, most movingly in Callum's final letter to Sephy. A letter read aloud on stage occupies a strange dual space: it is private communication made public. A performer might choose to stand very still at this moment, voice low and controlled, the proxemics of their isolation emphasised by a bare, dark stage. The absence of other performers signals that this is the most unmediated access the audience has had to Callum's inner life.
Subtext in these narrated passages is crucial. When Callum tells the audience one thing and then behaves differently in a scene, the gap between word and action carries emotional weight. A skilled performer playing Callum should allow that gap to be visible — not by over-signalling it with knowing looks, but by maintaining a specific, inward quality to their narration that suggests containment and control. The audience registers what is held back.
A common error in exam answers is to describe the narrators' speeches as soliloquies — internal thoughts overheard by the audience. This misses the Brechtian dimension entirely. The narrators in Noughts and Crosses are not thinking aloud: they are actively addressing, even pleading with, the audience as witnesses. This changes the staging implications significantly. A soliloquy tends to be staged with the performer slightly turned away or looking inward; a direct address monologue requires the performer to orient fully towards the audience, blocking themselves to maximise engagement rather than privacy. The difference matters in an exam answer because it changes the specific vocal and physical choices a performer would make.
Episodic Structure and Time-Jumps
Cooke's adaptation compresses the novel's timeline into roughly two acts, using episodic time-jumps rather than continuous realistic action. Each jump is marked by a shift in light and sound: a blackout or cross-fade that signals a change in location or time. This episodic structure means the designer must build a visual and aural language for time and place shifts that the audience can read quickly. Consistent lighting cues tied to particular spaces — for instance, a warm amber wash for the beach scenes, a colder blue for the school — help audiences navigate the jumps without confusion.