Anonymous - Mankind

Everyman was on our reading for Theorizing, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to read a couple more morality plays (why not, right?). I grabbed an anthology with three; Everyman, Mankind, and Mundus Et Infans.

Mankind was up first. Despite being attributed to somewhere 1400-1600 England, I was struck by just how modern the evil characters come across. Nought, Newguise and Nowadays, along with Mischeif, are not at all unlike the "bad" characters we still see in movies today. I was also surprised, given the religious attachments of Moral Plays, at the vulgarity of their actions. They were no less crude than some of Shakespeare's base characters, with no lack of penis jokes. The other thing that sort of stood out was the shock factor of these characters; almost like pre-Artaud shock. I don't know a lot about his influence, but for some reason reading this I thought of him.

Judith Thompson - Palace of the End

I was searching the RADA Library, and was pleasantly surprised to see two Canadian Playwrights in good supply; Judith Thompson, and Michel Tremblay. I always love Thompson's work, and was feeling the need for her words...so picked up Palace Of The End, one of her newer plays.

It consists of 3 monologues, adding up characters on stage, so that even once they are "gone" they remain in view. It builds from images of a young female American Soldier, to a British Scientist, to an older Iraqui woman. We are taken through each of their stories; beginning in the typical poetic, disjointed style Thompson is known for with the American Soldier. The language solidifies more, with bursts of frenzy, but mainly rational sounding debate with the British Scientist. Ths sound is still poetic, broken, but has moved beyond the Thompson one might expect. Finally, the Iraqui woman, whose heartbreaking tale of defiance in the face of tyranny wrenched my gut, is written in beautiful prose. Calm, collected, smooth. The injustice of each person's acts is directly related to the disjunction in their speech.

Thompson always puts her audience in a place of discomfort; not from graphic things happening necessarily, but from the people she creates, and the things they do to one another and those around them. These characters are frighteningly close to people we know and see every day.

This is not an easy play to read, and would be an even harder play to watch. For good reason.

Neil LaBute - fat pig

What awful people. The characters in this play are horrible, shallow, self-centered and judgemental. With the exception of Helen, who comes across as really genuine, and honestly seeking connection with someone. Jeannie and Carter specifically call to mind those terrible, juvenile, people we all have encountered at some point in our lives; so insecure in themselves that they ridicule others. And though we have some hope for Tom's ability to connect with Helen, looking beyond physical and social "rules" eventually even he fails.

I was really angry at the end of this play; at Tom for doing what he does. At Helen for sitting there taking it.

But grateful to LaBute for facing the subject. I only wish he had managed to not have his character succumb; I was left feeling hopeless for our consumer culture, that we will never break free from these false idols and obsessions with meeting certain ideals.

Luigi Pirandello - Absolutely! (perhaps)

Oh. My. Goodness. I loved this play. The conversation of the characters, fixated on the lives of others, caught up in meaningless obsession paralleled beautifully with today's celebrity obsession, despite the play being nearly 100 years old. I couldn't help but imagine ways to stage this, my mind was racing as I read the play. The character Laudisi was hilarious trying to help the townspeople see the absurdity of trying to pin down "truth". This play presents a great opportunity to explore the ideas of watching others, judgement, and truth-seeking in a theatrical experience. I want to do more with this.

Why don't I read more Pirandello?

Shakespeare - Hamlet

Have read this one many times in the past as well, this time as required reading for Birkbeck Scene Study. I think my read this time was influenced by having just read Othello the day before, but i really felt the stagnancy of the pace in Hamlet's first acts this time around. Although much happens, the movement of the play is rather sustained until nearly the point when the Mousetrap is played, after which it spirals quickly.

Sort of fuelled by class discussion today as well, I began to think of where the climax is in the plot of hamlet. I almost feel that the play steadily rises at a crazy level of intensity until one moment; for me, the deaths at the end of the play are a denouement, the inevitable consequence of a decision. The climax, then, is the moment when Hamlet finally reasons with himself to the decision to kill Claudius. From here, the tension between action and inaction is imbalanced, moving swiftly from one action to the next.

Eugene Ionesco - The Chairs

this is a second-read for me while I am trying to nail down the perfect play (!) for my performance-based dissertation. I have an affinity for the absurdists, which in readinig this blog you have likely picked up on. I really love theatre that can be entertaining, frightening, fast, slow, intellectual and bawdy all at the same time.

The frenzy of this play is unreal, despite only 2 "real" characters. The sense of unrecognized despair really stood out; The Old Couple are desperately searching to assign meaning to their lives, actualized through ambition..."you could have been a General" and many other fabulous lines. They are limited through their need for acceptance by the crowd. The Emperor adds a layer to this, as they try desperately to impress and please this arbitrary higher power. But they have no acknowledgement of this absurd state.

Something else that stood out to me was how infantilized the old man is through the play. This rang in simiilarity to the end of another Ionesco play, The Lesson. Going to do some reserch to see if anyone has published on the subject of Ionesco's men as young children.

This stands out as a potential choice. But part of me still feels a strong affinity to Kane......still a month or so before I need to discuss my choice. Keep reading!

image: Public art, couldn't attribute the artist, but found here - http://weburbanist.com/2009/04/13/the-art-of-architecture-10-incredible-installations/?ref=search

Shakespeare - Othello

I have read this many times, for various purposes. It has always stood out to me as one of my favourite of the Bard's plays, simply because of its focus on jealousy and the result of assumption. This time what really stood out was the pace; while some plays take awhile for things to happen, in Othello the events fly by (despite the play's length) and the audience too feels swept away by the lies and deceit, until the moment Desdemona is killed. From here one almost feels suspended in time and the moments take gut-wrenching years, while Othello learns of the error in his ways.

Also really apparent to me this time was the abundance of crowded feet and female endings in the metre, along with the seamless transition between verse and prose as Iago goes from spinning his web to trying to maintain his cover. This is likely influenced by all the Berry I have been reading, but it stood out nonetheless.

Sarah Kane - Blasted

"No God. No Father Christmas. No Fairies. No Narnia. No fucking nothing." And yet in a twisted way, what remains is hope.

This play is brilliant. Beginning with a "normal" setting of two real people, in a real place, it quickly departs normalcy and drives ever toward the absurd. Yet strangely the events and relationships get starkly more real, despite the world almost literally falling apart around the characters. The use of our most base human desires and needs as tools to demonstrate our animalism is not shocking, but truthful; in fact the ability of the characters to abuse one another as they do shows us just how civilized we really are (not).

Kane's language appears sparse on the page but is fiery beyond the imagination, with remarkably few words to incite such images of violence. Not simply violence of action, but violence of spirit.

The surreal nature of the play causes the actions of these characters to become more than they are on the surface; somehow we aren't shocked by the sex because it takes on not the act of sex itself, but the impregnation of the disease of thought in us all in today's media-saturated society. Layers upon layers of shit sliding down hill.

Bertolt Brecht - Antigone

I have felt a connection to the story of Antigone for some time. At her core, Antigone is a woman who does what she ought to and not what she is told by convention; her defiance of expectation to do what she thinks is right echoes through later heroines in theatre history. And she stays with this choice, even when offered the opportunity to declaim her actions and save her life.

Brecht's interpretation, translated by Judith Molina, is an interesting update of the story. Brecht focuses on the politics of the story; contrasting the Elders' blind faith in Kreon with Antigone's action to honour her brother. For me, this breezes over the important philosophical argument, to reach the political argument. Clearly this is influenced by Brecht's views on the role of theatre, and also the time he is writing for. But for me the more important piece of Antigone's development is that she will not renounce what she believes in, even if given the chance to live.

This has made me want to re-read the Sophoclean original....with some ideas.

image: Antigone by Albert Toft (1907)

Samuel Beckett: Radio Plays

In the edition of Play I picked up, there were also two short radio plays included: Words and Music, and Cascando.

In both of these, the music becomes a character, arguably the impelling agent in the action, moving things forward. The voices are silly, lost, repetetive, and only the music pushes them forward.

Samuel Beckett - Play

I am a huge Beckett fan. Seeing this on the reading list (assigned for Theorizing the Contemporary) made me quite excited, as it was a piece of Beckett I hadn't encountered before.

Stark. Empty, but filled with 3 people, 3 objects, 3 faces, 3 voices. The sense of detachment, and an acidic take on human attempts at connection are what stood out for me. Hope is absent when we rely on other people.

Interestingly it is 2 women and 1 man. Not 100% decided on what to take from this. All 3 are equally bad, though W1 seems to have been wronged....her actions quickly eliminate her potential as protagonist.

There are no heroes.

image; Alan Rickman in a 2001 production of Play

Aeschylus - The Oresteia

Required reading for Scene Study at Birkbeck. This is split into 3 parts, developing the line of the same family, but each could stand on its own. My thoughts:

Aegamemnon
- pain and sacrifice are major themes. Also the "truth", and what this is.
- women are portrayed in very specific roles:
1. Innocence - Iphigenia, who is eventually killed as sacrifice
2. Whore - Helen (of Troy) who causes the war, out of which all events ensue
3. Manly - Clytemnestra, in this play is stoic, the word Manly is used to describe her as she acts in society without her husband.
4. Servant - Cassandra

- the imagery of lions stands out

Choephori
- vengeance
- family (what is family? What are the ties of family?)
- grief
- major images are to do with snakes, specifically Clytemnestra's dream

The Eumenedies
- builds on the previous, with a focus on duty & responsibility

Overall the women are what really stood out to me...The story itself is terrible, and a sad story of betrayal and the demise of a family.

image: Martha Graham as Clytemnestra (dancer) in 1958

Sarah Kane - Psychosis 4.48

This play really grabbed my attention. I happened upon it after several tutors talking about Sarah Kane's work, and me realizing that I hadn't even heard of this woman. So I popped into the library, and this title stood out at me.

The language is beautiful; savagely beautiful and abrasive. Structurally I liked that it isn't completely clear who is speaking immediately, but that a clear character emerges quite quickly. Similarly the movement from individual, poetic language into 2-handed scenes really appealed to me. I couldn't help but consider options for how to bring this to the stage, how one might deal with the pages of heightened inner-monologue without being pitched too high for the full show. Or should it be?

One of the structural ideas of feminist theatre is that there can be multiple climaxes in a piece, rather than following the Aristotelian ideal. This play nearly felt like several continual climaxes, without anything more than a few lines comedown before the next fever pitch.

I don't know yet what I will do with this. But I suspect I will be drawn back to it.