Dead body in a container by Susana Cook
Hirst, Damien. Mother and Child, Divided, 1993
Hirscht is reputed to be the richest living artist in the world. Most of his work relies in using animals as a metaphor for humans. I see his art as very consistent with the norm, relying more in signification and exploitation than in craft.
Mother and Child, Divided, consists of a cow and a calf each sliced in half, and put in a box full of formaldehyde solution. According to critics in this piece Hirst is exploring ideas of death. His artistic genius consists in ordering the death and cutting in half of a big amount of cows that will be exhibited in different parts of the world. The cut animals that Hirst presents in his exhibits usually begin to decay before the exhibit it’s over so they have to be replaced by new ones, making his art work a series of unnecessary deaths.
If the beauty of his craft would reside in the composition of the installation, a fake cow would do the trick. But the main part of his piece is that the cow is real, that it was killed and cut in half for the exhibit. So in this case the piece is a spectacle of cruelty and human supremacy over animals more than a piece of art in the aesthetic sense of the term.
Hirst explorations on death went onto bigger animals, in 2006 he exhibited a pickled shark. The piece was titled "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living". Hirst is inviting the audience to think about death. What is not clear is what is that he wants us to think about it. There are many thoughts we could have about death. The first one that comes to mind when watching his work is: the life or death of an animal doesn’t have the same value as the life and death of a human.
What interests me about this kind of art is the huge amount of meanings and significations that emanate from the piece and the way the art world decides to select the meanings in order to attribute value to a piece that ultimately reinforces and perpetrates the status quo and the constant exploitation and slavery of animals by humans. The selection of the artists that will reach fame is not innocent or arbitrary or based on talent.
Hirst has to overpass several regulations and laws in many countries in order to stage his work. The bans on British beef in Japan for example, stopped the cows at the airport in 2006. But every time he manages to bypass laws and regulations, the cows clear customs and the exhibit ends up taking place in very important museums around the world. This kind of work not only ends up getting all the necessary permissions and passports but it also gets highly rewarded.
Hirst is not the only artist torturing or killing animals as art work. The artist Marco Evaristti, for example, at Trapholt art museum in Denmark, put goldfish in a blender, and the visitors were given the option of pressing the “on” button. As a result many of the fish were of course liquidized. In August 2007 the artist from Costa Rica Guillermo Vargas featured a dog confined in a bare art gallery floor without food, water or bedding until it starved to death and after this exhibit he was chosen to represent his country at the Bienal centroamericana Honduras 2008. And the list goes on.
Why is it that humans are not a metaphor for humans? What would happen if Demain Hirst would exhibit the body of a human mother and her child cut in half in a box full of formaldehyde solution? What if we were invited to liquidized a fetus? What would happen if we were to trap a person in a gallery without food or water until she dies? The exhibits would certainly be banned, illegal and the artists would end up in jail. That would be considered murder. But killing an animal for artistic purposes is considered rebellious. It makes the artist respectable, filled with international recognition and rich.
Work cited:
Hirst, Damien. Mother and Child, Divided, 1993
Steel, GRP composites, glass, silicone sealants, cow, calf, formaldehyde solution; dimensions variable.
http://www.art-in-guelph.com/Pages/FishBlender.html
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Friday, April 09, 2010
Backwards and Forwards, by David Ball
Just backwards
by Susana Cook
A manual is a set of instructions on how to use a machine that already exists. This manual is for reading plays, so the idea behind it is that plays are a device with a purpose and David Ball will teach us how to unveil the mechanism that moves the machine, so we can understand it better and hopefully build similar ones. Ball very deliberately leaves out any room for interpretation, creativity, or diversity in the theater world. He focuses on the technicalities of “drama”. If he would prefix the word “traditional” every time he mentions theater, narrative or drama he would be more accurate with his statements. But the way he deliberately appropriates those words as if the whole genre was ruled by these formulas makes the whole book a new attempt to make traditional narrative the only option, the only thing we can call drama, or good drama, the only technique that works.
His statements are bold and clear from the first pages and throughout the book.
“People who talk about, write about, or do theater agree on little. But there is one thing: “Drama is conflict!” we all cry in rare unanimity” (25). Really? The way that Ball ignores and makes invisible the huge amount of theater that was and continues being created that does not follow those rules and predicaments is unbelievable.
I think there’s two ways that people maintain the hegemony of these formulas. One is ignoring the existence of any other kind of theater that doesn’t follow these rules, and another one (this one would apply to theater that is more known and cannot be ignored) is to make extreme efforts to prove that those plays, even if not evident, are secretly following the same formula. This strategy reinforces the notion that these rules are inescapable.
Aristotle defines tragedy as Action and a set of Actions, David Ball writes a new book, that explains in detail that “A play is a series of actions” (9). In the introduction he sets the rules, “the techniques in this book will help you read analytically to discern how the play works. What the play means should not be the first consideration” (3). Leaving out meanings when talking about theater is a bold decision that ignores numerous and important authors whose work is concerned with meaning, and who made a huge contribution to the world.
He doesn’t acknowledge at any point during the book the existence of postmodern, postdramatic or avant-garde theater.
Ball moves forward and backwards in the succession of actions analyzing mostly Hamlet, King Lear and Greek Tragedies. He explains to us conflict, with bold letters as if revealing a new truth: “a play’s conflict is between what someone wants and what hinders the want: the obstacle” (28)
The audience is described as some sort of collection of puppets, easy to manipulate into whatever state we want if we master the right techniques. We are doing it for them after all, to entertain them. “Dramatic tension requires that the audience desire to find out what is coming up. The greater the desire, the greater –and more active—the audience involvement” (59)
“Don’t deprive anyone of theater’s greatest pleasure: the delicious, often suspenseful thirst to know what comes next… often the core of dramatic tension resides in keeping information from the audience. Don’t negate the tension by premature revelation” (34). I guess the word “often” is enough to acknowledge the importance of Brecht’s epic theater and the Verfremdungseffekt (distancing effect).
Another very interesting note about this book is that it has no notes and no bibliography. David Ball is a professor of playwriting, acting, theater history, and literature at Carnegie-Mellon University, but his book seems to be informed just by him, his impressions and beliefs. It is lacking a lot of information, or deliberately leaving out half of the history of theater.
Book Cited:
Ball, David. Backwards and Forwards. Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983.
by Susana Cook
A manual is a set of instructions on how to use a machine that already exists. This manual is for reading plays, so the idea behind it is that plays are a device with a purpose and David Ball will teach us how to unveil the mechanism that moves the machine, so we can understand it better and hopefully build similar ones. Ball very deliberately leaves out any room for interpretation, creativity, or diversity in the theater world. He focuses on the technicalities of “drama”. If he would prefix the word “traditional” every time he mentions theater, narrative or drama he would be more accurate with his statements. But the way he deliberately appropriates those words as if the whole genre was ruled by these formulas makes the whole book a new attempt to make traditional narrative the only option, the only thing we can call drama, or good drama, the only technique that works.
His statements are bold and clear from the first pages and throughout the book.
“People who talk about, write about, or do theater agree on little. But there is one thing: “Drama is conflict!” we all cry in rare unanimity” (25). Really? The way that Ball ignores and makes invisible the huge amount of theater that was and continues being created that does not follow those rules and predicaments is unbelievable.
I think there’s two ways that people maintain the hegemony of these formulas. One is ignoring the existence of any other kind of theater that doesn’t follow these rules, and another one (this one would apply to theater that is more known and cannot be ignored) is to make extreme efforts to prove that those plays, even if not evident, are secretly following the same formula. This strategy reinforces the notion that these rules are inescapable.
Aristotle defines tragedy as Action and a set of Actions, David Ball writes a new book, that explains in detail that “A play is a series of actions” (9). In the introduction he sets the rules, “the techniques in this book will help you read analytically to discern how the play works. What the play means should not be the first consideration” (3). Leaving out meanings when talking about theater is a bold decision that ignores numerous and important authors whose work is concerned with meaning, and who made a huge contribution to the world.
He doesn’t acknowledge at any point during the book the existence of postmodern, postdramatic or avant-garde theater.
Ball moves forward and backwards in the succession of actions analyzing mostly Hamlet, King Lear and Greek Tragedies. He explains to us conflict, with bold letters as if revealing a new truth: “a play’s conflict is between what someone wants and what hinders the want: the obstacle” (28)
The audience is described as some sort of collection of puppets, easy to manipulate into whatever state we want if we master the right techniques. We are doing it for them after all, to entertain them. “Dramatic tension requires that the audience desire to find out what is coming up. The greater the desire, the greater –and more active—the audience involvement” (59)
“Don’t deprive anyone of theater’s greatest pleasure: the delicious, often suspenseful thirst to know what comes next… often the core of dramatic tension resides in keeping information from the audience. Don’t negate the tension by premature revelation” (34). I guess the word “often” is enough to acknowledge the importance of Brecht’s epic theater and the Verfremdungseffekt (distancing effect).
Another very interesting note about this book is that it has no notes and no bibliography. David Ball is a professor of playwriting, acting, theater history, and literature at Carnegie-Mellon University, but his book seems to be informed just by him, his impressions and beliefs. It is lacking a lot of information, or deliberately leaving out half of the history of theater.
Book Cited:
Ball, David. Backwards and Forwards. Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983.
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
The Virgin Molly, by Quincy Long
The theme of gays in the military and the arrival of the Messiah in Virgin Molly, by Susana Cook
I was getting to the end of Virgin Molly and there was no pregnancy in the story yet. How is he going to deal with the guy getting pregnant in just 9 pages? I thought. Until that point the main theme seems to be gays in the military; this is the track Long creates for his story. He carves deep into the psychology of these fanatic men creating very intense scenes with the erotic at the center of it. Scenes of role-playing, authoritarian abuse and humiliation lead us to the cathartic moment when the abusive Corporeal puts in action some kind of torture session to force the accusing homophobe Harmon to confess. The torture inflicted on him is to become a woman, to act effeminate. The drag queen theme appears (as in The Bacchae) as humiliation and punishment.
The author explores the theme of gender normative behavior and the military’s antiseptic idea of manhood. Quincy Long insinuates at the beginning that Molly Petersen is androgynous, maybe even a hermaphrodite. “My mom. She was sure in her heart I was going to be a girl… I am built kind of funny. Kind of a girl and everything.” (13-14) He says to the Captain. Molly is a gender variant person; he is not gay.
The tension begins to grow through a fantastic element introduced in the story: the letters and phone calls that start pouring in the military headquarters. Some of them are sent anonymously, some of them from very important people who are concerned about the development of Molly’s evaluation. This element creates a powerful reaction in the viewer/reader. It gives us the illusion that the forgotten and oppressed nobody will be rescued by some anonymous hero. It could also be interpreted as a call to action by showing us how external pressure can make a difference in an abusive situation.
When the letters start arriving it resembles Amnesty International’s work (sending letters to prisons where they keep captive political prisoners) Then it becomes exactly the device J.K. Rowling uses in Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone (The letters keep arriving from everywhere, warning his adoptive family that they had somebody important in their house, a kid that they were abusing and neglecting). The captain inquires to Molly about his family or special contacts he may have with powerful people. Exactly like Harry Potter, Virgin Molly has no idea who could care about him. He is innocent and abused, but he is also special.
The mysterious letters, phone calls and the pregnancy all get resolved in the last pages by the addition of a new element, a religious mystical moment: “Jones and Private enter from the head amidst a brilliant light, holding hands” (83). Molly is giving birth. We hear voices from offstage announcing the birth of the messiah, “Leading us to the promise land” (91).
Then we realize that the magical- mystical element was somehow present throughout the play in the character of The Civilian. Nobody seems to see him, except Molly, and the audience. He carries a suitcase with a homemade bedspread. I guess the Civilian character represents God and it seems as if it was added after the first part was written. It feels like a device that was probably added to give some anchor to the very religious magical ending.
I am not taking the play as a realistic effort but the problematic issue presented is very real: homophobia and abuse in the military. He carves deeply into this theme, even through satire and extreme portrayals. But after presenting a real problem he runs away from it by introducing a new magic or religious element that will solve or end the story.
I was trying to draw a message or concept transpiring from the play it would be: The only thing that could save the androgynous -gays in the military, is the arrival of the Messiah.
Book cited:
Long, Quincy. The Virgin Molly. New York: Playscripts, Inc, 2007.
I was getting to the end of Virgin Molly and there was no pregnancy in the story yet. How is he going to deal with the guy getting pregnant in just 9 pages? I thought. Until that point the main theme seems to be gays in the military; this is the track Long creates for his story. He carves deep into the psychology of these fanatic men creating very intense scenes with the erotic at the center of it. Scenes of role-playing, authoritarian abuse and humiliation lead us to the cathartic moment when the abusive Corporeal puts in action some kind of torture session to force the accusing homophobe Harmon to confess. The torture inflicted on him is to become a woman, to act effeminate. The drag queen theme appears (as in The Bacchae) as humiliation and punishment.
The author explores the theme of gender normative behavior and the military’s antiseptic idea of manhood. Quincy Long insinuates at the beginning that Molly Petersen is androgynous, maybe even a hermaphrodite. “My mom. She was sure in her heart I was going to be a girl… I am built kind of funny. Kind of a girl and everything.” (13-14) He says to the Captain. Molly is a gender variant person; he is not gay.
The tension begins to grow through a fantastic element introduced in the story: the letters and phone calls that start pouring in the military headquarters. Some of them are sent anonymously, some of them from very important people who are concerned about the development of Molly’s evaluation. This element creates a powerful reaction in the viewer/reader. It gives us the illusion that the forgotten and oppressed nobody will be rescued by some anonymous hero. It could also be interpreted as a call to action by showing us how external pressure can make a difference in an abusive situation.
When the letters start arriving it resembles Amnesty International’s work (sending letters to prisons where they keep captive political prisoners) Then it becomes exactly the device J.K. Rowling uses in Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone (The letters keep arriving from everywhere, warning his adoptive family that they had somebody important in their house, a kid that they were abusing and neglecting). The captain inquires to Molly about his family or special contacts he may have with powerful people. Exactly like Harry Potter, Virgin Molly has no idea who could care about him. He is innocent and abused, but he is also special.
The mysterious letters, phone calls and the pregnancy all get resolved in the last pages by the addition of a new element, a religious mystical moment: “Jones and Private enter from the head amidst a brilliant light, holding hands” (83). Molly is giving birth. We hear voices from offstage announcing the birth of the messiah, “Leading us to the promise land” (91).
Then we realize that the magical- mystical element was somehow present throughout the play in the character of The Civilian. Nobody seems to see him, except Molly, and the audience. He carries a suitcase with a homemade bedspread. I guess the Civilian character represents God and it seems as if it was added after the first part was written. It feels like a device that was probably added to give some anchor to the very religious magical ending.
I am not taking the play as a realistic effort but the problematic issue presented is very real: homophobia and abuse in the military. He carves deeply into this theme, even through satire and extreme portrayals. But after presenting a real problem he runs away from it by introducing a new magic or religious element that will solve or end the story.
I was trying to draw a message or concept transpiring from the play it would be: The only thing that could save the androgynous -gays in the military, is the arrival of the Messiah.
Book cited:
Long, Quincy. The Virgin Molly. New York: Playscripts, Inc, 2007.
Saturday, April 03, 2010
The Good and Faithful Servant by Joe Orton
The meaning of work
The play starts and we are already landing in the most exciting part of the Passover Night. Buchanan and Edith meet again after 40 years. The play takes us to the action very fast, without preludes or preparation. The big event is right there, and Buchanan receives the big news of his life from Edith immediately after they meet. Edith was his only love. He finds out that she had twins after he abandoned her pregnant. The twins died in a sanitary system of an alien country and they “produced” a boy, but nobody knows which one of them was the father. The mother of the twins killed herself when she heard that the twins died. Buchanan is a grandfather. Edith breaks all this news to Buchanan very casually in a few lines. The satirical dark humor is very engaging. Buchanan is retiring after 50 years from a firm. Orton’s portrayal of the corporate approach to his worker’s life is very funny. They own his life, they took his arm and they also want the grandchild he just found out he has. Buchanan is retiring after 50 years of working in that company and all he has left is the presents they give him in his retirement party: a bad working toaster and a bad working clock. But the action pretty much stops there. From now on we’ll just follow him to his death.
Buchanan’s life seems meaningless because he devoted 50 years to work for a firm and nobody remembers him. He has nothing left, not even a friend. Orton is not focusing exclusively on corporate work; he is making a statement about work in general.
- I don’t work, says his grandson Ray
- Not work!? (Stares, open mouthed Buchanan), What do you do then?
- I enjoy myself, responds Ray.
- That’s a terrible thing to do… claims Buchanan. (167)
Orton’s sarcastic humor leaves us with two options, enjoy yourself or be a slave of a corporate firm. The beginning is playful, audacious, dark, funny, but then he seems to be telling us a simple statement: work sucks. He leaves us without any creative option besides enjoying yourself, and he has no more humor when describing Buchanan’s life as a retired man.
Not that the play should present a recipe for a happy life, but since it is presenting a recipe for disaster it would probably be great to see a hint of something other than that lonely, unhappy life. Looking at Buchanan’s story you would think that working full time is not a good idea. But Edith, who spent her life working too, scrubbing floors in the same company, seems to be content. Maybe it’s not good for a man, but for a woman it doesn’t seem to be that bad?
On another note: Abandoning your first love pregnant seems like a very bad idea in Durrenmatt’s play The Visit, but in The Good and Faithful Servant the results are very different. Buchanan finds the woman after many years, she is not upset and she becomes his wife, taking care of him on his last days and he also gets a grandson.
Orton, Joe. The Good and Faithful Servant. The Complete Plays. New York: Grove Press, 1977.
The play starts and we are already landing in the most exciting part of the Passover Night. Buchanan and Edith meet again after 40 years. The play takes us to the action very fast, without preludes or preparation. The big event is right there, and Buchanan receives the big news of his life from Edith immediately after they meet. Edith was his only love. He finds out that she had twins after he abandoned her pregnant. The twins died in a sanitary system of an alien country and they “produced” a boy, but nobody knows which one of them was the father. The mother of the twins killed herself when she heard that the twins died. Buchanan is a grandfather. Edith breaks all this news to Buchanan very casually in a few lines. The satirical dark humor is very engaging. Buchanan is retiring after 50 years from a firm. Orton’s portrayal of the corporate approach to his worker’s life is very funny. They own his life, they took his arm and they also want the grandchild he just found out he has. Buchanan is retiring after 50 years of working in that company and all he has left is the presents they give him in his retirement party: a bad working toaster and a bad working clock. But the action pretty much stops there. From now on we’ll just follow him to his death.
Buchanan’s life seems meaningless because he devoted 50 years to work for a firm and nobody remembers him. He has nothing left, not even a friend. Orton is not focusing exclusively on corporate work; he is making a statement about work in general.
- I don’t work, says his grandson Ray
- Not work!? (Stares, open mouthed Buchanan), What do you do then?
- I enjoy myself, responds Ray.
- That’s a terrible thing to do… claims Buchanan. (167)
Orton’s sarcastic humor leaves us with two options, enjoy yourself or be a slave of a corporate firm. The beginning is playful, audacious, dark, funny, but then he seems to be telling us a simple statement: work sucks. He leaves us without any creative option besides enjoying yourself, and he has no more humor when describing Buchanan’s life as a retired man.
Not that the play should present a recipe for a happy life, but since it is presenting a recipe for disaster it would probably be great to see a hint of something other than that lonely, unhappy life. Looking at Buchanan’s story you would think that working full time is not a good idea. But Edith, who spent her life working too, scrubbing floors in the same company, seems to be content. Maybe it’s not good for a man, but for a woman it doesn’t seem to be that bad?
On another note: Abandoning your first love pregnant seems like a very bad idea in Durrenmatt’s play The Visit, but in The Good and Faithful Servant the results are very different. Buchanan finds the woman after many years, she is not upset and she becomes his wife, taking care of him on his last days and he also gets a grandson.
Orton, Joe. The Good and Faithful Servant. The Complete Plays. New York: Grove Press, 1977.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
The Screens, by Jean Genet
Theatrical elements and the sanctity of sin in The Screens,
by Susana Cook
I am interested in looking at the way in which Genet uses theatrical devices in The Screens to unfold his poetic and political ideas of colonialism, poverty and death, and the way in which he succeeds at sanctifying evil.
The Screens is an epical ceremony set in the Algerian War. It starts with Said and his mother walking to his wedding, and ends in the world of the dead.
Said, the poorest, has to marry Leila, the ugliest. Their journey becomes an act of dethroning of what is sacred and elevating to sainthood what is consider sin or un-sacred. Robbery, prostitution, violence and war are glorified in Genet’s world. Colonialism, patriotism, order and obedience are shown dirty and pathetic.
The screens displayed onstage create the scenery by having actors drawing different elements of the changing set on them. This device allows him to take the story to all kinds of fantastic and extreme places. The landscape of war, the realm of the dead, fire and total destruction become layers of the multidimensional reality that will be displayed on the screens. The screens also display the power of the symbolic. Power and authority are representations, drawings on the screens. The characters obey and submit to these authoritarian figures. Sir Harold, a colonialist, displays his manly authority when he is onstage by playing with his glove and whip and giving orders to Jewell, his horse off stage. When he has to go, he leaves onstage a big glove pointing as an act of surveillance. This presence will be reinforced by the Arabs who work for the colonizers. “Every finger is listening with an ear as big as an umbrella… Be careful! (33) says Habib, trying to perpetrate Sir Harold’s authority in his absence. Sir Harold’s orders are represented in the glove and looked after by Habib. The presence of the glove is then enough to subjugate the Arabs. The representation of authority creates order. The objects become animated. Leila subdues and worships Said’s trousers left in the house. Her relationship with his trousers is more free and erotic than the relationship she can have with the real Said, because he rejects her. The sound effects are performed by the actors, and their words create a reality that they will enact and fall victim to. Said says, “it’s getting windy—both men imitate the sound of the wind, and shiver” (34)
Said, Leila, and his mother are very poor and miserable. But they are not pathetic or looking up at the rich people. The characters sink deeper in misery, unhappiness, poverty, and corruption, but as they do it they become more and more the heroes of the story. Genet creates such deep, carefully drawn characters. Said is walking to his wedding and he says to his mother, “don’t joke. Today I want to be sad. I’d hurt myself on purpose to be sad” (12). The mother doesn’t try to give him consolation or to make him happy, she encourages him to go deeper into that feeling of unhappiness, “vomit on her” (13) she tells him.
The brothel is another strong image used by Genet to sanctify sin. Malika and Warda, the prostitutes, are proud of their rituals, they are the goddesses of the ceremony. Malika’s seduction style is “the tooth cleaning with a hatpin” (21). We normally would find that image pretty gross, but when executed by this professional of lovemaking and seduction it becomes a sensual ceremony.
Genet glorifies the dead more than life. Death is not an end but a passing to a new dimension. In The Screens we can see Genet’s idea of theater as a ‘dialogue with the dead’. Genet expressed the idea that the true site of theater was the cemetery . The people of the town know how to communicate with the dead. “Your funeral is also part of your life as a living man” (57) says the mother to The Mouth.
During the reading of the play I was to try to look at how does Genet so successfully accomplishes his goal of making the miserable characters the heroes of the story. My answer was, by giving them the complexity that is usually denied to them. For the most part we are exposed to writing that is affected by a view that will follow the same treatment. The heroes are the characters who are written with specific individual characteristics. The “evil” ones are usually more similar to a stereotype. When writing people of color, for example, the traits attached to the characters are mostly part of their cultural background. The white protagonists’ traits are individual, personal, and complex. Genet reverses the treatment that most writers give to characters. He presents the oppressors as funny caricatures, and he gives the Arabs, the people of color, the sinners, the robbers, and miserable characters a complexity that is usually denied to them by most authors. We enter their lives and their psychology in a way we usually are not allowed to, we follow them to their deaths, their sinking into sin is heroic, poetic and beautiful.
Book Cited:
Genet, Jean. The Screens. Trans. Bernard Frechtman. New York: Grove Press, 1961.
by Susana Cook
I am interested in looking at the way in which Genet uses theatrical devices in The Screens to unfold his poetic and political ideas of colonialism, poverty and death, and the way in which he succeeds at sanctifying evil.
The Screens is an epical ceremony set in the Algerian War. It starts with Said and his mother walking to his wedding, and ends in the world of the dead.
Said, the poorest, has to marry Leila, the ugliest. Their journey becomes an act of dethroning of what is sacred and elevating to sainthood what is consider sin or un-sacred. Robbery, prostitution, violence and war are glorified in Genet’s world. Colonialism, patriotism, order and obedience are shown dirty and pathetic.
The screens displayed onstage create the scenery by having actors drawing different elements of the changing set on them. This device allows him to take the story to all kinds of fantastic and extreme places. The landscape of war, the realm of the dead, fire and total destruction become layers of the multidimensional reality that will be displayed on the screens. The screens also display the power of the symbolic. Power and authority are representations, drawings on the screens. The characters obey and submit to these authoritarian figures. Sir Harold, a colonialist, displays his manly authority when he is onstage by playing with his glove and whip and giving orders to Jewell, his horse off stage. When he has to go, he leaves onstage a big glove pointing as an act of surveillance. This presence will be reinforced by the Arabs who work for the colonizers. “Every finger is listening with an ear as big as an umbrella… Be careful! (33) says Habib, trying to perpetrate Sir Harold’s authority in his absence. Sir Harold’s orders are represented in the glove and looked after by Habib. The presence of the glove is then enough to subjugate the Arabs. The representation of authority creates order. The objects become animated. Leila subdues and worships Said’s trousers left in the house. Her relationship with his trousers is more free and erotic than the relationship she can have with the real Said, because he rejects her. The sound effects are performed by the actors, and their words create a reality that they will enact and fall victim to. Said says, “it’s getting windy—both men imitate the sound of the wind, and shiver” (34)
Said, Leila, and his mother are very poor and miserable. But they are not pathetic or looking up at the rich people. The characters sink deeper in misery, unhappiness, poverty, and corruption, but as they do it they become more and more the heroes of the story. Genet creates such deep, carefully drawn characters. Said is walking to his wedding and he says to his mother, “don’t joke. Today I want to be sad. I’d hurt myself on purpose to be sad” (12). The mother doesn’t try to give him consolation or to make him happy, she encourages him to go deeper into that feeling of unhappiness, “vomit on her” (13) she tells him.
The brothel is another strong image used by Genet to sanctify sin. Malika and Warda, the prostitutes, are proud of their rituals, they are the goddesses of the ceremony. Malika’s seduction style is “the tooth cleaning with a hatpin” (21). We normally would find that image pretty gross, but when executed by this professional of lovemaking and seduction it becomes a sensual ceremony.
Genet glorifies the dead more than life. Death is not an end but a passing to a new dimension. In The Screens we can see Genet’s idea of theater as a ‘dialogue with the dead’. Genet expressed the idea that the true site of theater was the cemetery . The people of the town know how to communicate with the dead. “Your funeral is also part of your life as a living man” (57) says the mother to The Mouth.
During the reading of the play I was to try to look at how does Genet so successfully accomplishes his goal of making the miserable characters the heroes of the story. My answer was, by giving them the complexity that is usually denied to them. For the most part we are exposed to writing that is affected by a view that will follow the same treatment. The heroes are the characters who are written with specific individual characteristics. The “evil” ones are usually more similar to a stereotype. When writing people of color, for example, the traits attached to the characters are mostly part of their cultural background. The white protagonists’ traits are individual, personal, and complex. Genet reverses the treatment that most writers give to characters. He presents the oppressors as funny caricatures, and he gives the Arabs, the people of color, the sinners, the robbers, and miserable characters a complexity that is usually denied to them by most authors. We enter their lives and their psychology in a way we usually are not allowed to, we follow them to their deaths, their sinking into sin is heroic, poetic and beautiful.
Book Cited:
Genet, Jean. The Screens. Trans. Bernard Frechtman. New York: Grove Press, 1961.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Monday, March 15, 2010
The Poetics. Aristotle
Aristotle’s Poetics 2370 years later, by Susana Cook
I am interested in looking at The Poetics’ legacy and how after 2370 years it still stands as a ruling force in the world of drama and playwriting. Besides being a thorough compendium of the elements of the tragedy and comedy, The Poetics shows the power of the written word, shaping a culture that will grow at the shadows of the immutable classics. Experimental or innovative efforts in the world of drama or performance end up creating new categories. It is as if the Drama/ Theater/ Playwriting realm could not be transformed or subject to change. When the new form becomes too distant or foreign to the classical ancestor then it becomes something else, a sub-discipline or genre. The domain of theater or drama conserves the specific rules spelled by Aristotle in The Poetics. It is the norm, and moving away from the norm carries the price of expulsion from the world of Tragedy and Comedy. The authors who subverted the rules established at The Poetics become in a way an evidence of the lasting effects of The Poetics and how its mandates survived in contemporary cultural expressions, (although the poetics only address Tragedy, his poetics of Comedy have never been found).
“Whether tragedy has fully realized its possible forms or has not yet done so may be left for another discussion. Its beginnings, certainly were in improvisation. After passing through many changes it came to a stop, being now in possession of its specific nature.” (49) The stop expressed by Aristotle as a present moment was over two millenniums ago, but the dramatic form certainly came then to an irrevocable stop. The shape or specific nature that it had acquired at the moment described by Aristotle created the mold that shapes dramatic writing to this day.
The idea of order that exhumes from The Poetics creates a confining and organized environment. It assumes a unified audience that will respond or react to certain elements of the tragedy in the same way. Aristotle starts his Poetics by establishing universal moral values and a uniformed human nature. Tragedy imitates people who are better than us and Comedy people who are lower than us, “goodness and badness being universal criteria or character” (46). Aristotle refers to human nature as a universal (hierarchical) category with specific characteristics. He attributes then the creation of Tragedy to the “instinct to imitate rooted in human nature” (47). The audience becomes a uniformed entity as well. “We have evidence of this in actual experience, for the forms of those things that are distressful to see in reality, we contemplate with pleasure when we find them represented with perfect realism in images” (47). After establishing a uniformed motivation to the creative act; an identical response to it and universal values of goodness and badness, he describes then the effects. The actions onstage have the purpose to effect fear and or pity in the audience and the play will eventually create the catharsis of those emotions.
I obtained my BA in Drama in Buenos Aires over twenty years ago. As a student, I had to read and write essays about The Poetics. After I graduated I spent many years doing theater in every capacity. I never talked again about The Poetics. I didn’t hear anybody talking about it and I didn’t read any book that cited the work. I recently returned to school to do my MFA, and The Poetics came back as a deja vu in workshops and classes and readings. Maybe because I am myself a person who does not respond to stories with a plot the way that Aristotle expected his audience to react, or maybe it is because I see The Poetics as inevitably connected with school, but it makes me think that institutionalized knowledge of drama relies on The Poetics for the creation of uniformity and order necessary to the narrative of artistic value. The organization of events into a consistent plot structure proposed by Aristotle can be found mostly in mainstream theater and film.
According to Aristotle “the basic principle is imitation” (45) Brecht argued with that statement with his famous: “Theater is not a mirror of reality but a hammer to shape it”. His theater it's usually referred to as Epic or Political Theater. The Poetics teach us that “The soul of tragedy is the plot”. Some authors, like Gertrude Stein argue that “A play doesn’t have to tell a story”. According to Stein, what’s happening during the drama is the theater experience itself. The creation of an experience, according to Stein is more important than the representation of an event. Many people wouldn’t consider Gertrude Stein’s plays to be real theater or playwriting. The same could be said for many people who created new forms, their work was named alternative theater, performance art, interventionists theater, etc. It’s interesting to see how the world of visual arts for example went through so many movements and changes that transformed it essentially but theater rules seem to be frozen in time. Aristotle describes the work of the painters of his time, Polygnotus, Pauson and Dionysius. Looking at those paintings and at contemporary paintings you can see the millennia that went by in the history of fine arts. Contemporary painters don’t seem to be following the rules of composition and structure that the painters of that time were following. But in drama, most of the teachings of Aristotle remain intact and alive at the heart of most contemporary dramas. However a classicist strain runs through all arts, though perhaps it is strongest in theatre.
I find The Poetics to be a valuable historical document of the Tragedy of that time. But I think that it also has served through the millennia the purpose of creating a normative discourse of structure and a hierarchical and unified set of values in the world of drama.
Book cited:
Aristotle’s Poetics. Translated with an Introduction and Notes by James Hutton. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company.
I am interested in looking at The Poetics’ legacy and how after 2370 years it still stands as a ruling force in the world of drama and playwriting. Besides being a thorough compendium of the elements of the tragedy and comedy, The Poetics shows the power of the written word, shaping a culture that will grow at the shadows of the immutable classics. Experimental or innovative efforts in the world of drama or performance end up creating new categories. It is as if the Drama/ Theater/ Playwriting realm could not be transformed or subject to change. When the new form becomes too distant or foreign to the classical ancestor then it becomes something else, a sub-discipline or genre. The domain of theater or drama conserves the specific rules spelled by Aristotle in The Poetics. It is the norm, and moving away from the norm carries the price of expulsion from the world of Tragedy and Comedy. The authors who subverted the rules established at The Poetics become in a way an evidence of the lasting effects of The Poetics and how its mandates survived in contemporary cultural expressions, (although the poetics only address Tragedy, his poetics of Comedy have never been found).
“Whether tragedy has fully realized its possible forms or has not yet done so may be left for another discussion. Its beginnings, certainly were in improvisation. After passing through many changes it came to a stop, being now in possession of its specific nature.” (49) The stop expressed by Aristotle as a present moment was over two millenniums ago, but the dramatic form certainly came then to an irrevocable stop. The shape or specific nature that it had acquired at the moment described by Aristotle created the mold that shapes dramatic writing to this day.
The idea of order that exhumes from The Poetics creates a confining and organized environment. It assumes a unified audience that will respond or react to certain elements of the tragedy in the same way. Aristotle starts his Poetics by establishing universal moral values and a uniformed human nature. Tragedy imitates people who are better than us and Comedy people who are lower than us, “goodness and badness being universal criteria or character” (46). Aristotle refers to human nature as a universal (hierarchical) category with specific characteristics. He attributes then the creation of Tragedy to the “instinct to imitate rooted in human nature” (47). The audience becomes a uniformed entity as well. “We have evidence of this in actual experience, for the forms of those things that are distressful to see in reality, we contemplate with pleasure when we find them represented with perfect realism in images” (47). After establishing a uniformed motivation to the creative act; an identical response to it and universal values of goodness and badness, he describes then the effects. The actions onstage have the purpose to effect fear and or pity in the audience and the play will eventually create the catharsis of those emotions.
I obtained my BA in Drama in Buenos Aires over twenty years ago. As a student, I had to read and write essays about The Poetics. After I graduated I spent many years doing theater in every capacity. I never talked again about The Poetics. I didn’t hear anybody talking about it and I didn’t read any book that cited the work. I recently returned to school to do my MFA, and The Poetics came back as a deja vu in workshops and classes and readings. Maybe because I am myself a person who does not respond to stories with a plot the way that Aristotle expected his audience to react, or maybe it is because I see The Poetics as inevitably connected with school, but it makes me think that institutionalized knowledge of drama relies on The Poetics for the creation of uniformity and order necessary to the narrative of artistic value. The organization of events into a consistent plot structure proposed by Aristotle can be found mostly in mainstream theater and film.
According to Aristotle “the basic principle is imitation” (45) Brecht argued with that statement with his famous: “Theater is not a mirror of reality but a hammer to shape it”. His theater it's usually referred to as Epic or Political Theater. The Poetics teach us that “The soul of tragedy is the plot”. Some authors, like Gertrude Stein argue that “A play doesn’t have to tell a story”. According to Stein, what’s happening during the drama is the theater experience itself. The creation of an experience, according to Stein is more important than the representation of an event. Many people wouldn’t consider Gertrude Stein’s plays to be real theater or playwriting. The same could be said for many people who created new forms, their work was named alternative theater, performance art, interventionists theater, etc. It’s interesting to see how the world of visual arts for example went through so many movements and changes that transformed it essentially but theater rules seem to be frozen in time. Aristotle describes the work of the painters of his time, Polygnotus, Pauson and Dionysius. Looking at those paintings and at contemporary paintings you can see the millennia that went by in the history of fine arts. Contemporary painters don’t seem to be following the rules of composition and structure that the painters of that time were following. But in drama, most of the teachings of Aristotle remain intact and alive at the heart of most contemporary dramas. However a classicist strain runs through all arts, though perhaps it is strongest in theatre.
I find The Poetics to be a valuable historical document of the Tragedy of that time. But I think that it also has served through the millennia the purpose of creating a normative discourse of structure and a hierarchical and unified set of values in the world of drama.
Book cited:
Aristotle’s Poetics. Translated with an Introduction and Notes by James Hutton. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company.
Sunday, March 07, 2010
Cancer Walking Through These Woods, by Sarah Hammond
The use of mosquitoes in Sarah Hammond’s Cancer Walking Through These Woods
From the second line of the first stage directions we can see that flies are important characters in Sarah Hammond’s play. She uses them in every possible way to tell us things about the characters and the story. They become a tool to create spells, measure time, and show frustration. They create a physical action that keeps repeating itself in a situation that carries a level of timid intimacy and trust. The mosquitoes become a tool of communication, to express through physical action the way they feel and at moments an obstacle that separates them. When they finally connect and decide to trust each other, then the mosquitoes disappear.
Slaughter is waiting for Chesnutt in the woods “slapping mosquitoes as they land on her arms, neck, legs” (38). She is killing time by killing mosquitoes. She catches one bug in both hands, holds it for a moment and then Chesnutt arrives. It’s as if by catching the bug she made magic, and Chesnutt appears because of her spell.
The bugs and mosquitoes are the first thing they talk about when they see each other. “You know, at night, the mosquitoes become large. They grow teeth, stand up on two legs,” (38) says Slaughter to Chesnutt, as if she was measuring the time she was waiting for Chesnutt in the woods through the life and transformations of the mosquitoes.
Then “the bug flies away and Chesnutt finds her,” the author says in the stage directions. We don’t know if he catches the bug or if he kills her -- we just know that he finds her.
The mosquitoes create invisible lines between the characters, keeping them somehow connected through illness and infestation.
“They stand on two legs, and they walk up beside you with their invisible bodies. Beside you in the dark, they slip their threadline lips into your ear so soft you just hear the buzz, and then, sip by sip, they siphon off your brain,” explains Slaughter to Chesnutt, adding that she is “down to three quarters brain matter” (38). She measures time through the mosquitoes sucking of her blood, emptying her brain. Soon we’ll find out that Chesnutt is afraid that that is exactly what Slaughter is doing to him, making him a hypochondriac, washing his brain. He shows his frustration scratching frenetically a mosquito bite. “You have me brainwashed,” he complains, searching for the mythical tumor. (40) Cancer, tumors and family curses are the themes flying around them with the mosquitoes. A bug flies away from Slaughter and Chesnutt catches her. They are still connected through the insects. The fear of infestation and death is expressed though the fantasy of mosquitoes siphoning off their brain. They touch their own body to scratch mosquito bites; Slaughter touches Chesnutt’s body in search of tumors; Chesnutt comes to Slaughter because he has a headache and fears it could be the beginning of the family spell that will kill him before 30.
But trust is the main theme of the play. Slaughter wants Chesnutt to trust her and Chesnutt wants Slaughter to trust him. The obstacles they have to overcome to finally get close is shown through the device of the mosquitoes. The insect becomes so animated that it seems at moments to be Tommy (Chesnutt’s dead brother, who had a strong relationship with Slaughter) coming in between the two characters as a ghostly presence embodied in the mosquito surrounding them. Tommy trusted Slaughter, in spite of her trench coat. He didn’t think she was a terrorist. Chesnutt is aware what other kids think of her, that she looks “like those Columbine kids. That she is gonna shoot up the place”. She is an outcast and she is not allowed to enter his baseball game. She doesn’t trust anyone enough to tell them her name, a girl’s name. She feels more powerful and protected in her trench coat, using a non-gendered last name. But she knows Chesnutt is “better than regular people” (40) as Tommy was.
Chesnutt finally gets from Slaughter what Tommy couldn’t get from her. She tells him her first name: Elizabeth. He then gives in to her powers, holding still and letting her perform some kind of mystical-surgical operation of his tumor in the woods. They are finally close. The flies then disappear.
Book cited:
Sarah Hammond, Sarah. Cancer Walking Through These Woods. Hanover: Smith and Kraus, Inc. 2004.
From the second line of the first stage directions we can see that flies are important characters in Sarah Hammond’s play. She uses them in every possible way to tell us things about the characters and the story. They become a tool to create spells, measure time, and show frustration. They create a physical action that keeps repeating itself in a situation that carries a level of timid intimacy and trust. The mosquitoes become a tool of communication, to express through physical action the way they feel and at moments an obstacle that separates them. When they finally connect and decide to trust each other, then the mosquitoes disappear.
Slaughter is waiting for Chesnutt in the woods “slapping mosquitoes as they land on her arms, neck, legs” (38). She is killing time by killing mosquitoes. She catches one bug in both hands, holds it for a moment and then Chesnutt arrives. It’s as if by catching the bug she made magic, and Chesnutt appears because of her spell.
The bugs and mosquitoes are the first thing they talk about when they see each other. “You know, at night, the mosquitoes become large. They grow teeth, stand up on two legs,” (38) says Slaughter to Chesnutt, as if she was measuring the time she was waiting for Chesnutt in the woods through the life and transformations of the mosquitoes.
Then “the bug flies away and Chesnutt finds her,” the author says in the stage directions. We don’t know if he catches the bug or if he kills her -- we just know that he finds her.
The mosquitoes create invisible lines between the characters, keeping them somehow connected through illness and infestation.
“They stand on two legs, and they walk up beside you with their invisible bodies. Beside you in the dark, they slip their threadline lips into your ear so soft you just hear the buzz, and then, sip by sip, they siphon off your brain,” explains Slaughter to Chesnutt, adding that she is “down to three quarters brain matter” (38). She measures time through the mosquitoes sucking of her blood, emptying her brain. Soon we’ll find out that Chesnutt is afraid that that is exactly what Slaughter is doing to him, making him a hypochondriac, washing his brain. He shows his frustration scratching frenetically a mosquito bite. “You have me brainwashed,” he complains, searching for the mythical tumor. (40) Cancer, tumors and family curses are the themes flying around them with the mosquitoes. A bug flies away from Slaughter and Chesnutt catches her. They are still connected through the insects. The fear of infestation and death is expressed though the fantasy of mosquitoes siphoning off their brain. They touch their own body to scratch mosquito bites; Slaughter touches Chesnutt’s body in search of tumors; Chesnutt comes to Slaughter because he has a headache and fears it could be the beginning of the family spell that will kill him before 30.
But trust is the main theme of the play. Slaughter wants Chesnutt to trust her and Chesnutt wants Slaughter to trust him. The obstacles they have to overcome to finally get close is shown through the device of the mosquitoes. The insect becomes so animated that it seems at moments to be Tommy (Chesnutt’s dead brother, who had a strong relationship with Slaughter) coming in between the two characters as a ghostly presence embodied in the mosquito surrounding them. Tommy trusted Slaughter, in spite of her trench coat. He didn’t think she was a terrorist. Chesnutt is aware what other kids think of her, that she looks “like those Columbine kids. That she is gonna shoot up the place”. She is an outcast and she is not allowed to enter his baseball game. She doesn’t trust anyone enough to tell them her name, a girl’s name. She feels more powerful and protected in her trench coat, using a non-gendered last name. But she knows Chesnutt is “better than regular people” (40) as Tommy was.
Chesnutt finally gets from Slaughter what Tommy couldn’t get from her. She tells him her first name: Elizabeth. He then gives in to her powers, holding still and letting her perform some kind of mystical-surgical operation of his tumor in the woods. They are finally close. The flies then disappear.
Book cited:
Sarah Hammond, Sarah. Cancer Walking Through These Woods. Hanover: Smith and Kraus, Inc. 2004.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Moon Cup Poem
This poem was written in collaboration with my fiancee:
Moon Cup Poem
Go from the Mountains of my breasts to the valley of my navel
Into the silky forest
Take in the Fresh scent!
And turn into the hidden driveway
Drive along my dangerous curves
Watch out for children, deer and falling rocks
Turn left at the red light. No need to obey the speed limit. BUT Slow down before merging. Watch Out!
Slippery when wet!
Moon Cup Poem
Go from the Mountains of my breasts to the valley of my navel
Into the silky forest
Take in the Fresh scent!
And turn into the hidden driveway
Drive along my dangerous curves
Watch out for children, deer and falling rocks
Turn left at the red light. No need to obey the speed limit. BUT Slow down before merging. Watch Out!
Slippery when wet!
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Saturday, February 06, 2010
Thursday, February 04, 2010
The Bacchae
THE TRAGEDY OF DYING AS A DRAG QUEEN
Even though The Bacchae was written in 408 B.C, we can recognize in the play themes, values and prejudices that are so engrained in our Western culture to this day. Greek gods and goddesses had gender and their dynamics were similar to the contemporary ones. Dionysus is a manly god, his battle with Pentheus resembles two men fighting for power, protecting their pride and manhood against mockery. They both feel complete authority and send grandiose threats for disobedience to their God/King authority.
In this annotation I am looking at the gender normative narrative embedded in The Bacchae. The gender mandates are expressed in the assigned clothing for each gender. Men dress as men and women dress as women. The violation of this mandate carries shame and humiliation. Euripides ridicules the old men dressing as women to join the Bachcae’s rituals: “He is incongruously dressed in the bacchant’s fawn skin and he is crowned with ivy”, he says in the stage directions when referring to Teiresias. “He is an incongruous and pathetic figure” (161), he adds when referring to Cadmus.
A man dressed as a woman will be ridiculed and reduced to a joke but also will carry with him the ultimate destruction of his dignity. Pentheus will succumb, after losing his fight with Dionysus, facing what seems to be the supreme offense and humiliation a man can face, he will walk to his death dressed as a woman.
Convinced by Dionysus, Pentheus agrees to dress in a woman’s dress to see the revels in the mountains. Even though at the beginning he thinks that he “would die of
shame” (191) by doing it, he allows Dionysus to lead his cross- dressing. This ritual between the two manly figures becomes particularly relevant because Dionysus is secretly planning Pentheus destruction but Pentheus is innocently enjoying the ceremony. Dionysus puts a wig on him with long curls. (191). Next, robes to his feet and a net for his hair. Then a thyrsus for his hand and a skin of dappled fawn. (192). After showing resistance to dress in women’s clothes, Pentheus begins to enjoy his transformation becoming a real drag queen. “One of your curls has come loose from under the snood where I tucked it”, Dionysus complains. “It must have worked loose when I was dancing for joy and shaking my head” , Pentheus responds. Dionysus sees Pentheus’s transformation as his victory and enjoys humiliating him.
There’s an apparent bonding between the two men during the cross-dressing, Pentheus gives himself to Dionysus, “ I am completely in your hands” (196), he tells him.
But Dionysus sees his transformation as his victory. This way he plans the ultimate punishment for Pentheus. He will die twice, first by being ridiculed: “I want him made the laughingstock of Thebes, paraded through the streets, a woman” (193). And then “butchered by the hands of his mother.” (193).
The fall and destruction of Pentheus is marked by his transformation into a woman. That’s the death we see onstage. The death in the hands of his mother happens off stage. At the end Agave, his mother, enters carrying Pentheus head on her thyrsus.
The struggle for power between the two manly figures, King and God, ends with the triumph of the god Dionysus and the collapse of the king Pentheus, whose image is shattered to pieces.
Even though Euripides guides our feelings through the stage directions, stressing how ridicule and pathetic men look when dressing as women, the feminization of Pentheus before his horrible death makes him in a way a martyr in the story. We end with a feeling of sympathy for this man who was at the beginning arrogant and manly, and dies wearing a wig with long curls and jewelry, a woman. Laughter or pity seem to be the only two feelings we are allowed to experience in the face of this gender bending scene. Losing his manly appearance as a king seems to mark Pentheus’ defeat in the hands of Dionysus.
Book Cited:
Euripides. Euripides V. The Bacchae. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1959.
Even though The Bacchae was written in 408 B.C, we can recognize in the play themes, values and prejudices that are so engrained in our Western culture to this day. Greek gods and goddesses had gender and their dynamics were similar to the contemporary ones. Dionysus is a manly god, his battle with Pentheus resembles two men fighting for power, protecting their pride and manhood against mockery. They both feel complete authority and send grandiose threats for disobedience to their God/King authority.
In this annotation I am looking at the gender normative narrative embedded in The Bacchae. The gender mandates are expressed in the assigned clothing for each gender. Men dress as men and women dress as women. The violation of this mandate carries shame and humiliation. Euripides ridicules the old men dressing as women to join the Bachcae’s rituals: “He is incongruously dressed in the bacchant’s fawn skin and he is crowned with ivy”, he says in the stage directions when referring to Teiresias. “He is an incongruous and pathetic figure” (161), he adds when referring to Cadmus.
A man dressed as a woman will be ridiculed and reduced to a joke but also will carry with him the ultimate destruction of his dignity. Pentheus will succumb, after losing his fight with Dionysus, facing what seems to be the supreme offense and humiliation a man can face, he will walk to his death dressed as a woman.
Convinced by Dionysus, Pentheus agrees to dress in a woman’s dress to see the revels in the mountains. Even though at the beginning he thinks that he “would die of
shame” (191) by doing it, he allows Dionysus to lead his cross- dressing. This ritual between the two manly figures becomes particularly relevant because Dionysus is secretly planning Pentheus destruction but Pentheus is innocently enjoying the ceremony. Dionysus puts a wig on him with long curls. (191). Next, robes to his feet and a net for his hair. Then a thyrsus for his hand and a skin of dappled fawn. (192). After showing resistance to dress in women’s clothes, Pentheus begins to enjoy his transformation becoming a real drag queen. “One of your curls has come loose from under the snood where I tucked it”, Dionysus complains. “It must have worked loose when I was dancing for joy and shaking my head” , Pentheus responds. Dionysus sees Pentheus’s transformation as his victory and enjoys humiliating him.
There’s an apparent bonding between the two men during the cross-dressing, Pentheus gives himself to Dionysus, “ I am completely in your hands” (196), he tells him.
But Dionysus sees his transformation as his victory. This way he plans the ultimate punishment for Pentheus. He will die twice, first by being ridiculed: “I want him made the laughingstock of Thebes, paraded through the streets, a woman” (193). And then “butchered by the hands of his mother.” (193).
The fall and destruction of Pentheus is marked by his transformation into a woman. That’s the death we see onstage. The death in the hands of his mother happens off stage. At the end Agave, his mother, enters carrying Pentheus head on her thyrsus.
The struggle for power between the two manly figures, King and God, ends with the triumph of the god Dionysus and the collapse of the king Pentheus, whose image is shattered to pieces.
Even though Euripides guides our feelings through the stage directions, stressing how ridicule and pathetic men look when dressing as women, the feminization of Pentheus before his horrible death makes him in a way a martyr in the story. We end with a feeling of sympathy for this man who was at the beginning arrogant and manly, and dies wearing a wig with long curls and jewelry, a woman. Laughter or pity seem to be the only two feelings we are allowed to experience in the face of this gender bending scene. Losing his manly appearance as a king seems to mark Pentheus’ defeat in the hands of Dionysus.
Book Cited:
Euripides. Euripides V. The Bacchae. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1959.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
The Practitioners
I find annoying when academics call artists "practitioners". I think the thought behind it is: They might be able to swim. But we are the ones who know how deep are the waters.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD
Existentialism or Karma.
According to most critics and scholars one of the main themes that appear in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is existentialism. This theory is based on the way both characters struggle to define themselves and the world they are in during the course of the play, and their final conclusion that their destiny was ultimately their own fault – that it could have been better had they done things differently. Interestingly enough, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern had a previous life that seems to define their end – their fatal destiny is already written in their past life. Perhaps then, Stoppard took these two characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet not with the intention to re-write their story, but just to explain their death, stating that it was actually their own fault.
Atheistic existentialism declares that Existence comes before essence. “Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself.” (Sartre) Stoppard is clearly subscribing to this theory by making the characters fall victims to their own actions and then having them regret not doing things differently. In the last scene Guildenstern says “There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said—no. But somehow we missed it.” (He looks around and sees he is alone.) (Stoppard, 125).
On the other hand Hindu philosophy, which believes in life after death, holds the doctrine that if the karma of an individual is good enough, the next birth will be rewarding, and if not, the person may actually devolve and degenerate into a lower life form. Every person is responsible for his or her acts and thoughts, so each person's karma is entirely her own. The law of cause and effect forms an integral part of Hindu philosophy. This law is termed as 'karma', which means to 'act'. In a way the concept of karma is similar to existentialism, the person is responsible for their own existence, the only difference is that Hinduism believes in consecutive lives, and the actions in one life carry on to the next one. In that case, what we do (good or bad actions) in the present life might not show until the next one. (Subhamoy Das)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. In the original version this is not a very important event. Stoppard sheds light on these two minor characters, making—I thought– a brilliant choice. In Shakespeare’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern appear almost as disposable characters, as audience we are worried about the life of the protagonist, Hamlet. He was saved from execution, and we feel relieved. The message that this title is conveying is important: There are important lives and less important lives, and in this play we are going to make the less important ones more important. These two characters are for the most part off-stage in Shakespeare’s version. Here, they are always onstage, as the main characters, and Hamlet has a small part.
Stoppard dives into Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and shows us new layers and parts of the story. The original drama remains intact thou, and some of the scenes appear in his adaptation.
Stoppard articulates several layers of performance. In the first act Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are alone flipping a coin, questioning the real and the un-real, in a tribulation that could be an “invisible” scene from Hamlet. With the arrival of The Tragedians the layers start unfolding. They will present a play. They will include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the play and the play is Hamlet. Ophelia, Claudius, Gertrude and Polonius enter. The characters are played by The Tragedians, or they are the “real” characters of the tragedy. The confusion of roles, real characters and performed characters is the most interesting part of the drama. The characters tell us what the author is doing with the script. The Player explains to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern the technique used by Stoppard in the play: “ We do on stage the things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else.” (Stoppard, 28). Indeed, we will look at the lives of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, after they exit—in the original drama—when they are not onstage. These layers inside the drama, with characters who die and come back to life suggest a continuum in the life cycle. The player announces the show of death: “Death for all ages and occasions! Death by suspension, convulsion, consumption, incision, execution, asphyxiation and malnutrition…” (Stoppard, 124) After spending a good portion of act one with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in this new play, the entrance of Ophelia, Claudius, Gertrude and Polonius reciting the lines from Hamlet feels like the arrival of the ghosts or the beginning of acting—they are after all characters from the previous life. “Which way did we come in? I’ve lost my sense of direction” (Stoppard, 58) Says Rosencrantz. They try to find their way, going in and out of the drama—trying to see if they can exist outside of Hamlet. When the pirates attack and they think Hamlet is dead, they question their own existence without him.
“Rosencrantz- He is dead then. He is dead as far as we are concerned.
Player – Or we are as far as he is/
Guildenstern – The whole thing is pointless without him. (Stoppard, 119- 20)
They arrive to the conclusion that they can’t exist without Hamlet. Their struggle to escape and the moments they realize that they can’t exist without their previous life are the ones that move the action. “We are slipping off the map ,” (Stoppard, 108) says Rosencrantz.
At the beginning of Act Two Rosencrantz and Guildenstern feel insecure after interacting with Hamlet. “I think we can say he made us look ridiculous,” says Rosencrantz, “He murdered us” (Stoppard, 56). These comments seem to refer to the way Hamlet made them look ridiculous and murdered them in the original drama. Even if they are trying to think by themselves and exist outside of Shakespeare’s drama, they seem to be trapped—Shakespeare has already written their fate. In the original version Hamlet tells Horatio that he feels no guilt about sending Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to the fate that they were sending him: “Why, man, they did make love to his employment. They are not near my conscience. Their defeat doth by their own insinuation grow.” (Shakespeare, V.2.60). It is clear to Hamlet in the original version that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were responsible for their actions, and that they knew what they were doing. But in Stoppard’s play they don’t seem to remember any wrongdoing.
In both versions The Ambassador from England arrives to announce the death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. “This sight is dismal; and our affairs from England come too late. The ears are senseless that should give us hearing to tell him his commandment is fulfilled, that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Where should we have our thanks?” (Stoppard, 56) After a full circle, they meet the same end. Their efforts to escape the drama and their destiny prove to be unproductive. However they end up taking responsibility for their destiny, feeling that it was their fault. “There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said no” (Stoppard, 125). I guess they understand that they could have said no to Claudius, that their destiny, is somehow a consequence of saying yes, accepting their role in the killing or disappearance of Hamlet. Even I they can’t remember that they did it.
“Here is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it,” (Sartre). But I would argue that in this case the essence of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was there before their existence. As characters of a play by Tom Stoppard, the characters were carrying the essence of the play written by Shakespeare. “Even as you die you know that you will come back in a different hat” (Stoppard, 123), says Guildenstern to the Player. Looking at it from this perspective, and probably without any intention by the author, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, is more of a Hindu play than an existentialist one. Their karma seems to be carried on from their previous life. Rosencrantz asks Guildenstern, “We’ve done nothing wrong! We didn’t harm anyone. Did we?
- I can’t remember, responds Guildenstern. (Stoppard, 125)
They don’t seem to remember their previous life, as it’s usually the case, they just feel the effects of it. But as audience we know what happened in Shakespeare’s version, we know that they actually did something wrong by accepting the task to send Hamlet to his murderers. “Well, we’ll know better next time.” (Stoppard, 126) are the last words of Guildenstern before “disappearing”. Because in this version, as in Shakespeare’s one, they don’t die, they disappear, and the drama goes on as if this second life was just contained in the previous one.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Stoppard, Tom, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. New York: Grove Press, 1967.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987
Sarte, Paul. Existentialism Is a Humanism.
Written: Lecture given in 1946 Source: Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre, ed. Walter Kaufman, Meridian Publishing Company, 1989; First Published: World Publishing Company in 1956; Translator: Philip Mairet.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm
Subhamoy Das, What Is Karma? The Law of Cause & Effect
http://hinduism.about.com/od/basics/a/karma.htm
According to most critics and scholars one of the main themes that appear in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is existentialism. This theory is based on the way both characters struggle to define themselves and the world they are in during the course of the play, and their final conclusion that their destiny was ultimately their own fault – that it could have been better had they done things differently. Interestingly enough, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern had a previous life that seems to define their end – their fatal destiny is already written in their past life. Perhaps then, Stoppard took these two characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet not with the intention to re-write their story, but just to explain their death, stating that it was actually their own fault.
Atheistic existentialism declares that Existence comes before essence. “Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself.” (Sartre) Stoppard is clearly subscribing to this theory by making the characters fall victims to their own actions and then having them regret not doing things differently. In the last scene Guildenstern says “There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said—no. But somehow we missed it.” (He looks around and sees he is alone.) (Stoppard, 125).
On the other hand Hindu philosophy, which believes in life after death, holds the doctrine that if the karma of an individual is good enough, the next birth will be rewarding, and if not, the person may actually devolve and degenerate into a lower life form. Every person is responsible for his or her acts and thoughts, so each person's karma is entirely her own. The law of cause and effect forms an integral part of Hindu philosophy. This law is termed as 'karma', which means to 'act'. In a way the concept of karma is similar to existentialism, the person is responsible for their own existence, the only difference is that Hinduism believes in consecutive lives, and the actions in one life carry on to the next one. In that case, what we do (good or bad actions) in the present life might not show until the next one. (Subhamoy Das)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. In the original version this is not a very important event. Stoppard sheds light on these two minor characters, making—I thought– a brilliant choice. In Shakespeare’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern appear almost as disposable characters, as audience we are worried about the life of the protagonist, Hamlet. He was saved from execution, and we feel relieved. The message that this title is conveying is important: There are important lives and less important lives, and in this play we are going to make the less important ones more important. These two characters are for the most part off-stage in Shakespeare’s version. Here, they are always onstage, as the main characters, and Hamlet has a small part.
Stoppard dives into Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and shows us new layers and parts of the story. The original drama remains intact thou, and some of the scenes appear in his adaptation.
Stoppard articulates several layers of performance. In the first act Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are alone flipping a coin, questioning the real and the un-real, in a tribulation that could be an “invisible” scene from Hamlet. With the arrival of The Tragedians the layers start unfolding. They will present a play. They will include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the play and the play is Hamlet. Ophelia, Claudius, Gertrude and Polonius enter. The characters are played by The Tragedians, or they are the “real” characters of the tragedy. The confusion of roles, real characters and performed characters is the most interesting part of the drama. The characters tell us what the author is doing with the script. The Player explains to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern the technique used by Stoppard in the play: “ We do on stage the things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else.” (Stoppard, 28). Indeed, we will look at the lives of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, after they exit—in the original drama—when they are not onstage. These layers inside the drama, with characters who die and come back to life suggest a continuum in the life cycle. The player announces the show of death: “Death for all ages and occasions! Death by suspension, convulsion, consumption, incision, execution, asphyxiation and malnutrition…” (Stoppard, 124) After spending a good portion of act one with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in this new play, the entrance of Ophelia, Claudius, Gertrude and Polonius reciting the lines from Hamlet feels like the arrival of the ghosts or the beginning of acting—they are after all characters from the previous life. “Which way did we come in? I’ve lost my sense of direction” (Stoppard, 58) Says Rosencrantz. They try to find their way, going in and out of the drama—trying to see if they can exist outside of Hamlet. When the pirates attack and they think Hamlet is dead, they question their own existence without him.
“Rosencrantz- He is dead then. He is dead as far as we are concerned.
Player – Or we are as far as he is/
Guildenstern – The whole thing is pointless without him. (Stoppard, 119- 20)
They arrive to the conclusion that they can’t exist without Hamlet. Their struggle to escape and the moments they realize that they can’t exist without their previous life are the ones that move the action. “We are slipping off the map ,” (Stoppard, 108) says Rosencrantz.
At the beginning of Act Two Rosencrantz and Guildenstern feel insecure after interacting with Hamlet. “I think we can say he made us look ridiculous,” says Rosencrantz, “He murdered us” (Stoppard, 56). These comments seem to refer to the way Hamlet made them look ridiculous and murdered them in the original drama. Even if they are trying to think by themselves and exist outside of Shakespeare’s drama, they seem to be trapped—Shakespeare has already written their fate. In the original version Hamlet tells Horatio that he feels no guilt about sending Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to the fate that they were sending him: “Why, man, they did make love to his employment. They are not near my conscience. Their defeat doth by their own insinuation grow.” (Shakespeare, V.2.60). It is clear to Hamlet in the original version that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were responsible for their actions, and that they knew what they were doing. But in Stoppard’s play they don’t seem to remember any wrongdoing.
In both versions The Ambassador from England arrives to announce the death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. “This sight is dismal; and our affairs from England come too late. The ears are senseless that should give us hearing to tell him his commandment is fulfilled, that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Where should we have our thanks?” (Stoppard, 56) After a full circle, they meet the same end. Their efforts to escape the drama and their destiny prove to be unproductive. However they end up taking responsibility for their destiny, feeling that it was their fault. “There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said no” (Stoppard, 125). I guess they understand that they could have said no to Claudius, that their destiny, is somehow a consequence of saying yes, accepting their role in the killing or disappearance of Hamlet. Even I they can’t remember that they did it.
“Here is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it,” (Sartre). But I would argue that in this case the essence of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was there before their existence. As characters of a play by Tom Stoppard, the characters were carrying the essence of the play written by Shakespeare. “Even as you die you know that you will come back in a different hat” (Stoppard, 123), says Guildenstern to the Player. Looking at it from this perspective, and probably without any intention by the author, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, is more of a Hindu play than an existentialist one. Their karma seems to be carried on from their previous life. Rosencrantz asks Guildenstern, “We’ve done nothing wrong! We didn’t harm anyone. Did we?
- I can’t remember, responds Guildenstern. (Stoppard, 125)
They don’t seem to remember their previous life, as it’s usually the case, they just feel the effects of it. But as audience we know what happened in Shakespeare’s version, we know that they actually did something wrong by accepting the task to send Hamlet to his murderers. “Well, we’ll know better next time.” (Stoppard, 126) are the last words of Guildenstern before “disappearing”. Because in this version, as in Shakespeare’s one, they don’t die, they disappear, and the drama goes on as if this second life was just contained in the previous one.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Stoppard, Tom, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. New York: Grove Press, 1967.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987
Sarte, Paul. Existentialism Is a Humanism.
Written: Lecture given in 1946 Source: Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre, ed. Walter Kaufman, Meridian Publishing Company, 1989; First Published: World Publishing Company in 1956; Translator: Philip Mairet.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm
Subhamoy Das, What Is Karma? The Law of Cause & Effect
http://hinduism.about.com/od/basics/a/karma.htm
Mother Courage
WAR AS A CONCEPT ESTRANGED FROM PAIN
Brecht, Bertolt. Mother Courage and Her Children. New York: The Penguin Group, 2007.
In his epic theater, Brecht proposes a theater of ideas, where people shouldn’t be distracted by their emotions but instead using the play as an instrument of analysis. Mother Courage is a monumental piece of epic theater but it’s also a tragedy.
Brecht removed from his play some of the elements that would lead the audience to emotional reactions to the story—he turned on white lights and he created the “alienating effect”, to keep the audience away from suspense, remaining at all times awake and rational. Paradoxically what we call the horrors of war: carnage and destruction, awakes a strong emotional response in all of us. He successfully tears off many of the meanings attached to war: Heroism, patriotism, and the unavoidable necessity of it, but he can’t dissolve our emotional reaction it.
Our thinking of war cannot exist without the emotional component that is so inherent to it. Our reaction to war cannot be only analytical because it’s embedded with the emotional reaction to death and carnage. Our sentiment and understanding of war is based on our emotional reaction to it.
In Mother Courage Brecht emphasizes war-profiteering to prove his point. Mother Courage makes a living during the 30 years war selling goods from her cart. She is a single mother— her life revolves around survival and her family. So in the end, the tragedy is the story of a mother seeing her children die, one by one.
No distancing effect can takes us away from the pain of Mother Courage having to see the dead body of her son, and say that she didn’t know him to save herself, her daughter and her business, knowing that if nobody claimed his body, it will be thrown into a pit (38). Neither can we be indifferent to her pain when she sings a lullaby to her dead daughter Katrin, after she saved the village with her drumming (81).
Mother Courage represents a behavior that Breach intends to condemn—she makes a profit selling goods during war times. The fact that during the epic she loses her three children, feels like a punishment for her wrong behavior. At the end we are left with a moral of punishment that resembles more a religious lesson than a Marxist one. The concept that we’ll be punished for our wrongdoings, or that wrongdoings will have at the end a bad ending suggests some kind of religious moral that takes away the principle that would sustain a more ethical behavior per se , without seeking recompense or fearing punishment.
In his introduction to the work Norman Roessler writes, “Brecht understood, that all performative discourse on war, even the most antiwar, never rises above “pornography” (xx). Mother Courage is a monumental anti-war play that refrains from romanticizing the war, or making it into a spectacle that will trigger positive feelings.
In Marxist thinking, war, poverty and unemployment are inherent to capitalism, so Mother Courage is herself a victim of the system, even if she takes advantage of its most painful expression, war and death.
“All theater is necessarily political, says Augusto Boal, in his Theatre of the Oppressed, “those who try to separate theater from politics try to lead us into error—and this is a political attitude”. I would argue that we can’t remove politics from theater but we can’t remove emotions from theater either.
Even a cold documentary, journalistic, academic or any kind of non-theatrical public presentation of stories of the war will cause an emotional reaction in the audience— we can’t escape the feelings attached to the concept of war.
Theater as a place for thinking is still theater. Even if we remove the dreamy and cathartic elements of some forms, the ritual is still intact. Even if we turn on the lights and tell the audience what will be happening in each scene, they are still sitting, watching a story that will unfold in front of their eyes. Every theater story deals with representation and some level negotiates with emotions.
Bertolt Brecht successfully guides our emotions towards the political ideas that he wants to convey, but he also fails to make the audience a complete objective witness of pain and death. Even in a sober and analytical state we are witnessing a painful tragedy of loss, death and the horrors of war.
Brecht, Bertolt. Mother Courage and Her Children. New York: The Penguin Group, 2007.
In his epic theater, Brecht proposes a theater of ideas, where people shouldn’t be distracted by their emotions but instead using the play as an instrument of analysis. Mother Courage is a monumental piece of epic theater but it’s also a tragedy.
Brecht removed from his play some of the elements that would lead the audience to emotional reactions to the story—he turned on white lights and he created the “alienating effect”, to keep the audience away from suspense, remaining at all times awake and rational. Paradoxically what we call the horrors of war: carnage and destruction, awakes a strong emotional response in all of us. He successfully tears off many of the meanings attached to war: Heroism, patriotism, and the unavoidable necessity of it, but he can’t dissolve our emotional reaction it.
Our thinking of war cannot exist without the emotional component that is so inherent to it. Our reaction to war cannot be only analytical because it’s embedded with the emotional reaction to death and carnage. Our sentiment and understanding of war is based on our emotional reaction to it.
In Mother Courage Brecht emphasizes war-profiteering to prove his point. Mother Courage makes a living during the 30 years war selling goods from her cart. She is a single mother— her life revolves around survival and her family. So in the end, the tragedy is the story of a mother seeing her children die, one by one.
No distancing effect can takes us away from the pain of Mother Courage having to see the dead body of her son, and say that she didn’t know him to save herself, her daughter and her business, knowing that if nobody claimed his body, it will be thrown into a pit (38). Neither can we be indifferent to her pain when she sings a lullaby to her dead daughter Katrin, after she saved the village with her drumming (81).
Mother Courage represents a behavior that Breach intends to condemn—she makes a profit selling goods during war times. The fact that during the epic she loses her three children, feels like a punishment for her wrong behavior. At the end we are left with a moral of punishment that resembles more a religious lesson than a Marxist one. The concept that we’ll be punished for our wrongdoings, or that wrongdoings will have at the end a bad ending suggests some kind of religious moral that takes away the principle that would sustain a more ethical behavior per se , without seeking recompense or fearing punishment.
In his introduction to the work Norman Roessler writes, “Brecht understood, that all performative discourse on war, even the most antiwar, never rises above “pornography” (xx). Mother Courage is a monumental anti-war play that refrains from romanticizing the war, or making it into a spectacle that will trigger positive feelings.
In Marxist thinking, war, poverty and unemployment are inherent to capitalism, so Mother Courage is herself a victim of the system, even if she takes advantage of its most painful expression, war and death.
“All theater is necessarily political, says Augusto Boal, in his Theatre of the Oppressed, “those who try to separate theater from politics try to lead us into error—and this is a political attitude”. I would argue that we can’t remove politics from theater but we can’t remove emotions from theater either.
Even a cold documentary, journalistic, academic or any kind of non-theatrical public presentation of stories of the war will cause an emotional reaction in the audience— we can’t escape the feelings attached to the concept of war.
Theater as a place for thinking is still theater. Even if we remove the dreamy and cathartic elements of some forms, the ritual is still intact. Even if we turn on the lights and tell the audience what will be happening in each scene, they are still sitting, watching a story that will unfold in front of their eyes. Every theater story deals with representation and some level negotiates with emotions.
Bertolt Brecht successfully guides our emotions towards the political ideas that he wants to convey, but he also fails to make the audience a complete objective witness of pain and death. Even in a sober and analytical state we are witnessing a painful tragedy of loss, death and the horrors of war.
Cloud Nine
PATRIARCHY, COLONIALISM AND CHILD ABUSE
Churchill, Caryl. Plays:1. Cloud Nine. London: Methuen Drama, 1996.
As a feminist and a person who cares about political theater and writers concerned with social justice, I appreciate the work of Caryl Churchill. Cloud Nine explores ideas of patriarchy and colonialism that I think are very important to put onstage. I agree with her political views and I appreciate her commitment to theatrical experimentation. I read Cloud Nine many years ago, and my impression of the play was very different then— I liked the text and I was very happy that writers like her were getting international recognition. It was exciting after all these years to have a chance to read the play again to analyze it. To my surprise I was a bit disappointed. I found that even though I still agree with the ideas that she is conveying, now I see the play as an illustration of progressive ideas more than an experimental theater piece that deals with political ideas. I appreciated the change of gender and race of the actors who play the different characters with the intention to stress the expectations that were put on them. I found that to be a clever and effective way of subverting gender paradigms. Her use of humor helps build an entertaining satire, which challenges the stereotype of feminist or political theater as being boring and taking itself too seriously.
Act one is set in Victorian times in the 1950s, at the height of colonialism. The power dynamics between men and women, servant and master are shown through characters resembling caricatures—in that their positions are very extreme. Each one of the characters represents a ‘big idea’: The wife, “women’s oppression”; the husband, “patriarchy”; the servant, “colonialism”. The picture she is painting is huge and general. The characters and the situations are not specific, they lack the complexity of the particular.
Almost every line in this play then, becomes a political statement, since every character conveys a specific meaning and represents a particular group. In this kind of carefully designed illustration, where political ideas will find their way to the audience through the lines of the characters, I find it surprising that child abuse would be thrown casually in the landscape. I doubt that something as important and serious as child molestation was not written into the play with a particular intention. I believe that the scene where Edward is molested by his uncle is part of the ideas that Churchill wants to communicate to us. In that case, I wonder, what exactly is she communicating? Edward seems to enjoy being molested by his uncle Harry, and asks him. “You know what we did when you were here before. I want to do it again. I think about it all the time. I try to do it to myself but it’s not as good. Don’t you want to any more? (270).
The second act is set in London in 1979, when in fact 100 years have passed. It is a difficult task to show in a play how much of the sexism and racism of that society was resolved (or not) after 100 years. So again, the characters carry a similarly heavy weight. They represent “the lesbian”, “the gay”, “the liberated woman”, and “the modern husband”. Churchill makes her point, with a very optimistic view. She shows us some improvement in the power dynamics between the characters. Betty divorces Clive, she begins a new life, now she works and she also masturbates. Martin, Victoria’s husband is a good guy who tries to be supportive and understanding of her desires. Edward is now an adult and he is out gay—he became the housewife his mother would want Victoria to be. Victoria comes out as a lesbian and she has more intellectual interests than her mother ever had. The only issue that remains unresolved is Edward. He doesn’t mention or remember that uncle Harry molested him when he was a child. We know that it happened, but we don’t see the damage, which I believe is the hidden part of this issue, and the one that never gets discussed.
Churchill has been compared to Bertolt Brecht in her style and the way her plays convey a clear political message. But if Brecht was accused of sacrificing artistic value at the service of political commitment, then Cloud Nine is a more extreme case of that. Brecht’s plays display stronger images and metaphors—the narrative is more conventional than hers in a way, but his writing transcends the political message. In Cloud Nine it appears as if the message was already digested before it was given to us.
Churchill, Caryl. Plays:1. Cloud Nine. London: Methuen Drama, 1996.
As a feminist and a person who cares about political theater and writers concerned with social justice, I appreciate the work of Caryl Churchill. Cloud Nine explores ideas of patriarchy and colonialism that I think are very important to put onstage. I agree with her political views and I appreciate her commitment to theatrical experimentation. I read Cloud Nine many years ago, and my impression of the play was very different then— I liked the text and I was very happy that writers like her were getting international recognition. It was exciting after all these years to have a chance to read the play again to analyze it. To my surprise I was a bit disappointed. I found that even though I still agree with the ideas that she is conveying, now I see the play as an illustration of progressive ideas more than an experimental theater piece that deals with political ideas. I appreciated the change of gender and race of the actors who play the different characters with the intention to stress the expectations that were put on them. I found that to be a clever and effective way of subverting gender paradigms. Her use of humor helps build an entertaining satire, which challenges the stereotype of feminist or political theater as being boring and taking itself too seriously.
Act one is set in Victorian times in the 1950s, at the height of colonialism. The power dynamics between men and women, servant and master are shown through characters resembling caricatures—in that their positions are very extreme. Each one of the characters represents a ‘big idea’: The wife, “women’s oppression”; the husband, “patriarchy”; the servant, “colonialism”. The picture she is painting is huge and general. The characters and the situations are not specific, they lack the complexity of the particular.
Almost every line in this play then, becomes a political statement, since every character conveys a specific meaning and represents a particular group. In this kind of carefully designed illustration, where political ideas will find their way to the audience through the lines of the characters, I find it surprising that child abuse would be thrown casually in the landscape. I doubt that something as important and serious as child molestation was not written into the play with a particular intention. I believe that the scene where Edward is molested by his uncle is part of the ideas that Churchill wants to communicate to us. In that case, I wonder, what exactly is she communicating? Edward seems to enjoy being molested by his uncle Harry, and asks him. “You know what we did when you were here before. I want to do it again. I think about it all the time. I try to do it to myself but it’s not as good. Don’t you want to any more? (270).
The second act is set in London in 1979, when in fact 100 years have passed. It is a difficult task to show in a play how much of the sexism and racism of that society was resolved (or not) after 100 years. So again, the characters carry a similarly heavy weight. They represent “the lesbian”, “the gay”, “the liberated woman”, and “the modern husband”. Churchill makes her point, with a very optimistic view. She shows us some improvement in the power dynamics between the characters. Betty divorces Clive, she begins a new life, now she works and she also masturbates. Martin, Victoria’s husband is a good guy who tries to be supportive and understanding of her desires. Edward is now an adult and he is out gay—he became the housewife his mother would want Victoria to be. Victoria comes out as a lesbian and she has more intellectual interests than her mother ever had. The only issue that remains unresolved is Edward. He doesn’t mention or remember that uncle Harry molested him when he was a child. We know that it happened, but we don’t see the damage, which I believe is the hidden part of this issue, and the one that never gets discussed.
Churchill has been compared to Bertolt Brecht in her style and the way her plays convey a clear political message. But if Brecht was accused of sacrificing artistic value at the service of political commitment, then Cloud Nine is a more extreme case of that. Brecht’s plays display stronger images and metaphors—the narrative is more conventional than hers in a way, but his writing transcends the political message. In Cloud Nine it appears as if the message was already digested before it was given to us.
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