Author: Kyle Higgins

My notes: How did we get here and, where are we going?  Seminar by James Hudson.

Drama historically started with the text, especially the single-author playwright configuration.

 “…of English theatre in the twentieth century, this at least can be said, that it is better than the English theatre of the ninetieth century” (B. Ifor Evans, 1948).

The Bricks and Mortar men, where wealthily individuals who monopolised theatre during the beginning of the 20^th century, based on a star system. They used famous faces to draw in crowds to performances and owned most of the established theatres within London during this time-period. If they lost capital on a production they would simply sell the theatre recovering any loss they had before undergoing any given production. (Similar to the current financial outlook on western American theatre regarding commercialism, I.e. Broadway.)

Terrance Rattigan 1911-1977.

Terrance Rattigan, displaying his acute Britishness.

• Prestigious British theatrical critic Terrance Rattigan, who was mainly known for work that was concerned with probing aspects of the heart, and used his mise en scène (some kind of simulation or recreation of what the audience would be used to, I.e. a drawing room or a parlour). His theatre is arguably not for the well-educated, however for those that are looking for an easy-going pastime or the idea of an intellectual appearance which is ultimately a façade for the passive spectator to become lost in. As Terrance Rattigan stated, he imagined his ideal theatre goes as being “Aunt Edna” a spectator who is interested in the idea of art and what it means, however, does so in an unconnected, uncomplex manner and uninformed way simply put – (challenge your theatre-goer at your peril.)

“A playwright must be his own his own audience. A novelist may lose his readers for a few pages; a playwright never dares lose his audience for a minute.”

 Terrance Rattigan

Kenneth Tynan 1927-1980.

Kenneth Tynan photographed outside of the National Theatre’s Board’s Office.

 He was theatrical provocateur and controversial in views extremely outspoken and the first person to say “Fuck” on British-television during a live-broadcast.

Predominately known as a 50’s theatre critic both in Britain and America. Kenneth Tynan was offered a job in New York which carried with it a huge amount of cultural power.

Was keen for the British establishment to reinvent itself or pull something from the American continent in reinvention. (The idea that theatre writers where a small pool of talent and attempts should be made to explore beyond this.) Theatre is boring when it is about the middle-class.

The idea that of the theatre writers, writing from a Kensington flat for the girl they love: merely to break the ice.

“Not content to have the audience in the palm of his hand, he goes one further and clinches his fist.”

                                                                                                            Kenneth Tynan.

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Important moments.

George Devine, Quote taken  from their mission statement which in those days, it was revolutionary statement about attracting young people to the theatre. (The right to fail: attributed to Tony Richardson, we have an obligation to do an obligation that might not work, that represent risk and challenging, that might challenge the audience.) Making a statement of pushing the perimeters of what is normally seen on stage.

The Royal Court is one of the most important theatrical companies, as it dragged British theatrical culture into the modern age. Seen as “the writer’s theatre.”

Joan Littlewood within her company there is no strict hierarchy, everyone was allowed an equal voice. No division, understood Brecht and brought his theatrical thinking’s and methodologies to the mainstream UK.

The formation of The English Stage Company. The Royal Court and its importance in premiering the important writing for the next year or so.

Waiting for Godot (1955), Samuel Beckett didn’t think of himself of a dramatist, wrote that in a break from writing for Novellas. He wrote them and then had them translated so he had complete control over his work.

British theatre had censorship since 1737. Until Edward Bond: 1965-68. Scripts had to be submitted to the office of the lord-chamberlain. And had strict penalties for content that contained the following sex, god, royal family, swearing and politics among others. However, there was a loop-hole in the law where a (public) theatre company could not put on a show that had been refused, however a private company could.

1968 Edward Bond submitted a further play which returned from the censor i.e. the Lord Chamberlin with one note: “His Lordship would not allow it”. This ultimately was the moment which led to a general realization and questioning about the ludicrousness and restraints of the censorship system, and the censorship ceased to exist.

Peter Hall. The RSC founded 1960, The National Theatre opens with Hamlet, which premiered the founding of the British National Theatre.

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Playwrights: 60’s, 70’s, 80’s.

Plays from the perspective of being written by the playwright.

Edward Bond Marxist: Society needs to become democratic.

Harold Pinter was writing about power and domination. Won the Nobel-prize in (2003) his speech was about politics, Iraq and the issues around 9/11 and the invasion of Chile.

The overall effect of Carol Churchill and the theatrical world becoming more experimental under her influence.

Joe Orton’s text that helped redefine farce as it was known in mainstream theatre in favour of political satire and mockery of the established social, economic principles.

90’s The New Face of Writing.

Blasted (1995) was important and was written by Sarah Kane and later was coined as “in-yer-face theatre” However, is better described as experiancial, e.g. (for the audience to feel as if it has been through some kind of theatrical experience.) Arguably there is no such thing as “in-yer-face theatre”– This opened the wider theatrical world to new types of playwriting.

Theatre became about who is the new best playwright? Who is young, and who has a story to tell? Who and what can sell? Through this thinking there was an influx of new, diverse writing which ultimately outshined historically theatrically successful established writers, in favor of new untold or explored work. In essence more working-class theatre.

The New Writing of The 90’s – It’s the process of how it gets there. Theatrical productions begin to change because drama groups want to encourage this process as there is financial gain and these performances and texts are marketable e.g. Shopping and Fucking (1997) (The idea of the me-and-my mates play, also the idea that playwrights are young, urban-people that write texts about their experiences of life that feature a cast of people that can be related to from a working perspective, narrowing down the focus.) Young playwrights are encouraged to write about their own lives – Auto Ethnography, relevant and current work that will sell to a wider demographic outside of the typical bourgeois theatrical communities.

Onwards, where are we heading?

The rise of the popularity of the verbatim text and play with its emphasis on the importance of the now. Popular culture and the rise of Site-specific and Site-generic theatre. The idea and questioning of theatre itself namely, why does theatre, have to be in a theatre? The idea that theatre in theatre is boring and also the exploration of taking theatre out of its “given” or “conventional” space.

The arguably pending downfall or unappreciated theatrical critic and the idea that no one cares about reviews anymore (not in the conventional journalistic sense). 2000 onwards, and the rise of the new-wave bloggers and the mentality of a society that is driven by constantly validating their views and opinions to wider communities or peers.

Work Cited.

Evans, B. Ifor (1948) A Short History of English Drama. London: Pelican.

The Post-dramatic: Playwrighting, Scripting, and Devising.

Finally inspiration at last! 

Forced Entertainment: 12am: Awake & Looking Down.

This unconventional post-dramatic performance, sees the audience immersed in a setting where there is arguably no linear story taking place and, instead rather as a spectator you are left with like many post-dramatic texts the freedom to make your own narrative. In many ways, Forced Entertainment’s 12am: Awake and Looking Down (1993)  is something of a theatrical revelation that allows the spectator to assume complete control over what they are shown and perceive. The simple cardboard ascetic is somewhat humbling and allows a deeper meaningful connection away from the lights and spectacle of traditional bourgeois theater scene. In many ways, post-dramatic theatre, could be argued to be aimed at the intellectual who derives a deeper meaningful connection from a text that is not restricted by narrative or a fixed point in time. Time itself is a factor also as with most Forced Entertainment productions, the spectator is not confined to a fixed time and is free to stay as little or, as long as they desire with performances lasting anywhere from a few minutes to several hours at a time.  This performance utilizes “five silent performers endlessly reinvent their identities using stacks of cardboard signs with which they name themselves, and a store of jumble-sale clothing (coats, dresses, suits, anoraks, trousers, pyjamas) from which they dress and re-dress. This catalogue of names range from LOST LISA and VALENTINA TERESHKOVA to ELVIS PRESLEY (THE DEAD SINGER) and THE MAN WHO WENT TOO FAR” (Forced Entertainment, 2016).

A still taken during performance. 

This act of rebirth or reenactment could be interesting to explore in performance. I also enjoy the notion that in many post-dramatic texts characters is somehow second-hand and, instead the freedom of allocating this role is left to the reader, examples of this being Attempts on Her Life (1997). I feel also, post-dramatic texts usually draw on the mediatized culture and society around them. This idea of society is exemplified on stage within 12am: Awake and Looking Down, the reliance on the spectator drawing a relationship with the printed words on the cardboard with simple statements like, ‘A SCHOLAR OF THE OCCULT’, ‘A RICH MAN’ etc. I also feel the repeated motions on stage for example of a man running over and, over again on the spot clearly really going nowhere, adds to the surrealness of the events taking place on stage.

“12 am… is a physical and visual performance that explores the relation between object and label, image and text. 12 am… also functions as a kind of narrative kaleidoscope as the named figures, in different combinations, share space beneath the backdrop of electric stars. The piece plays on the growing exhaustion and inventiveness of its performers as they create new stories or juxtapositions between characters” (Forced Entertainement, 2016).

The aspect of ‘theatrical ghosting could be an interesting concept on which to develop with added elements that utilize theatrical teachings that are relevant to presenting a scholarly topic through performance.

Works Cited.

Forced Entertainemnt (2016) 12AM: AWAKE & LOOKING DOWN. Sheffield: Forced Entertainment. Available from http://www.forcedentertainment.com/project/12am-awake-looking-down/

Forced Entertainment (2014)  12am: Awake & Looking Down (clip) Essen, 2014. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljsUnsNcSjk [Accsesed 29 October 2016].

The post-dramatic: Playwriting, Scripting, and Devising.  (Continued.)

My notes on Simon Stephen’s “Pornography” (2008). With reference from Jacqueline Bolton’s Introduction & commentary in Pornography (2014).

Simon Stephens Master Class post-show discussion, Theatre Royal Haymarket.

“Based upon Jaquez’s ‘Seven Ages of Man’ speech in As You Like It […] the seven scenes of Pornography take the form of four monologues, two duologues and a numbered list offering short descriptions of the 52 people killed in the 7/7 London bombings. The scenes do not constitute a unified plot in which a central narrative, focused upon one protagonist, unfolds chronologically. Instead, we are presented with a crystalline structure in which the first week of July 2005 is refracted through the perspectives of eight anonymous individuals experiencing six different situations. Pornography locates ‘the source and (as it were) the soul’ of the drama in the real-life events– the veridical history – of London during this tumultuous week: on 2 July, the rock concert Live 8 was held in Hyde Park with simultaneous concerts played globally; on 6 July, London was awarded the 2012 Olympic Games; on 7 July, four British-born Muslim Commentary 15 men detonated four bombs across the London transport system. Rather than serving to propel the forward thrust of a singular linear narrative, the characters of Pornography – and the incidents and impressions they narrate and enact – are linked by their proximity to, and fleeting intersections with, a series of localized events with global important” (Bolton, 2014, 14-15.).

“Pornography is a play that dramatizes ‘a world that seems to be more atomized and fractured than it has been in the past’, a world peopled by individuals ‘scorched by a need and an inability to connect’.¹⁰ Pornography does not only illustrate the dislocation and disaffection engendered in and by contemporary lived experience, however. In its selection and organization of dramatic, Pornography also invites critical consideration of some of the precipitating causes of a society in moral and ethical disarray: those political, economic and social ‘flaws and ruptures’, the aftershocks of which currently reverberate throughout Western and non-Western cultures alike” (Stephens, cited in Bolton, 2014, 29.).

“An estimated 3 billion people – almost half the world’s population– watched Live 8 through various media platforms, including live streaming on the internet provided by the US-based multinational media corporation AOL Time Warner.²⁴ According to the AOL website, feeds from London, Philadelphia and other capitals around the world reached a total of 5 million unique users that day, making it the largest streaming event ever. The event also spawned more than 26 million text messages – the largest number of text messages sent on one day^25”  (Time Warner Cited In. Bolton, 2014, 36.).

“It seems significant, moreover, that the journey recounted by the suicide bomber in Scene Four is not an authentic account of the route taken by the four men that day but instead describes a journey from Manchester, via Stoke and Derby, to London King’s Cross St Pancras.4 This is, in fact, the reverse route of a journey that Stephens himself once took from London to his brother’s house in Derby, and on to his Mum’s house in Stockport…”  (Bolton, 2014, 27-28.).

“Pornography complicates this stance by inviting us to consider the terrorist act as something located within, and produced by, Western culture. As Stephens explains, one of his ‘abiding memories’ of living in London at the time of the terrorist attacks was ‘an inability to share many people’s incredulity [and] horror that the boys who bombed London were British by birth’”   (Bolton, 2014, 28.).

A sense of stark isolation pervades Pornography, given varied and eloquent expression by nameless individuals cocooned in solipsistic narratives. A woman longs for her husband to touch her (6); a man imagines his estranged wife asleep beside him (56); a man kisses goodbye to his wife and children for the last time (37). Often, when alone, characters are rendered completely immobile: ‘I sit still for up to half an hour at a time’ (5); ‘I go into my sister’s room. I lie down under her bed’ (11); ‘[I] try not to spend too many hours staring out of the window’ (57). The ‘fucking horror’ (ibid) of having to talk, live alongside, or otherwise encounter ‘other people’ manifests itself throughout the text: grocery shoppers evoke ‘the deadness of real despair’ (58); the neighbors are probably ‘cunts’ (29); boys press a screwdriver to another boy’s cheek and threaten to ‘cut his face off’ (13). Advanced technology substitutes for and supplants the human: ‘on some tube lines now […] the machines have started to run themselves. I like this’ (56). The ubiquity of the iPod – ‘the tube is full of people and nearly all of them nowadays have iPods’ (6) – uncouples human connection from human co-presence, substituting private auditory narratives in place of a collective public experience. Individuals in Pornography are divorced from their environment and alienated from their bodies: they observe, rather than inhabit, their actions, words, instincts and emotions” (Bolton, 2014, 31.).

My observations.

One uniting theme is the issue of being unable to communicate or interpret emotions effectively. Throughout the text “characters” are unable to distinguish prime emotions I.e. crying and laughing. Throughout little empathy, to the situations, in which each find themselves in is shown.

Each “character” within the text are arguably connected by consumerism and the possessions of items of a consumeristic society, I.e. Pornography, I pod’s, coffee, Upper Crust Etc. Each character owns or shows an intense interest in the consumption of others in some abstract from.

Each character is acting on impulse and lacks the ability to not do so for example, the old women who watches pornography and on her way home knocks on a stranger’s door asking for chicken, the women who gives away an organization plans for the R&D, the bomber who detonates on a public train after choosing the busiest location for maximum impact, and so on.

Pornography as a title is important as it sums up the idea of the issues of the objectification of consumers and people within society. Throughout the text we are presented with the issue of the audience’s lack of apperception of the individual personality within the character performer, it instead chooses to exploit them for a means-to-an-end as yet another object of consumerism, similarly terrorists are viewed as using people as collateral damage when displaying their cause to the state or wider media as a device to be used and abused at will, they are viewed as objections instead of real people with wants, needs, and desires. They too are objectified as commercial property of the western world who need to be educated or cleansed.

Each character in the text is displayed at the “end” as a brief three to four line summary of a real person, taken directly from the BBC’s obituaries webpage. Another example of the objectification that within the media. The text also highlights how certain actions I.e. the teacher and student sleeping together has no impact on why she would later be killed in the 7/7 bombings. In essence, some actions have no direct consequences.

Each scene in the narrative involves a transgression. Each character acts on an impulsion or desire with no regard for others. The text highlights the hypocrisy of commercialism and consumerism I.e. Live Aid and the London 2012 Olympics reveal. The very heart of London has been ripped open exposing the filth and desires beneath but also the commercial value of London on that day.

Works Cited.

Bolton, J. (2014) Pornography SIMON STEPHENS with commentary and notes by JACQUELINE BOLTON. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama.

Stephens, S. (2008) Pornography. London: Methuen Drama.

Authorizing the Audience: The conceptual drama of Tim Crouch: Stephen Bottoms.

Below follows the statements that I felt were important from the reading and were points that were discussed in my seminar.

Tim Crouch performing An Oak Tree at Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, August 2005. Jon Spooner plays the second actor. 

“Things become art in space where powerful ideas about art focus upon them. Indeed the object frequently becomes the medium through which these ideas are manifested and proffered for discussion” (O’Doherty, 1999, 14).

“Crouch demonstrated that the theatre space – together with the performance of written dialogue spoken within it – had transformational possibilities potentially exceeding those of the gallery” (Bottoms, 2009, 65).

” reality is somewhat undermined by the fact that her lines are performed by Crouch himself, standing there in the garb of the stage hypnotist character that he plays through most of the piece: the tree s/ he gestures at is a piano stool, the road a bare stage floor, and the daughter a plastic-arm. The Father, moreover, is played by a second actor (male or female) who has neither seen nor read the play prior to stepping onstage in the given performance” (Bottoms, 2009, 65-66).

“the ‘perpetual field’s of force’ operating within the theatre space, that despite all the blatantly telescoped signals of the scene’s artifice” (Bottoms, 2009, 66).

“Spectators take the information they are given, partial and contradictory as it is, and fill out the perceptual and emotional landscape through an investment that, because personal, makes the material all the more intensely felt” (Bottoms, 2009, 66).

“The distinction between fact and fiction is a late acquisition of rational thought…”(Bottoms, 2009, 66).

“The spectators are cast as ‘characters’ in the play but simultaneously reminded of their non-coincide with the spectators they represent – just as they remain conscious that the second actor is non-coincidental with the character s/he is asked to portray” (Bottoms, 2009, 66).

“the adjective “postdramatic” denotes a theatre that feels bound to operate beyond drama, at a time “after” the authority of the dramatic paradigm in the theatre’ (Lehmann, cited in Bottoms, 2009, 67).

“liberating the authority of the audience to see their own thing. For me that’s very important: it’s about relinquishing control from the stage” (Crouch, cited in Bottoms, 2009, 67).

“Crouch makes his audience conscious of their own process of spectatorial meaning- seeking, by showing them- dramatising?” (Bottoms, 2009, 68).

My observations.

An Oak Tree is influenced by postdramatic dramaturgy that is contained alongside Craig-Martin’s various artworks, which arguably has come before and influenced its inception.

An Oak Tree takes its teachings from the material, that is by the poststructuralist and postdramatic philosophy.

Every performance is unique as the second actor is unaware they have been allocated the part to mere hours before it is due to be performed, they also have not been given a script. This leads to there being no pre-conceived emotional attachment to the character-troupes or stereotyping. The performance given, is very much a real birth of a new life.

Works Cited.

Bottoms, S. (2009) Authorizing the Audience: The conceptual drama of Tim Crouch. Performance Research, 14(1) 65-76

juliageek (2007) An Oak Tree by Tim Crouch.

Available from https: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIf3a49W_iI [Accsessed 28 October 2016].

O’Doherty, B. (1999) Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space. London: University of Califonia Press.

THE POST-DRAMATIC THEATRE.

Hans-Thies Lehmann Postdramatic Theatre.

“For both theatre and literature are textures which are especially dependent on the release of active energies of imagination, energies that are becoming weaker in a civilization of the primarily passive consumption of images and data” (Lehmann, 2006, 16).

“Theatre does not produce a tangible object which may enter into circulation as a marketable commodity, such as a video, a film, a disk, or even a book” (Lehmann, 2006, 16).

“a unique intersection of aesthetically organised and everyday real life takes place ” (Lehmann, 2006, 17).

“In contrast to other arts, which produce an object and/or are communicated through media, here the aesthetic act itself (the performing) as well as the act of reception (the theatre going) take place as a real doing in the here and now” (Lehmann, 2006, 17).

“Theatre means the collectively spent and used up lifetime in the collectively breathed air of that space in which the performing and the spectating take place. The emission and reception of signs and signals takes place simultaneously. The theatre performance turns the behaviour onstage and in the auditorium into a joint text a, ‘text’ even if there is no spoken dialogue on stage or between actors and audience. Therefore, the adequate description of theatre is bound to the reading of this total text” (Lehmann, 2006, 17).

“Yet in theatre the text is subject to the same laws and dislocations as the visual, audible, gestic, and architectonic theatrical signs. (Lehmann, 2006, 17).

“By alluding to the literary genre of the drama, the title ‘Postdramatic Theatre’ signals the continuing association and exchange between theatre and text. Nevertheless, the discourse of theatre is at the centre of this book and the text therefore is considered only as one element, one layer, or as a ‘material’ of the scenic creation, not as its master. In no way does this involve a prior value judgment. Important texts are still being written, and in the course of this study the often dismissively used term…” (Lehmann, 2006, 17).

“’text theatre’ will turn out to mean a genuine and authentic variant of postdramatic theatre, rather than referring to something that has supposedly been overcome” (Lehmann, 2006, 17).

“…unsatisfactory theoretical analysis of the newly produced scenic discourses (in comparison with the analysis of drama,)” (Lehmann, 2006, 17-18).

“The interpretation that this autonomization of language bears witness to a lack of interest in the human being, (small 4) however, is not a foregone conclusion. Is it not rather a matter of a changed perspective on human subjectivity? What finds articulation here is less intentionality — a characteristic of the subject — than its failure, less conscious will than desire, less the ‘I’ than the ‘subject of the unconscious’. So rather than bemoan the of an already defined image of the human being in the postdramatically organised texts, it is necessary to explore the new possibilities of thinking and representing the individual subject sketched in these texts [Sic.]” (Lehmann, 2006, 18).

“the remark that aesthetic investigations always involve ethicalI, moral, political and legal questions in the widest sense. Art, and even more so theatre which is embedded in society in multiple ways — “ (Lehmann, 2006, 18).

“all aesthetic interrogation is blind if it does not recognise the reflection of social norms of perception and behaviour in the artistic practise of theatre.” (Lehmann, 2006, 19).

“Yet the majority of spectators, who — to put it crudely — expect from the theatre the illustration of classical texts, may well accept the ‘modern’ set but subscribe to a comprehensible fable (story), coherent meaning, cultural self-affirmation and touching theatre feelings” (Lehmann, 2006, 19).

“The new theatre, one hears and reads, is not this and not that and not the other, but there is a lack of categories and words to define or even describe that it is in any positive terms. This study aims to go some way towards correcting this situation and at the same time encourage ways of working in the theatre that expand our preconceptions of what theatre is or meant to be” (Lehmann, 2006, 19).

Works Cited.

Lehmann, H.  (ed.)  (2006) Postdramatic Drama Hans-Thies Lehmann. USA: Routledge.