Exeter Drama T3 Journal 2021 by Exeter Drama

Editorial Note

We write this on a week which we had all hoped might be the last week of restrictions. As another delay is announced and cases are on the rise in schools, the summer feels one of exhaustion and trepidation. In this context, the students’ achievements this year are all the more impressive, and the work voluntarily undertaken to produce a journal at short notice is testament to their commitment and energy. In these essays, dissertation extracts and creative pieces we can hear the voices of a generation who, whatever their personal circumstances, are responsive to wider and urgent social concerns. Questions of representation are particularly apparent in this issue. How do authors use form and narrative to represent the marginalised experiences of global majority characters? How does the actor’s body tell its own story in relation to the story depicted through character? An intersectional approach prompts nuanced responses to theatre that concerns climate change, feminism and colonialism. An understanding of theatre history also informs these discussions in considering women’s writing for the theatre, and productions that interpret older plays, such as Miller’s The Crucible. The use of dialect, laughter and the technical demands of puppetry are also considered in this issue. The creative writing shares some of the same concerns, with two very different pieces considering women’s bodies, one in a defiant spoken word poem of resistance; the other evoking the mundane experience of period pain. There’s also an eerie story about an explosion in the Orkneys and an imagined scenario with multiple Edith Piafs. Speaking perhaps the most directly about the pandemic itself, Freddie Venturi’s monologue for a 15-year-old who has found a kind of freedom in lockdown is a poignant reminder of the pressure we put on young people. In producing the T3 Journal, we aim to celebrate our students’ writing as much as their making, because writing is also making. And this issue particularly celebrates their self-questioning and their sense of the importance of theatre and the stories we tell. A big thank you to all the authors and the editors, with hopes for the coming year, and appreciation of all your generous enquiry. Katie Beswick and Cathy Turner Student Editors: Odette Abbasi, Roxanne Davies, Pauline Eller, Sofia Giles, Millie Jewry, Orla Mackinnon, Zoe Man, Morwenna Stevens, Sophia Trewick T3 Journal 2020-21 was funded with an award from the Exeter Alumni Annual Fund, and by Exeter University Drama Department

T3 Journal - Student Writing in Drama, University of Exeter 2020-21

The female body in conversation: how taboos, community and comfort shape our understanding of the female body, sex and sexuality. Reflection on the creative process for the ‘Practical Essay’ performance - ‘here i am’ Pauline Eller

Have a look at the cover page of this journal again. The image you see was taken from our Practical essay performance here i am. It is the opening image of our piece. Overlaying the image is a reading of Margaret Atwood’s take on the ever demanding expectations of women - ‘(m) ale fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies?’. To her, even a woman’s own thoughts are dominated by these fantasies ‘peering through the keyhole in our own head’. In the context of our final practical module our aim was to create and navigate a space that intends to resist these limitations and expectations, offering a space to breathe and grow. Our practice aimed to open up conversations around the female body, pushing at what might be considered taboo or uncomfortable. We had been investigating how communities shape how we feel about our body and ourselves, how public and private expectations of the female body influence our perceptions of our own body, and why it is so hard to be happy with yourself. Our research methodology followed the intent to create performance from interviews. We invited six female identifying members, aged 18-25, of the University’s Pole Fitness Society and four members of the Women’s Rugby Team, to join the conversation. These interviews and our own explorations provided the foundation of this piece. By creating body focused and visual work that incited conversation and discourse, our research and performance process followed characteristics of provocation and challenge of perception, in relation to the work of Gómez-Peña, Esther Bunting, Peggy Shaw, and the tradition of Performance Art. The subject matter is both deeply psychological and physical at the same time, where an exploration of visual and textual bases simultaneously allows for an in-depth consideration of our research questions and offers stimuli for creative explorations around the topic. We invite the audience to engage with our performance to the extent to which they are comfortable, and to challenge and empower their own perception of their body.

I want to specifically talk about this comfort and vulnerability following the creation of a ‘level playing field’. Both in our creative process and in the final piece, this notion proved to be an important stepping stone towards creating a safe and inviting space for participants and audience. One of the primary components of our research were the interviews we conducted with members of the University’s Pole Fitness Society, members of the Ladies’ Rugby team, as well as each other within our group. With the goal to create an open and safe space within our interviews, we determined that by allowing ourselves to be vulnerable we would be able to create an equal and trusting space. Our hope was that this space would then facilitate and safeguard the vulnerability of our participants if they chose to open up to us about highly personal sentiments and experiences. However, while preparing for these interviews, we had to recognise that this approach possessed the potential to sabotage and taint the attitudes and answers we would receive. Sharing our own experiences would prove to be difficult without manipulating and forcing a narrative and comfort level. We wanted to preserve the natural and organic responses and proceeded to abandon the initial considerations of a level playing field through shared vulnerability. Nonetheless, we were able to conduct our interviews successfully by encouraging an engagement with the topic in a trusting and supportive space. Our final piece approaches the notion of a ‘level playing field’ in the performer-audience relationship. The subject matter we discuss in our piece is immediately personal to the individual, whether male, female or other. It is vulnerable and makes whoever engages with it vulnerable; the stakes are high, for everyone involved. We are demanding space by using our bodies and our voices as performers. With exposed breasts, flowery vaginas, and bloodstained sheets, we push at the boundaries and limitations placed on the discussion of the female body. The actor’s body and voice, our bodies, are exposing themselves to make room for vulnerability and confidence. The tradition of Perfor-

Pauline Eller

mance Art helps this rebellious push, turning the actors’ bodies into ‘active political tools’ challenging the subject matter through raw and uncomfortable imagery protected by aesthetic fascination and artistry (Foerscher 2017). You cannot look away, you have to engage. Charging ahead, we manage to create this level playing field through our personal engagement with the topic and offer the audience a safe space to become vulnerable themselves. However, with such an immediately personal research question it becomes difficult to navigate between the person and performer. There is a necessity to find a balance between the personal truth, the performative action and the responsibility we carry towards the subject matter and the effect we have on our audience. A level playing field is essential to our performance, and was essential to our creative process. In order to remove expectations and open up conversations, we need to make space for a shared vulnerability that is safeguarded from external sabotage and exploitation. With our piece we hope to provide an entrance into that space and some tools to navigate its strength.

Foerschner, A. (2017) Crossing the Line: The “Disgusting” Female Body as Artistic Medium of Resistance. [online] https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/ crossing-the-line-the-disgusting-female-body-as-artistic-medium-ofresistance/ [4/2/21]

T3 Journal - Student Writing in Drama, University of Exeter 2020-21

Editorial & Essay

Editorial

Cover photo - Reflective Essay The female body in conversation: how taboos, community and comfort shape our understanding of the female body, sex and sexuality. Pauline Eller

Photo credits and contents

Essays

An intersectional feminist analysis of Ella Hickson’s Oil Sophia Trewick

An exploration of the representation of cultural identities through the actor’s body in Small Island Aoife Rush

19 Photo Credits

Climate research, science and community: a discussion on Chantal Bilodeau’s Sila Maddie Holmes

Cover Photo: Pauline Eller (still from video recording of practical essay performance here i am)

The political significance of tucker green’s formal innovation in random Sally Johnson

23 Other photos were taken by: Mima Beauchamp (pp.8-9)

Applying feminist and post-colonial analysis to the 2014 Old Vic Production of The Crucible, focusing on the characters of Abigail and Tituba Zoe Man

Pauline Eller ( p.31, pp.52-53) Susanna Bramwell (pp.32-33, pp.60-61, p.69)

Ways in which Anne Charlotte Leffler and Elizabeth Robins tell ‘their own story’ and the implications of the pen being in a woman’s hand Susannah Bramwell

Contents & Photo Credits

The actor’s body in British participatory theatre as a challenge to hegemonic constructions of the cultural identities of women who are refugees and/or seeking asylum. An analysis of two plays, Tanja and Queens of Syria. Aoife Rush

To what extent can African and Black British dialects on the London stage be used as sites of resistance and empowerment? An examination of Inua Ellams’ Barber Shop Chronicles. Helen Romeu Coombes

Enlivening the inanimate: exploring the creation of audience belief in twenty-first century West End puppetry Matthew Lawrence

Charlotte Josephine’s Bitch Boxer (2012): a reflection on the portrayal and expectation of gender in women’s boxing in regard to the 2012 London Olympics.

Creative Writing

The female body in conversation: how taboos, community and comfort shape our understanding of the female body, sex and sexuality. Pauline Eller

Room to breathe in a respiratory crisis Freddie Venturi

When the curtain went up Mo Johnson

March 8th 2008 Ethan McLucas

Free Leah Frape

Contents

Dissertation Extracts

Sabrina Cass

How is feminist laughter operating within contemporary performance? Rebecca Taylor

Reflective Essays

Reflection of Process and Breath Susannah Bramwell

‘Hold on Tightly, Let go Lightly’: A Maxim for Collaboration Lucy Kean

Essays

T3 Journal - Student Writing in Drama, University of Exeter 2020-21

An intersectional feminist analysis of Ella Hickson’s Oil Submitted for the module ‘Performance and Interpretation’ Essay Sophia Trewick

Conceived and written by Ella Hickson over six years, the first production of Oil was directed by Carrie Cracknell and staged at the Almeida Theatre in London in 2016. The contemporary history play travels from a candle-lit Cornish farm in 1889 to a lavish colonial residence in Tehran in 1908 to a semi-detached house in Hampstead in the 1970s, into desert between Baghdad and Kirkuk in 2021 before landing in a dark, speculative Cornwall in 2051. Hickson’s exploration of Britain’s relationship with the Middle East during the age of mass petroleum extraction is anchored by an intimate portrayal of a mother-daughter relationship which traverses centuries. Cho, Crenshaw and McCall define intersectionality as ‘a nodal point’ or ‘gathering place’ for ‘investigating’ the intersections of various social ‘inequalities’ (2013: 788). My understanding of the term intersectional feminism is informed by bell hooks’ definition of feminism as ‘a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression’ (hooks 2015:1), Angela Davis’ affirmations of a ‘feminism that recognises the interconnections … between intimate and institutional violence’ (Afromarxist 2018: 1:55/6:07) and Patricia Hill Collins’ description of intersectionality as a ‘knowledge project of resistance’ (Collins 2019: 10). Crucially, an intersectional feminist analysis highlights the extent to which a play resists the perpetuation and re-enactment of intersecting structural oppressions. I will investigate Ella Hickson’s textual representation of the character Ana before considering the political and ethical implications of staging a play which traverses cultural borders and time frames. My analysis gives rise to questions of ethics, positionality, and cultural appropriation as I consider the inherently political nature of storytelling through the prism of intersectional feminist theory and praxis. The second part of Oil is set in Tehran in 1908 - a year marking the formation of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and a subsequent escalation of petroleum extraction in

southwest Iran (Shafiee 2018: 4). Hickson purposefully aligns the contextual historical event with the microcosmic politics of interpersonal relationships. The character of Ana is an Iranian housekeeper working at a lavish colonial residence. Informed by Sara Ahmed’s notion that ‘the racial and historical dimensions are beneath the surface of the body described by phenomenology’, I will focus particularly on the political implications of the phenomenological when staging abusive and exploitative interactions (Ahmed 2006: 110). Despite the geographical location initially displacing Western centrality in the play, Hickson grounds the action in a ‘colonial residence in the Persian desert’ and subsequently establishes the aesthetics of white, colonial excess as dominant (Hickson 2016: 35). Ana enters the space part way through the scene to give May her uniform. Her peripheral placement in the narrative mirrors Hickson’s peripheral staging of Iranian civilians in a more general sense. Hickson describes ‘the workers, exhausted and hollow eyed’ in her stage directions - literally placing ‘the oil wells of Iran’ ‘on the horizon’ (Hickson 2016: 35). Naomi Klein describes ‘imperialism’ as ‘disposable peripheries being harnessed to feed a glittering centre’ (Klein 2014: 169). Oil reproduces this dynamic through the centrality of the Western settlement, a ‘glittering centre’ in which ‘all is sumptuous and exciting’ (Hickson 2016: 35). Under the reductive lens of the white, Western gaze, the Middle East is frequently homogenised in popularised representation. Mainstream media coverage of Muslim women in Middle Eastern countries tends to hinge on the body as a site for the enactment of oppression/resistance (Shahrokni 2020: 2). Ana is subjected to aggressive behaviour from both May and Samuel, a white colonial officer who flirts with May and becomes microcosmically reflective of the strategic paternalism employed by British colonial corporations in Iran (Shafiee 2018: 136). A series of violations of women’s bodies occur in the concluding moments of the second act - Samuel ‘grab(s)’ May, a white

Sophia Trewick

British maid with a young daughter (Amy), and ‘runs his hand up her leg’ (Hickson 2016: 55). While this is happening, Amy is gorging herself on the Turkish delights given to her by the officer. May is horrified and tries to get her to spit them out before Samuel intervenes, ‘grabs Amy hard and smacks her - until she spits them out’ (Hickson 2016: 56). Samuel then wraps a cloth around Amy’s head in a mock-imitation of Ana’s dress and tells her to ‘dance like Ana dances’ (Hickson 2016: 56). Later, Samuel ‘squeezes Ana on the back of the neck’; a gesture which, unseen by May, expresses total domination and powerlessness (Hickson 2016: 57). May and Amy run away leaving Ana stranded at the residence. The stage directions read ‘Samuel approaches Ana with malice’ (Hickson 2016: 59). Ana’s role is defined by the status of victimhood, Hickson offers no escape route at the end of the scene and the audience are left with the haunting image of the white, abusive officer bearing down on her ‘with malice’ (Hickson 2016: 59). The gestural language of the scene frames working-class women’s bodies as intensely vulnerable. The objectifying, colonizing gaze of Samuel permeates the action - he commands, ‘grabs’, taunts and ‘smacks’. Where May and Amy can escape further abuse, Ana is granted no such relief - her narrative is bleakly mapped, the scene traps her body and encloses her storyline. Shahrokni describes white Western representations of Iran as ‘Janus-faced’ identifying a suspicious fixation in which ‘women’s bodies’ are placed ‘under the scrutiny of Western observers’ (Shahrokni 2020: 2). To an extent, Hickson’s textual representation of Ana conforms to this trend - to represent a narrative through the description of pain risks separating ‘the wound … from the complex histories of ‘being hurt’ or injured, histories which cannot be gathered under a singular concept such as patriarchy’ (Ahmed 2014: 173). Director Carrie Cracknell locates Oil’s radicalism in the centrality of two female protagonists and their journey as one which relates to various men without being dictated and defined by these relationships (Almeida Theatre 2016a 14:39/47:35). Michael Billington’s review of Oil identifies the play as a rebuttal of ‘the old idea that women dramatists tend to shun the epic form’ and remarks on the nuance and compelling psychology of May, the white protagonist (Billington 2016: n.p). Without acknowledging race, culture and imperialism - central to the play’s subject matter the anglocentricity of Oil is hidden behind an emphasis on the play’s radical portrayal of women. Arguably, Ana’s representation is not radical - it reflects historic and contemporary patterns of intersectional oppression as the white woman takes centre stage in her battle

for self-determination, financial security and freedom. Chandra Mohanty outlines the tendency in white feminist discourse and practice to ‘construct the notion of the free, liberated Western feminist’ through ‘colonising’ marginal communities by reading and representing these groups as without agency (Wasiyo 2015: 8:14/1:17:20). Mohanty describes the gaps in a ‘hegemonic feminist theory’ which approaches gender as ‘non-racialised’ (Wasiyo 2015: 6:31/1:17:20). White feminism has traditionally claimed a kind of neutrality, a fight for all women which excludes non-white gendered experiences through a politics of negation and privilege. Oil documents the infrastructure of Britain’s social and economic relationship with Iran and Iraq through the prism of the white gaze – placing a white female protagonist at the heart of the play. An intersectional feminist analysis of Oil necessitates a consideration of the role and responsibilities of the white theatre writer, maker, and critic in relation to the urgent realities of cultural appropriation and reductive representations of ‘the other’ on the contemporary, London stage. Instigated by a panel discussion hosted by the Almeida in 2016 entitled ‘The Right to Write’, I will expand my investigation of the play beyond the bounds of the dramatic text and into the systems, material conditions and ethical discussions which framed and informed its development and interpretation in practice. The discussion panel was chaired by the white theatre critic Matt Trueman and the guests were Xīnrán Xue (Chinese-British journalist and author), Ella Hickson (white British playwright of Oil ), Carrie Cracknell (white British director of Oil ) and Vava Tampa (Congolese activist, poet, and writer). At the beginning of the talk Hickson openly describes ‘struggling with both the practical and … ethical questions around writing characters that were from cultures that (she) didn’t share cultural experience with’ (Almeida Theatre 2016a: 3:49/47:35). Both Hickson and Cracknell acknowledge the play as an ‘attempt’; a movement towards conscious, global storytelling (Almeida Theatre 2016a: 14:18/47:35). A series of short videos released by the Almeida in tandem with the first staging of Oil give insight into the rehearsal process. Actor Nabil Elouahabi, who plays Mr Farouk, describes a collaborative space; ‘the whole company... partakes in the process’ with ‘open-ness’ and ‘creativity’ (Almeida Theatre 2016b: 0:30/5:14). Lara Sawalha, who multi-roles to play three characters (including that of Ana) describes ‘a beautiful experience of just playing’ (Almeida Theatre 2016c: 0:40/2:47). The mutability of the new

T3 Journal - Student Writing in Drama, University of Exeter 2020-21

writing and the approach of Hickson and Cracknell to the process of staging the text indicates an explorative, lateral way of creating as a collective. Sawalha describes a sense of solidification over time as her roles developed in their power throughout the creative process - she refers to a ‘grounded’, ‘empowering’ sense of strength in the characterisation (Almeida Theatre 2016c:1:15/2:47). Part way through the conservation, Tampa poses a pointed question - ‘On what basis … should you, white people, continue to write about me?’ (Almeida Theatre 2016a: 30:12/47:35). He goes on to state that the stories we platform need to do more than ‘reflect’ historical and present realities but also ‘challenge the systems in place … in British society’ (Almeida Theatre 2016a: 31:53/47:35). He insists on active resistance to oppressive systems as key in acknowledging the harmful material consequences of the white gaze in the theatrical and literary canon. Engaging with Hickson’s script while allowing Tampa’s question to percolate involved reflection on my own whiteness and the privilege embedded in my perception of the text and its staging. Grappling with these issues as a white, feminist drama student interested in theatre practice and theory prompted uncertainty and discomfort. Sara Ahmed’s meditations on emotion and her development of a critical theory which investigates power without adhering to the idea that ‘“rational thought” is unemotional’ allowed me to approach feelings of discomfort with curiosity (Ahmed 2014: 170). Drawing on Audre Lorde’s explorations of anger, Sara Ahmed asserts that ‘(a)nger is creative; it works to create a language with which to respond to that which one is against’ (Ahmed 2014: 176). Similarly, acknowledging whiteness and interrogating discomfort creates the opportunity for reflection and resistance to the reproduction of narratives in which the white gaze is deemed universal rather than unstable and reductive. The phrase ‘the right to write’ is as politically, ethically and morally charged in 2020 as it was in 2016. Vava Tampa’s question is full of possibilities - ‘how do we challenge the systems in place?’ (Almeida Theatre 2016a: 31:53/47:35). To displace and dismantle white supremacy in the arts, those in positions of privilege must confront the fact that ‘white bodies are somatic norms’ (Ahmed 2006:133) and consider the radical provocations of intersectional theory and praxis. Mohanty asks ‘how do you keep questions of the profound gendered structure of society together with colonial legacies, capitalist scripts, racialised ideologies, nationalism … and use that as a frame?’ (Wasiyo 2015: 5:54/1:17:20). Oil stages intersectional oppression and

illuminates aspects of the human story of oil extraction. The rehearsal process foregrounded collaboration and playfulness. And yet, the all-female leadership behind the production was also an all-white leadership. The script centres the narrative of a white protagonist and, in places, reinstates hegemonic theatrical traditions of placing marginal female voices at the periphery without interrogating or working to actively resist the reductive tendencies of the white, theatrical gaze. Hickson begins to address the political responsibilities of the contemporary white playwright - ‘We cannot expect white structured stories with white poetic language… to represent...’ and then she trails off and picks up a new thought (Almeida Theatre 2016a: 35:08/47:35). It is this cautious confrontation of whiteness as a cultural reality which shapes the way stories are told and who gets to tell them, which responds to the insights of intersectional feminism and the ethical questions at the heart of theatre-making. To actively engage with the provocations of intersectional feminist theory and practice, white British playwrights and theatre makers must engage with the issues of cultural appropriation and accountability. To engage with whiteness as a symbolic and material construct pulls privilege from its comfortable invisibility, exposing the distorting effects of the white gaze.

Sophia Trewick

Afromarxist. (2018) Angela Davis on Intersectional Feminism, [online audio visual resource], Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=9GDjT3Fw_6w>, [Accessed 5 December 2020]. Ahmed, S. (2006) Queer Phenomenolog y : Orientations, Objects, Others, Duke University Press, North Carolina. Ahmed, S. (2014) The cultural politics of emotion, 2nd edition, Edinburgh University Press. Almeida Theatre. (2016a) The Right to Write | Almeida Questions, [online audio visual resource], Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=62EulXfcaqI>, [Accessed 4 December 2020]. Almeida Theatre. (2016b) Rehearsing for Oil - Nabil Elouahabi, [online audio visual resource], Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=fekO2no9-uw&t=4s>, [Accessed 6 December 2020]. Almeida Theatre. (2016c) Rehearsing for Oil - Lara Sawalha, [online audio visual resource], Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=DpIXYlL4UYQ>, [Accessed 6 December]. Billington, M. (2016) ‘Oil review – scorchingly ambitious with plenty of renewable energ y’, The Guardian, [online resource], Available at: <https://www. theguardian.com/stage/2016/oct/16/oil-review-almeida-theatre-londonanne-marie-duff-ella-hickson-empire-energy-parenthood>, [Accessed 28 December 2020]. Cho, S. Crenshaw, K.W. McCall, L. (2013) ‘Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies: Theory, Applications, and Praxis’, Signs, 38(4), pp. 785–810. Collins, P. H. (2019) Intersectionality As Critical Social Theory, Duke University Press. Hickson, E. (2016) Oil (NHB Modern Plays), Nick Hern Books, London. hooks, b. (2015) Feminism is for everybody: passionate politics, New York, Routledge. Klein, N. (2014) This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, Great Britain, Penguin Books. Shafiee, K. (2018) Machineries of Oil: An Infrastructural History of BP in Iran. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press (Infrastructures Series.) Shahrokni, N. (2020). Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran. Oakland, California, University of California Press. Wasiyo, K. (2015). Chandra Mohanty’s ‘Under Western Eyes’, [online audio visual resource], Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=9EDFA-bKq1o>, [Accessed 29 December 2020].

T3 Journal - Student Writing in Drama, University of Exeter 2020-21

An exploration of the representation of cultural identities through the actor’s body in ‘Small Island’ Submitted for the module ‘The Actor’s Body’ Essay Aoife Rush

Within Small Island, the actor’s body works to represent the intricacies and tensions in the cultural identities shaped by the ‘shared history of Jamaica and Britain’ (Howard 2019:4). This adaptation of Andrea Levy’s 2004 epic novel presents a performance where cultural identity is explored in three intertwining storylines and the characters’ struggles to find a sense of belonging and self, a ‘home, some work, some self-respect, some love’ (Edmundson 2004:127), between the turbulent years of 1939 and 1948. World War II, the post-war mass migration with the arrival of the Empire Windrush in 1948, and the larger ‘legacy of colonialism and postcolonial subjectivities’ (Holdsworth 2014:10), all contextualise the representation of cultural identities through the actor’s body. Their bodies represent cultural identity as multifaceted, shifting, and relational not only due to its innately dynamic state but because of its complex relationship with the surrounding sociopolitical climate. Cultural identity eludes precise definition. To define this concept absolutely, may lead to a misconstrued, facile interpretation which ignores the endless complexities of human existence. It is an ever-changing framework through which we understand ‘“what we really are”; or rather – since history has intervened – “what we have become”’ (Hall 2005:445). Cultural identity is based on our relationship with history, reflecting ‘the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past’ (Hall 2005:445). It is, therefore, represented as a multidimensional phenomenon shaped and reshaped through a confusion of semantics and discourse as it ‘undergo[es] constant transformation’ (Hall 2005:445). There are overlapping emotional, psychological, physical, socio-political, and philosophical paradigms of the body which underpin our understanding of our identity and how this might be represented. Given the intrinsic connection between identity and social context, the representation of cultural identity through the actor’s corporeal body is also inherently political. Therefore, an analysis of the

representation of cultural identity within this performance is presented through current theories of the body as a site of social and political significance and tension, as well as philosophical paradigms. Adapted by Helen Edmundson and directed for the National Theatre by Rufus Norris in 2019, this performance is set in the context of the Windrush Scandal, a renewed public responsiveness to the Black Lives Matter Movement, and Covid-19. It is framed by globalisation, the shifting ethics of ‘transmission and exchange’ (Evans 2019:104) of culture and the implications of these contexts for the expression of cultural identity on and off stage. Online streaming of this production during the 2020 lockdown locates the performance within shifting understandings of theatre practices. The virtual presentation and consumption of the actor’s body in this performance is a product of the breaking of a new paradigmatic wave of theatre, adapting to be ‘pandemic-compatible’ (Tripney 2020). The power and poignancy of this performance and the signification held within the actor’s body, is heightened by the ‘unprecedented times’ (BBC Media Centre 2020) and the ‘resonances or associations [it] offer[s] of a different time, place, politics, or culture’ (Holdsworth 2014:np). In this performance, ‘ideas of national identity as conceptual categories’ (Holdsworth 2014:1), and the existence of oppression and racism are presented as defining elements of cultural identity. Actors Leah Harvey and Gershwyn Eustaches Jnr provide insights into the representation of cultural identities through a psychophysical process of acting. This allows the interrogation of cultural identity through an ‘enactive approach to acting and embodiment’ (Zarrilli 2013:8) grounded in phenomenological, philosophical paradigms of the body. Psychophysical acting, equally engages ‘“inner and “outer” dimensions of experience and embodiment’ (Zarrilli et Al 2013:viii), through which the actor develops a sort of ‘phenomenal consciousness’ (Zarrilli 2013:45). Their ‘consciousness of the doing’ (Zarrilli

Aoife Rush

2013:45) allows the actors to experience and navigate the interplay between the representation of their character and the reality of their own identity during performance. Therefore, the actor engages in an ‘embodied consciousness’ (Zarrilli 2013:8) which allows the exploration of the resonances between the cultural identities of actor and character. Ultimately, the portrayal of cultural identity within Small Island highlights the value of a representation that invites ‘new ways of thinking about or problematizing questions around the nation and national identity’ (Holdsworth 2014:8), challenging assumptions regarding the significance of nation within our identities. The conscious, psychophysical work of the actors also represents cultural identities on stage through the depiction of overt racism. The actor’s body can become a device for exposing and dismantling oppressive systems which stifle and torment the existence of black cultural identities. In this way, the body works as a liminal site where discourse and debate are stimulated, whilst being an active contributor to that discourse, a voice, and a live vehicle of communication with real agency. Hortense and Gilbert address the audience, expressing their overwhelming desire to ‘go to England’ (Small Island 2019). Here, their actor’s body works to ‘contest and unsettle ideas of the nation’ (Holdsworth 2014:np) and its place within cultural identity. Nation has been defined as a ‘large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory’ (Oxford Languages 2020: online). However, its representation through the actor’s body in Small Island exposes this as limited. The reality of these defining categories – ‘descent, history, culture or language’ – are contestable, filled with contradictions and tensions that result from colonial power. In this moment, the actor’s body explores the way in which a rigid, myopic vision of nation affected the identities of those who travelled from Jamaica to England in 1948 as part of the Windrush generation. Harvey and Eustaches Jnr present both Hortense and Gilbert as yearning for England, attributing their hope and anticipation of future success to their status as a ‘British subject’ (British Nationality Act 1948). When Hortense proposes that Gilbert should ‘Marry me and go to England’ (Edmundson 2019:75), Harvey and Eustaches Jnr stand apart, and deliver their lines to the audience. This moment provides an insight into ‘nation’ as a stakeholder within these characters’ cultural identities. Here, two national identities, one defined by birthplace, family, and language, the other by policy implemented by colonial powers, converge in shaping the cultural identities of the

characters. To explore the complexities of cultural identity (including the place of nation), the actor’s body works through a ‘phenomenal consciousness’ (Zarrilli 2013:45). It is the dialectical relationship between the actor’s ‘lived body and the phenomenal world’ (Merleau-Ponty 2012:np), of both the play and the context, which enables this exploration of nation as an aspect of cultural identity. The actor’s performance is underpinned by phenomenological, philosophical paradigms of the body through which the actor’s experience is, arguably, engendered by an ‘embodied’ (Loukes 2013:195) practice. It is characterised by the actor’s self-awareness of this approach and use of the senses. The actor brings the character, their history, culture, and desires to life through their sensory body which works as a product of their own history, culture, and personal life. Therefore, underpinned by Merleau-Ponty’s theory, in this performance the ‘perceived object’ becomes the character and the ‘perceiving subject’ (2012:53) is the actor, who works through sensing to engage their body phenomenologically with their acquired understanding of their character. This interplay requires the constant, conscious engagement of the actor’s body with story and context, and its resonances with the world in which the actor exists. Through their bodies, Harvey and Eustaches Jnr represent the complexities of the cultural identities of Hortense and Gilbert. The actor’s embodied representation of cultural identity exists in a dialectical continuum with the fictional, historical, and current context in which it manifests. A focus on the ‘phenomenal consciousness’ (Zarrilli 2013:45) of the actor when representing cultural identities, then, elucidates not only the theatre but also the actor’s body ‘as a site through which the ideological maneuverings and actions of the nation state could be put under scrutiny’ (Holdsworth 2014: 3). Moreover, the cultural identity of the actors in this performance permeates ‘the feeling of the form’ (Zarrilli 2013:45). The actors’ ‘multiple consciousness’ (Zarrilli 2013:45), which allows them to represent the character’s identity through the work of the body-mind, could not function without the experience, knowledge, and permanence of their own cultural identity as part of this representation. Their ‘feeling of the doing’ is, perhaps, not simply an ‘additional layer of resonance within the performer’s consciousness’ (Zarrilli 2013:45) but characterises the actor’s entire on-stage experience. This suggests the representation of nation as a complex aspect of cultural identity is achieved through the phenomenological experience of the actor. This is a psychophysical process. The actor’s work and the essence of the character have a phe-

T3 Journal - Student Writing in Drama, University of Exeter 2020-21

nomenological mutual dependency. As the body animates the text, which in turn tells the story, a symbiotic relationship evolves between body and mind supported by the idea that ‘the body’s unity… is a lived integration in which the parts are understood in relation to the meaningful whole’ (Landes 2012: xlii). The actor’s body, then, functions as an untangle-able ‘knot of living significations’ which the actor tunes accordingly to produce a harmonic set of meanings, to ‘perform a single gesture’ (Merleau-Ponty 2012:153). In this pivotal moment, the performed gesture expresses through psychophysical practice, the significance of nation as a feature of cultural identity. Yet, in this moment the political paradigms of the body, framed by legislation under the British Nationality Act 1948, most clearly represent the strength of nation within cultural identity. The psychophysical work of the actors highlights the role of policy in entrenching the idea of nation further within cultural identities. Harvey and Eustaches Jnr portray the possibilities their characters see for themselves in this politically defined identity. The potency of these concepts is brought into sharp relief through the personal, human stories of these characters. As a result, the representation of the complexities of cultural identity reveals the actor’s body as a transformative tool. In Small Island, it exists as an instrument of change, presenting in response to social disconnect and ignorance, speaking directly to a ‘turning point or crisis in the national psyche’ (Holdsworth 2014:9) which is in need of re-assessment, of education, and motivation to ‘do the work’ (Saad 2020). Representation of cultural identities through the actor’s body may, therefore, provide a space for the destabilising and redefining of restrictive, exclusionary hegemonic understandings of ‘the ambivalent figure of the nation’ (Bhabha 1990:2). In the last moments of this performance, the actor’s body represents a diasporic cultural identity as a product of oppression and racism. Eustaches Jnr delivers an impassioned speech through Gilbert in which he asks, ‘Am I to be the servant and you the master for all time? Because you white?’ (Edmundson 2019:127), exposing and challenging the ‘features history and contemporary configurations of society exploit’ (Graver 1997:229) for dividing and mistreating groups of people. Engaging psychophysically to deliver the text, Eustaches Jnr plays Gilbert standing back frowning, hurt, turning directly to Bernard who faces away towards the audience, and confronts him saying, ‘Your white skin. You think it give you the right to lord it over a black man. But you know what it make you? White. That

is all, man. White’ (Small Island 2019). In this moment, the interplay between actor’s body and the represented body of Gilbert is accentuated by the ‘corporeal identity’ (Graver 1997:228) of the actor as a black British man ‘whose family are Trinidadian’ (Hemming 2020). Considering ‘acting as an embodied phenomenon and process’ (Zarrilli 2013:42), then, necessitates a dialogue between the identity of the fictional character and the actor. His ‘embodied consciousness’ (McCutcheon and Sellers-Young 2013:2) incorporates both a representation of his cultural identity, a black man ‘raised in London’ (Hemming 2020) with family from the West Indies, and his understanding and psychophysical engagement with the character’s cultural identity, a black man ‘with the status of British subject’ (British Nationality Act 1948) and first generation West Indian migrant. Representation of cultural identities through the actor’s body here, is therefore underpinned by the understanding that ‘embodied consciousness is an integration of the brain and body as they interact with the environment’ (McCutcheon and Sellers-Young 2013:2). As Eustaches Jnr moves and speaks, Gilbert’s cultural identity manifests through this specific synthesised bodymind and its interactions with the surrounding world. His ‘embodied’ (McDermott 2007:204) process shows Gilbert’s cultural identity as affected by overt racism when Bernard shouts ‘Get your filthy black hands off my wife!” (Small Island 2019). Therefore, it is the blurring of boundaries and the overlapping identities of actor and character that gives the text and actor’s body such potency within this moment. Arguably, the depiction of black cultural identities within the brackets of oppression perpetuates ‘ideological stereotypes and group narratives’ (Graver 1997:229), contributing to the marginalisation of black cultural expression. However, within Eustaches Jnr’s performance, the importance of critically deconstructing the oppression which impacts a black identity, is represented through the actor’s body and its interrelationship with character. When Eustaches Jnr performs Gilbert’s line ‘You know what it make you? White. That is all, man. White,’ (Small Island 2019), his actor’s body works most powerfully through voice. Although it may seem that text has a ‘strong autotelic element’ (Zarrilli 2013:46), the animation of these words happens through his bodily engagement with them. In this way, the ‘the body is a form of consciousness’ (Romdenh-Romluc 2011:2-3), and the synthesis of the actor’s body-mind not only represents the cultural identity of the character, it brings it to life. Here, the ‘performer as doer’ (Zarrilli 2013:8) is emphasised as Eustaches Jnr – through Gilbert

Aoife Rush

– uses his body, mind, and voice as the actor to carry out a task, dismantling the semantics used to construct cultural identity. His voice breaks, and pointing at Bernard he says, ‘But still, after all we suffer together, you wan’ tell me that I am worthless and you are not’ (Small Island 2019). The delivery of this speech exhibits the cruelty of this discrimination fuelled and plagued by a deficit of compassion. Finally, Gilbert speaks of the commonality between himself and Bernard who ‘both just finish fighting a war for a better world’ (Small Island 2019). As Gilbert appeals to a shared humanity, the actor’s body represents a fundamental empathy that could be the foundation of any identity. Therefore, the actor’s body changes from representative being, to an affective, impelling force that is born from and transcends the story. This challenges the idea that ‘the performer ideally never becomes self-conscious’ (Zarrillli 2013:45). The actor’s self-awareness is, perhaps, what communicates the message of the text so authentically. Ultimately, through the representation of Gilbert’s cultural identity, the actor’s body speaks directly to the audience. Asking ‘what then?’ (Small Island 2019), the body in collaboration with text offers ‘a rich source of material for speaking to the contemporary moment’ (Holdsworth 2014: np) regarding the representation of cultural identity as defined both by hegemonic prejudice and the hope of change. Therefore, in light of the murder of George Floyd and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, looking past the portrayal of racism and its impact diminishes the experience of oppression and violence that still significantly shapes black identities. To get beyond this, there must be change. The representation of the effect of oppression – discrimination on the grounds of race, ethnicity, and skin colour – through the actor’s body confronts this injustice face on. To conclude, in Small Island the actor’s body-mind is engaged in a phenomenal, ‘embodied consciousness’ (McCutcheon and Sellers-Young 2013:2), which facilitates the representation of cultural identities through a psychophysical acting process. The representation of cultural identity comes directly from the interrelationship between the social, historical, and corporeal identity of both the actor and character. This relationship between actor and character represents cultural identity as a kaleidoscopic amalgamation of significations. These shape and influence the way in which an individual may understand who they are in relation to the past, their current context, and others, reinforcing the idea that cultural identity is ‘not an essence but a positioning’ (Hall 2005:446). Consequently, in the

context of this performance and its conjunction with the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter Movement, cultural identity is presented as significantly impacted by experiences of racism and oppression, the concept of nation and national identity, and the larger context of colonialism. The representation of West Indian and black British identities within this performance, highlights the idea that the appearance and representation of black bodies on stage are inherently and unavoidably political. The political power of the actor’s body enables the actorto publicly deconstruct hegemonic structures and, in this performance, expose, destabilise, and redefine understandings of cultural identity. However, the politicising of the actor’s body in this way, highlights ethical implications for the actor’s body in bearing the weight of this representation on stage. The portrayal of cultural identities in this performance, resonates with the view that white people should be actively anti-racist, to dismantle systemic racism ‘because white supremacy is their construct, a construct they have benefited from’ (Oluo 2019). In this way, the actor’s body in Small Island speaks to white audiences who ‘are the problem’ (Oluo 2019). This provokes a dialogue about white privilege and the ethical questions around the emotional weight of representing cultural identities as defined by specific notions of nation, and oppression. Finally, it is important to acknowledge the human story through which these identities are revealed. Within this performance, the actor’s body works to convey larger socially and politically constructed cultural identities, through the intimate representation of characters and their personal journeys. The weight of the human story suggests that it is the representation of a flawed but fundamental humanity that provides the actor’s body with agency to redefine cultural identities. And so, although the actor’s body is clearly a site of complex meaning and representation, the actor as a ‘living, breathing, sentient being’ (Zarrilli 2013:42) cannot be reduced to symbols. The psychophysically embodied state emphasises that the actor’s body on stage has a life beyond its character. Ultimately, the resonance of the human story significantly bolsters the political symbolism within the representations ofcultural identities, thus contributing to the transformation of the actor’s body into an affective, edifying vehicle of change.

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Bhabha, H. 1990. Introduction: narrating the nation. In: Bhabha, H. ed. Nation and Narration. London: Routledge, 1-8 British Nationality Act 1948. (C. 56). [Online]. [Accessed 21 December 2020]. Available from: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/1112/56/enacted Daboo, J. Loukes, R and Zarrilli, P. 2013. Acting: Psychophysical Phenomenon and Process. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Evans, M. 2019. Performance, Movement, and the Body. London: Red Globe Press. Graver, D. 1997. The Actor’s Bodies. Text and Performance Quarterly. [17:3]. 221-235. Hall, S. 2005. Cultural Identity and Diaspora. In: Hier, S. ed. Contemporary Sociological Thought: Themes and Theories. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc, 443-454. Hemming, S. 2020. Gershwyn Eustaches Jnr: ‘Sometimes silence is more powerful than people clapping’. Financial Times. Published 19 Jun. [Online] [Accessed 21 December 2020]. Available from: https://www. ft.com/content/5cb28dc4-b156-11ea-a4b6-31f1eedf762e Holdsworth, N. 2014. Theatre and National Identity: Re-Imagining Conceptions of Nation. Oxon: Routledge. Howard, A. and Corke, S. ed. Small Island: Rehearsal Diaries. [Booklet]. London: The Royal National Theatre Board. Landes, D. 2012. Translator’s Introduction. In: Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenolog y of Perception. London: Routledge, xxx-lii. Levy, A and Edmundson, H. 2019. Small Island. London: Nick Hern Books. Loukes, R. 2013. Making Movement: The Psychophysical in ‘Embodied’ Practices. In: Daboo, J. Loues, R and Zarrilli, P. Acting: Psychophysical Phenomenon and Process. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 194-223. McCuthcheon, J. and Sellers-Young, B. 2013. Embodied Consciousness: Performance Technologies. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. McDermott, P. 2007. Physical Theatre and Text. In: Keefe, J. Murray, S. (eds). Physical Theatres: A Critical Reader. London: Routledge 201-208. Merleau-Ponty, M. 2012. Phenomenolog y of Perception. London: Routledge National Theatre, 2019. Small Island. Rufus Norris. Dir. Olivier Theatre, London: National Theatre. First Performance: 17 April 2019. [Online]. [Accessed via Drama Online 21 December 2020]. Oluo, I. 2019. Confronting racism is not about the needs and feelings of white people. The Guardian. Published 28 Mar. [Online]. [Accessed 30 December 2020]. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2019/mar/28/confronting-racism-is-not- about-theneeds-and-feelings-of-white-people Romdenh-Romluc, K. 2011. Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenolog y of Perception. London: Routledge Saad, L. 2020. Do the work: an anti-racist reading list. The Guardian. Published 3 Jun. [Online] [Accessed: 20 December 2020]. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/jun/03/ do-the-work-an-anti-racist- reading-list-layla-f-saadTripney, N. 2020. Play with the format: how theatre shows are dispensing with stage.

The Guardian. Published 7 Nov. [Online]. [Accessed 18 December 2020]. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/nov/07/playwith-the-format-how-theatre- shows-are-dispensing-with-the-stage Zarrilli, P. 2013. Introduction: Acting as Psychophysical Phenomenon and Process. In: Daboo, J. Loues, R and Zarrilli, P. Acting: Psychophysical Phenomenon and Process. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 1-50.

Maddy Holmes

Climate Research, Science and Community: A Discussion on Chantal Bilodeau’s Sila. Submitted for the module ‘Theatre for a Changing Climate’ Essay Maddy Holmes

Sila portrays the relationship between the climate scientist and their engagement with the wider community when they work together through artistic endeavours. Stephen Bottom’s critique of Sila is that the dramatization of relationships between research scientists, politicians and activists means: ‘the lay spectator is largely exempted from personal responsibility in the climate change drama’ (2012: 343). This sends a misleading message to audiences, whereby they believe they are exempt from participating and working with others to respond to the climate disaster. As such, this reinforces the negative implication of the scientist singlehandedly solving climate change and triumphing as the planet’s saviour. To counter-argue, Bilodeau’s theatre practice has stemmed from research projects tackling climate change as seen through the dependency between her fictional climate scientists and the Inuit community. She draws effectively upon these relationships to teach a lesson to her audience about the actions of those in society today. Bilodeau’s own plays, designed to ‘grow out of scientistartist collaboration and participate in environmental activism through the arts’ (Balestrini 2017 :75), are a prime example of how collaboration between scientific and artistic communities can benefit climate change action. As Artistic Director of The Arctic Cycle and ‘driving force’ (ibid) of the programme Climate Change Theatre Action, Bilodeau’s career is a successful example of how these two elements can participate together. The engagement with the creative arts initiative has been enormous with ‘100 collaborators in 25 countries (4 of which were Arctic nations) host[ing] events ranging from informal readings in classrooms to day-long festivals, from radio programs and film adaptations to site-specific performances’ (Bilodeau, 2016). The CCTA’s endeavour to support the 2015 Paris Climate Conference proves how effective ‘artistic forms of discourse that lead to activism [can be]’ (Balestrini 2017: 75). Bilodeau states that the motivations behind such an effectual enterprise started by:

[First, utilising] resources of local artists while uniting multiple countries and cultures around a common issue […] by communicating through personal stories, [this] provided a forum for public conversation, and helped build community. (2016) In effect, the success of Bilodeau’s work rests on the desire for connectivity and vulnerability to provoke multiple communities into engaging with climate theatre and science. In Sila, the relationship between Jean (a climate researcher), and Tulugaq (an Inuit Elder), displays how reinforcing connections between scientists and local communities can be an effective course of action when tackling climate change. The role of the climate scientist is initially depicted in Sila as egotistical and selfish as Jean objects to working with Tulugaq. His resistance towards engaging with the Inuit community is indicated through the capitalisation ‘I am a SCIENTIST. Not a SOCIAL WORKER’ (Bilodeau 2015: 34). Yet, it is the Elder’s invaluable knowledge of the Arctic environment and the Inuit rituals around community that become vital to Jean’s research. Bilodeau alters the trajectory of the scientist in the dialogue of climate change. While typically depicted as heroic, Jean’s role is reduced to an ‘ethical witness’ (Bottoms 2012: 346) of the Arctic landscape. This highlights how Western cultures can learn from traditional Inuit practices to maintain stable and habitable ecosystems by prioritising community and ‘mobility [which] serves as the dynamic component that keeps the relation between spaces and people alive’ (Balestrini 2017: 74). However, Bilodeau also exposes the sombre realities of climate research when scientists are faced with unprecedented natural disasters while aiming to support under-represented communities. This is evident in the emotional stress Thomas and Raphael (two Coastguards Marines) go through in their failed efforts to save the

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scientists from death on board the Polaria. The enormity of the ‘fifteen-foot waves and snow falling sideways’ (Bilodeau 2015: 75) confirms the risks taken within the scientific community to understand climate change further. The impact of the accident as a huge ecological disaster exacerbates how trivial humanity is compared to the greater forces of the natural world. Yet, this does not lessen climate scientists’ responsibility to protect each other. Thomas supports this notion with the words ‘when you’re someone’s lifeline you don’t get to quit’ (ibid: 81). There is similarly a responsibility for scientists to protect minority communities from political exploitation to counteract the belief that the ‘world’s economic survival is more important than the well-being of a small Arctic nation’ (ibid: 63). Bilodeau’s Sila investigates the role of the scientist in supporting micro-communities and marks the importance of theatre and science engaging multiple cultures on a large scale in order to bring awareness to, and prevent, climate change disaster.

Balestrini, N. (2017) ‘Climate Change Theater and Cultural Mobility in the Arctic: Chantal Bilodeau’s Sila (2014)’, Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, 1(1) pp.70-85. Bilodeau, C. (2015) Sila. Vancouver: Talonbooks. Bilodeau, C. (2016) ‘Arctic in Context’, Climate Change Theatre Action’. [Online] http://worldpolicy.org/2016/02/10/climate-change-theateraction/ Bottoms, S. (2012) ‘Climate change ‘science’ on the London stage’, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 3(4) pp.339-348. https://doi. org/10.1002/wcc.173

Sally Johnson

The political significance of tucker green’s formal innovation in ‘random’. Submitted for the module Playwriting. Essay Sally Johnson

random by debbie tucker green follows the lives of Sister, Brother, Father and Mother, exploring their experiences of grief and loss in their family. The play, set in London, takes place over one day and exposes the false portrayal of minorities by the media when Brother is stabbed. tucker green illustrates the characters using ‘as her starting point the speech patterns of black Londoners, […] tropes drawn from black poetry and hip hop, to generate a strikingly original dramatic poetry’ (Reid 2018: 391). This application of form provides an intimacy often overlooked within black characters on the Western stage as the style originated in black culture. As I will show, the form is notable in displacing anticipations of Western theatre and divulging the dishonest practices of the media. Naturalism dominates the western stage, other forms being alienated as ‘it is the doxa experience so peculiar to the English stage which accounts for its particular inability to recognize other forms of performance as valid or equal in importance’ (Godiwala 2006: 35). Consequently, theatre forms that do not fit expected notions of English theatre are diminished and condemned, tucker green having been: ‘repeatedly criticised, for example, for her use of heightened demotic poetry, which a number of high-profile theatre critics have objected to on the grounds that it is either difficult to understand for white audiences or distracting in that it is inherently undramatic’ (Reid 2018: 397). White audiences finding the form difficult to understand is not a compelling argument for why tucker green’s work should not be on stage. Rather, it imposes the ‘doxa experience’ (Godiwala 2006: 35) of theatre that denies the representation of marginalised groups and individuals. Therefore, tucker green’s use of poetry works politically to ‘destabilize the political position of the English language and English drama in England, thereby decentring the imperial hegemony underlying English culture’ (Godiwala 2006: 36). As a result, random provides a space where

marginalised voices can be heard, in a form inspired by black English culture. Consequently, the positive recognition of the form by critics is necessary in displacing and regenerating the expectations of English drama by encouraging white audiences to engage with a new form of theatre. Moreover, the portrayal of marginalised groups in the media is what leads to their misrepresentation and lack of representation on stage. In one passage, tucker green writes of reporters loitering in the place where Brother died. The reporters ask a ‘hard-lookin “hoodie”’ (tucker green 2008: 74) how he would solve the problem of knife crime, the words denoting an intimidating and shadowy figure beneath a hood. However, this image, regularly represented in the news, is overturned when tucker green describes the man’s eyes as ‘wet raw/ With weepin’ (tucker green 2008: 74). Using poetry, specifically poetry from a black woman’s perspective, tucker green reveals the sincere feelings of the man in the hoodie. The man’s words have not been twisted by the reporters, nor has his reaction been entirely omitted from the story. As Godiwala (2016) explains, ‘critics have noted, [History] inevitably manoeuvres a strategic presentation of certain views and a repression of others’ (Godiwala 2016: 36) just as the reporters repress the “hoodie’s” views in random. This is established when tucker green writes ‘they don’t show that bit tho’ (tucker green 2008: 74), the reporters only wanting a ‘“good”, “urban” story’ (tucker green 2008: 74) that suits the established imperial hegemony. Furthermore, the play was written a year after Tony Blair ‘urged black communities to take responsibility for diverting young people away from this type of violence’ (Barling 2007: np). Similarly, the reporters in random ask members of Sister’s community for solutions to prevent and stop the stabbings (tucker green 2008: 74), placing responsibility on those most affected by the death. This denies the black community space to grieve as they are now in the public eye, being tasked with finding a solution. Therefore, random is politically significant

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in linking its plot to the political context of 2007 and providing space for the black community to grieve and express their vulnerability. I for one, as a white woman, found it difficult to write in the spoken word form. I felt as though I was appropriating black culture, resulting in me reverting to a more classical poetic form that had a structured rhyming scheme. Kae Tempest, a white artist, has been criticised for their use of poetry inspired from rap and hip hop, styles originating in black culture. When questioned, Tempest explains they ‘felt a part of the culture. It wasn’t like [they were] trying to adopt or appropriate something’ (Tempest interviewed in Machlus 2017: np); unlike myself, feeling as though I was imitating a voice that was not mine. Tempest’s work dismantles the imperial hegemony Godiwala (2006) wants to displace from the English stage, however their work gives rise to questions of ownership over style. Personally, I find myself at a juncture where I do not want to appropriate black culture’s form or write from a perspective that I have never experienced, yet I simultaneously want to disrupt the imperial hegemony that prevents the experiences of minorities being represented on stage to begin with. Thus, in my opinion, the most effective way for marginalised groups to be represented on stage is to provide black British playwrights with an equal platform in English theatre. White playwrights writing on the behalf of people of colour, as much as they endeavour, will never be able to articulate a truthful account of a marginalised experience. For this reason, actively seeking out black playwrights and curating their work is one of the best approaches to disrupting the imperial hegemony of Western theatre, resulting in an appreciation of the diverse forms of writing and experiences in Britain.

Barling, K. (2007) ‘Teen Deaths on London’s Streets’, BBC [Online] http:// www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/articles/2007/12/11/kurt_teen_ murders_feature.shtml [7 December 2020]. Fragkou, M. (2012) ‘Precarious subjects: ethics of witnessing and responsibility in the Plays of debbie tucker green’, Performing Ethos: International Journal of Ethics in Theatre and Performance, vol. 3, no. 1, pp 23-39. [Online] https://doi.org/10.1386/peet.3.1.23_1 [30 October 2020]. Godiwala, D. (2006) ‘Genealogies, archaeologies, histories: the revolutionary “interculturalism” of Asian theatre in Britain’, Studies in Theatre and Performance, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 33-47. [Online] https://doi.org/10.1386/ stap.26.1.33/1 [30 October 2020]. Machlus, S. ‘Kate Tempest on Cultural Appropriation, Humanity, and Let Them

Eat Chaos’, Tom Tom Mag [Online] https://tomtommag.com/2017/04/ kate-tempest-cultural-appropriation-humanity-let-eat-chaos/ [9 December 2020]. Reid, T. (2018) ‘“Killing Joy as a World Making Project”: Anger in the Work of debbie tucker green’, Contemporary Theatre Review, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 390-400. [Online] https://doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2018.1475356 [30 October 2020]. tucker green, d. (2012 [2008]) random, Nick Hern Books. [Online] https://r1.vlereader.com/Reader?ean=9781780010960 [30 October 2020].

Zoe Man

Applying feminist and post-colonial analysis to the 2014 Old Vic Production of The Crucible, focusing on the characters of Abigail and Tituba. Essay Zoe Man

Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is a play that dramatizes the Salem Witch Trials of the late 1600s. It explores the power struggles within the black-and-white and institutionalized nature of Puritan New England in the late 1600s as Abigail Williams, an orphaned teenage girl, cries witchcraft on women of Salem in a desperate attempt to seduce John Proctor, a married man who she once had an affair with. I will be analyzing the 2014 production of The Crucible, performed at The Old Vic in London and directed by Yaël Farbler, through feminist and post-colonial standpoints. Specifically, I will be focusing on the first act of the play and paying special attention to the characters of Abigail Williams and Tituba, and how they contribute to a feminist and post-colonial analysis of this production. According to Mark Fortier, feminist theory is ‘directly and predominantly political. Its purpose is to struggle against the oppression of women as women’ (Fortier 2016:85). Although there is no denying that The Crucible is a political allegory of the era of McCarthyism that Miller had endured, the play itself carries highly misogynistic tones. However, I would argue that Farbler’s production brings attention to and challenges the female oppression of the play and its historical era by emphasizing it. In his book Theory/Theatre, Fortier suggests that ‘the body is one site of oppression for women’ (Fortier 2016:88), and there is a lot of manhandling of the female characters throughout the production, emphasizing female oppression. As Reverend Hale (Adrian Schiller), is interrogating Abigail (Samantha Colley), he grabs her by the upper arm and neck and drags her to Betty’s bedside, forcing her on her knees. He then spins her around for him to face her, maintaining a firm grip on her neck. Schiller’s grasp on Colley’s neck signifies a threatening form of control as the neck is a vulnerable part of the body that can end life, as demonstrated when John Proctor, the main character, is hanged at the end of the play. Furthermore, Schiller’s physical towering over Colley highlights a power disparity between the two

characters. Schiller then lets go of Colley’s neck when Abigail scapegoats Tituba and brings another woman into question. Hale requests to speak with Tituba, and when she enters, Schiller physically throws Colley out of the way to approach and interrogate Tituba. A feminist reading would suggest Hale is exerting his power over all women in question and subjecting each of them to his interrogation to assert dominance. According to a commentary of the play by Susan C.W. Abbotson, ‘young, unmarried, servant girls are considered chattels rather than viable members of the community’ (Abbotson 2010:xxxviii). Therefore, Puritan society’s consideration of Abigail as property due to her gender would enable Hale to manhandle her. Additionally, Farbler explains in her interview about directing the production, ‘On Directing: Yaël Farbler’, that ‘a touch has an enormous charge’, and continues to explain that touch is a way to convey the codes of Puritanical society. Hale physically manhandles Abigail in this particular way at this moment because he feels ‘entitled to in that moment’, further emphasizing the power disparity due to gender. However, Fortier suggests it is important to note that ‘women do not constitute one homogenous group but are often at odds with each other’ (Fortier 2016:90). Although Abigail and Tituba are both women, Abigail is the niece of a reverend, and Tituba is a black slave from Barbados. They are of different social classes. Therefore, it is important to analyse at the same scene with a postcolonial standpoint in order to achieve a fuller understanding of the production. Post-colonialism, according to Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins in ‘Introduction: Re-acting (to) Empire’, is ‘an engagement with and contestation of colonialism’s discourses, power structures, and social hierarchies’ (Gilbert and Tompkins 1996:2). Through a postcolonial standpoint, we can explore the relationship between the power different characters hold due to their social statuses. When Abigail mentions Tituba,

T3 Journal - Student Writing in Drama, University of Exeter 2020-21

we can see Thomas Putnam jump and point in excitement, signifying the character was happy to find a scapegoat. In Neslihan Yilmaz Demirkaya’s article about scapegoating non-conforming identities in The Crucible, it is mentioned that scapegoating practices are ‘caused by those who want to keep their privileged status and access to more power’ (Demirkaya 2015:127). On one hand, we can see Thomas Putnam’s desire to keep Tituba, a black woman, under the control of the ruling class, which he is a part of. On the other hand, we can also see Abigail, a white girl who is the niece of a reverend, keeping her higher social status and starting to gain power by accusing Tituba of unnatural practices. Additionally, Hale discarding Abigail aside to approach and question Tituba can signify scapegoating: An attempt to pin the blame on the black slave instead of the white girl. This scapegoating is furthered when Colley runs up to Tituba (Sarah Niles) to accuse her of witchcraft, demonstrating Abigail’s eagerness to push responsibility of Betty’s immobile condition on Tituba as she is an easy scapegoat due to her race, and consequently social class. Moreover, Niles gets pushed onto the ground by Goody Putnam (Rebecca Saire) as Abigail starts accusing Tituba. In this particular moment, a feminist analysis will work alongside a postcolonial analysis to highlight Tituba’s helplessness as a black, female slave. Farbler suggests in her interview, ‘people touch Tituba because they can, because she’s like cattle, she’s a possession, she’s property’ in that moment. The fact that Goody Putnam is the person who pushes her onto the ground signifies a social hierarchy due to race as both characters are of an inferior social class of the female gender. Due to Goody Putnam’s identity as a woman, she has no real autonomy in accordance to Abbotson’s commentary on the play: ‘Although wives were given some authority in running the home, the husband was considered the undisputed head of the household’ (Abbotson 2010:xxxviii). In the midst of the chaos during the interrogation, Goody Putnam takes this opportunity to express her prejudice and exert her power. As Tituba was the person she physically abuses, it demonstrates the social injustice and power disparity between different races. It should also be noted that Tituba is Reverend Parris’s slave, following that logic, Tituba would be Parris’s ‘property’. However, Goody Putnam still feels entitled to touch and physically abuse Tituba because of race. While Goody Putnam, a woman, demonstrates power in that particular moment, it takes away the power from another woman, further enhancing Fortier’s point of women not

‘consitut[ing] to one homogenous group but are often at odds with each other’ (2016:90). Although Tituba does eventually confess to witchcraft, she does so out of selfpreservation. Prior to her confession, she was chased out of her seat by Reverend Parris and cornered by Thomas Putnam, eventually forced down onto her knees in front of Reverend Hale before delivering a confession. This choreographed routine indicates Tituba being forced into confessing to witchcraft against Christianity, with the alternative option being condemned to death. Tituba was clearly targeted as a scapegoat for both her race and gender. Melissa Lucá Sarmiento mentions Elizabeth Reis’s argument in her article about deconstructing gender identities about how ‘women were deemed to be the weaker gender and it was assumed that their souls were more vulnerable to Satan’s temptations because their bodies were not as strong as those of men’ (Sarmiento 2015:2) in Puritan New England. The ‘weakness’ which the male characters see in the female characters are clearly conveyed in this choreography. It exerts the male characters’ and their gender’s physical strength and reinforces the weakness of the female gender. From a postcolonial standpoint, the idea of Tituba being property and cattle is once again signified as every other character feels obliged to physically manhandle and abuse her. Consequently, Tituba is forced into a confession to allying with Satan and performing witchcraft. According to Lloyd W. Brown’s study about ‘Tituba of Barbados’, despite Tituba’s Barbadian, pagan background and her ‘lack[ing] the Christian’s politicized notions of absolute good and evil’, she is ‘frightened by the coming process (of being whipped and hanged as an unconfessed witch)’ that she ‘falls back on the slave’s last resort for self-preservation’, which is to ‘give the master what he wants’ (Brown 1974:120). From a postcolonial standpoint, we can see the imperialist powers forcing and imprinting their Christian beliefs on a foreign person by means of threatening with a death penalty. In the face of death, Tituba delivers a confession in which the characters in power desire. We can then see Tituba gaining power right away as Schiller crouches down to Niles’s level and takes her hands, the only non-violent act of touch Tituba’s character has received so far. This imprinting of religious beliefs is furthered when Schiller takes Niles’ hands and guides her to open her arms up to the sky to receive God’s grace, connoting the dominant powers forcing non-believers to submit to their religion in order to survive. Meanwhile,

Zoe Man

this moment signifies female bodily autonomy from a feminist analytical standpoint. Reis argues in Damned Women that ‘the threat of female sexuality stemmed from the idea that ‘the soul was feminine, and it needed to be claimed by a masculine entity: God or Satan.’ (Sarmiento 2015:2) Hale’s identity as a male reverend reinforces this idea as Schiller opens Niles up to a religious stance, signifying that a woman needs to be physically helped by a man, especially one ordained, to receive the light of God. However, Tituba gains power by being ‘complicitous in sustaining patriarchy’, ‘manipulating its ideology to achieve the power they have’ and ‘offering a limited, treacherously ambiguous escape from its most oppressive constraints’ (Alter 1989:na). In confessing, Tituba gains confirmation by Hale as a dutiful Christian and ‘adopts the Christian’s political demonology as a safe stalkinghorse for an attack on her mean owner, and for a covert demand for freedom’ (Brown 1974:120). We can see Tituba gaining power in that moment of the production as Niles stands up, saying ‘Oh, how many times he bid me kill you, Mr Parris!’, exacting revenge on her master with Satanical threats. Furthermore, it is the only time Niles delivers any of her lines standing up and physically being on an equal level to other actors. It is also the only time she speaks without being interrupted by others, giving Tituba’s character importance and power. Here, feminist and postcolonial standpoints work together to signify how Tituba, a black, female character, gains power in a misogynist and sexist Puritanical society by sustaining the patriarchy and using it to her own advantage. Yet, Tituba’s power is soon taken away by Abigail. Once Tituba confesses, Niles crawls away, and Colley hops onto the bed and confesses to witchcraft. The attention falls on Abigail and Tituba is forgotten, a power disparity signified here with the difference in physical level of Colley standing on a piece of furniture and Niles on her knees and tucked away in a corner. The stage also goes quiet and all actors turn to look at Colley. D. Quentin Miller notes in ‘The Signifying Poppet: Unseen Voodoo and Arthur Miller’s Tituba’, that Abigail and the white girls sense the way Tituba gains power through confession and accusation, and immediately follow suit, controlling it and using it to their own advantage (Miller 442-443). Abigail appropriates Tituba’s story and uses it to gain power of their own. This recalls a problem of postcolonialism, which Fortier mentions, where ‘women of colour have had their perspectives and voices erased from the dominant culture and therefore have a different struggle in asserting their

perspectives and voices’ (Fortier 2016:91). Farbler expresses her sensual interpretation of the play in her interview, and it is demonstrated when Abigail confesses to witchcraft, where Colley arches her back on the bed as if she was fighting a demonic possession. That moment underpins the idea that a woman loses the little autonomy she had in Puritan New England after compacting with the Devil, as ‘surrendering the body implied an indirectly sexual relationship to the devil and his creatures’ (Sarmiento 2015:2). From a feminist analysis, Colley’s body contortion signifies the recovery of bodily autonomy for women. However, in doing so, Tituba’s character was robbed of any power she had by the legal system and a young white girl (Miller 2007:440), highlighting a power disparity due to race. According to Tanfer Emin Tunc, patriarchal institutions, such as the church, were threatened by nonconformist women who ‘possessed knowledge beyond the boundaries circumscribed by society’, such as healing, spirituality and witchcraft (Tunc 2013:267). If feminism ‘works towards the unravelling and overthrow[ing] of the patriarchy’ (Fortier 2016:85), this production certainly does so by giving the terrifying power of determining life or death to the nonconforming women of the play: Tituba, the black slave skilled in spirituality; and Abigail, an unmarried girl delving into voodoo to seduce a married man she once had an extramarital affair with. However, the production also highlights the misogyny and sexism of Puritan New England and reminds the audience of similar horrors in contemporary times as the female characters of the play can only gain power by sustaining the patriarchy. In addition to doing so, as the girls gain momentous power over the course of the play, they appropriate and erase the voice of the character with no true power— the black, female slave: Tituba. Therefore, through feminist and postcolonial analytical standpoints, the production prompts audiences to think about the hierarchies of power in the play, and relationally, in real life.

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Alter, Iska (1989), ‘Betrayal and Blessedness: Explorations of Feminine Power in The Crucible, A View from the Bridge, and After the Fall’, Feminist Rereadings of Modern American Drama, ed. June Schlueter, Rutherford, JG: Farleigh Dickinson University Press. Brown, Lloyd W., 1974. “Tituba of Barbados and the American Conscience: Historical Perspectives in Arthur Miller and Ann Petry.” Caribbean Studies, 13(4), pp.118-126. Demirkaya, Neslihan Yılmaz. (2015) “Scapegoating Non-Conforming Identities: Witchcraft Hysteria in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and Caryl Churchill’s Vinegar Tom.” Journal of History Culture and Art Research 4 123-135. Digital Theatre Plus (2014), ‘On Directing’: Yaël Farbler. Fortier, Mark (2016) ‘Theory/Theatre: An Introduction’, London: Routledge Gilbert, Helen and Tompkins, Joanne (1996) ‘Introduction: Re-acting (to) Empire’, in Post-colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics, London: Routledge, pp. 1-14. Miller, A. (1952) The Crucible, ed. Susan C.W. Abbotson. Bloomsbury. Miller, D. Quentin. (2007) “The Signifying Poppet: Unseen Voodoo and Arthur Miller’s Tituba.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 43(4) 438-454. Sarmiento, Melissa Lucá (2015), ‘Deconstructing Gender Identities in Nicholas Hytner’s The Crucible.’ Tunç, Tanfer Emin (2013). “The Healer and the Witch: Sexuality and Power in Arthur Miller’s THE CRUCIBLE.” The Explicator 71 266 - 270.

Susannah Bramwell

Ways in which Anne Charlotte Leffler and Elizabeth Robins tell ‘their own story’ and the implications of the pen being in a woman’s hand This essay was submitted for the module ‘Women in Theatre’. Essay Susannah Bramwell

Feminist women playwrights of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries broke with tradition and innovatively created new aesthetic principles with regards to genre. Consequently, the pen being in their hands had radical political implications: that being the advancement of the fight for women’s rights. I will argue that Anne Charlotte Leffler conveyed a compelling feminist critique in her play True Women (1883), but Elizabeth Robins through Votes For Women (1907) brought both aesthetic and political implications to greater significance with the use of her pen. Bennett explores Jauss’ concept of a ‘horizon of expectations’ (48) whereby earlier textual references are needed ‘for texts to be comprehensible’ (ibid). Leffler and Robins both used melodramatic conventions expected by audiences, and radically rewrote them in order to provoke support for their causes. To effectively analyse how these women utilised generic expectations I will be examining the melodrama Lady Audley’s Secret (1863), by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, adapted by William Suter for the stage. I would argue that Leffler and Robins are some of the women Paxton claims were ‘inspired by their political beliefs’ (Methuen Drama VII) and ‘chose to use the theatre to represent and debate the contemporary issues that concerned them… [their plays] are written to be heard, to communicate an idea and to provoke thought and inspire action’ (ibid). Breaking expectations to form new aesthetic principles was also crucial as women wanted to ‘show themselves as initiators rather than imitators’ (Paxton, Methuen Drama ix). In 1916 Brander Mathews wrote ‘we find in the works of female storytellers not only a lack of largeness in topic but also a lack of strictness in treatment’ (120). Powell labels this as a ‘tendency to define playwriting so as to exclude women’ (79) and that good plays by women ‘could be explained by… [their] masculine style’ (80). Nevertheless, Leffler and Robins were among the women who did write good plays in their own styles, and who wrote them in a way that utilised genre traditions to ensure

their plays were both successful, and political. Thompson argues that the thrill of energy is a ‘chief characteristic of melodrama’ (816). Braddon demonstrates extreme energy in the murder of George Talboys, whose death occurs in a mere 6 lines: ‘LADY A. Ah! (with a wild exclamation she suddenly brings / her hand holding the poniard from her dress; turns rapidly on / TALBOYS and stabs him ; he utters a cry, staggers back against / the wall of the well; the wall gives way with a crash, and he / disappears, falling down into the well; LADY AUDLEY throws / her poniard amongst the brushwood and hurries off’ (17) The desperation of Lady Audley, and the speed in which Talboys is despatched creates a strong sense of energy and movement; the audience would be left whirling in the aftermath of such extreme theatricality. An actor is provided with extremely active stage directions to incite such speed of movement. Thompson confirms that a ‘skilful builder’ of melodramatic plays would deliberately engineer dramatic effect like this to ensure a startled audience (818). For melo-dramatists the reason to create such ‘plot[s] of surprise’ (ibid) was to create sensation, which Braddon certainly does with Talboys’ murder. I would argue this key melodramatic characteristic of energy is also present in True Women. For example, Leffler shows extreme energy in the scene where Mr Bark emotionally manipulates Mrs Bark to give him back control of her inheritance. Leffler follows this exchange with snappy lines: ‘MRS BARK. Just tell me what I must do! / BARK. Where is that infernal deed? / MRS BARK. I don’t know. / BARK. Has Berta gone to the bank? / MRS BARK. No, not yet’ (33). The monosyllabic words create a sense of energy similar to the speed seen in melodrama. Moreover, shortly after this

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exchange Mrs Bark even ‘runs into BERTA’s room’ (ibid) which echoes the fast physical movement of Lady Audley. Like Braddon, Leffler engineers a complete turn of events in the play within a short space of time, which does startle and surprise the audience. The speed of Leffler’s play allows for the stage to hold multiple voices which present both ‘issues from the male-dominated outer world with issues from the female dominated domestic sphere’ (Harvey 41). Brecht suggested that ‘innovations which require a repositioning of cultural markers will only be accepted if they rejuvenate rather than undermine existing society’ (Bennett 97), and arguably Leffler’s portrayal of a wife continually sacrificing her freedom to her husband was aimed to rejuvenate her society through sympathy. Moreover, in using melodramatic convention Leffler made it easier for an audience to absorb and respond to the play’s feminist issues framed in a familiar format, which corresponds with Jauss’ theory of expectations (Bennett 48). In this way it could be argued that Leffler’s use of her pen, her style and aesthetic principles, had political implications. All characters present on stage in the last lines of Lady Audley’s Secret undergo a form of emotional excess that is displayed physically: ‘[Lady Audley] presses both hands to her heart, and falls back dead; SIR MICHAEL appears, door R., and gazes on her with grief and terror; TALBOYS kneels beside her, covering his face with his hands; ROBERT raises his hands towards heaven’ (38). Interestingly in True Women Leffler, like Braddon, also presents Mr Bark to be overcome by excessive emotion; Leffler simply states Mr Bark is ‘Weeping’ (33). While this does not have the flamboyance of Braddon’s writing, Leffler’s stage direction could have incited acting that was reminiscent of men in sensational melodramas. Harvey identifies how Leffler controversially alluded to ‘recent hotly debated developments’ one being ‘the passing in 1874 of a law allowing married women to dispose of their own income’ (19). The significance of Mr Bark’s weeping alludes to the controversy surrounding the law, and so his weeping makes him seem manipulative. In contrast to the positive aspect that emotional feeling brings to Robins’ characters, Leffler uses the generic convention to criticise Mr Bark, and also Mrs Bark for being so sentimental as to let him regain control over her money following his weeping. Therefore, Harvey persuasively concludes that in

critiquing both selfish men and ‘their eternally forgiving and self-effacing wives… the play was thus among the first in Scandinavia to attack both male and female attitudes’ (19). Powell suggests that ‘women who wished to write good plays would have to approach the language from a “masculine” perspective, stripping their plays of “social theories and political opinions”’ (86). However, in using melodramatic tradition Leffler and Robins were able to step away from male approaches and share political opinions; with the pen in their hands, they were able to use expressive style to be forcefully political and feminist. The disruption of melodramatic character tropes, and the endings portrayed for those characters, are perhaps the most significant feminist strategy of Leffler and Robins. Most noteworthy is how Robins used the trope of the fallen woman through Vida. Tilghman highlights how the ‘fallen women’ was a ‘staple of melodrama’ (348), and Robbins signals Vida to be one in the first act. Vida is described on entrance as a woman ‘with a somewhat foreign grace; the kind of whom men and women alike say, “What’s her story? Why doesn’t she marry?’ (1.1.277-278). The sense of mystery, and the idea that Vida has a past is corroborated by Mrs Heriot who states ‘(Significantly). We can’t pretend to have access to / such sources of information as Miss Levering’ (1.1.542-545). Farfan contends that Vida is ultimately ‘a melodramatically conventional victim’ (73), however, she overlooks that Robins treats her fallen woman considerably differently from how a melodrama would. Significantly, she is not punished for her sin. Tilghman validly claims that ‘in order to fulfil her function in the play, the “fallen” woman was not allowed to thrive; she was made to atone for her sins by means of scandal, ostracism, destitution, or suicide’ (348). Braddon’s Lady Audley conforms to this type. Arguably, she is a fallen woman as she has been unfaithful to her husband and married another man, thus, the play ends with the act of her suicide: ‘I have taken poison—death is on me even now!’ (38). Therefore, Lady Audley’s Secret conforms to Newey’s description of melodramatic structures; she argues that ‘the retributive deaths of transgressive female protagonists’ were apart of ‘the dramaturgical conventions of the genre’ (Melodrama and Gender 150). Braddon even shows Lady Audley to regret her suicidal decision – ‘If I had but delayed a few minutes only!’ (38) – but it is too late and, inevitably, the fallen woman is punished for her crime. However, Robins departs from melodramatic tradition as not only does Vida survive, she also finds a purpose for her past, passionately displayed in one of her final monologues:

Susannah Bramwell

‘I’m one (she controls / with difficulty the shake in her voice) who has got up bruised and bleeding/, wiped the dust from her hands and the tears from her face, and / said to herself not merely, “Here’s one luckless woman! but— here is / a stone of stumbling to many. Let’s see if it can’t be moved out of / other women’s way.”’ (3.1.777-782) The intensity of Vida’s emotional feeling could stray into hysterics, but Robins’ simple stage direction of ‘control’, combined with an authenticity of feeling that shines through the impassioned language, ensures this is not the case. Robins has successfully modified melodramatic conventions to show her heroine as ‘empowered rather than embowered’ (Tilghman 349). Accordingly, I would argue that, in opposition to Stowell who proposes that Robins was ‘writing within a patriarchal dramatic tradition’ (Farfan 73), to not have Vida die is a defiant breaking with generic tradition. The audience expecting a conventional ending is now left with hope: John observes how the ‘woman with a past’ is given ‘both a present and a future’ (143). Thus, Tilghman is correct in arguing that Vida is a ‘positive role model for young women to follow’ (352), as can be seen in Vida’s intention to help other “fallen” women. In creating a strong sense of hope, Robins’ style has prevailing political implications. McDonald highlights the ability of Vida ‘to translate her previous experience of personal tragedy into political action’ (156) in the second act, but fails to acknowledge how the innovative reconstruction of the fallen woman’s typical ending in the third act is also radically political. It is the consequential action that Vida exits wrote: ‘STONOR. You’ve forgotten something. (As she looks back he is signing the / message.) This. (She goes out silently with the “political dynamite” in her hand.) CURTAIN.’ (3.1.799-801). Certainly, Robins is didactic in her stage directions, but the audience would only see Vida exiting the stage, knowing the impact she will have. The melodramatic fallen woman would end the play dead and unmoving on the floor, as Lady Audley does in Braddon’s play. Robins rewrites the ending for her fallen woman, and ‘turns a potentially tragic personal incident that should have excluded her from society according to social and stage conventions into the raison d’etre for an active campaign’ (McDonald 140). The political implications are huge considering the potential far reaching effect on a theatrical audience. Newey maintains that ‘the theatre was an important remediating space…

manufacturing and influencing popular opinion and feeling’ (Bubbles of the day, 59), so it is not unbelievable to suggest that Vida’s active nature in Votes For Women was consequently a guiding force to potential suffragettes. Both Leffler and Robins used popular aspects of melodrama to develop political plays focused on rights and respect for women. The aesthetic principles that were the foundation of the theatricality of their plays benefited the presentation of their political opinions. In disrupting their audiences’ ‘horizon of expectations’ (Bennett 48) with their repurposing of melodramatic convention, their theatre was actively political and, therefore, created sensation and inspiration for their audiences. Bennet notes that the aesthetics of theatre cannot be divorced from the culture that it ‘serves’ (92), and Paxton confirms this, recognising that the suffrage movement understood the ‘importance of utilising the persuasive power of visual power as part of a political agenda’ (Stage Rights! 17). Votes For Women, in its fusion of the personal political passion of Vida and melodramatic convention, has stronger political implications in comparison with True Women, even if Robins is more didactic in doing so. Gates identifies that Robins strategically manipulated political attitudes (109), and I have suggested that this is most thought-provokingly done through her management of common melodramatic tropes. Robins also advocated for other women to pursue “the use of the pen” to obtain the vote (Farfan, 70), and it is certain that her play stood as a foundation for further plays on women’s rights. Therefore, the implication of the pen being in the hands of women, especially Leffler and Robins, is that they could combine their profession and their feminist beliefs to write powerful pieces of influential, feminist theatre. As such, it is still exceedingly important to consider these plays as the innovative pieces of feminist political drama that they are, especially as even today the rights of women are continually side-lined.

Bennett, Susan. Theatre Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception, 2nd edition. Routledge, London, 1997. PRINT. Braddon, Mary Elizabeth. Lady Audley’s Secret, adapted by William Suter. Thomas Hailes Lacy, London, 1863. PRINT. Matthews, Brander. “Chapter VII: Women Dramatists”. A Book About the Theater. Charles Scribners Sons, New York, 1916, pp. 111-126. PROJECT GUTENBERG, 2011: https://www.gutenberg.org/ files/36790/36790-h/36790-h.htm#CHAPTER_VII Cameron, Rebecca. ““A somber passion strengthens her voice”: The Stage as Public Platform in British Women’s Suffrage Drama”. Comparative Drama Vol.

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50, No. 4. Comparative Drama, Michigan, Winter 2016, pp. 293-316. Eltis, Sos. “Women’s Suffrage and Theatricality”. Politics, Performance, and Popular Culture: Theatre and Society in Nineteenth-Century Britain edited by Peter Yeandle, Katherine Newey, Jeffrey Richards. Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2016, pp. 111-127. Farfan, Penny. “From “Hedda Gabler” to “Votes For Women”: Elizabeth Robbins’s Early Feminist Critique of Ibsen”. Theatre Journal Vol. 48, No. 1. John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1996, pp. 59-78. Gates, Joanne E. “Introduction: Votes For Women”. Modern Drama By Women 1880s-1930s. Routledge, London, 1996, pp. 108-111. Harvey, Anne-Charlotte Hanes. “Introduction: True Women”. Modern Drama By Women 1880s-1930s edited by Katherine E. Kelly. Routledge, London, 1996, pp. 17- 20. John, Angela V. Elizabeth Robins: Staging A Life, 1862-1952. Routledge, London, 1995. Leffler, Anne Charlotte. “True Women: a play in three acts”. Modern Drama By Women 1880s-1930s translated by Anne-Charlotte Hanes Harvey, edited by Katherine E. Kelly. Routledge, London, 1996, pp. 21-43. McDonald, Jan. “”the Second Act was Glorious”: The Staging of the Trafalgar Scene from “Votes for Women!” at the Court Theatre.” Theatre History Studies, Vol. 15. University of Alabama Press, Alabama, 1995, pp. 139. Newey, Katherine. “Bubbles of the day: The Melodramatic and the Pantomimic”, Politics, Performance and Popular Culture: Theatre and Society in Nineteenth-Century Britain, edited by Jeffrey Richards, Peter Yeandle, and Katherine Newey. Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2016, pp. 59-74. Newey, Katherine. “Melodrama and Gender.” The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama, edited by Carolyn Williams. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2018, pp. 149–162. Paxton, Naomi. Stage Rights! The Actresses’ Franchise League, Activism and Politics 1908-58. Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2018. Paxton, Naomi. The Methuen Drama Book of Suffrage Plays. Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, London, 2013. Powell, Kerry. Women and Victorian Theatre. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997. Robins, Elizabeth. “Votes For Women: A Dramatic Tract in Three Acts”. The New Woman and Other Emancipated Plays, edited by Jean Chothia. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998, pp. 135-208. Thompson, Alan Reynolds. “Melodrama and Tragedy.” PMLA, Vol. 43, No. 3. Modern Language Association, 1928, pp. 810–835. Tilghman, Carolyn. Staging Suffrage: Women, Politics, and the Edwardian Theatre in Comparative Drama, Vol. 45, No. 4. Comparative Drama, Winter 2011, pp. 339-360.

Dissertation Extracts

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This essay examines how the actor’s body in participatory theatre can challenge hegemonic constructions of the cultural identities of refugee women through an analysis of key performance moments in two plays, Tanja and Queens of Syria. It explores how the representations of these women, through the actor’s body, may reinforce or counter constructions of cultural identity maintained by dominant social structures and positions (Kiesling 2009:262). [...] The human need to belong and have a clear sense of identity is indisputable. For people forced from their homes the consequences are profound. The search for a place in a new country can prove as perilous as the hazardous journeys endured to reach ‘safe lands’. Responses by receiving nations, often characterised by dehumanising processes and rejection, and compounded by a societal narrative of refugee women as victims and refugee men as dangerous, shape a view of these people as somehow Other and threatening. What is absent and yet needed are for their voices to be listened to. Who tells these stories and how they are conveyed matters. They can shine a bright light on the hegemonic constructions of the cultural identities of refugee women. It is through creating, questioning, dismantling, and rebuilding narratives that ‘all of us come to be who we are (however ephemeral, multiple, and changing)’ (Somers 1994:606). Theatre offers a direct and embodied mode of storytelling. The body of the actor, then, is a channel through which our stories may be told. It becomes a tangible site through which to negotiate and work to relocate ourselves within the dynamic narratives of identity. In this way, it is an affecting social device. I use the UN Refugee Agency’s definition of refugees as ‘people who have fled war, violence, conflict or persecu-tion and have crossed an international border to find safety in another country’ (UNHCR 2021). Within this definition are included those who seek asylum in the destination country. Within the plays Tanja and Queens of Syria, the actor’s body represents the complexities which perme-

ate the cultural identity narratives of women affected by the turbulent events of ‘Europe’s refugee crisis’ (Kingsley 2017:np). These examples of participatory theatre follow, and respond to, the events of the ‘extraordinary year of 2015’ (Kingsley 2017:6). This year was characterised by an influx of forced migrants in Europe and the neoliberalism of Britain’s Conservative government, defining the nation’s political response to this mass displacement and humanitarian crisis. It is further framed by public and media narratives which often perpetuate ‘homogenized stereotypical’ (Yuval-Davis and Kaptani 2009:57) perspectives of people who are refugees. In this way, the representations of cultural identity in these plays are contextualised. With current government plans ‘seeking to unjustly differentiate between the deserving and undeserving refugee by choosing to provide protection for those fleeing war and terror based on how they travel to the UK’ (Grierson 2021), representation of these identities remains urgent. To establish my analytical framework, it is important to define how specific terms are used. Approaches to understanding cultural identity are varied and elusory. Its consignment to a fixed definition risks creating a distorted and essentialist explanation which overlooks the intricacies of humanity’s existence (Rush 2021:1). It is a shifting and multifaceted concept characterised by its dynamic interrelationship with its context and can be described as a framework through which we come to understand ‘“what we really are”; or rather […] “what we have become”’ (Hall 2005:445). Cultural identity, then, encapsulates ‘the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within’ our surroundings, that is, the social, political, and cultural contexts as well as ‘narratives of the past’ (Hall 2005:445). These combine to inform the construction – and the discourses which shape this construction – of our understandings of who we are in relation to people and the world around us. If subjected to the ‘continuous “play” of history, culture, and power’ (Hall 2005:445), cultural identity is unavoidably

Aoife Rush

affected by hegemonic discourses. These ‘unstable points of identification’ (Hall 2005:446) are represented by social and conceptual categories such as gender, refugee status, race, nation, religion, home, and family. An analysis of the representation of these categories is underpinned by an elaborate convolution of philosophical, social, political, theatrical, and personal paradigms of the body. Tanja and Queens of Syria highlight gender and refugee status as significant social categories, which inform the constructions of a ‘socially shared image’ (Seu 2003:158) through certain homogenising official and popular narratives. Cultural identity is a ‘contested concept’ (Yuval-Davis 2009:58), further complicated by the introduction of an ‘actor’s bodymind’ (Zarrilli et al 2013:ix). The bodymind is defined by the performer’s cultivation of ‘a state of non-dual consciousness’ to enable ‘an holistic embodying which encompasses all aspects of […] being’ (Zarrilli 2013:43-44). The actor’s body, then, is constructed psychophysically through a process of equally engaging the ‘“inner” and “outer” dimensions of experience and embodiment’ (Zarrilli 2013:viii). It manifests through a dialogical relationship between the social, political, and theatrical environments with the actor’s emotional and psychological state. This psychophysical interrelationship produces the actor’s body. Through this actor’s body the cultural identities of refugee women are represented by Ntshangase-Wood in Tanja and Queens of Syria’s all-female ensemble. The actor’s body in participatory theatre may then function as an additional positioning within the identity narratives of the performers. This ‘performer’ identity may serve or challenge dominant ideologies. Given this, my analysis of the representations of cultural identity is grounded in theories of the body as a site of social and political contention and significance and driven by an enquiry of the ethical implications of this kind of representation. Recognising the interplay between cultural identity and the actor’s body within participatory theatre, reveals a ‘complex process of interdisciplinary performance’ (Thompson and Schechner 2004:13). This suggests that both the systems of construction and modes of representation, as well as the constructed categories of cultural identity themselves, are malleable to reconstruction. The participatory theatre context enlivens the actor’s body as a tool for social change. Participatory theatre offers a platform for the exploration of cultural identity through the additional integration of a ‘performer’ identity or ‘actor’s body’ into what already constitutes our ‘unstable points of identification’ (Hall 2005:446). Representation of the cultural identities of

refugee women through this actor’s body could be considered as an ‘interaction of two distinct fields of performance’ (Thompson and Schechner 2004:13). Our social and cultural identities - like social locations - are ‘arenas rich in performance moments’ (Thompson and Schechner 2004:13). Therefore, if these identities are constructed and expressed through our synthesised and ‘situated bodymind[s]’ (Zarrilli 2013:np), then our bodies are also ‘sites of multiple performance’ (Thompson and Schechner 2004:13). Within participatory theatre, therefore, the actor’s body is not simply applied but is integrated, through a ‘continually renegotiated flux’ (Thompson and Schechner 2004:13), into the performer’s identity. Within both plays, the actor’s body works to represent the cultural identities of refugee women as constructed through various social and conceptual, physical, and psychological categories and narratives. These include performer, gender, refugee status, ‘citizen and alien’ (Smith 2014:48) violence, ideas of self and ‘constructions of otherness’ (Bharucha 1996:202). Specifically, the cacophonous intersections between these subject positions and affecting factors work to define the cultural identities of refugee women. These intersections are represented through the actor’s body. All of this occurs through a theatre which relies on the acknowledgment and exploration of the interplay between social, personal, and theatrical performances of identity. These theoretical considerations lay the foundation for my analysis of Tanja and Queens of Syria, with a focus on how the actors construct the performances, the relationship between audience and acting space, between ‘text and body’, and significantly the interrelationship between ‘actor and role’ (Pavis 1985:209). Ultimately, my analysis will demonstrate that the performers’ representation of cultural identity can foster agency, invigorating the actor’s body with both personal resonance and political power. It provides a medium through which individuals are ‘able to resist and negotiate the position’ (Seu 2003:159) they are seen to occupy within the hegemonic structures. Viewing cultural identity as ‘a matter of “becoming” as well as of “being”’ (Hall 2005:445), I intend to highlight the potency of the performer identity or actor’s body as active in shaping the representation of the cultural identities of refugee women in participatory theatre. I advocate its use as an affecting and political vehicle for social change and thus an activist tool which can expose, deconstruct, and redefine hegemonic discourses built and maintained by a deficit of compassion. In Tanja, the actor’s body works to challenge hegemonic constructions

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of the cultural identities of refugee women, demonstrating its capacity for reclaiming space for self-definition. Standing centre-stage, facing outwards, Ntshangase-Wood greets the audience stating, ‘my name is Emily and I am “Tanja”’ (Macpherson 2021). Here, she addresses the complex synthesis between ‘actor and role’ (Pavis 1985:209) as an unavoidable factor in the production of meaning and thus the representation of cultural identity through the actor’s body. Paradoxically, her introduction simultaneously blends and places a necessary distance between the cultural identities of both Tanja and Ntshangase-Wood. She communicates this intrinsic connection between her identity and the identity of her character. Her delivery of this line emphasises that, in her representation of Tanja ‘“inside” the embodied process’ (Zarrilli et al 2013:viii) of acting, she inevitably represents herself. She claims her actor’s body as a space for self-definition. Where prevailing narratives characterise the cultural identities of refugee women seeking asylum as ‘other’ (Smith 2014:48), Ntshangase-Wood uses her actor’s body to centralise her voice and ‘bodymind’ (Zarrilli 2013:ix) as a former detainee at the Yarl’s Wood (SBC Theatre 2020). Her actor’s body, then, can champion a narrative of ‘resistance, reworking, [and] resilience’ (Smith 2014:15). She introduces ‘John, the producer’, ‘Hannah, the director’ and ‘Rosie, the writer’, speaking out towards the audience before turning to the cast to confirm they are ‘ready’ (Macpherson 2021) to begin. Ntshangase-Wood’s voice leads the storytelling. Her command of the space defies the perception of women seeking asylum as silenced, ‘typified by others speaking on their behalf’ (Smith 2014:50). Consequently, her introduction challenges assumptions of ‘weakness or passivity’ ( Jeffers 2012:5) as defining features of the cultural identities of refugee women. Instead, her actor’s body becomes a vehicle through which to begin a process of demarginalization and re/self-definition. This moment demonstrates that the cultural identities of refugee women can be explored differently through the actor’s ‘psychophysical processes’, characterised by the ‘dialectical engagement of the actor’s bodymind’ (Zarrilli 2013:ix). This works as a dynamic but cohesive instrument of communication. Here, Ntshangase-Wood’s bodymind is operating through a phenomenal ‘multiple consciousness’ (Zarrilli 2013:45). This marks the performer’s sensation or experience of acting, as well as their ‘consciousness of the doing’ (Zarrilli 2013:45). This ‘feeling of the form’ (Zarrilli 2013:45) is inevitably affected by the reality of the actor’s cultural identity. In stating that she is both ‘Emily’ and ‘Tanja’ (Macpherson 2021), Ntshangase-Wood acknowledg-

es the resonances of her own cultural identity within the character she is playing. She suggests that ‘Emily’ – herself – is represented within the character of Tanja, as much as Tanja is represented by ‘Emily’ (Macpherson 2021), through her actor’s body. The cultural identity of the actor is represented through her experience of ‘metaxis’ as she simultaneously belongs to both ‘a real and imagined world’ (Freebody and Finneran 2013:50). Therefore, Ntshangase-Wood’s cultural identity informs not only her peripheral ‘consciousness of the doing’ (Zarrilli 2013:45) but directly shapes her phenomenal experience of portraying Tanja. In this sense, the actor’s body within participatory theatre offers a platform for a representation of the cultural identities of refugee women informed by the reality of her own experiences. Disrupting the actor/character dichotomy, she offers an implicit meta-commentary on the role of the actor’s body within participatory theatre as it exceeds the limited notion of ‘turning “nonperformers” into performers’ (Thompson and Schechner 2004:12). Instead, she addresses the ‘dynamic interaction’ (Thompson and Schechner 2004:13) between actor and character identity. Ntshangase-Wood reveals the power found in this complex performer identity. She demonstrates agency through her performance, integrating her actor’s body as a way of redirecting the narratives surrounding the cultural identities of refugee women. Opening in this way, Ntshangase-Wood’s performance serves a multipurpose function, introducing theatrical form, character, and self. She claims her actor’s body as a platform to shape and define her own cultural identity. This counters the dominant gendered narrative of refugee women seeking asylum as ‘de-selved […] dispossessed, disoriented […] and powerless’ (Hajdukowski-Ahmed 2009:38), and therefore becomes an act of resistance. In Queens of Syria, the actor’s body also subverts the hegemonic constructions of the cultural identities of refugee women upheld by the dominant ‘rhetoric that normalises the victimhood and passivity of the foreign “other”’ (Abdulla in press:np). It works to build a counter narrative which recognises that ‘there is no such category as “refugees” as a concrete social category’ (Yuval-Davis and Kaptani 2009:57). Representing themselves through their actors’ bodies, these thirteen women enable a reconstruction of the cultural identities of refugee women through a ‘narrativization of the self’ (Hall 2011:3) based on personal accounts of home, family, community and belonging. In the early stages of this performance, the ‘relation between text and body’ and the significance of ‘what story is being told’ (Pavis 1985:209) are highlighted as instrumental

Aoife Rush

in the work of the actors’ bodies to undermine prevalent understandings of the cultural identities of refugee women. Taking turns to stand and address the audience directly, the women share their ‘cherished memories’ ( Queens of Syria 2016) of Syria. The actor’s body, here, works powerfully through voice. These opening moments are characterised by a tangible nostalgia. Fatemeh speaks of Homs, her ‘beautiful city’ and how her ‘warm house is full of memories of love’ that she ‘will never forget’ ( Queens of Syria 2016). Her words conjure images of her house where ‘everything is beautiful’ ( Queens of Syria 2016). Particularly, she describes ‘my small window where I receive the sunlight every morning’ ( Queens of Syria 2016) conveying the safety and comfort found in the seemingly mundane and personal. As she explains ‘I breathe from it’ ( Queens of Syria 2016), the ensemble, sitting around the edge of the stage listening, inhale audibly in unison, suggesting their collective yearning for Syria. Here, the actor’s body physically communicates their desire to breathe Syrian air and gives the sense that their home is their life and therefore day-today routines hold value in defining their cultural identities more deeply than any legal, political, or media narrative can. Continuing, her words immerse the audience in a sensory description of ‘the scent of jasmine […] roses and basil’ and activates a scene in the audience’s imagination of her neighbours ‘putting up the laundry’ and ‘watering her plants’ ( Queens of Syria 2016). Finally, she questions ‘what can I say more except to tell you about my abundant memories of my country’ ( Queens of Syria 2016). In this way, through the complete merging of ‘actor and role’ (Pavis 1985:209) Fatemeh uses her actor’s body as a platform to offer alternative images of Syria to the media’s depiction of war and rubble. Here, the actor’s body represents the magnitude of nation as a physical location and a conceptual category (Holdsworth 2014:1) within the cultural identities of these refugee women. The actor’s body works through a ‘phenomenal consciousness’ (Zarrilli 2013:44), formed through memories, to represent the place of nation within their cultural identities as constructed through their daily existence, familial connections and sensory, corporeal lives in Syria. The ‘actor’s embodied consciousness’ (Zarrilli 2013:8) is directly fuelled by its recollection of the everyday lives of the actors themselves as a defining part of their national identity. Their psychophysical processes are therefore characterised by a necessary self-awareness, an amplified ‘feeling of the form’ (Zarrilli 2013:45), which is defined by personal experiences, and thus, the resonance of their own cultural identities in their actors’ bodies. In this sense, a symbiotic relationship between ‘actor and role’ (Pavis 1985:209) emerges. The performer identity or actor’s

body and their memories of Syria as ‘my country’ ( Queens of Syria 2016) and homeland, are represented as ‘mutually constitutive’ (Kirkwood et al 2013:453). In representing the place of nation within the cultural identities of refugee women through personal depictions of memories of Syria, the actor’s body highlights how identities are ‘never singular but multiply constructed across different, often intersecting’ (Hall 2011:12) personal narratives as well as socio-political discourses. Consequently, the nuance of these human stories serves to undermine the dominant narratives manipulated by political and media forces.

Abdulla, A. In press. A Different Approach to Making Theatre with/about Refugees: A Refuge from Being a Refugee. In: De Martini Ugolotti, N and Caudwell, J. Eds. Leisure and Forced Migration: Lives Lived in Asylum Systems. London: Routledge. Bharucha, R. 1996. Somebody’s Other: Disorientations in the cultural politics of our times. In: Pavis, P. ed. The Intercultural performance Reader. London: Routledge, 196-212. Freebody, K and Finneran, M. 2013. Drama and Social Justice. Power, Participation and Possibility. In: Anderson, M and Dunn, J. eds. How drama activates learning: Contemporary Research and Practice. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 47-63. Grierson, J. 2021. Migrants entering UK illegally to be liable for removal at any time. The Guardian. Published 23 March. [Online]. [Accessed 25 April 2021]. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/ mar/23/migrants-entering-uk-illegally-to-be- liable-for-removal-at-anytime. Hajdukowski-Ahmed, M. 2009. A Dialogical Approach to Identity: Implications for Refugee Women. In: Hajdukowski-Ahmed, M. Khanlou, N. and Moussa, H. eds. Not Born a Refugee Woman: Contesting Identities, Rethinking Practices. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 28-54. Hall, S. 2005. Cultural Identity and Diaspora. In: Hier, S. ed. Contemporary Sociological Thought: Themes and Theories. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc, 443-454. Hall, S. 2011. Introduction: Who Needs Identity?. In: Hall, S. and du Gay, P. Questions of Cultural identity. London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 1-12. Holdsworth, N. 2014. Theatre and National Identity: Re-Imagining Conceptions of Nation. Oxon: Routledge. Jeffers, A. 2012. Refugees, Theatre and Crisis: Performing Global Identities. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kiesling, S. F. 2009. Hegemonic identity-making in narrative. In: De Fina, A. Schiffrin, D. and Bamberg, M. eds. Discourse and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics), 261-287. King, O. 2021. PDF of Queens of Syria Surtitle Script sent in email to Aoife Rush, 18 January 2021. Kingsley, P. 2017. The New Odyssey: The Story of Europe’s Refugee Crisis. London: Guardian Books.

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Kirkwood, S. MicKinlay, A. and McVittie, C. 2013. The Mutually Constitutive Relationship between Place and Identity: The role of Place-Identity in Discourse on Asylum Seekers and Refugees. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology. 23(6), 453-465. Macpherson, R. 2021. PDF of ‘Tanja’ Script sent in email to Aoife Rush, 19 January 2021. Macpherson, R. 2021. Private Vimeo link for ‘Tanja’ sent in email to Aoife Rush, 19 January 2021. Pavis, P. 1985. Theatre Analysis: some questions and a questionnaire. New Theatre Quarterly. 1(2), 208-212. Rush, A. 2021. An exploration of the representation of cultural identities through the actor’s body in ‘Small Island’. DRA3076. University of Exeter. Unpublished Essay. Seu, B. I. 2003. The Woman with the Baby: Exploring Narratives of Female Refugees. Feminist Review. 73, 158-165. Smith, K. 2014. Challenging dominant narratives: stories of women seeking asylum. Doctoral thesis, University of Huddersfield Repository. Somers, M. R. 1994. The narrative constitution of identity: A relational and network approach. Theory and Society. 23 (5), 605-650. Stand and Be Counted [SBC]. 2020. TANJA. [Online]. [Accessed 2 February 2021]. Available from: https://www.sbctheatre.co.uk/ productions/tanja. Thompson, J and Schechner, R. 2004. Why Social Theatre?. The Drama Review TDR. 48(3), 11-16. Yuval-Davis, N and Kaptani, E. 2009. Performing Identities: Participatory Theatre among Refugees. In: Wetherell, M. ed. Theorizing Identities and Social Action. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 56-74. Zarrilli, P. 2013. Introduction. In: Daboo, J. Loukes, R and Zarrilli, P. 2013. Acting: Psychophysical Phenomenon and Process. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Helen Romeu Coombes

To what extent can African and Black British dialects on the London stage be used as sites of resistance and empowerment? An examination of Inua Ellams’ Barber Shop Chronicles. Dissertation Extracts Helen Romeu Coombes

Hybridity and creolising English Since the decolonisation of many countries following the Second World War, “Anglophone” African nations have been left with the issue of choosing an official language for a multilingual society, and the neocolonial implications that choosing English as this official language presents (Myers-Scotton 1993: 9). This debate has carried over into African literature, where certain writers have debated the effectiveness of the English language in resisting cultural imperialism and redefining African identity. Two representatives of this polarising debate are Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe and Kenyan writer and scholar Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Achebe chose to write in English, arguing that this language, though originally forced on indigenous communities as a means of control, now accurately reflected the state of English-speaking African countries and could be used to unite people (Achebe in Williams et al. 1994: 429-430). Thiong’o, on the other hand, opted to write in his native tongue of Gikuyu, stressing that the African writer who uses European languages is no different from the ‘politician who says Africa cannot do without imperialism’ (Thiong’o in ibid: 449-450). Barber Shop Chronicles sits somewhere in the middle of this spectrum, as Ellams writes in English but in a creolised and hybrid form, mixing African and Caribbean pidgins and creoles, and Black London slang with Standard English. Achebe and Thiong’o’s debate becomes much more complex and nuanced when attempting to apply it to theatre writing. The theatre industry and its workers, like any other industry, is reliant on making a profit. Furthermore, it would be naive to not consider the obvious practicality in using the English language for an English-speaking audience. Unfortunately, Ellams cannot take as many liberties with his writing as Thiong’o as he is aware of the limitations that a mostly monoglossic audience presents. Counter to Thiong’o’s beliefs, however, English can be

used as an effective political tool, exemplified in Ellams’ writing. This creolisation of English is not unique in the Black British theatrical canon; many Black playwrights have demonstrated a ‘sensitivity towards linguistic and cultural mixture’ since their arrival to mainstream British stages in the 50s (Pearce 2017: 105). This pattern suggests that this unique use of English may not simply be a financial practicality. Trinidadian playwright Mustapha Matura stated that for him, ‘writing in dialect was an important political act’ (Matura in Inchley 2015: 82). Rather than considering the reasons why writers of colour use English, I find it much more effective to consider how they use it and to what political effect(s), as Matura suggested. In this light, I am inspired by Nigerian dramatist Ola Rotimi, who emphasised that The real issue should not be why an African writer resorts to perpetuating a colonial tongue. Rather, for the debate to be worthwhile, it should bear on how the writer uses that tongue to express the conditions and yearnings of his linguistically diverse peoples. (Rotimi in Carlson 2006: 126; emphases added). Thiong’o’s questioning of the effectiveness of English in postcolonial writing is a necessary conversation to have. However, it is specifically Ellams’ use of that colonial tongue that makes it so effective in resisting and challenging the cultural hegemony of the stage, as it ‘decentre[s], destabilise[s] and carnivalise[s]’ (Hall in Williams et al. 1994: 402) the very language that was used to suppress Black communities in the UK and abroad. Furthermore, I argue that Ellams’ use of African and Black British dialects and his playful creolisation of English is not s imply a practicality but a political act of subversion. The way in which he uses these dialects as tools of resistance and empowerment will be explored in the subsequent sections.

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Code switching The character of Samuel’s speech pattern is one way that dialect in this play is used as a tool for resistance and empowerment. Samuel is a second-generation Nigerian living in Peckham, and like many children of African and Caribbean immigrants growing up in Britain, he exists in a hybrid space, moving between his Nigerian and British identities. One of the main ways in which this dual identity is expressed is through language, exemplified in Samuel’s codeswitching. In linguistics, ‘codeswitching’ is when a speaker alternates between two or more languages within the same conversation (Nguyen 2015: 1). Samuel is a fluent speaker of both English and Nigerian Pidgin, and demonstrates code switching in a conversation with Muhammed in scene 6: MUHAMMED: How body? Wetin dey? SAMUEL: I’m okay man. Trim? MUHAMMED: Eight pounds as usual? SAMUEL: Of course. MUHAMMED: My guy. SAMUEL: Sitdon there, I dey come. (Ellams 2017: 34; emphases added). As highlighted in the italicised phrases, Samuel alternates between Standard or London English (‘I’m okay man. Trim?’) and Pidgin (‘Sitdon there, I dey come’), as does Muhammed. Samuel also does this when cutting Benjamin’s hair, another fellow Pidgin speaker: SAMUEL: Oya, come and sit down. BENJAMIN: You want to hear a joke? SAMUEL: Is it funny? BENJAMIN: Na joke now. SAMUEL: Did you invent it? BENJAMIN: What kind question be dat? SAMUEL: Oya, I dey hear. (ibid: 20; emphases added). In both instances, Samuel begins by speaking in Standard English and moves towards Pidgin as he engages more with the Pidgin speaker. Reasons as to why multilingual speakers may code-switch have been heavily researched by linguists. However, a series of anecdotal TED talks on code-switching by several Black American speakers1 suggest that code-switching may be about much more than just language for certain people, including Samuel. Every speaker mentioned how code switching was not simply about adapting their language, but also their clothes, their

demeanour, and other facets of their identities to become more acceptable’ to the context they were in, which usually involved compromising parts of their African American identities. For people with marginalised and stigmatised bodies and voices, code switching can be a way to adhere to hegemonic norms and codes, and in extreme cases, a form of survival. This resonates with Samuel and the other Pidgin speakers in Barber Shop Chronicles; their ability to code-switch suggests that their African dialects and identities are not accepted in mainstream British society and culture. Nevertheless, code-switching is also an act of power and self-determination; it demonstrates a command of both languages, and an ability to perform either identity whenever the speaker chooses to. Sociolinguist Mark Sebba studied the language of second-generation Black Londoners and their assimilation of West Indian Creole into their speech. He concluded that because these speakers were born in Britain and therefore had little to no affiliation with the Caribbean, this code switching had nothing to do with communication and was instead ‘largely symbolic’, a way to assert a group identity (Sebba in Britain 2007: 281). Fittingly, he describes Creole as a performance (ibid: 283). Furthermore, code switching is a naturally performative act as the person is expressing a part of their cultural identity through a conscious shift in their language. So, it is evident from Samuel’s exchanges with his clientele that these characters are not code switching for linguistic reasons like intelligibility, but to perform and affirm each other’s cultural identities. However, when the “performance” of this creolised English is not done in a creolised space but on the British stage, a domain where these voices haven’t always been heard or accepted, then the act of code-switching has wider implications. Samuel’s codeswitching is a symbol of his hybrid cultural identity, something which threatens the idea of one stable “British” identity, perpetuated through the theatre’s favouring of RP over other language forms. Ellams choosing to portray this linguistic aspect of these cultures demonstrates the extent to which these marginalised communities have had to assimilate into British society and cultural institutions like the theatre. Nevertheless, it also reflects a unique linguistic character that originally arose out of the imposition of English on these communities, that has now flourished into a rich hybridity and diversity. The presence of these African dialects and the practice of codeswitching on the London stage will hopefully lead to the acceptance of these language forms

Helen Romeu Coombes

and cultures in public life. Ellams thus uses the hybrid language of codeswitching as a way to resist the idea of a fixed or standard English, and empower those communities that have birthed diverse and creative ways of expressing themselves.

Britain, D. (ed.) (2007) Language in the British Isles, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carlson, M. (2006) Speaking in Tongues: Languages at Play in the Theatre, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Ellams, I. (2017) Barber Shop Chronicles, London: Oberon Books. Inchley, M. (2015) Voice and New Writing, 1997-2007: Articulating the Demos, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Myers-Scotton, C. (1993) Social Motivations for Codeswitching: Evidence from Africa, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Nguyen, T. (2015) Codeswitching: a sociolinguistic perspective, Anchor Academic Publishing. Pearce, M. (2017) Black British Drama: A Transnational Story, London: Routledge. Williams, P. & Chrisman, L. (eds) (1994) Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, London: Routledge.

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Enlivening the Inanimate: Exploring the Creation of Audience Belief in Twenty-First Century West End Puppetry Dissertation Extracts Matthew Lawrence

For centuries, the intricate art of puppetry has cultivated a virtuosic theatre genre that has successfully captivated the imaginations of audiences around the world. The process of seeing the puppeteer transform an inanimate object into an enlivened figure fascinates the audience, allowing them to suspend their disbelief and immerse themselves within a world of limitless possibilities. Handspring Puppet Company’s co-founder Basil Jones states that puppets can ‘reinvent the ordinary’ ( Jones in National Theatre 2011: 00:48), allowing the audience to observe life in unprecedented ways. I argue that when the audience have their disbelief suspended by puppetry, they are then permitted to perceive the puppet as alive, enabling them to immerse themselves into the performance by believing that the puppet is more than just an inanimate object. The notion of being able to suspend an audience’s disbelief was originally introduced by literary critic and poet, Samuel Coleridge, in what he called the ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ (Coleridge in Roberts 2014: 208). He uses this term to describe how readers of literature allow themselves to accept and believe in the fanciful language and imagery being presented in poetic writing. I will analyse how the suspension of disbelief is achieved in a theatrical setting by examining how puppeteers in contemporary West End productions lead the audience to believe that the puppet is conscious and animate. I will be specifically focussing on the representation of the animal kingdom through puppets, as animal figures are a common feature seen within modern puppet theatre productions. Czech semiotician, Otakar Zich, describes how watching an inanimate object come to life on stage captivates the audience. He notes that: “we may conceive of the puppets as if they were living beings by emphasising their lifelike expressions, their movements and speech, and taking them as real. Our awareness that puppets are not alive recedes, and we get the feeling of something inexplicable, enigmatic,

and astounding […] Here we are faced with something utterly unnatural – namely, life in an inanimate, inorganic material. (Zich in Tillis 1992: 54)” In order for the audience’s disbelief to be suspended, Zich emphasises the importance of a puppet being presented with a lifelike physicality. Therefore, I will analyse how the puppet’s physicality in War Horse, The Lion King and Life of Pi contributes to the audience’s belief that the puppets have life, consciousness, and emotion. In order to determine how a puppet is enlivened on stage, an analysis of the techniques used by puppeteers to animate the puppet’s physicality is required. To conduct this analysis of the physicality, I will use Steve Tillis’ research into the sign-systems that make up a puppet, in which he highlights how ‘the specific signs that constitute the puppet are related to signs that are generally recognised as signs of life; that is as signs that one associates with the presence of life’ (Tillis 1992: 7). Tillis organises these signs into three categories: ‘signs of design, of movement and of speech’ (Tillis 1992: 7). Through analysing the design, movement, and speech across my three case studies, I will be able to investigate how these signs contribute to the audience’s belief of life within a puppet and recognise how that puppet is ‘imagined to have life’ (Tillis 1992: 23). Moreover, the signs of life presented by the puppets and puppeteers in War Horse, The Lion King, and Life of Pi, are visual signifiers that allow the audience to interpret meaning created throughout the performance. For example, through movement and manipulation, the puppeteer can present the puppet as breathing and as a result, the audience will acknowledge breathing as a code that signifies life. In this section I will emphasise the semiotic importance of the puppet in creating aliveness and suspending audience disbelief, as well as highlight how the puppeteer produces these signs and creates, as Tillis describes, ‘an illusion of life’ (Tillis 1992: 7). The most identifiable way to understand how the puppet is

Matthew Lawrence

physically enlivened is by understanding the techniques used to control and animate the puppet’s movement. The sign-system of movement is arguably the most influential in creating audience belief within the puppet. Russian puppeteer, Sergey Obraztsov, claims that, ‘the puppet is created to be mobile. Only when it moves does it become alive and only in the character of its movements does it acquire what we call behaviour’ (Obraztsov in Tillis 1992: 133). This supports Tillis’ idea that through movement, the audience can perceive these signs as signs of life. When observing how the puppet moves and behaves on stage, the audience may draw links between the puppet and the being it represents (Tillis 1992: 7). This allows them to decode the representative movement and associate its implied meaning with recognisable behaviours seen in real life. Theatre semiotician, Jirí Veltřuský, confirms this by highlighting, ‘by contiguity, this implied meaning reflects in the spectator’s mind on the puppets themselves, thus tending to attribute to them [a] life of their own’ ( Veltřuský in Tillis 1992: 133). This decoding of movement is a crucial first step in establishing the suspension of disbelief between puppet and audience, as without believable movement, the other sign-systems have little to support, thus positioning the sign-system of movement as the most influential in presenting the puppet as alive. To illustrate this further, I will analyse three main components of movement in puppets: how the eyes and focus are presented, how the puppet is shown to have breath, and how the puppet is performed with weight and balance. The movement and control of the puppet’s eyes help the audience to detect the puppet’s consciousness; by interpreting the puppet’s gaze we can determine ideas about what the puppet is feeling, thinking, and observing. Swedish puppeteer and director, Michael Meschke notes that ‘the face makes the most important contribution to the figure’s presence, and, in the face, the eyes are what determine its character’ (Meschke 1992: 104). Meschke’s observation stresses the importance of the eyes in communicating the temperament and behaviour of the puppet. To assess this theory, I will analyse the significance of eye contact and focus in signalling the relationship between puppet and actor in the recent theatre adaptation of Life of Pi. Meschke highlights, ‘the relationship between two figures comes to life only if the play between their eyes is consciously studied and executed’ (Meschke 1992: 104). The audience sees this relationship particularly clearly during the first lifeboat scene. In this scene the protagonist, Pi Patel, comes to the realisation that he is stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with the

Bengal tiger from his family’s zoo. The scene shows Pi’s stand-off with the tiger in which both characters lock eye contact and prowl around the perimeter of the boat as Pi tries to build trust and respect. The tiger puppet is manipulated by three puppeteers and, as ‘the eyes […] direct the movement of the body’ (Meschke 1992: 104), the lead puppeteer controls the movement of the head and eyes. The puppeteer uses slow and precise movements when manipulating the puppet’s head, ensuring that the direction of the tiger’s eyes is aimed directly at Pi. This denotes the tiger as following Pi, ready for attack. The movement sign produces the idea that the tiger is conscious; the exchange of eye contact and focus illuminates the presence of life within the tiger puppet. The audience decode the stare between both figures as intimidating and begin to determine the tiger’s predatory behaviour and character. Puppetry director Mervyn Millar emphasises the importance of focus, he notes, ‘focus helps us with clarity. We want to know what the puppet is thinking about, and how it feels’ (Millar 2018: 46). The spectator is able to grasp what the puppet is concentrating on by observing the puppet’s focus throughout the performance. As a result of the precisely directed eye focus and movement, the audience are able to perceive the relationship between puppet and actor as authentic. The actor’s fearful responses to the tiger help to enliven the puppet by demonstrating the actor’s belief that the puppet is real. This is evidence to support how ‘the interplay between two figures is […] enhanced if they follow one another’s movements across the stage with precisely directed eyes’ (Meschke 1992: 108). The interaction between actor and puppet helps the audience to believe the puppet is alive by suggesting that the tiger is thinking about and planning out its next moves autonomously. This idea of the puppet having autonomous thoughts is easily recognised as a sign of life and helps to strengthen the audience’s belief in the puppet. Furthermore, the kinaesthetic communication established by the eye-contact and the movement of the eyes allows the intimate relationship between Pi and the tiger to be believable as a consequence. This showcases how puppetry suspends audience disbelief and immerses them in an illusion of aliveness. Breath is a communicative tool employed by puppeteers to present the ‘illusion of life’ (Tillis 1992: 7) within the puppet. As a sign-system of movement, the implementation of breath within a puppet is crucial in encouraging the audience’s belief that the puppet is alive. Millar highlights the communicative quality of breath and notes how the

T3 Journal - Student Writing in Drama, University of Exeter 2020-21

breath’s volume, rhythm and style tells the spectator a lot about the character of the puppet (Millar 2018: 66). It is through the vocalised rhythm of the breath that the spectator can deduce the cognitive behaviour of the puppet’s character. Through analysing the performance of the Joey puppet in War Horse, we can understand how ‘breath relates thought and mood to the body’ (Millar 2018: 19). In scene nine, Albert attempts to harness Joey in order to teach him how to plough the farm. This moment depicts Joey’s unwillingness to wear the harness and demonstrates how the puppeteers display the horse’s reluctance through breath. Joey lets out short, tempered breaths in a staccato rhythm. As he gets more frustrated, the chuffing is manifested through expansions of the ribcage, operated by the two puppeteers inside the puppet. This movement is complemented by sudden jolts of the head, which signals to the audience that Joey’s character is stubborn and that his emotions, in this scene, are tempestuous and fearful. This analysis verifies how vocalised breathing ‘carries the emotional resonance of the animal [puppet]’ (Luther in Kohler 2009: 145). By performing emotion through an inanimate object, the audience are able to suspend their disbelief and begin to empathise with the puppet. The audience is further prompted to believe the puppet has life through the sign of breath, as it punctuates and validates all movement performed by the puppet. Handspring’s co-founder, Basil Jones, supports this with his claim that the in-breath ‘is a kind of signalling, a semiotic of movement’ ( Jones in Sichel 2009: 166). The breath signifies that the puppet has decided to move. The spectator reads the in-breath as a sign that ‘gives the energy’ ( Jones in Sichel 2009: 166), and the out-breath as a sign that ‘ends the phrase and passes the energy to the next figure’ ( Jones in Sichel 2009: 166). This encourages, as Tillis describes, ‘the imagination of life’ (Tillis 1992: 23) as humans also perform this sequence of breath in their everyday routines. This underlines how, when performed by a puppet, the audience observes breath as a sign of life. I believe that the most powerful way breath is utilised in puppet theatre is during moments of stillness. Millar suggests that breath allows the puppet to stay alive, even in stillness (Millar 2018: 117). From this reading, we can infer that when the only movement performed by a puppet is the act of breathing, the audience are able to recognise the puppet’s aliveness presented in its purest form. A puppet’s stillness allows the audience to understand that ‘breathing is physical, yet it has a profound metaphorical power. This non-existent substance (air) that is passing through this mechanical being represents the very essence of life: the soul’ ( Jones 2009: 262, brackets in

original). This once again shows how the sign-system of movement manipulates the audience into suspending their disbelief and immersing themselves into the impression of life being portrayed. Another way in which I will analyse how a puppet is physically enlivened through the sign-system of movement is through examining the importance of performed weight and balance. The MOPPIV and rear-rod styles of puppetry are seen in all three productions that I am analysing, and they each present the puppet with an authentic weight which is pivotal in maintaining audience belief. As Meschke describes in his own definition, ‘authenticity is that which corresponds to natural laws’ (Meschke 1992: 110). This is to say that in order for a puppet to be regarded as authentically presenting its subject, it must conform to the physical expectations of that being. For instance, a large elephant puppet would be expected to have heavy, cumbersome movements with a low centre of gravity; each foot would be planted firmly onto the stage as it walks. Meschke illustrates the significance of this with his analysis of a human puppet: “When a person walks, the natural laws permit him to lift one leg at a time, but not both at the same time. […] [For puppet theatre,] if there is the slightest carelessness in lifting, both legs leave the floor simultaneously and the illusion is destroyed. It becomes inauthentic. (Meschke 1992: 110)” This authentic illusion is evident in War Horse and Life of Pi, as both productions imitate the lifelike qualities of the animals they feature. In The Lion King, there is more freedom to break away from this authenticity because the production does not aim to present believable animals, but rather Disney’s cartoon imagining of the characters Timon and Pumbaa. This allows for playful and caricatureesque presentations of the animals, rather than wholly authentic portrayals of a meerkat and warthog. In multioperated puppets, ‘all three puppeteers work […] together to create the illusion of weight and balance’ (Millar 2018: 196). This illusion is physically created ‘when the puppet moves with a lifelike weight and muscularity’ (Millar 2018: 127). We can observe how the tiger puppet moves with this weight and muscularity in Life of Pi. In a scene between Pi and the tiger, the tiger launches himself across the lifeboat towards Pi. This attack action demonstrates how the puppeteers encourage the audience to suspend their disbelief and believe that the lightweight wooden puppet weighs four hundred and fifty pounds. As seen

Matthew Lawrence

in Figure 2, one puppeteer wears the puppet like a shell which ‘engages [the puppeteer’s] muscles more specifically in the action […] making the movement seem to come from inside the object’ (Millar 2018: 67). This allows the puppeteer to animate the tiger puppet in a lifelike manner, as they can physically feel which paw is bearing weight, as others are being lifted and therefore achieve a natural balance to the tiger’s movement. With one puppeteer controlling from inside the puppet, it achieves the effect of a heavy gravitational pull as the tiger lands from the pounce. This helps to contribute to the authenticity of the puppet and ‘avoid[s] limpness and increases the credibility that they are earthbound’ (Meschke 1992: 118). From the analysis of Life of Pi, we can understand how performing the puppet with an authentic weight helps to transform the audience’s perception of the puppet from a lightweight wooden figure to a heavy, muscular, flesh-filled body. This supports McPharlin’s belief that the ‘[audience] ceases to think of wood and wire [and] is [instead] absorbed in the action’ (McPharlin in Tillis 1992: 47). By performing weight within the puppet, the audience can see the figure become imbued with another recognisable sign of life. As the portrayal of weight becomes more authentic, the suspension of audience disbelief becomes stronger, evidencing that the sign-system of movement is elemental in immersing the audience in this ‘illusion of life’ (Tillis 1992: 7) within the puppets featured in War Horse and Life of Pi.

Tillis, S. (1992) Towards an Aesthetics of the Puppet: Puppetry as a Theatrical Art. London: Greenwood Press. Williams, H. (2019) How Can You Put ‘Life of Pi’ Onstage? With Puppets. [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: <https://www.nytimes. com/2019/07/16/theater/life-of-pi-play.html> [Accessed 31 March 2021].

Jones, B. (2009) Puppetry and Authorship. In: Taylor, J. (2009) Handspring Puppet Company. Johannesburg: David Krut Publications, pp.253-269. Kohler, A. (2009) Thinking Through Puppets. In: Taylor, J. (2009) Handspring Puppet Company. Johannesburg: David Krut Publications, pp.42-150. Meschke, M. (1992) In Search of Aesthetics for the Puppet Theatre. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers. Millar, M. (2018) Puppetry: How to Do It. London: Nick Hern Books. National Theatre (2011) What is Unique About Puppets In Theatre? [online video] Available at: <https://youtu.be/JcHA4r3EBqk> [Accessed 31 March 2021) Roberts, A. (2014) Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp.207-214. Sichel, A. (2009) Escaping the Puppet Ghetto. In: Taylor, J. (2009) Handspring Puppet Company. Johannesburg: David Krut Publications, pp.151-175. Taylor, J. (2009) Handspring Puppet Company. Johannesburg: David Krut Publications.

T3 Journal - Student Writing in Drama, University of Exeter 2020-21

Charlotte Josephine’s ‘Bitch Boxer’ (2012): a reflection on the portrayal and expectation of gender in women’s boxing in regard to the 2012 London Olympics Dissertation Extracts Sabrina Cass

As a female boxer, I have had mixed experiences. Boxing has offered me empowering opportunities while I have also suffered the inequality that can come alongside participation in a traditionally masculine pursuit. When I first tried boxing, I instantly felt a connection with the sport. Perhaps it was the adrenaline, but I remember, after my first padding session, feeling nearly speechless, the only words I could find were, ‘I want to fight’. These words made me think that it wasn’t just the adrenaline, it was the experience of performing an act outside my produced gender norm that gave me a sense of purpose and power. Bitch Boxer (2012) is a one-woman play written and performed by Charlotte Josephine. The play was first conceived when Josephine was working at a coffee shop and on one of their shifts they were lifting heavy boxes into an office. Upon seeing them do this, a stranger commented that they didn’t look very ladylike. Instead of ignoring the comment, Josephine directed that frustration and anger into writing a rant on their phone. The rant they’d written was later structured into a monologue and it was only after hearing about the news of women being able to box competitively for the first time in the 2012 London Olympics that Bitch Boxer (2012) was written into a play. Women’s boxing first featured in the Olympics in 2012, where it was approved by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Amateur International Boxing Association (AIBA), and further finalised by the president of the IOC committee, Jacques Rogge. Nonetheless, due to this being the first time in history that women were given the spotlight in a typically male dominated environment, the participation alone was enough to inspire women to achieve tasks outside a produced and reproduced gender norm. Boxing reaches out to the places that other sports don’t reach. Why? Because it engages with young people on their own terms and recognises that frustration and aggression

that is so often the hallmark of teenage years. It reaches into the underground, anarchical world which engulfs so many school drop-outs, which many other forms of social engagement cannot penetrate. And, crucially, boxing gives young people who may be bad at everything else they’ve tried a sense of worth and self-esteem. They stop labelling themselves as drop-outs; the frantic quest to prove themselves by bravado is not necessary (Charlotte Leslie, 2008: np). Chloe is the main character in Bitch Boxer. She shows strength and spirit in times of hardship. When her mother leaves, she finds a motive and direction for her anger in boxing, which ultimately gives her purpose for something greater to strive for. The societal view of boxing, especially for women, is as aggressive, violent and transgressive, but this demonstrates how women’s anger and hardship is rarely taken seriously. Chloe’s Mum leaving her was fate that gave her a purpose and a chance to make history for women. “First year women can fight and it’s in London. Of all the places in the world they choose Stratford. Could have been held anywhere and it’s down the fucking road?! If that ain’t fate then I dunno what is. Someone’s trying to tell me sumink though eh? It’s practically on my fucking doorstep/ throw a stone and I’m there. I’ve got to fight. I just have to. And bollocks to all the haters. I’ll prove ‘em wrong. Can’t be an embarrassment to that silly slag with a gold medal can I? (Charlotte Josephine, 2012: 39).” As we see from the above, the drive that Chloe has mirrored the fact that her Mum has no time for her interest in boxing and sees it merely as a teenage phase that she’ll soon grow out of. Personally, I find this a particularly stimulating side to the play, that Chloe, though angry at her mum, doesn’t ever express this feeling to her in person. Instead, she controls it by taking the damage that her mum caused and chanelling it through productive rebellion instead. For Chloe, getting to and winning the 2012 London Olympics is about so much more than just a gold

Sabrina Cass

medal. More generally, allowing women to box at the 2012 London Olympics opens up a platform to break stigmas. Women do not need to ape ‘maleness’ but can offer their own version of the boxing event. As we know, ‘not only are performances and narratives of women’s boxing haunted by the ghosts of male champions and contenders gone before, but the sport is also burdened by the fascination of what female bodies are and are not capable of’ (Solomon Lennox and Sarah Crews, 2021: 6).

Josephine, C., 2012. Bitch Boxer. 1st ed. London: Oberon Books, pp.1-62. Leslie, C., 2008. Boxing is the best way to stop violence in kids. The Guardian, [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ blog/2008/apr/14/boxingisthebestwaytostop [Accessed 12 April 2021]. Crews, S. and Lennox, S., 2021. Boxing and Performance: Memetic Hauntings. 1st ed. Oxon: Routledge, pp.1-147. Hargreaves, J., 1994. Sporting Females: Critical Issues in the History and Sociolog y of Women’s Sport. 1st ed. Abingdon: Routledge.

The link with masculinity is present in Bitch Boxer through Chloe’s relationship with her father, who dies. She carries on through grief after her dad’s death, believing that, ‘Fighters don’t get sick’ (Charlotte Josephine, 2012: 35). Women have been fighting an uphill battle for years to not even come close to something as grand as competing in the Olympics. Chloe understands what entering the professional world of boxing will be like as a woman, but she also knows that, ‘Every competition planned, every fight one step closer to my new dream. A chance to prove to the whole world I’m worth sumink, to prove ‘em all wrong. Women can’t box? You watch’ (Charlotte Josephine, 2012: 40). She’s adamant in not wanting to talk about her feelings, grieve or ever look weak, as she doesn’t always like to let people in and it’s hard to when the image of a fighter is always strong. Letting her guard down could mean that her gendered assumed emotions get in the way of her being a professional boxer and so make her a liability to the sport. Thus, by creating this strong persona through boxing, Chloe shields and guards her own femininity as this is the only way she knows how to survive after her Dad dies. Upon interviewing Charlotte Josephine, it was clear to me that a lot of Chloe’s character was made up of experiences reflecting Josephine’s own life of what it means to be a woman in a western society. While truthfully, there is nothing new about women boxing, Jennifer Hargreaves reminds us: “Although it’s now officially acknowledged that no reasons exist why biological differences between the sexes should impose restrictions on women’s participation’ in sports, it is exceptionally difficult to shift institutionalised practices and ideas that have supported them for so many years ( Jennifer Hargreaves, 1994: 282).” Allowing women to box has therefore created a challenge to gendered views, but more than that, it hands over to women power that is traditionally assigned within a masculine narrative.

T3 Journal - Student Writing in Drama, University of Exeter 2020-21

How is Feminist Laughter Operating Within Contemporary Performance? Dissertation Extracts Rebecca Taylor

Laughter is a feminist issue. It is an act which has the ability to reinforce and dismantle oppressive structures, and which comes from bodies existing ‘within contexts of misogyny, transphobia, racism, violence, privilege and pleasure’ (Frey, 2021a: 7). Feminist laughter is not a new concept, it has long been used by feminists for political action and as a ‘mechanism of self-care’ (Frey, 2021a: 7). Aston writes that women attending the theatre often find themselves laughing ‘in spite of’ themselves (Aston, 1996: 60). She addresses the idea of an ‘implied’ spectator: one imagined by a writer or director when a theatre piece is written or crafted, and a ‘real’ spectator: the actual person who sees the performance (Aston, 1996: 59). The implied spectator tends to be a man, and consequently, the real female spectators find themselves in a compromised position: ‘the female spectator whose reactions are theatrically “competent” generally finds herself in the position of laughing in spite of herself. Where is the pleasure in finding yourself the object of the joke?’ (Aston, 1996: 60). Reading Aston’s essay twenty years later, I realised that this still happens in contemporary performance. While discussing this phenomenon with a friend, he asked me: “why do women laugh at something if it isn’t funny?” Rebecca Krefting provides an answer in All Joking Aside - from youth we learn that there are economic and social advantages to identifying with those in power because such perspectives ‘bear the promise of material and cultural capital’ (Krefting, 2014: 7). This influences what - and whose - humour succeeds. Krefting asserts that, as women are a minority group, ‘buying into’ a woman’s point of view is less lucrative (Krefting, 2014: 7). As a woman, by not laughing when a self-deprecating joke appears in a public setting you identify with the ideals of a minority group and separate yourself from the advantaged perspective. Hanich, in his sociological study on laughter in cinemas, asserts that by refusing to laugh you place yourself ‘outside of the community’ (Hanich, 2018: 213). Women laugh at self-dep-

recating jokes because this sense of humour is what we have learnt to be socially acceptable and beneficial. Aston contends that in order to avoid this eventuality, feminists can either stop attending the theatre, or create theatre which ‘realises the pleasure/s and desires/s of the female/feminist spectator’ (Aston, 1996: 60). In light of this, I discuss what happens when women/feminists are invited to reclaim laughter within the context of contemporary performance. When feminists laugh, not in spite of themselves, but at spite itself, what does this do? Leading me to my question: how is feminist laughter operating within contemporary performance? ‘Nanette’ by Hannah Gadsby

Hannah Gadsby: Nanette (Nanette), was performed and filmed in the Sydney Opera House. It was released on Netflix in 2018, where I watched it in 2021. In this performance, Gadsby addresses her experiences of being a comedian, and the trauma she has experienced as a lesbian. In Nanette, Gadsby overtly refuses to laugh in spite of herself, explaining that she used to self-deprecate in order to feel heard (2018: 00:17:40). Instead, Gadsby creates laughter through a narrative that backs herself. For example, she tells a story about when a man told her not to take anti-depressants because she’s an artist and should feel. She quotes herself: ‘what do you honestly think?’, her tone is in infuriated amazement as she addresses the man in her memory, ‘that creativity means you must suffer? […] just so you can enjoy it? Fuck you, mate’. She then mimics him, her tone adopting the tone of amused surprise that men often take in order to undermine a woman’s anger: ‘no need to be so sensitive’ (00:35:05-00:35:40) “he” says, holding “his” hands up defensively. Gadsby then addresses the audience: ‘when somebody tells me to stop being so sensitive, you know what? I feel a little bit like a nose being lectured by a fart’. She surveys her audience, her face scrunched up in distaste, before she stresses: ‘not the

Rebecca Taylor

problem’. The audience laughs (00:36:30). Instead of using humour to dismantle her identity, here she uses humour to affirm it, asserting to the audience that in a situation where you’re told you’re being overly emotional - a situation many women experience - the accuser is in fact the problem. The ideology that women are more emotional than men is a prominent (and inaccurate) belief in Western culture. This is an issue for women because emotionality in Western culture has been linked to a lack of rationality (Brescoll, 2016: 415 & 418). Comedy is a place where people can assert their cultural identity (Krefting, 2014: 13, Chattoo and Feldman, 2020: 8). Gadsby, in this moment, asserts her identity as a woman who feels, not backing away from this stereotype but instead comedically expressing that anyone who sees this characteristic as an issue, is the issue. This humour is inclusive in that it attacks an attitude rather than a social group (Bing, 2004: 28), meaning it doesn’t alienate potential sympathisers, and instead only targets those with this ideology. Bing asserts that self-affirming humour within feminist comedy emphasises the female experience as important (Bing, 2004: 27). The laughter that arises here sides with Gadsby and other women who have received this comment, affirming those who are sensitive and ridiculing those who criticise them. In not laughing “down” at herself, or others that identify with her, Gadsby instead laughs “up”, targeting individuals and institutions with power. For example, Gadsby laughs up at modern art and Picasso: ‘I hate him, but you can’t, Cubism’ she states, frustrated. Sarcastically, she continues: ‘if you ruin Cubism, then civilisation as we know it will crumble’, she dramatically lengthens the word ‘crumble’ to highlight her view that Cubism isn’t important. She continues: ‘aren’t we grateful in this room, that we live in a post-Cubism world? Isn’t that the first thing we all write in our gratitude journals?’. She earns laughter with this mocking (00:50:35). Once Gadsby has engaged the audience in laughing at him, she explains that as a married forty-twoyear-old, Picasso ‘fucked an under-age girl’ (00:53:10). There is an incongruency theory to laughter, which suggests: ‘to feel amused enough to laugh, the audience must be able to recognize both the status quo and the incongruent, unexpected reinterpretation of the status quo that comedy offers’ (Chattoo and Feldman, 2020: 25). Applying this logic, the ideology that Picasso’s work is unessential is the status quo and therefore Gadsby’s exaggerated portrayal of its importance earns laughter in its incongruency; this suggests that the idea of Picasso’s work being deemed important is funny, undermining it. As discussed earlier,

selecting your laughter’s target carefully is important as it communicates your values (Chattoo and Feldman, 2020: 148). Gadsby negatively targets a successful man who represents an institution with arguably misogynistic roots and who slept with an under-age girl, communicating feminist values. Hierarchy is subverted in comedy when it is challenged (Bing, 2004: 24), and the laughter here encourages a disparaging re-evaluation of Picasso to highlight his misogyny. Gadsby uses laughter to reciprocate men’s conduct. Near the start of the performance, Gadsby discusses the way men berate women who don’t laugh at jokes which are offensive to them: ‘“you need to lighten up”’ ( 00:16:34). After discussing the eventuality of being mistakenly called ‘sir’, Gadsby entertains the idea of being perceived as a man. She says, enthused: ‘don’t apologise […] I’m top-shelf normal, king of the humans - I’m a straight white man’ the audience applauds, she continues: ‘I’m about to get good service for no fucking effort’ (00:24:49). To retreat from this exploration, Gadsby good-naturedly states: ‘just jokes though, clearly just jokes […] do you know why I love […] telling jokes about, straight white men? Because they’re such good sports’ she says fondly, earning her a laugh with her incongruent statement (00:25:30). Here, Gadsby employs the tactic Sorensen terms ‘political jiu-jitsu’ (Sorensen, 2008: 183), using an oppressor’s force against them. Stand-up comedians have been known to dismiss harmful comments as a joke (Rappaport and Quilty-Dunn, 2020: 477) and because stand-up is a field that has historically been dominated by men (Chattoo and Feldman, 2020: 28), this is commonly enacted by them. After performing a speech about men’s lives being easier, and potentially irritating the male audience members, Gadsby removes the male audience members’ autonomy to be annoyed by saying she is only joking, thus challenging them to face the tactic men have used repeatedly to get away with saying offensive things about women/minority groups. Laughter here puts men in the position of women: ‘to be amused she must discount and disvalue her own experience’ (Merrill, 1988: 279). It forces men to make the difficult choice between laughing in spite of themselves or placing themselves outside of the community of the audience in refusal; this is revenge. Whilst discussing these functions of laughter which laugh “up” and target men, some challenging questions come to mind. For example: ‘is denying male subjectivity the only way to posit a female spectator?’ (Gilbert, 1997: 325), or: ‘have feminists discovered humor only to complain about men?’ (Bing,

T3 Journal - Student Writing in Drama, University of Exeter 2020-21

2004: 27). Whilst undermining a man’s power and using it against them is a satisfying thing to do in that it provides relief-laughter for feminist spectators, it also keeps men at the centre of much of Gadsby’s feminist-comedy’s attention causing me to wonder: does this undermine men’s power, or reaffirm it? Additionally, as suggested by Richmond and Richmond, by telling jokes that attack men, this can make situations ‘more toxic’ due to the way that men, when their masculinity is questioned, tend to respond with ‘more sexism’ (Rich-mond and Richmond, 2019: 163). They mention Nanette, suggesting its ‘threat to men’ may result in some male viewers acting to ‘restore the status quo’ (Richmond and Richmond, 2019: 164). I contend that this laughter doesn’t create enough positive social change to be worth it. This laughter is paradoxical, because this humour does allow the female/marginalised spectators the relief of laughing at a frustrating situation, which is influential in the way it provides them with catharsis. But research shows that by laughing at something spiteful, it can influence an oppressed subject to ‘better tolerate an intolerable situa-tion’ (Bing, 2004: 24), enabling them to live with it. I wonder whether Warner’s point about acts of gaiety creating pleasure out of something hateful (Warner, 2012: 11) - whilst stopping feminists from residing in pain - is allowing them to simply reside in a patriarchal system. Moreover, I argue this laughter may drive away potential or current straight, white, male supporters. Gadsby uses laughter structurally in Nanette. She initially captures the audience’s attention with her amusing tales, laughing “up” and political jiu-jitsu, so later, when she removes comedy from the performance when telling her truth, they are listening. The rapport created in stand-up comedy sets can allow for comics to ‘push boundaries’ (Chattoo and Feldman, 2020: 70); in the end Gadsby takes advantage of this rapport. She says: ‘do you remember that story about a young man who almost beat me up? It was a very funny story’, referring to the opening story of this section. She then explains that she twisted it. She sounds strained as she continues: ‘[...] I couldn’t tell the part of the story where that man realised his mistake, and he came back and he said’- she imitates him again, this time performed with more hostility - ‘oh, no. I get it. You’re a lady faggot. I’m allowed to beat the shit out of you’. The auditorium is silent. Gadsby, now as herself, states passionately, despairingly: ‘and he did! He beat the shit out of me, and nobody stopped him. And I didn’t report that to the police, and I did not take myself to the hospital and I should have’ she stresses (00:58:51). The audience remains tense and silent as she speaks with gritted teeth: ‘this tension, it’s

yours. I am not helping you anymore’ she asserts. Her voice is thick with frustration as she addresses the audience: ‘you need to learn what this feels like, because this tension is what not-normals carry inside of them all of the time, because it is dangerous to be different’ (01:00:17). McConachie explains that laughter is a bodily function that occurs after a break in tension, regulating our sense of well-being (McConachie, 2008: 107). Earlier in the show, when Gadsby told this same story, she had eased the tension, encouraging laughter by providing the audience with a punchline. So, this time, when Gadsby doesn’t provide a punchline, the tension resides and becomes powerful in its reign. In saying ‘I am not helping you anymore’, Gadsby suggests she knows she offers a sense of well-being when she makes her audience laugh; so, by removing laughter, she knowingly removes her audience’s ability to tolerate the discussion of these issues. By giving the audience this tension, something Gadsby asserts all minorities feel, she makes it their problem, giving them motivation to act. Warner writes that acts of gaiety ‘make worlds, albeit illusory and fleeting ones’ (Warner, 2012: 9). By structuring her show so that self-loving, authority-attacking laughter reigns to begin with, Gadsby presents a world of betterment. By ending with tension when she discusses her truth, asserting that homophobia and misogyny hate-crimes still occur, Gadsby shatters this world; showing the audience instead the reality we are living in – there is feminist work to be done, and men are still considered the automatic standard. The audience’s laughter at the start built a relationship with Gadsby and captured their attention so that in the end, Gadsby’s true story and message was impactful and heard. Laughter in Nanette works to value marginalised people’s experience in the refusal to self-deprecate and the use of self-affirming humour which lead to Gadsby’s story. It provides feminist spectators with relief when ridiculing men and their oppressive attitudes. However, it paradoxically has the potential to anger male spectators who might respond with sexism, distancing themselves from the feminist cause, whilst allowing feminist spectators to sit within misogyny more easefully.

Rebecca Taylor

Aston, E. (1996) ‘Gender as a sign-system: the feminist spectator as subject’ in Campbell, P. (ed.) Analysing Performance: A Critical Reader, Manchester University Press, pp. 56-69. Bing, J. M. (2004) ‘Is Feminist Humour an Oxymoron?’ in Women and Language, vol. 21: 1. Pp. 22-33. Brescoll, V. (2016) ‘Leading with their hearts? How gender stereotypes of emotion lead to biased evaluations of female leaders’ in The Leadership Quarterly. vol. 27. Pp 415-428. Bryson, V. (2021) The Futures of Feminism. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Chattoo, K. B. and Feldman, L. (2020) A Comedian and an Activist Walk into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice. 1st ed. vol 1, University of California Press, 2020. Frey, A. (2021a) ‘Introduction’ in Frey, A. (ed.) Who’s Laughing Now?: Feminist Perspectives on Humour and Laughter, Bradford, Ontario: Demeter Press, pp. 7-12. Gilbert, J. R. (1997) ‘Performing marginality: Comedy, identity, and cultural critique’ in Text and Performance Quarterly, Vol. 17:4. Pp. 317-330. Hannah Gadsby: Nanette (2018). [Online]. Directed by Madeleine Perry and John Olb. Australia: Guesswork Television [Viewed 28 April 2021]. Available from Netflix. Hanich, J. (2018) ‘Chuckle, Chortle, Cackle: A Phenomenolog y of Cinematic Laughter’ in The Audience Effect: On the Collective Cinema Experience (pp. 189216). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Krefting, R. (2014) All Joking Aside: American Humor and Its Discontents, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. McConachie, B. (2008) ‘Social Cognition in Spectating’ in Engaging Audiences. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Pp. 65-120. Merrill, L. (1988) ‘Feminist humour: Rebellious and self-affirming’ in Women’s Studies, vol. 15, 1-3. Pp. 271-280. Rappaport, J. and Quilty-Dunn, J. (2020) ‘Stand-Up Comedy, Assertation, and Authenticity’ in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 78. pp. 477-490. Richmond, J. C. and Richmond, K. (2019) ‘Laughter: Feminist Friend or Foe?’ in Women’s Reproductive Health, vol. 6:3. Pp. 161-165. Sorensen, M. J. (2008) ‘Humour as a Serious Strateg y of Nonviolent Resistance to Oppression’ in Peace & Change, vol. 33. Pp. 167-190. Warner, S. (2012) ‘Introduction’ in Acts of Gaiety: LGBT Performance and the Politics of Pleasure, University of Michigan Press. Pp. 1-30. Willett, C. Willett, J. and Sherman, Y. (2012) ‘The Seriously Erotic Politics of Feminist Laughter’ in Social Research, vol. 79: 1. Pp. 217-246.

Reflective Essays

T3 Journal - Student Writing in Drama, University of Exeter 2020-21

Reflection on Process and Breath Submitted for the module ‘Physical Performance’ Susannah Bramwell

Initially, I found the Physical Performance module challenging. As a self-described “non-performer” who had spent months outside of the studio, I found it difficult to fully relax into creating. A body-based approach focusing on breath was most useful in helping me engage fully with the process. I developed my use of breath through yoga during the warm ups we did, and eventually used breath as a composing element in both the first and second Micro-Performances (MP1 and MP2). To further my confidence in creation, exercises that helped my embodiment in the studio were also useful. The idea of being present using my breath was key to this, and the exercise that was most valuable was working with Lecoq’s Neutral Mask. The outcome of this work was that I then felt able to play and create with my MP2 collaborators as a strong ensemble. I immediately felt daunted by one aim of the module: to “develop our own physical language”. However, in one of the early sessions, 24th of September, module convenor Emily Kreider led the group through a yoga sequence to warm up. She emphasised the use of uniting our breath with our movements. After this exercise I wrote in my journal “in these sessions I want to get my thoughts OUT of my head – and I just want to be present in my body, like I was just now listening and moving my body”. On reflection it is clear to see the place of struggle I started my creative work from, but this moment in the studio was an important discovery for me; I found I could quieten the thoughts in my mind and connect to my process through yoga, and my breath. I soon started doing yoga at home to complement the work I was doing in the studio. I used Adriene Mishler’s YouTube channel, Yoga with Adriene, as her practice focuses on an awareness of breath, and finding what feels good. Through this daily practice I found great tools that I used in my warm ups in the studio. Yoga sequences helped me to unite my body and my brain, in using pranayama techniques I could ‘mark each new breath as a new arrival’ and ‘anchor the thoughts of [my] busy mind’ (Mishler 2020, FWFG Kula). Furthermore, I found I felt

more confident in creating and sharing work in the public space of the studio. A day that stands out to me was the 5th of October where I experimented further than before with my physicality while bringing to life an orange golf ball. I wrote in my journal that I felt “out of my daily body”, and now I can see that this is what enabled me to unselfconsciously create with the golf ball. I committed completely to this exercise and it was a turning point for me in the process. Breath is also a key facet of physical performance; Emily Kreider had been emphasising the importance of breath in composing the MP1 since the start of the process. However, I was clearly still insecure on how best to start that composition as I repetitively wrote in my journal things like “it’s in the spirit of trying things out and giving it a go!” in early-October. To find inspiration, I reinvigorated my exploration of the natural world. In my research I observed how everything had a natural rhythm, and when I attempted to imitate the world around me in the studio, I found myself subconsciously altering my own natural rhythm: my breath. Consequently, I threw myself into the MP1 preparation using my breath as a key composing element. I let the force of my breath lead me through each layer of my score, including the rhythm, tension, and weight of each movement, as well as the transitions between movements. Using this approach benefited my composition, and this was recognised in my performance feedback where I received positive comments on my use of breath to show tension. Most importantly, I was able to experiment with elements of physical performance and felt excited to share my score. Clearly, my breath helped me to feel engaged in the process. Subsequently, I felt confident, able to experiment, and take risks. I discovered how intrinsically my breath was linked to my personal embodiment through the work we did on Lecoq’s Neutral Mask on the 24th of September. When I volunteered to perform the Neutral Mask

Susannah Bramwell

sequence, I felt initially terrified. However, I calmed myself by deepening my breath and aiming to commit fully to the exercise. However, I was still not fully present during the exercise as afterward I wrote in my journal that although the mask was “encouraging use of whole body and breath”, I didn’t manage a complete engagement. Nevertheless, I discovered that I could use the exercise as the ‘training tool’ (Disanto 2016:119) it was devised by Lecoq to be. Disanto claims that the mask ‘enables one to experience the state of neutrality prior to action, a state of receptiveness to everything around us, with no inner conflict’ (2016:121), and although I did not feel this in my first attempt, I took what I learnt with me. In the final session of the module, I reflected that a key moment of discovery for me was the “availability” I found in the mask. The outcome of this work was that I learnt methods that enabled me to be available to create with my MP2 collaborators. The idea of availability through commanding my breath was a key facet of my personal process, and an aim of the Practical Seminar I conducted with my collaborators on the 5th of November. My collaborators and I decided to focus on the “neutral” body (in opposition to the “daily” body) and how different energy flowing through the body can affect our creativity. For example, when our energy is blocked, we are stuck in our daily bodies which can dampen the work we produce. The idea of energy led me to consider yogic chakras, as when chakras are open energy can run through them freely. Moreover, I had previously experienced how yoga and breath work enabled me to reach a neutral body state. I decided to focus on the solar plexus chakra for a warm-up, as other practitioners like the Chantraine Dance of Expression (2019) highlighted the importance of central control for physical work. I researched pranayama breath techniques that lead from the solar plexus and discovered ‘Breath of Fire’ or Kapalabhati breath (Spirit Rising Yoga 2019); a rhythmic breath of sharp inhalations and exhalations powered by the diaphragm. In preparation for the Seminar I practised this technique at home, and agreed with Spirit Rising Yoga which maintained that an important benefit of Kapalabhati breath is that it ‘increases oxygen delivery to the brain, facilitating a focused, intelligent, and neutral state of mind’. Breath work proved effective in providing a sense of presence for other students too. After the Seminar, I wrote about a shared feeling among students that the “warm ups help[ed] body and mind go – leaving feelings at the door”. Marshall argues that there are key criteria to being a good performer, one of which is being ‘open and responsive to others’ (2001:95), and certainly before I discovered yogic breath

techniques, I was not able to be as open or responsive to my peers. It is evident that this approach worked for me, as on the 2 nd of November I reflected on the way that “being in this space makes me feel so intense… it’s probably the ability to just sink into this moment. Grateful”. Therefore, this work was among the most crucial that I did in the whole module, and I will be utilising it in the future when I feel nervous in a creative process. The work I did on my breath and presence was also integral to the work my collaborators and I did together in preparation for the MP2, and especially for us to come collectively together as an ensemble. Britton examines how ‘shared training can be ... a core element in encouraging ensemble’ (2013:6) - our previous work in the module certainly enabled us to form a stronger sense of a collective. Our shared consciousness of the importance of centring ourselves and using our breath was fundamental in the development of the trust we built in the rehearsal room. We started each devising session with warm-ups developed from our Practical Seminar that helped us become embodied and engaged in the space. Consequently, we felt a vibrant connectivity after warming up together that, on reflection, resonates with Shevtsova’s description of an ensemble as a ‘permanent group breathing as one’ (Britton 2013: 11). Later, on the 30th of November, I reflected that this feeling of breathing together led me to “[get] on with my group so well, feeling creatively at ease, unstifled, even more free to just chuck my body in and move it”. My writing emphasises the full embodiment I had discovered for myself by the end of the process. My easeful presence enabled me to play and take risks in the creation of our MP2 performance. For example, most of my group’s final work developed from improvisation; something I have historically struggled with due to personal fears. However, I trusted my connectivity to other collaborators so completely that I pushed through and turned up to rehearsal determined to improvise, use my breath, and allow my body a full range of expressivity. In the last session I wrote that “trusting the others” was one of the things I was most proud of. Goat Island’s method of creation engages with the ensemble we created. Goat Island writes in Letter to a Young Practitioner: ‘Critical evaluation is transformed into the need to respond creatively. The work exists in the moment, vital, perhaps not yet even assimilated or understood by the artists who made it’. In almost every session this idea of existing in the moment, without yet understanding what we were creating, became crucial to our creativity and the final work we produced.

T3 Journal - Student Writing in Drama, University of Exeter 2020-21

Furthermore, as an ensemble breathing together (Britton 2013:11) my collaborators and I decided to use our breath as an integral element for our MP2. In the first section, a structured movement sequence, each move was motored by a breath. Considering this now I can see the strong link between this method and the way yogic practices lead movement from breath. While moving together as an ensemble, we were still individually in tune with our bodies. Arguably, our breath made us a more effective ensemble as during the section we could stay in synchronisation without looking at each other through listening to our breathing. In the reflection session on the 30th of November, I noted how our audience considered “our ensemble work and moving off each other in performance” to be “really strong”. The way we used our breath as an integral element in the final section of our performance enabled us to play and create even when sharing our work with an audience. This semi-improvised section was inspired by the ocean, and we had to trust each other to be fully responsive during the performance. Britton claims that in a live performance an ensemble ‘must react spontaneously and appropriately to the ebb and flow of impulses between them’ (2013:27). I would argue that my collaborators and I achieved this when we individually synchronised with one another. I felt ‘truly alive’ (Britton 2013:27) to my collaborators and in breathing as one, our performance was received powerfully by our audience. In feedback on the 30th of November our peers referred to this translation of “energy / atmosphere to the audience” as something to take forward in our creative work. Therefore, it is clear how our embodied rehearsal process led to a successfully embodied performance that had an echo of the fearlessness Goat Island also promoted for their ensemble (Letter to a Young Practitioner). As an ensemble, it was crucial for us to work throughout the process on breath techniques and methods of presence, especially as we were physically unable to connect with each other this term. I found the work of Goat Island illuminating for the ensemble work we did, as they also focused on ideas of presence in the creation of their work. The approaches I took from Goat Island, Le Coq, and yoga practitioners were also incredibly meaningful for my personal process. The personal journey I took as a performer, rediscovering my body and connection to other performers, would ultimately have been impossible without spending time on breath and embodiment. This process has been a meaningful one for my life outside the studio; I have learnt how to be present using my breath and this will continue to help me feel grounded, and creative, in the uncertain times we live in today.

“Breath of Fire” Spirit Rising Yoga Blog. Spirit Rising Yoga, Chicago, 18 September 2019. WEBSITE: https://www.spiritrisingyoga.org/ kundalini-info/breath-of-fire Britton, John. “Introduction” Encountering Ensemble, edited by David Barnett. Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, London, 2013, pp. 3-43. VLE BOOKS: https://www.vlebooks.com/Vleweb/Product/ Index/312196?page=0 The Chantraine Dance of Expression. “Chantraine Dance of Expression”, YouTube, posted by The Chantraine Dance of Expression, 29 January 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0foHG-4NRZA Disanto, Dody. “Neutral Mask – A Life’s Journey” The Routledge Companion to Jacques Lecoq edited by Mark Evans and Rick Kemp. Routledge, London, 2016, pp.119-126. VLE BOOKS: http://www.vlebooks.com/ Vleweb/Product/Index/882359?page=0 Goat Island. “writing: Letter To A Young Practitioner” Goat Island Performance. Goat Island Performance Group. WEBSITE: http://www. goatislandperformance.org/writing_L2YP.htm Marshall, Lorna. “What Stops Us Working” The Body Speaks. Methuen, London, 2001, pp. 95-110. PRINT. Mishler, Adriene. Find What Feels Good Kula. Yoga With Adriene LLC, Austin, 2020. WEBSITE: https://www.fwfgkula.com/

Lucy Kean

‘Hold on Tightly, Let go Lightly’: A Maxim for Collaboration Reflecting on the module ‘Working Together: Performance Training for Collective Creation’ Lucy Kean

Throughout my participation in the module ‘Working Together: Performance Training for Collective Creation’, I developed a profound interest in the maxim ‘hold on tightly, let go lightly’, referred to henceforth in italics, and introduced early on in the process by module convenor, Bryan Brown. This maxim originates in the writing of Anne Bogart, director and practitioner of the Viewpoints method of creation, where she states that ‘if the work is too controlled, it will feel constricted and lifeless’ (Bogart 2007: 46). She goes on to write that ‘(i)f there is too little control, it will be chaotic and hard to see and hear’, encouraging collaborators to ‘celebrate the paradox of firm decisive action and letting go all at the same moment’ (Bogart 2007: 46). Although this maxim was written by Bogart in regard to collaborating, Brown discussed this as a more holistic way of creating theatre: “The more you take this philosophy into account, the richer your process will be. This does not necessarily mean easier, but you will have more agency in what you want to be doing” (Brown, Logbook: 14/10/20). Within the module we experienced three strands of learning: training for collective creation, adaptation of The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa as our primary source material, and techniques for successful collaboration. Therefore, in this essay I will be examining how Bogart’s maxim was applicable throughout our process as a whole, and how the consideration of the idiom enriched my group’s experience and ability to create collectively. I will be analysing this through moments of our practical experience, in conversation with writings on the three different facets of the module, applying the maxim chronologically through the process. Our first exposure to the hold on tightly philosophy of teaching was introduced via an overview of the plastiques and Viewpoints. Stephen Wangh, an American practitioner, describes the plastiques, exercises introduced to him by Jerzy Grotowski from the Polish Theatre Laboratory, as physical isolations that become ‘an external key to an internal door’, as they are imbued with emotional questioning (Wangh

2000: 76). These isolated movements then developed into what Wangh coined as ‘Plastique Rivers’; whole bodyled improvisational forms ‘that both evoke and contain emotional life’ (ibid: 81). At the beginning of the module, we moved through the ‘Plastique Rivers’, exploring this body-led movement as individuals, whilst slowly introducing images inspired by The Memory Police into our movement vocabulary. Wangh specifies that ‘what makes something a plastique is that the movement is specific, that it is filled with life, and that it is related to an image’ (ibid: 84). Therefore, by integrating the text into our movement in this way, we as performers began to saturate ourselves with physical impulses, hence inspiring feelings around the text, which we could then start turning into art. Working on the plastiques as individuals consequently fed into our practice of the Viewpoints, where we explored a mixture of both Anne Bogart and Mary Overlie’s methods. Whereas the plastiques were centred in the body, Overlie’s Viewpoints deconstruct performance as a whole into what she refers to as ‘the Horizontal’ perspective that frees theatre from what she describes as a solid-state structure (Overlie 2006: 206). Within this perspective, she separates performance-making into six Viewpoints: space, shape, time, emotion, movement and story. In our group improvisations, we placed these two forms of training in conversation with each other which collectively encouraged us to hold on tightly to our impulses whilst also constantly questioning ‘and now what’s next’. We prioritised maintaining interest in our impulses over finding a story within the improvisation. This was because for Overlie, the Viewpoint ‘Story’ is on the same hierarchical level as ‘Movement’, however the notion of ‘logic’ is not: ‘logic is the means through which art delivers its messages and effects and becomes significant to us’ (Overlie 2006: 202). In our group, we discussed the idea that an audience member will identify logic in improvisations if the performer maintains their interest in their impulses. This is because an audience member will engage with what the performer finds interesting, as a performer’s interest will be deemed significant for the audience. This

T3 Journal - Student Writing in Drama, University of Exeter 2020-21

was evidenced in an improvisation where one performer locked their interest on another, saying ‘I can see you’, before turning away to repeat the same phrase again. The moment elicited a laugh from the audience as the performer had maintained their interest in the ‘seeing’, despite no longer being able to physically see the other performer. As a group, we were able to recognise the significance of a performer’s interest for the audience by considering ourselves from the Viewpoints perspective of being ‘observer/ participant’ artists. By viewing ourselves in this way, we began to learn an ‘entirely different set of skills’, focusing on the ability to ‘listen and see without the prejudice of the creator’ (ibid: 203). Therefore, Viewpoints and plastiques became our foundational techniques for collective creation, encouraging us to hold on tightly to our impulses, which we then applied when we separated into performance groups. However, the necessity of applying let go lightly to our work became evident when we reflected as a group on the ‘strangeness’ of our training and improvisations. In discussions, one performer admitted that allowing the physicality of the body to be the driving force, and not prioritising narrative, sparked a fear of being afraid to look like an idiot. Stephen Wangh addresses this issue in his text An Acrobat of the Heart, stating that ‘acting is crazy. Acting is making up stuff that you know perfectly well is not true and then letting yourself believe in it’ (Wangh 2000: 96). This addressing of feeling foolish in the plastiques is also recognised by Overlie in Viewpoints. She states that although this work may at first ‘seem mystical rather than practical, and definitely not something that could actually work in the world of creation’, ‘this is the system that all human beings enter when they encounter the unknown’ (Overlie 2006: 204). Wangh seems to agree, stating that actors need to relinquish their judgement, as judgement inhibits work, making it less possible to do good acting (Wangh 2000: 115). Therefore, in order for the performer to be following their impulses with their full interest, they must simultaneously let go of being afraid of acting badly. By doing so, the actor will enter a state of flow where they will be able to deal with any disruption or change that may occur within either improvisation or performance. Director Mike Alfreds articulates that this should be the ideal state of any performer in theatre, as theatre is live, thus ‘life has a way of breaking in on it. Therefore, it would seem logical to welcome this element of uncertainty, of possibility, of the unexpected; to embrace life’s intrusions creatively, rather than trying to block them out’ (Alfreds 2007: 33). This sense of flow,

and therefore discarding the fear of looking like an idiot, was a technique that our performance group attempted to embody whilst collectively creating. We recognised that working physically with our interests in a sense of flow would therefore encourage improvisation that was based in what we were passionate about in The Memory Police, and according to director Dmitry Kyrmov, ‘while the head can be convinced of anything, passion cannot be persuaded. You need passion at the core’ (Freedman 2016). To hold on tightly to one’s passions is also necessary to consider when adapting from a source text. From my first reading of The Memory Police, I was interested in the role that the voice played in the text, and how it might represent the portrayal of humanity in the novel. In creating my solo explication, I retained these interests and concentrated on the comparison between the main character in The Memory Police becoming a voice within the embedded narrative of the woman losing her voice. I continued to investigate these interests when we moved into our groups of seven, which hence fed into our piece’s structure revolving around the vocal and physical sharing of memories, with our core belief being that the relationships we build with people is intrinsic to our sense of humanity. The transition of my individual interest into the groups was supported by our use of the training techniques we experienced earlier in the module. Through the use of group improvisation, we presented our individual interests to each other physically and experimented with the new ideas that these improvisations created. For example, we frequently used a whiteboard in our improvisation to note down anything that we found particularly interesting in the form of questions, drawings or provocations. This method of embodiment was inspired by the American Russian Theatre Ensemble Laboratory’s technique of ‘BodyStorming’ who utilised their own training of the plastiques and Viewpoints in creating a method of composition which ‘began from the idea of having individuals share their research, but rather than a presentation to static listeners, we decided to embody the entire process […] [and] would allow [the research] to work physically upon [us]’ (Brown 2016: 10). Through this method of writing and embodying we were able to saturate ourselves with our passions from The Memory Police, allowing us to collectively create and adapt the text. However, before experiencing this training and method of devising, we entered the module with preconceptions about what it means to adapt a source text. These views became apparent when we discussed how the success of an adaptation can sometimes be determined by its fidelity to

the original text. A company that attempts to change this view is devising company Kneehigh. Co-artistic director Emma Rice labelled adaptations as ‘retellings’ as, in her view, no-one owns a story (Lilley 2017: 5). Kneehigh’s approach towards theatrical retellings is useful to examine in relation to this module, as Rice considers retellings to be on a spectrum between wholly group-devised work to written solo adaptation; emphasising that to put a performance into one of these binaries is too binding for their work (ibid: 7). Considering our use of source-text saturated improvisation as our main method of composition, it is useful to apply this spectrum-based definition to our performance. Although we referred back to the text consistently throughout our process, we engaged with The Memory Police as a primary source, rather than an exclusive one. When creating our piece, we absorbed the idea that the audience’s interpretation of our piece would not be so much an agreement but rather an understanding of the logic, as defined previously by Overlie, and that an audience member’s understanding would differ from our understanding as participants and performers. However, to maintain a logic to our piece that could promote audience understanding, it was essential to create a cohesive structure to our performance. This decision was implemented later in the composition process, in order for us to allow our interests to be saturated with the work and to allow as much creativity to occur as possible within the timeframe. A technique that we used to determine our structure was to write out each of our individual ideas for a structure on pieces of paper, using writer and editor John Yorke’s outline of a five-act structure as inspiration. We then re-ordered, clashed and reduced these on the floor in order to visualise how our ideas coincided and to find the conflicts between them; a visual embodiment of hold on tightly, let go lightly (Yorke 2013: 40). Within this process of structuring, we all adopted the traditional theatre perspective of a dramaturg; ‘people who attend to “the art or technique of dramatic composition and theatrical representation”— people who notice it, think about it, perhaps write about it’ (Thomson 2003: 4). As Anne Bogart suggests, it was helpful to consider a dramaturg to be a window, rather than an individual’s role, to encourage collaboration and shared effort (Bogart 2014: 111). By examining the piece’s logic from this collaborative perspective, with our shared understanding of how our piece was inspired by rather than traditionally adapted from The Memory Police, we were able to let go lightly of the expectation to stage the novel. Whilst devising our work, our group developed a passion to hold on tightly to the community that we were growing as creators, as well as characters. As a seven, we enjoyed sharing personal memo-

ries from the beginning of our process, as it built upon our interest in the nature of humanity, whilst also strengthening our bond as an ensemble. We wanted to prioritise our relationship as a community as we were inspired by psychologists Teresa Amabile and Steve Kramer’s definition of ‘the nourishment factor’ in the workplace; ‘something that everyone craves at work: human connection. You nourish the inner work lives of your subordinates when you reward or recognize their good work, encourage them, or offer emotional support’ (Amabile and Kramer 2011: 130). A company that we consistently drew comparisons from was Pixar Animation Studios, as through their collective creation techniques they seem to recognise the importance of nourishing their colleagues. A particular example of this is their practice of ‘dailies’, where participants show incomplete work to their director and colleagues, which require ‘engagement at all levels, and it’s our director’s job to foster and create a safe place for that’ (Catmull 2014: 193). A nourishment factor that they use to achieve this is ‘whether or not the animators would get that same go-ahead, everyone could count on this: When each finished his or her presentation, the room would burst into applause’ (ibid: 193). The recognition of support from the room creates a safe environment to discuss problems; ‘to participate fully each morning requires empathy, clarity, generosity, and the ability to listen’ from everyone in the room, and hence creativity is magnified (ibid: 195). Our sharing of memories as a group echoed this ritual of ‘dailies’ as it facilitated human connection in our group and therefore contributed to our ability to collaborate more effectively. By strengthening our collaboration through this process of nourishment, our ensemble relationship acted as a container within which we were able to process any conflicts and problems that arose. In a discussion, we realised that confrontation is not inherently detrimental to a collaboration, if structures of communication and trust are put in place to mitigate any pejorative consequences. In fact, confrontation can sometimes lead to better problem solving as it requires creativity and good listening to solve the issue. Richard Sennet, award winning sociologist, highlights this through his breakdown of the difference between a dialectic and dialogic conversation. Dialectic conversation aims to come eventually to a common understanding, whereas dialogic does not resolve itself by common ground, but ‘through the process of exchange people may become more aware of their own views and expand their understanding of one another’ (Sennet 2012: 19). These two types of listening feed into each other as both require the listener to pick up ‘on concrete details, on specifics, to drive a con-

T3 Journal - Student Writing in Drama, University of Exeter 2020-21

versation forward’ (ibid: 20). Within our ensemble group, a conflicting conversation would often take place within the container of a game or improvisation. For example, in one game that we attempted to play as a group, one of our members became frustrated as they were not enjoying the game. They verbalised their frustration, which the ensemble took as an offer, sparking an improvisation where we became stereotypical characters in a board-meeting attempting to solve the problem. This improvisation would not have existed without the verbalising of this member’s frustration, and the ensemble would not have been able to absorb the frustration into an improvisation without the trust that we had built, which was only grown as a result of taking the time to listen to each other and nourish the group. Conflict, therefore, can be productive in a collaboration, as long as the group can hold on tightly to developing a strong group bond.

achieved in choral music, discussed by dramaturg Lynn Thomson. This note ‘exists octaves above the rest and is not sung by a human voice. It is magically heard when all vocal parts of a choir join together, the literal result of perfect harmony’ (Thomson 2003: 118). Our group’s use of the maxim hold on tightly, let go lightly to utilise training, consider adaptation and guide our collaboration, facilitated our strength of ensemble. In the final performance, as a result of our process, we harmonised to collectively create our own phantom note - the culmination of our collaboration.

Alongside the nourishment factors, a key aspect to creating a successful collaboration is to let go lightly of one’s individual ideas. This process of relinquishing must be maintained consistently throughout the collaboration, as ‘true collaboration is a verb, not a noun, a process of engagement, a map more than a destination’ (Thomson 2003: 118). We therefore attempted to consistently collaborate throughout our process, which was particularly evident when we created motifs of movement as small containers to refer back to in our performance. We began in a circle, creating one gesture each that represented a theme to each individual, for example, childhood. After we had shared our individual gesture, each member would then take another person’s gesture and ‘plus’ it. This was inspired by Pixar Animation Studio’s method of feedback, known as ‘plussing’, where you may only criticise an idea if you also add a constructive suggestion (Gogek 2015: online). Finally, with a plussed gesture each, we broke out of the circle, playing and experimenting with the gesture, ‘plussing’ and changing our own ideas until we were in agreement as an ensemble. This final collective creation we made as a group therefore seemed to epitomise the hold on tightly, let go lightly maxim, as we held onto our gestures individually, but we all had to drop these to achieve harmony in the ensemble.

Bogart, A. (2007) And Then, You Act: Making Art in an Unpredictable World, London: Routledge.

Examining our module through the perspective of this maxim reveals how our process as a collaborative ensemble was supported through the collective creation training and exposure to new forms of adaptation. Therefore, our final performance developed as a natural product of these skills: a physical indication of our learning process. A final analogy for successful collaboration that seems applicable to our performance is the phenomena of the phantom note

Thomson, L. (2003) ‘Teaching and Rehearsing Collaboration’: Theatre Topics, Vol. 13, No. 1, Project Muse: John Hopkins University Press.

Alfreds, M. (2007) Different Every Night: Freeing the Actor, London: Nick Hern Books. Amabile, T. and Kramer, S. (2011) ‘The Nourishment Factor’ in The Progress Principle: using small wins to ignite joy, engagement, and creativity at work, Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.

Bogart, A. (2014) What’s the Story: Essays about Art, Theater and Storytelling, New York: Routledge. Bryan, B. and Petrakova, O. (2016), Devising a Playground: ARTEL’s strategies for embodying research and text, draft paper. Catmull, E. (2014) Creativity, Inc. Overcoming the Unseen Forces that Stand in the Way of True Inspiration, USA: Random House. Freedman, J. (2016) ‘Dmitry Krymov’: Bomb, Issue. 136, [Online], https:// bombmagazine.org/articles/dmitry-krymov/ [2 January 2021]. Gogek, D. (2015), How Pixar turned their Criticizers into Creators - and Changed the Movie World Forever, [Online] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tireddysfunctional-collaborating-steal-3-great-ideas-daniel-gogek/ [2 January 2021]. Kean, L. (2020) Working Together: Performer Training for Collective Creation Logbook, September to December, University of Exeter: unpublished. Lilley, H. (2017) ‘Kneehigh’s Retellings’ in Reilly, K [ed.] Contemporary Approaches to Adaptation in Theatre, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Overlie, M (2006) ‘The Six Viewpoints’ in Bartow, A. [ed.] Training of the American Actor, New York: Theatre Communications Group. Overlie, M. (2016) Standing in Space: The Six Viewpoints Theory and Practice, Montana: Artcraft Printers. Sennet, R (2012) Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation, London: Penguin Books.

Wangh, S. (2000) An Acrobat of the Heart: A Physical Approach to Acting Inspired by the Work of Jerz y Grotowski, New York: Vintage Books. Yoko, O. (1994) The Memory Police, translated from Japanese by Stephen, S. London: Vintage. Yorke, J. (2013) Into the Woods, How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them, London: Penguin Books.

Creative Wrtiting

T3 Journal - Student Writing in Drama, University of Exeter 2020-21

The female body in conversation: how taboos, community and comfort shape our understanding of the female body, sex and sexuality. Pauline Eller

This section is part of our piece ‘here i am’, created for the third year module ‘Practical Essay’. Our performance centered around the female body in conversation. Script extract: It hurts, it aches. people say it feels like ripping off wallpaper - someone is angry, tearing down the fruitless structures, grieving that again nothing came of it. I’m not grieving, really I’m relieved to know: ‘no babies for me this month’. but it hurts, as if my body is grieving without my mind. I need to rest and recover, yet I’m restless. the stomach, the back, my head, it hurts. But I function, I work, I do all the things I need to do as if I can’t feel my body working away creating a new home for the next month, for a baby I will refuse to have. I’m aching, I’m weak but I cannot get irritable. I can’t afford to get irritable. I’m on my period and it is my secret, my pain - and I (will) function.

Pauline Eller

Freddie Venturi

Room to Breathe in a Respiratory Crisis Creative Writing Freddie Venturi

The news has been horrific. Intensive care units full to the brim with patients struggling to breathe, sedated and ventilated, separated from loved ones as they take their last gasping breath. I can’t begin to imagine the profound pain and suffering; it is etched on their faces, glimpsed through oxygen masks, and reflected in the anguished, ashen eyes of grieving relatives and in the despairing demeanour of exhausted medics. But I am young. I have no fear of illness, no real sense of mortality. The trembling dread I experienced for my older relatives at the beginning of the pandemic has faded. They remain well, touch wood. Life goes on.

days. I know they will have missed the structure of the school routine and the social interaction. I have read about domestic abuse and unfriendly families, and I can’t begin to imagine the effects these traumatic circumstances must be having on the mental health of many. But I have been fortunate. I am not like them. I have lain on the sofa, my limbs languorous rather than burning and aching and striving to reach the distant end of the pool first in the constant competitions my swim club used to enter. I remember the sad walk of shame back to the coach if we hadn’t swum our best. Success only lasting until the next failure. The competitive tension uneasily masked as team camaraderie.

Now I feel guilty because I have an admission to make. This year, in this pandemic, I have been able to breathe far better than ever before. Vast volumes of oxygen have entered my relaxed lungs. For me, lockdown has meant freedom.

I have baked dubious confections with my beastly brother and we even ate them, liberated from the worry of nauseainducing training or tests, laughing blithely together with uninterrupted exuberance, time on our side for once.

Freedom from the classroom, from relentless homework. Freedom from extra-curricular sports, from endless music practice. Freedom from competition, with my peers or with myself. Freedom from the pressure to achieve, from sleeping just six hours a night and working every weekend. Freedom from washing my hair and wearing shoes, from looking in the mirror and worrying about spots.

I have talked to my family, learned about their lives and loves and longings. I have heard sweet bird song in my garden, shrill foxes at night. I have walked without destination or purpose, felt sunshine and icy wind and sea spray on my skin. I have slumbered for hours and hours, my body healing from years of sleeplessness.

But soon it will all be over. Boris has spoken. On March the eighth, we’re going Back to School. The heavy dread I feel evokes the bitter autumnal scent of waning summers past, awakens grim memories of dragging my musty PE bag from its hiding place in the cupboard under the stairs and reminds me of sickeningly cheerful shop window displays, touting new pens and pencils in early July by kleverly spelling school with a k. My chest is tightening to restrict my breathing once again. March the eighth. The end of lockdown. The end of my freedom.

My mind is healthy at last. But not for long. It’s almost March the eighth now. I am fifteen. I have finally felt freedom, imprisoned here in my home, and I don’t want to be locked down again, institutionalised. I am curious to learn, but I no longer want lessons. Has my future been ruined, as politicians are predicting? Or was I, like the planet, rescued for a while?

It’s not that I don’t realise that many children are trapped in tiny flats, lacking fresh air, friendships, a focus to their

T3 Journal - Student Writing in Drama, University of Exeter 2020-21

Mo Johnson

When the Curtain Went Up Creative Writing Mo Johnson

Author’s Note As often happens with great artists whose influence leads to imitations, Edith Piaf is now remembered as a character, appearing larger than her life, not as a genuine being who resided on this earth. This short play imagines an ageing Edith in the moments before she enters the stage, placed with her back partially to the audience, surrounded in silence, so the icon of Edith may be provided a moment of peace before the plunder of her life begins. The performer is left to interpret the minimalist script, the only request being that the composed melody be (seemingly) improvised, for her ears only, and rooted in the performer’s own experience as a singer contemplating the mortality of both their voice and their self. This is a chance to see Ms Piaf as small as human life truly is. Allow the singing to reflect this.

refrain lingers in the silences between the lines. EDITH PIAF: Non. (Pause) Non. (Pause) Non, rien de rien. C’est payé, balayé, oublié. (Beat) Je m’en fou de passé. (Beat) Non. (Pause) Non. Eventually, this solitary lullaby is interrupted by the sound of applause erupting from offstage. A knock sounds at the door. Edith turns her head to face it, and the backcloth rises to reveal four versions of Edith Piaf in their own dressing rooms: one is in a trailer on a film set, two are backstage in different theatres, another is in the corridor of an unspecified venue, using a compact mirror to apply her makeup. The first Edith rises from her chair and exits to her final performance and lights fade to black.

Scene 1 Scene 2 Spotlight up centre stage. Edith Piaf sits at her mirrored dressing table, facing an upstage corner with her back to us. She fumbles amongst the objects covering the table, perfume bottles, makeup, cigarette paraphernalia, postcards, a decanter and glasses and flowers. Her backless dress hangs off her small frame and her hair is pinned to the top of her head, nestlike. Offstage, in the corridor outside her dressing room, we hear the hurried commotion that precedes any performance. Band members laugh and fan girls natter, managers organise, and footsteps skip and pace, until it is finally quiet, and she is alone. Edith looks at herself in the mirror and applies more makeup with shaky hands. She breathes heavily. Eventually, she begins to sing to herself. Though the lyrics are from her famed track Non, je ne regrette de rien, it has a distinct tune, never heard before. It is slower, quieter and less triumphant. The shadow of her

A sound recording of a live performance by Edith Piaf plays. Lights fade up to reveal the four versions of Edith preparing to leave their dressing rooms. They walk downstage, one in a white dressing gown, others in detailed yet overdone costumes, the fourth in an especially crude, sequined dress. They each take their place in a spotlight. There is a breath, then they strike a ‘Piaf pose’. Fade to black out.

Mo Johnson

Ethan McLucas

March 14th 2008 Creative Writing Ethan McLucas

(A single open follow-spot illuminates the stage, 80%. There is a chair and desk DSC stage. Upon the desk there is a microphone, a laptop, a clock and a folder. There is a Radio Host sitting at the desk wearing a pair of headphones; they open the folder and pull out a pen) Radio Host: Good evening to anyone listening. I hope you’ve all had pleasant days. And if anyone is still working right now or driving home or out there sailing between the islands, I hope you get a chance to rest soon. It’s currently 7:30pm and you’re listening to Orkney Radio. Like always, I’m your host, Samantha Hartley. The weather isn’t too great at the moment, so I hope, like me in the studio, you’ve all battened down the hatches. I’ll get to our caller of the night and the shipping forecasts in just a moment but first, I’ll give you a rundown of the headlines. Our top story: The Missing Ullapool Boy. The police are still chasing leads in hopes to find a trace of the boy who went missing on Monday. The boy, whose first name has been revealed as Frederick, has fair skin and short blonde hair and was wearing a light blue jumper and had a red rucksack at the time of his disappearance. If anyone has any information regarding him or his disappearance you are encouraged to report it to the police. Secondly, the expansion of the local oil refinery here in Orkney has reached its second-year anniversary. Initially, when first proposed by the Scottish Government, the expansion project was met with scepticism by the public. However, not only did it recuperate its building costs within its first eight months, it also made Orkney the second largest Oil producer in all of the UK by more than doubling its previous output of the resource. Thirdly, there are still fears from local fishermen about the recent surge of Alaskan salmon in the North Ocean and the surrounding waters of the UK. They believe that if their numbers are left unchecked, they could possibly endanger the survival of more native salmon species within the area. However, professors from the University of the Highlands and Islands that have been running

tests in the local waters have assured the public that the presence of this new Alaskan breed is nothing to worry about. Well, those were the headlines. And just before we do the shipping forecasts, let’s see if we have our caller for the night? (SFX, loud volume, phone ringing) Radio Host: Hello? You’re live on Orkney Radio. Who is this? (Caller is heard but never seen. They are not pre-recorded. They are played off stage) Caller: Hi! Hello! Uh nice to be here. Oh, I’m Michael by the way. Radio Host: Lovely to meet you Michael. Do you want to tell the other listeners and I a little about yourself? Caller: Sure, yeah. I’m Michael but I’ve already said that. I always listen to this station at this time since my shift usually finishes around now and I have the radio on when I drive home. I’ve been married for six years now to my beautiful wife, Ruby, and have two amazing kids as well. Radio Host: I’m sure she’ll be glad, such a wonderful compliment. What are your children’s names? Caller: So, I’ve got Allura, who’s four and I’ve my younger son, Michael Jr. who just turned two. Radio Host: They sound lovely. So, tell me more about yourself. What do you do for a living Michael? Do you work on the Island? Caller: Yeah, I work at the oil refinery. I’ve been doing it for years now. Hell, I even helped out with the expansion. Oh, am I allowed to say Hell on the radio? Radio Host: You’re fine, don’t worry. I’m curious, what’s it like working there at the refinery? Caller: It’s something. Boring stuff mostly, I mean I’ve done nearly every job at the place now from your basic heavy lifting to statistics and planning. Although things have been picking up lately. Radio Host: Oh? How so? Do tell. Caller: Well, as you’ve mentioned it’s the big anniversary coming up, so the boss wants the place to be firing on all cylinders for it. You know, so we can put on a big demonstration for it to look nice for the papers. Actually, the guys who started work after me are doing a few test runs tonight.

T3 Journal - Student Writing in Drama, University of Exeter 2020-21

Radio Host: Well that does sound exciting. Tell me, how is your boss? Is he a nice guy? Or is he a bit of a slave driver? Caller: (chuckling) I can’t comment on that. I want to keep my job. Radio Host: That’s a smart move and probably for the best. (The Radio Host checks the clock and makes a note in their folder) Radio Host: I hate to do this but we’re running on so I’m afraid I’m going to have to let you go. Is there anything else you want to say on the show Michael? Caller: Sure. If my kids are listening, don’t worry, Daddy’s coming home soon. Radio Host: That’s really sweet. Alright, safe travels home tonight Michael. It’s been lovely having you on. Caller: Thanks for having me on and I will stay safe. Take care! Radio Host: Alright, goodbye! (SFX, loud volume, pre-recorded phone call ending sound) Radio Host: Now time for the shipping forecasts. (Sudden snap to blackout. SFX, loud volume, pre-recorded radio static) (Pre-recorded SFX of a fire crackling plays at a low volume) (A smoke machine gradually produces smoke) (Radio static ends suddenly. A blue frenzel spot, 80%, lights up DSL) (The setup is similar albeit messier. There is a chair and desk DSL stage. Upon the desk there is a microphone, a laptop, a clock and a folder. Radio Host 2 sitting at the desk wearing a pair of headphones, they open the folder and pull out a pen. They seem frantic) Radio Host 2: Breaking news: There may have been a large explosion on Mainland, Orkney. Coastline residents of the Scottish mainland have reported a bright flash in the direction of the island. Reports are still coming in as we speak. We promise to keep you updated! (Radio Host 2 continues to act on stage however they are silent/use mime) (A red frenzel spot, 70%, lights up DSL) (Another similar setup, this one is much more bare bones. Radio Host 3 sits as the desk, clutching their microphone to their chest. They do not touch their folder or pens) Radio Host 3: All forms of communication have been lost with the island. (Aside) Jesus, how bad is this? (Back to the microphone) I am sure there is nothing to worry about. It is important that no one panics in this situation. (Radio Host 3 continues to act on stage however they are silent/use mime) (A purple spotlight, 50%, lights up USR) (On another rostra, a much smaller one, is a very cramped setup.

They only have a microphone. Radio Host 4 sits uncomfortably squashed into their desk.) Radio Host 4: Emergency services are on their way to the island. The damage done by the explosion is unknown currently but believed to be severe. It has been estimated that the fire has spread to cover close to eighty percent of the island’s landmass. Rescuing survivors is the utmost priority. (Radio Host 4 continues to act on stage however they are silent/use mime) (An open spotlight, 80%, lights up DSR) (Radio Host 6 stands with a microphone. They look worn) Radio Host 6: The fire is still burning. Currently no survivors have been found but families of Orkney residents are encouraged not to lose hope. We will…do our best to keep you updated. (Radio Host 6 simply stands tiredly and almost motionless on stage) (The lights slow fade until blackout) (Blackout) (SFX, pre-recorded phone ringing, loud volume) (Caller 2 is heard but never seen. Their lines are performed live offstage. Their monologue starts off loud but slow fades into silence.) Caller 2: Hello? Hello! My husband never came home! Can someone please tell me what’s going on? Is he safe? Is he alright? Hello? Can anyone hear me? He was working at the oil refinery and said he was on his way home? He was on your show! Can someone please talk to me and say something? Hello? Somebody? Anybody? Our kids just want to see their dad and I just want to see my husband? Hello? Anyone? (SFX, loud volume, pre-recorded phone call ending sound) (SFX, pre-recorded phone ringing) (Silence) (End)

Leah Frape

Creative Writing Leah Frape

FREE. We realise the importance of our voices only when we are silenced Tear gassed and muzzled, holding our signs, we spit in spite in the face of it, we unite against our oppressors. Against incited violence. They wish we would stumble, but our resolve will not crumble. Instead we hold hands our middle fingers splayed, our multicoloured fists raised. Because we are tired of the fate that befalls women who are forced to keep quiet. Proudly we walk, we are no longer blind. We hold hands with our sisters, and find strength in our allies

we are done screaming out our lungs we are done reliving traumatic events with taped mouths in our mind we are done keeping everything inside. No more biting down on our tongues ‘til they bleed. No more hidden bruises under turtleneck jumpers and long sleeves. No more being used and beaten, skin black and blue wondering if the reason for my abuse is me, when all along, I was wrong. It was you.