That Glib and Oily Art

We are reading plays. We are seeing plays. Here, we will discuss what we have read and seen.

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And just to mitigate my blasphemous suggestion in the previous post that one of the English language's most cerebral actors may not have thought something though, here is Ian McKellen thinking something through to beautiful completion. Beautiful, transcendant interpretation.

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Ian McKellen providing a rather strongly voiced opinion in support of regional theater. But perhaps not exactly in the way you would expect. I agree with the broad strokes of it (acting to an audience that identifies with your experience and visa versa is very different than acting to an audience that shares little in common with you, no doubt). But... am I about to accuse Ian of maybe... not thinking this all the way through?

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‘Salomé - a tragedy in one act’ translated from the French of Oscar Wilde; pictured by Aubrey Beardsley. Published 1904 by Melmoth & Co.

See the complete book here.

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Reading Rainbow: The Radio Play

Sound theatre : thoughts on the radio play / David Pownall

Communicating through story characters : radio social drama / Pamela Brooke.

Decomposition: Post-Disciplinary Performance / Sue-Ellen Case, Philip Brett, Susan Leigh Foster

Radio Drama: Theory and Practice / Tim Crook

http://www.ruyasonic.com/rdr_links.htm

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Reading Rainbow: Devised Theater

Devising Performance: A Critical History by Deidre Heddon and Jane Milling

Making Contemporary Theatre: International Rehearsal Processes by Jen Harvie & Andy Lavender

The Director & The Stage: From Naturalism to Grotowski by Edward Braun

Through the Body: A Practical Guide to Physical Theatre by Dymphna Callery

Devising Theater: A Practical and Theoretical Handbook by Alison Oddey

Ghost Light: An Introductory Handbook for Dramaturgy by Michael Mark Chemers

Devised and Collaborative Theatre: A Practical Guide by Tina Bicat & Chris Baldwin 

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bigfoxis: Salome @ the Hampstead Theatre

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bigfoxis:

From the same performance at the Hampstead Theater in June 2010, another take in the form of a journal entry. See my colleague withswimminggait’s first entry below.

Salome

6/28/10

The Hampstead Theater

Director – Jamie Lloyd, Playwright – Oscar Wilde

In this modern interpretation of Oscar Wilde’s Salome, director Jamie Lloyd places Herod’s court in a harsh and morally bankrupt world. Rather than drinking from goblets, Herod and his soldiers swig copious amounts of wine from plastic gasoline containers, and sling sub-machine guns over their shoulders. The modern military costume and props suggest a police-state gone wrong, and call to mind current warzones, perhaps Israel itself, which politicizes the play slightly.

The set, designed by Soutra Gilmour, comprised of a gravel pit with cistern trap door at stage center, and large ladders ringing the stage. The rough and inorganic elements, and the hissing smoke vents during preshow, gave the impression of an industrial wasteland – perhaps a land ravaged by the intemperance of human consumption.  Even the moon and stars, symbols of that which lies beyond human comprehension in Wilde’s original script, were represented by exposed stadium lights.

The barren and wasted atmosphere of the set complimented Lloyd’s portrayal of an ethically barren court, where standard etiquette consists of constant drinking, complete sexual promiscuity and uninhibited violence. Actors gave a high-energy performance; their constant pacing and unexpected transitions from high to low animation created an anxiety and anticipation in the audience as to what might happen next. This was heightened by the intimacy of the open-end theater, and extended the chaos onstage into the psychological space of the audience.

My favorite thing about the set however, was how actors were able to constantly interact with it to emphasize the animalistic depravity of their characters. Established first in their pre-show entrances where elements of the set were carefully examined, soldiers continue to kick gravel and coat themselves in dirt, and at one point Jokannan’s face is pushed into the “oil” puddle to become doubly black.

The ladders became especially significant as the play went on; because they led to nowhere, climbing the ladders symbolized pointless action. Actors incessantly began and aborted ascents, emphasizing their frenetic and pointless energy. With metal ladders on three sides of the stage and the gravel pit below, actors literally appeared to be caged animals, raging at nothing and achieving nothing.

Beauty was conspicuously absent from this world. This I find to be the greatest departure from Wilde’s script and general aesthetic. Despite the fact that beauty in Wilde’s script might be threatening or lethal, as with the Moon (a persistent ill omen) or Salome herself, it is the strongest agent in the text. I think that by obliterating all beauty, even the beauty of Wilde’s words by obscuring Jokanaan’s speech with heavy sound treatment, Lloyd has focused entirely on lust and corruption. In Lloyd’s hands, the script’s unsettling undertones of incest and bloodlust eviscerate the mystery and otherworldly possibilities of beauty.

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Salome @ the Hampstead Theatre

withswimminggait:

London, Summer 2010

On the page, Oscar Wilde’s Salome feels like an old story—not necessarily biblical, but certainly dusty. It is a result of the simplicity and repetitiveness of his language and imagery. On the Hampstead Theatre stage, Salome is still alien to our time. It alludes to the ancient atmosphere of the original by tapping into the trope of a post-apocalyptic world into which humanity has regressed. Instead of exploring a pre-Christian world, this production projects a post-Christian world on the brink of possible renewal. This director’s vision of the apocalypse is one that stunts not only language and technology, but also the ability of individuals to develop into adulthood. And thus the possibility of human renewal is met by children.

Wilde’s Salome is a woman whose beauty and power over men is almost mystical. The power she holds over men lies in her cold chastity, her unattainability. We first encounter her in the text from below: a young, besotted swain stares as she stands on a balcony. On the Hampstead stage, she does not even appear, delaying the reveal of this powerful woman and arousing our imaginations. We watch the actors on stage stare at her the way they stare at the moon—something bright and otherworldly, something untouchable. Salome is described as white and silver, as having feet like white doves and eyes of gold. We are given just enough detail about her appearance to begin to create an image, but not enough that we cannot all project our own fantasies and tastes. But, suddenly, Salome gallops onstage in her clunky combat boots and the white doves fly into the realm of irony. Gone is the devastating and untouchable Salome whose erotic appeal is inseparable from her status as naïve virgin. In comes Salome, a post-apocalyptic Paris Hilton, a sexually precocious woman-child whose erotic appeal is awkwardly but blatantly performed. The Salome advertised on show posters and programs, a half-concealed, intriguingly-tattooed woman whose quiet power is palpable and mesmerizing even in two dimensions, is a far cry from the curly-haired, jumpsuit-and-bikini-clad, very American teenager who barrels onto stage.

The difference between this

and this

Salome’s exuberant, gloriously petulant youth is deliberately and consistently presented to the audience. Initially, the shock of this girl who cannot control her basest impulses is very effective—we see the power a child possesses. However, the Salome chosen by this director and this actress is a Salome who falls flat, whose power dissipates after the initial burst of tantrum. Iokanaan is reduced to a possession, a plaything, a doll. She asserts her dominance over him in the first act by forcing her lipstick on his lips. She cradles his severed head with the savage glee of girl who has just ripped the head off of her Barbie’s body, and her moment of unhappy realization when she understands that Iokanaan cannot look back at her has no more devastating implications than a girl who realizes her toy has been ruined. Salome is a girl whose attempts at sexual maturity are as obvious as those of a little girl who is playing dress-up—something she literally does when she dons her pink wig and pink satin underpants in the striptease/Dance of the Seven Veils scene.

The sex in this play is ultimately masturbatory, far more exciting in the imagination of the aroused party than it is for anyone else on stage or in the audience. In the Wilde text, Salome’s sexual power is something that seems to cast a spell over everyone in the scene: all the men, save Iokanaan, are tempted despite themselves. On the Hampstead stage, Salome is alluring only to the two most immature men on stage: The Young Syrian, in whose role is cast an actor who looks like he has just emerged from his boyhood, and Herod, who is portrayed in the manner of a willful child bent on consumption and the search for sensory pleasure in all its forms. 

The connection between power and childishness is continued in the character of Herod, who is also prone to tantrums, whining, and overindulgence. The play’s approach is a well-presented and consistent treatment, but in the end the figures of power, these figures who have control over the renewal or decline of their civilization, are obscured by their excesses and lose their dynamism as compared with Wilde’s characters. Even Salome’s appropriation of religious/spiritual imagery and behaviors is still an obvious and awkward performance that leaves the viewer unconvinced of her growth.

Iokanaan (for in the world of this production it would be completely incorrect to call him John the Baptist), supposedly the ill-fated locus of the play’s moral center, is shiny and pale in the manner of some monstrous sea creature risen from depths of toxic waste. He crawls around on all fours and his booming words are obscured by the audio effects put on them—he becomes a roaring animal, a noble savage so far removed from the world he has burst into that it is no wonder we cannot understand him. He becomes perhaps the opposite of the biblical figure he is based on, all visual effect to the point where his words and his message are lost. Thus is he a representation of the whole play: flash and impact so bright and so loud that the message seems secondary. Giddy spectatorship soon wears off: the Hampstead Theatre's Salome is a feast of empty calories. 

[bigfoxis]

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bigfoxis:

Sailing to Byzantium

W. B. Yeats (1928)

THAT is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees - Those dying generations - at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect.

Poetry and performance have always been one and the same to my mind. I have always wanted to make a project of returning poetry to the stage. I use “return” and mean so much by it, but for now, let’s suggest that I refer to returning to an ancient tradition, a Classical and antique notion of “Song”, something that is the lone glowing root of poetry, performance and music, rolled into one. Capital ‘R’ Romantic? Yes, I’m reading Yeats. Problematic? Yes, I’m reading Yeats.

An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium.

UNLESS / SOUL CLAP ITS HANDS AND SING, AND LOUDER SING

It is a reverent, spiritual cry. A railing against the disintegration of the physical self, perhaps a denouncement of those young and happy ones of the first stanza who are distracted by blissful, sexual, corporeality. It is a monkish pilgrimage that Yeats describes. A transcendence into “singing”, into art, only gained through study. A desperate clawing hand, reaching for immortality.

I’m not entirely sure I like it. 

O sages standing in God’s holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity.

The argument emerging here brings a sympathy in me, even with as retro-gazing as I tend to be, for the sensibility of my post-modern contemporaries. They are on the side of the young, the sexing, the fornicating, the birds in the trees, the mackerel in the sea — people too full of life to be concerned about the grand edifice of art, because to their eye, they are the grand edifice of art. The cannon ball that does not really regard the canon (that was awful. I’m not changing it.)

Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

But let’s play a long for a minute. Let’s cast ourselves in immortal metals, and become something inorganic, something only made by the hands of wo/men. Because when we are talking about theater, when we are participating in performance, that is exactly what we are doing. We are enacting and re-enacting, we are entering the ‘past, passing, and to come’. Theater is an artifice, and we are its architects, builders, renovators, busily knocking down or building up its walls. Whether you stand up with a text, or devise a new work, if the audience is there to replicate and amplify — you are ‘out of nature’; that performance is somehow, immortal. A part of our imaginary Olympian palace.

Its Romantic. Its tedious. Even Yeats doesn’t really buy it — TO KEEP A DROWSY EMPEROR AWAKE… art’s grand purpose? Cynical, Yeats, cynical. But at the root of this poem that shouldn’t really be aesthetics for anything besides hungry despair, there is a tremor of something unavoidably true. Performance is all at once the past, or passing, or to come, it is the artifice of eternity. Yeats was ‘sick with desire’ to become a permanent part of its shining edifice. I think if we’re really honest about it, we all are.

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Reading: (mostly) American Plays

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withswimminggait:

Much of my summer reading has consisted of drama, which I’ve found to be quite a different pace of reading. Plays are such quick reading and immediate gratification, but I find most of the digesting happens after one is finished—unlike novels, which allow me to mull and consider throughout, or poems, which force analytic stops and pauses at the end of lines and stanzas. 

In May - July I read

The Seagull (Anton Chekhov): Struck me as a text that leaves SO MUCH up to the director and actors. Everything is understated. Everything is ambiguous. Almost all inflections have to be a decision. Truly a TEMPLATE. 

Glengarry Glen Ross (David Mamet): Maybe I don’t “get” Mamet, but this was such a smoky, claustrophobic, and utterly MALE world full of MALE concerns about ego and masculinity and competition that I had a very hard time connecting to it. Characters seemed caricature-ish on the page. It’s easy to see that these are characters whose success depends almost entirely on the presence and charisma of the actors playing them. Perhaps in performance I might be enthralled; as it was, I was disappointed.

After the Dance (Terence Rattigan): Beautiful, sensitive, and heartbreaking, with bright moments of absurd hilarity—it reads exactly the way it was performed when I saw it at the National Theatre with Cumberbatch in the lead role. 

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Edward Albee): I was SO BREATHLESSLY TENSE throughout this play. Albee is a master at building up the tension of secrets and lies and resentments until the walls crack and the revelations come bleeding through. Deft touches of the surrealistic here and there to give the play a subtle underlying funhouse/allegorical atmosphere. 

August: Osage County (Tracy Letts): Much more than the sum of its parts. At surface, yet another dysfunctional family drama wherein ugly truths are revealed when all family members are brought together. Things that make this play transcendent: the dialogue, how well-realized each of the smaller family units is, the character Violet (the matriarch), descriptions of the set. 

This past week I read

A Raisin in the Sun (Lorraine Hansberry): Elegant writing, incredible dialogue, even more incredible depiction of the different roles, responsibilities, interactions, and perspectives of women in a family. Felt very contemporary even though it was written more than 50 years ago. Need to read Clybourne Park! 

The Miracle Worker (William Gibson): Depicts the early days of the Annie Sullivan/Helen Keller story. Verged on sentimental but saved by the presence of the utterly unsentimental demeanor of Annie Sullivan’s character. The most amazing thing about it was the non-spoken quality of a large portion of the storytelling, as necessitated by the subject matter. Also, the…not violence…but physicality of playing Helen and Annie, who literally kick and scratch and wrestle and poke and much else before they find a way to communicate. Must require lots of fight choreography. 

Our Town (Thornton Wilder): Liked the first act quite a lot, tolerated the second act, felt the third act was unnecessarily preachy/creepy and kind of killed the whole thing. 

A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams): This play is like a live animal even on the page. The language is poetic and fluid, and it elevates even as it describes a world reeking of alcohol and sweat and sex and human desperation. Even the stage directions were a revelation. 

Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Eugene O’Neill): The saddest, most beautiful play I have ever read. Each character is so vividly drawn, and must be hell to act, shifting mercurially between tenderness and defensiveness and hostility as the family members attempt to protect each other but cannot help themselves from lashing out. One of the most chilling and truthful depictions of family dysfunction I’ve read, showing how easily love can turn from nurturing to destructive.