tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/plays-28813/articlesPlays – The Conversation2023-10-06T16:19:34Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2151802023-10-06T16:19:34Z2023-10-06T16:19:34ZJon Fosse: Nobel prize in literature winner is a playwright who puts outsiders centre stage<p>When <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/oct/05/jon-fosse-wins-the-2023-nobel-prize-in-literature#:%7E:text=His%20longer%20works%20include%20the,international%20Booker%20prize%20in%202022.">Jon Fosse</a> receives this year’s Nobel prize in literature in December, it will be collected by a playwright and novelist whose work examines the lives of ordinary people on the outer reaches of society, trying to cope with the challenges and hardships of daily life. </p>
<p>But his work is suffused with hope and affection as well as a darker sense of foreboding. There is a warm affinity between Fosse and the characters that populate his plays, highlighting their humanity.</p>
<p>Fosse, a Norwegian who lives in Bergen, has also been much praised for his seven-part novel <a href="https://www.waterstones.com/book/septology/jon-fosse/damion-searls/9781804270066">Septology</a>, nominated for the International Booker prize in 2022. But few beyond Scandinavia and Germany realise his international success was built on his work as a dramatist. So who is this Scandinavian writer who has scooped the world’s most sought-after literary prize? </p>
<p>Fosse’s work straddles a variety of genres, including several novels, 40 plays, several collections of poetry, children’s literature, essays and translations. Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel committee for literature described his ability to “evoke man’s loss of orientation” as providing “access to a deeper experience close to divinty”.</p>
<p>Fosse started off writing poetry and fiction, which is rooted in the landscape and language of Norway’s rugged west coast, where he grew up. He is well known for writing in <a href="https://www.sprakradet.no/Vi-og-vart/Om-oss/English-and-other-languages/English/norwegian-bokmal-vs.-nynorsk/">Nynorsk</a>, a minority language used mostly in western Norway. Some regard Fosse’s use of it a political gesture. </p>
<h2>Theatre was ‘irrelevant’</h2>
<p>It was not always obvious that Fosse would become a playwright. He did not initially consider theatre to be the place for him. He read a lot of drama and drama theory, but the theatre still seemed irrelevant. He was at that time mostly occupied with writing poetry and fiction.</p>
<p>When he finally (and reluctantly) attended a ten-day course for aspiring playwrights in 1985, it was not an immediate success. On the contrary, his first plays were met with incomprehension. No one could not understand how his plays could be staged. They did not follow the conventions of traditional drama and the characters was not fully developed in the usual ways.</p>
<p>His first staged production was the short play <a href="https://tga.nl/en/productions/nooit-van-elkaar">And We’ll Never Be Parted</a> (1994), followed in 1996 by <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/fosse-plays-one-9781840022704">Somebody is Going to Come</a>. And We’ll Never Be Parted focuses on a woman waiting on her husband to come home, mulling over memories, marriage and infidelity. It sparked debate in Norway about what made good theatre, with one critic describing it as “naive”.</p>
<p>Some found his plays were too literary, or placed too much emphasis on the Norwegian setting, and that they failed to articulate the universal themes of the drama. But a Swedish theatre agent, Berit Gullberg, recognised something brilliant in Fosse and wanted to push his work beyond Norway. </p>
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<p>Giljotin, a small, alternative theatre in Stockholm with just 50 seats, opened up a new way of looking at Fosse’s drama. Director Kia Berglund took on <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/fosse-plays-one-9781840022704/">The Child</a> (1996) about a young couple awaiting their first baby, successfully creating the mysterious atmosphere that permeates the play.</p>
<p>It was clear that Fosse was a highly watchable dramatist, but also that audiences were required to listen carefully to the text and tune into its rhythms. In his plays, dialogue is sparse. He employs pauses and silences to transmit meaning and build up mood and atmosphere.</p>
<p>Fosse has often been compared to the Irish playwright <a href="https://www.bl.uk/people/samuel-beckett">Samuel Beckett</a>. But his plays rarely contain major philosophical discussions. Instead, they leave what is unspoken – those unarticulated feelings, desires and emotions that lie beneath the surface – to create tension and drama. </p>
<h2>Spreading the word</h2>
<p>Gullberg’s sustained efforts led to a production of Fosse’s second play, Somebody is Going to Come (about two people who buy a remote house by the sea), by French director Claude Régy in 1999. It was performed at an exceedingly slow pace, running twice as long as its Norwegian premiere. In 2003, Régy took on Fosse’s second play, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/fosse-plays-three-9781840024784/">Death Variations</a> (2001) about a young woman’s suicide, to critical acclaim.</p>
<p>At the turn of the millennium, Fosse’s plays began to be performed at several prestigious theatres in Germany. Two leading theatre magazines called Fosse “the master of <em>unheimlich</em>”, meaning the uncanny – a state of unease and fear.</p>
<p>But it was mainly Falk Richter’s 2000 Zurich production of <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/nightsongs-9781840022827/">Night Songs</a> (1998), about a young couple falling apart in the suburbs, and Luk Percival’s 2001 Munich version of <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/fosse-plays-two-9781840023848/">Dream of Autumn</a> (1999) – about a couple meeting in a cemetery on a stage filled with crunching gravel – that opened up German theatre to Fosse. Both productions illuminated the discreet humour in his dramas.</p>
<p>His plays came at just the right time, just as audiences were tiring of the <a href="https://howlround.com/post-dramatic-turn-german-theatre">violent German theatre aesthetic</a> with its dramatically expressive form. This led to “Fosse fever”, with his works being shown all over Germany.</p>
<p>Many theatres commissioned new plays and secured world premieres. For many years Fosse was the most-performed contemporary playwright in Europe and soon began to find audiences around the world. His works translated especially well to theatres in Japan and Korea, where the mysterious atmosphere of his plays was not considered strange.</p>
<p>However, launching in the UK proved difficult, with one of his first productions at the Royal Court criticised as pretentious and boring. But in 2011 when French director Patrice Chéreau staged <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/i-am-the-wind-9781849430715/">I am the wind</a> (2008), about two men in a boat tackling a storm, at the Young Vic, he found a form that won over British audiences.</p>
<p>This merry-go-round of of productions and premieres was exhausting for Fosse, who decided to stop writing drama and devote himself to fiction. The number of productions declined and his success shifted to the epic novels he produced, such as Trilogy (2014), about two lovers trying to find their place in the world. </p>
<p>These days Fosse is turning once again to drama, trying to find a balance between the two. The Nobel prize now means that more people will discover his plays, and certainly much of his best work will be restaged, giving new audiences the chance to enter Fosse’s unique universe.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rikard Hoogland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The prize has gone to a Norwegian playwright and novelist whose work examines the lives of ordinary people on the outer reaches of society.Rikard Hoogland, Senior Lecturer & Associate Professor in Theatre Studies, Department of Culture & Aesthetics, Stockholm UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2029982023-04-20T16:32:14Z2023-04-20T16:32:14ZShakespeare’s First Folio turns 400: what would be lost without the collection? An expert speculates<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518464/original/file-20230330-20-6659wf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5928%2C3871&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Shakespeare's First Folio was the first published work to include Macbeth.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/OO8AEXFQtdI">Matt Riches/Unsplash</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It has been 400 years since the publication of the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays, a volume now known as the First Folio. Prepared <a href="https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeare-in-print/first-folio/">by his fellow actors</a> after his death, the book presented 36 plays divided into the genres of comedy, history and tragedy.</p>
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<p>Without it, <a href="https://folio400.com/publication/">18 of Shakespeare’s plays</a> that had not previously been printed would have been lost, among them Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night and The Tempest. No “friends, Romans and countrymen”, no “brave new world”, no “double, double toil and trouble”.</p>
<p>But what would really be different if this book had never been printed at all?</p>
<p>Most significantly, there wouldn’t be the cultural icon we know as “Shakespeare”. Those works that do survive would be scattered across numerous flimsy early editions, rather than gathered in this imposing and serious volume. </p>
<p>Without the weight – cultural as well as literal – of the collected edition, it’s possible few would care about these surviving plays. Something similar happened to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/nov/17/classics.theatre">other playwrights of the period</a>, whose work was not given the authority of a collection.</p>
<p>We’d also have an idea of Shakespeare as more interested in histories and comedies than tragedies. Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar and Timon of Athens <a href="https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeare-in-print/first-folio/">would be lost</a> without the First Folio. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518455/original/file-20230330-30-cjtfyc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The title page of the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays featuring a portrait of a balding Shakespeare." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518455/original/file-20230330-30-cjtfyc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518455/original/file-20230330-30-cjtfyc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518455/original/file-20230330-30-cjtfyc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518455/original/file-20230330-30-cjtfyc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518455/original/file-20230330-30-cjtfyc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1215&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518455/original/file-20230330-30-cjtfyc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1215&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518455/original/file-20230330-30-cjtfyc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1215&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The title page of the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Shakespeare_-_First_Folio_1623.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>Since some of these early editions did not name Shakespeare on their title pages, the authorship of plays such as Romeo and Juliet, Titus Andronicus and Henry V would be uncertain. Conversely, title pages identify Shakespeare as the author of <a href="https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/resource/document/london-prodigal-first-edition">The London Prodigal</a> (1605) and <a href="https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/resource/document/yorkshire-tragedy-first-edition">A Yorkshire Tragedy</a> (1608), which most modern scholars do not attribute to Shakespeare. In part this is due to the fact that they are not included in the First Folio. Without it, the canon of Shakespeare’s plays would have decisively shifted.</p>
<p>This different canon would have prompted a different historical response. The convenience and ready availability of the First Folio as a repository for Shakespeare’s plays <a href="https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/podcasts/lets-talk-shakespeare/how-did-shakespeare-get-so-popular/">was a significant practical factor</a> in getting him back into the theatres when they reopened at the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. </p>
<p>This large collection of Shakespeare’s works took up visible space on the shelf. Had he not come back into prominence at that important moment – and had the newly revived theatre looked elsewhere for their dramatic scripts – Shakespeare’s reputation might well have been permanently lost.</p>
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<p><em>This article is part of our <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/william-shakespeare-14574">First Folio 400</a> series. These articles mark the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio, the first collected edition of William Shakespeare’s plays.</em></p>
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<p>If Shakespeare had not been revived in the later 17th century, it is hard to see how he would have <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/shakespeares-first-folio-9780198819998?cc=gb&lang=en&">become the national poet</a> during the 18th. No <a href="https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/william-shakespeare">statue in Poets’ corner</a>, no arguments between the literary figures of the day about the best way to edit his plays. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Garrick">David Garrick</a> – the leading Shakespearean actor of the 18th century – would have had an entirely different career (as, in later periods, would other actors like Laurence Olivier and Judi Dench).</p>
<h2>Shakespeare’s international reputation</h2>
<p>This much-depleted Shakespeare would hardly have <a href="https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/shakespeares-birthplace/purchase-of-birthplace/">galvanised outrage</a> about the sale of his Stratford birthplace in the 19th century. </p>
<p>Perhaps modern Stratford-upon-Avon would now simply mark its playwright son with a blue plaque (rather as Shakespeare’s writing partner <a href="https://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/heritage-and-retro/retro/the-peterborough-schoolboy-who-went-on-to-write-with-shakespeare-2942419">John Fletcher</a> is remembered in his hometown of Rye). There would be no <a href="https://www.shakespearescelebrations.com/whats-on/shakespeares-birthday-celebration-parade/">birthday parade</a>, no Othello taxi firm, no tourist industry. No one would care if his wife, Anne Hathaway, <a href="https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/visit/anne-hathaways-cottage/">had a cottage</a>.</p>
<p>Without the First Folio there would be no dedicated Shakespeare theatre in Stratford, or at Shakespeare’s Globe on Bankside. There would be no Shakespeare festivals around the world, such as that in Stratford, Ontario. In fact, Stratford, Ontario, named in the 19th century for Shakespeare’s hometown, would now have a different name entirely, as would Stratfords in Ohio, Connecticut, Wisconsin, New Jersey and in New Zealand and Australia.</p>
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<img alt="A thatched English cottage with white walls surrounded by greenery, photographed under blue skies." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518460/original/file-20230330-24-kyaao9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518460/original/file-20230330-24-kyaao9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518460/original/file-20230330-24-kyaao9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518460/original/file-20230330-24-kyaao9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518460/original/file-20230330-24-kyaao9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518460/original/file-20230330-24-kyaao9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518460/original/file-20230330-24-kyaao9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Anne Hathaway’s famous thatched cottage just outside Stratford upon Avon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/anne-hathaways-william-shakespeares-wife-famous-121825960">David Steele/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Halloween would be quite different without Macbeth, which popularised a trio of witches around a cauldron performing a spell. Valentine cliches of romantic love are unthinkable without the popularity of Romeo and Juliet. No sporting fixture between England and France would reach for the lines about Agincourt from Henry V.</p>
<p>A Shakespeare reduced in national prestige would not have been sufficiently prominent to be translated. Without German Shakespeare, we might never have had <a href="https://www.freud.org.uk/2013/01/16/shakespeare-and-psychoanalysis/">Freud’s version of the Oedipus complex</a>, which he understood through his reading of Hamlet. </p>
<p>Karl Marx would not have conceptualised his theory of capital <a href="https://theconversation.com/shakespeares-timon-of-athens-penned-in-plague-time-shows-money-corrupts-but-can-also-heal-143493">via Timon of Athens</a>. And translations around the world – into more than 100 languages – would not have established Shakespeare as a global author.</p>
<p>There are other, more serious consequences of this fancy. Colonial rule in India would not have relied on Shakespearean study as the <a href="https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/post-colonial-reading-of-the-tempest">central text of empire</a>. Othello’s murder of Desdemona might not have left its <a href="https://wilson.fas.harvard.edu/stigma-in-shakespeare/othello%E2%80%99s-black-skin">long shadow of prejudice</a> about interracial marriage. </p>
<p>Perhaps the Confederate actor John Wilkes Booth would not have shot Abraham Lincoln at DC’s Ford’s Theatre, in April 1865 since he wouldn’t have been <a href="https://www.theamerican.co.uk/pr/int-Shakespeare-In-A-Divided-America-James-Shapiro">steeped in the role</a> of the assassin Brutus in Julius Caesar.</p>
<p>The First Folio’s after-effects are far reaching indeed, touching fields of human psychology and geopolitics as well as literature, culture and theatre. No First Folio means no Shakespeare. And, whether you enjoy his works or not, that’s a hard reality to imagine.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202998/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Without the First Folio, the canon of Shakespeare’s plays would have decisively shifted.Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2010182023-03-03T14:40:49Z2023-03-03T14:40:49ZNational Theatre’s Phaedra review: suicide tragedy leaves a bad taste<p>Suicide is an act so shocking and violent that it undoes not only sensation, memory and feeling, but meaning. Poet and novelist Ocean Vuong describes how it unpicks even the connective tissue of <a href="https://therumpus.net/2022/12/20/the-weight-of-our-living-on-hope-fire-escapes-and-visible-desperation/">language</a>. </p>
<p>The death of my best friend by suicide last summer completely undid me. The experience has changed the way I experience the world, my relationship to myself, friends, loved ones, but it has also changed my relationship to my work. It has forced me to think differently about suicide’s frequent appearances in what we know of ancient Greek and Roman tragedies.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG8eD6UKRTM">Phaedra</a> is one such suicide tragedy. Director Simon Stone is at the helm of a new adaptation for the National Theatre, having previously directed <a href="https://www.youngvic.org/whats-on/Yerma-NT-at-home">Yerma</a> (2016) with Billie Piper, at the Young Vic and then <a href="https://tga.nl/en/productions/medea">Medea</a> (2014), which came to London’s <a href="https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2019/event/internationaal-theater-amsterdam-medea">Barbican</a> in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/mar/07/medea-review-barbican-london-simon-stone">2019</a>. In both previous productions, Stone has the female lead take her own life at the end of the performance and his Phaedra is no different.</p>
<p>Stone is working from multiple sources: Hippolytus by the ancient Greek tragedian Euripides, Phaedra by the Roman poet Seneca, Phèdre by the 17th century French dramatist Jean-Baptiste Racine and Phaedra’s Love (1996) by British playwright Sarah Kane.</p>
<p>As classics professor <a href="http://edithhall.co.uk/">Edith Hall</a> explains in the National Theatre’s programme, each version portrays Phaedra’s suicide differently in her plot to love and then discredit her stepson Hippolytus by falsely accusing him of rape following his rejection. A second death occurs when Hippolytus’ father kills him, for what he believes Hippolytus has done to his wife.</p>
<p>In all these versions – but especially Kane’s – suicide is an avoidable but seemingly inevitable horror. It is a corrosive agent for the drama, that leaves the characters on their knees, making sounds <a href="https://therumpus.net/2022/12/20/the-weight-of-our-living-on-hope-fire-escapes-and-visible-desperation/">“like an animal that just learned the word for God”</a>.</p>
<h2>Stone’s production of Phaedra</h2>
<p>The National Theatre’s Phaedra is quick witted, acerbic and does some <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2023/feb/10/phaedra-review-janet-mcteer-simon-stone-national-theatre-lyttelton">light decolonial thinking</a>, but it cannot fathom the ways in which suicide undoes people and their relationships to one another.</p>
<p>Stone changes much of the Phaedra story. Phaedra’s part is distributed among a couple of characters. Firstly, Helen (Janet McTeer), a shadow environment minister who, while studying at Oxford, went abroad to Morocco. There she fell in love with a man and took him away from his family so that he could drink, consume drugs and dream of being a rock star.</p>
<p>Hippolytus is no longer Phaedra’s stepson but Helen’s lover’s son, Sofiane (Assaad Bouab). Sofiane looks just like his father, who died tragically in a car wreck. We hear his voice recordings to his son which play in the long blackouts between scenes, variously morose, loving, macabre and suicidal.</p>
<p>Helen is complicit in this infidelity and her former lover’s eventual death. The play blames her almost entirely, with a long, hateful monologue delivered in French by Sofiane’s wife Reba (Sirine Saba) and translated live into English by Helen’s diplomat husband Hugo (Paul Chahidi) in the final scene.</p>
<p>The part of Phaedra is also shared with Helen’s daughter, Isolde (Mackenzie Davis) – a millennial who would be a good fit in <a href="https://theconversation.com/artworks-are-more-than-just-plot-clues-in-the-white-lotus-season-2-they-are-the-shows-silent-witnesses-196374">White Lotus</a>. Isolde is wracked by white guilt and very upper- middle- class privilege consciousness. Her marriage and NGO are failing. She shares Phaedra’s desire to be <a href="https://www.theoi.com/Text/SenecaPhaedra.html">out in the wilderness</a>, have scraped knees and hoist a bow over her shoulders.</p>
<p>Both Helen and Isolde sleep with Sofiane, producing much of the play’s farcical energy. The scene in a London restaurant that opens the second act is excellent – the audience gasped, feared, pitied and wondered at every revelation, expertly delivered by the ensemble. But it is Helen alone who shares Phaedra’s death.</p>
<p>Excruciatingly, she takes her own life on stage, creating the final image of the play. Sofiane disappears into a heavenly white haze, while Helen sinks into the ground alone, traces of her blood and sweat staining the “glass” box in which the production unfolds.</p>
<p>In Euripides and Seneca’s versions, Phaedra is undone by a god. But Stone’s Helen is a villain driven mad by the guilt of her own actions. “At least”, a <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/janet-mcteer-interview-realised-quickly-never-going-pretty-one/">Telegraph interviewer</a> reports McTeer saying, “Phaedra has the ‘redeeming’ grace to kill herself.”</p>
<p>Instead of implicating us in Helen’s choices and their aftermath, Stone asks us to project our shame onto this “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2023/jan/21/director-simon-stone-my-heroes-are-women-phaedra-janet-mcteer-national-theatre-billie-piper-yerma">post-menopausal woman</a>” and make her the scapegoat. </p>
<p>I marvelled at the set design and excellent performances. And I enjoyed the skill of the lighting, costume and sound designers, the work of the intimacy director, the speed and determination of the stage managers and backstage team. In minutes, they turned an upscale London living room into a Suffolk field. </p>
<p>However, I found the choice to stage Helen’s suicide as a redeeming act – and the invitation to cheer in the curtain call, just seconds after her death – dreadfully misplaced.</p>
<p>Instead of railing against Helen, I’d like to see a version of Phaedra where the desires of a postmenopausal woman aren’t played for shock and laughs. One that looks at why suicides like this take place and advocates for a world where mental health services are funded and people don’t die in their <a href="https://www.samaritans.org/about-samaritans/research-policy/suicide-facts-and-figures/latest-suicide-data/">thousands</a>. </p>
<p><em>Phaedra is on now at the The National Theatre, London, until April 8.</em></p>
<hr>
<p><em>If you’re struggling with suicidal thoughts, the following services can provide you with support:</em></p>
<p><em>In the UK and Ireland – call Samaritans UK at 116 123.</em></p>
<p><em>In the US – call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or IMAlive at 1-800-784-2433.</em></p>
<p><em>In Australia – call Lifeline Australia at 13 11 14.</em></p>
<p><em>In other countries – visit IASP or Suicide.org to find a helpline in your country.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201018/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marcus Bell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An expert in Greek tragedy can’t get past a seemingly callous approach to suicide in the National Theatre’s new take on Phaedra.Marcus Bell, PhD candidate, Classical Languages and Literature, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1931852022-11-22T13:26:28Z2022-11-22T13:26:28Z4 plays that dramatize the kidnapping of children during wars<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496548/original/file-20221121-19-gqqq2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C25%2C5665%2C3757&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">During the Russian occupation of Luhansk Oblast, 15 kids were allegedly taken from this rehabilitation center and moved to Russia.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/room-inside-the-center-for-social-and-psychological-news-photo/1244950133?phrase=ukraine russia orphanage&adppopup=true">Wojciech Grzedzinski/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since February 2022, Western and Ukrainian media have reported on the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/22/world/europe/ukraine-children-russia-adoptions.html">kidnapping and forced adoption</a> of Ukrainian children by Russians. </p>
<p>The exact number of Ukrainian children transferred to Russia has been difficult to pin down, but Ukrainian sources estimate that as many as <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ukrainian-children-russia-7493cb22c9086c6293c1ac7986d85ef6">8,000 children</a> have been forcibly moved there. Accounts have emerged of Russian authorities transferring them to <a href="https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/11/04/dad-you-have-five-days-before-they-adopt-us">Russian families or Russian state orphanages</a>, where they receive a “patriotic education.” Some of the kidnapped children have been falsely told that their families died or do not want them.</p>
<p>On Nov. 16, 2022, the <a href="https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-16">Institute for the Study of War</a>, a Washington private think tank, reported that Russia has been bragging about deporting as many as 150,000 children from the Donbas region alone.</p>
<p>The United Nations Security Council considers the abduction of children one of the six grave violations of the mandate of the <a href="https://childrenandarmedconflict.un.org/about-the-mandate/">Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict</a>. As a number of scholars and journalists have pointed out, the kidnapping, adoption and Russification of Ukrainian children is part of Russia’s <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-twilight-of-the-last-russian-empire-putin-kremlin-russian-federation-republics-war-ukraine-russification-mobilization-collapse-11666270992">premeditated strategy</a> to <a href="https://www.iwp.edu/articles/2022/11/04/another-genocide-russia-kidnaps-ukraines-children/">expand its falling Russian population</a>.</p>
<p>The wartime kidnapping of children is not new, <a href="https://theconversation.com/russias-reported-abduction-of-ukrainian-children-echoes-other-genocidal-policies-including-us-history-of-kidnapping-native-american-children-181451">nor is it specific to Russia</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://ces.fas.harvard.edu/people/001380-magda-romanska">As a theater scholar</a>, I’ve encountered a number of works on stage that explore the complex moral conflicts and traumas that these abductions have generated throughout history, from China to Argentina and many places in between.</p>
<h2>1. ‘The Orphan of Zhao’</h2>
<p>One of the earliest plays that center on the subject is “<a href="https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/a-child-for-all-ages-the-orphan-of-zhao/">The Orphan of Zhao</a>,” a 13th century Chinese classic written by dramatist Ji Junxiang during the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Mongol-empire/The-Yuan-dynasty-in-China-1279-1368">Yuan dynasty</a>. </p>
<p>Based on historical events that took place 3,000 years ago, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1768912">other narratives preceded Ji’s</a>, which he penned during the <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674072534">Mongolian invasion of China</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.7312/west16854-005/pdf">The plot</a> revolves around an orphan named Cheng Bo, who, at the age of 20, discovers that his father, General Tu’an Gu, is not his real father. In fact, his real father, Zhao Dun, along with his entire family, was murdered by Tu’an Gu during a bloody conflict. Cheng ultimately kills the general, thus avenging his blood father and his family. </p>
<p>The story of orphan Zhao has had an enduring appeal in Chinese society and has undergone a number of <a href="https://www.asianstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/a-child-for-all-ages-the-orphan-of-zhaoring.pdf">dramatic</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1726738/">film adaptations</a>. The play includes many features of classical Chinese drama, including a <a href="https://silo.tips/download/the-tragic-and-the-chinese-subject">tragic hero</a> torn between contradictory familiar loyalties, and in accordance with Confucian morality, has <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/Chinese-performing-arts/The-Yuan-period">an ending that reflects poetic justice</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Actresses encircle a mother holding a baby." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496546/original/file-20221121-14-2n20ar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496546/original/file-20221121-14-2n20ar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496546/original/file-20221121-14-2n20ar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496546/original/file-20221121-14-2n20ar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496546/original/file-20221121-14-2n20ar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496546/original/file-20221121-14-2n20ar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496546/original/file-20221121-14-2n20ar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A staging of ‘The Orphan of Zhao,’ performed by the China Opera and Dance Theatre, in October 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-dance-drama-the-orphan-of-zhao-performed-by-china-opera-news-photo/1235711371?phrase=orphan%20of%20zhao&adppopup=true">Guo Junfeng/Costfoto/Future Publishing via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Due to its <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25723618.2019.1592865">revenge plot</a>, the play is often compared to Shakespeare’s “<a href="https://www.academia.edu/34546098/On_Tragic_Heroes_A_Comparative_Study_of_Hamlet_and_The_Orphan_of_Chao">Hamlet</a>,” and is sometimes even referred to as the “Chinese Hamlet.”</p>
<h2>2. ‘The Circumference of the Head’</h2>
<p>During World War II, under the Nazis’ “<a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/lebensborn-program">Lebensborn program</a>,” Germany abducted and adopted as many as <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/the-children-the-nazis-stole-in-poland-forgotten-victims/a-52739589">400,000</a> Slavic children – mostly <a href="https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/hitlers-lebensborn-children-kidnappings-in-german-occupied-poland/">Polish</a> and Czech, particularly kids whose blond hair and blue eyes aligned with the Nazis’ objective to cultivate an Aryan-Nordic phenotype.</p>
<p>The abduction and forced Germanization of Slavic children went <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/the-children-the-nazis-stole-in-poland-forgotten-victims/a-52739589">largely forgotten</a> through the end of the 20th century. But recently, Polish journalists from news platform <a href="https://www.interia.pl/">Interia</a> and the German broadcaster <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/forgotten-victims-polish-children-abducted-during-world-war-ii-still-seeking-truth/a-41981284">Deutsche Welle</a> teamed up to release a book and documentary on the subject, “<a href="https://www.dw.com/en/the-children-the-nazis-stole-in-poland-forgotten-victims/a-52739589">Children Stolen by the Nazis: Forgotten Victims</a>.”</p>
<p>In theater, the Lebensborn program has not been widely explored. However, one Polish play worth mentioning is 2014’s “<a href="https://teatrnowy.pl/spektakle/obwod-glowy/">The Circumference of the Head</a>,” written and directed by Polish playwright and director Zbigniew Brzoza and dramaturg Wojtek Zrałek-Kossakowski. Incorporating archival materials, the play tells <a href="https://teatralny.pl/recenzje/gustaw-ziegenhagen,819.html">the real story</a> of two mothers, one Polish and one German, at odds over the fate of a girl who was kidnapped from the Polish mother and adopted by the German mother’s family. </p>
<p>After the war, the girl returned to Poland thanks to the efforts of the <a href="https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2021/03/17/german-genocidal-kidnapping-of-polish-children-definitive-work-lebensborn-letter-p-karpinska-morek/">Polish government</a> – one of an estimated <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/forgotten-victims-polish-children-abducted-during-world-war-ii-still-seeking-truth/a-41981284#:%7E:text=After%20the%20war%2C%20the%20Polish,was%20placed%20in%20an%20orphanage">30,000 Polish children</a> who were repatriated to Poland following the war. </p>
<p>For the children, the homecoming could be as traumatizing as the initial kidnapping, since many of them <a href="https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/hitlers-lebensborn-children-kidnappings-in-german-occupied-poland/">no longer remembered their Polish families</a>.</p>
<p>The title of the play refers to the Nazis’ use of pseudoscientific “<a href="https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/nazi-racial-science">racial science</a>” to determine which children they would send off to the death camps and which were deemed worthy enough to integrate into the German race. The circumference of the head was one such a measure.</p>
<p>Some Polish critics denounced the play for <a href="https://teatralny.pl/recenzje/gustaw-ziegenhagen,819.html">its Solomon-like depiction of the dispute</a> between the Polish mother and the German woman who adopted the kidnapped child. Although both women want the girl, both are willing to give up their parental rights for the welfare of the child. The play thus drew a moral equivalency between the two women, Polish and German. </p>
<p>However the critics largely agreed that the play exposed the intrinsically tragic aspect of wartime abductions.</p>
<h2>3. ‘Stepmother Home or My Mother the Stolen Child’</h2>
<p>Another play worth mentioning is a 2020 Polish-Greek-German production by Wicki Kalaitzi and Joanna Lewicka titled “<a href="https://lewicka.org/stepmotherhome/">Stepmother Home or My Mother the Stolen Child</a>.” </p>
<p>It is based on the story of Kataitzi’s mother, who was deported from Greece during the <a href="https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/greek-civil-war-1944-1949">Greek Civil War</a> by the <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo12274715.html">Greek Communist Party</a>. A German family eventually adopted her. </p>
<p>The play traces the mother’s journey through Europe, her life and the impact of generational trauma on her daughter, who’s caught up in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2GixU8xeaU">her own search for identity</a>. The play uncovers the profound and long-lasting implications of the wartime child abductions for the victims and their future families.</p>
<h2>4. ‘A Propos of Doubt’</h2>
<p>Argentina’s <a href="https://www.history.com/news/mothers-plaza-de-mayo-disappeared-children-dirty-war-argentina">Dirty War</a> has received repeated treatments on stage. </p>
<p>An estimated 30,000 people went missing during the civil conflict, which took place in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Roughly <a href="https://www.npr.org/2007/11/11/16171480/reunions-a-milestone-for-argentinas-stolen-victims">500 were children</a>, and many of them ended up adopted by childless military families – some of which were responsible for the “disappearance” of their parents. </p>
<p>In 1977, the grandmothers of the abducted children <a href="https://abuelas.org.ar/idiomas/english/history.htm">formed an organization</a> called the Association of the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/leader-madres-de-plaza-de-mayo-argentina-dies-93-rcna58170">Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo</a> to try to find as <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/33504/chapter-abstract/287812326?redirectedFrom=fulltext">many of them as possible</a>. Using <a href="https://abuelas.org.ar/idiomas/english/genetic.htm">DNA tests</a>, the organization has identified <a href="https://abuelas.org.ar/idiomas/english/cases/listado_resueltos.htm">128 kidnapped children</a> so far.</p>
<p>In 2000, Patricia Zangaro’s play about the events, “<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064220108536885">A Propos of Doubt</a>,” premiered in <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/701764">Buenos Aires</a>. The play has since inspired a yearly theatrical event, <a href="https://teatroxlaidentidad.net/">Teatro x Identitad</a> – “Theater for Identity,” or TXI for short – dedicated to plays focused on the fate of disappeared children. </p>
<p>All of the performances in the series, which started in 2000, open with the same line: “<a href="https://globalvoices.org/2017/07/21/three-decades-after-dictatorship-theater-aids-the-search-for-identity-and-truth-in-argentina/">My name is … and I can say it because I know who I am</a>.” Although the plays cover a range of themes connected to the disappearance of the children, all of them focus on the search and problems of identity.</p>
<p>The theatrical adaptations of wartime child abductions underscore the fundamentally tragic nature of such adoption. Advances in genetic testing have led to the administration of some justice: Hiding such crimes <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/27/magazine/spain-stolen-babies.html">has</a> <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-48929112">become</a> <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/taliban-criticize-alleged-abduction-of-afghan-baby-by-us-marine-/6801851.html">increasingly difficult</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193185/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Magda Romanska does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>These wartime abductions aren’t specific to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Throughout history, they’ve inflicted trauma on society’s most vulnerable – making them a rich subject matter for the stage.Magda Romanska, Associate Professor of Theatre and Dramaturgy, Emerson CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1932482022-10-26T13:37:50Z2022-10-26T13:37:50ZFour of Shakespeare’s plays and how they speak to the current political situation in Britain<p>The last few years in politics have gifted the keen observer many allusions to some of Shakespeare’s best-loved works. From the Midsummer Night’s (fever) Dream the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/21/liz-truss-global-media-reaction-uk-political-turmoil">electorate might think they are experiencing</a> while looking on at parliament to <a href="https://www.ftadviser.com/your-industry/2022/10/25/a-watershed-moment-advisers-react-to-sunak-as-pm/">All’s Well That Ends Well</a> (or is it?). </p>
<p>But more than surface references apply. Shakespeare’s work provides insights into the nature of power and how it is exercised.</p>
<p>Shakespeare lived through politically tumultuous times. His playwriting career spanned the reign of two monarchs, Elizabeth I and James I. The England of his plays was forming itself anew following the <a href="https://theconversation.com/wars-of-the-roses-how-the-french-meddled-in-this-very-english-conflict-159876">Wars of the Roses</a> (c. 1455-1487), which established the Tudor dynasty. They also set in motion the biggest political schism of the age: Henry VIII’s infamous divorce from Catherine of Aragon and <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-henry-viiis-break-with-rome-tells-us-about-parliaments-role-in-brexit-70078">break with the Roman Catholic Church</a>. </p>
<p>It is unsurprising, then, that questions of moral authority, the right to rule and the nature of a good leader are recurring themes in Shakespeare’s oeuvre. Recent political events could almost be ripped from the pages of these four plays.</p>
<h2>1. Measure for Measure</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.rsc.org.uk/measure-for-measure/">Measure for Measure</a> is about justice and exacting the proper punishment. Set in Itay, the play’s population has, under the leadership of a morally lax Duke, fallen into sinful ways.</p>
<p>Despairing of his whore-ridden, drink-loving populace, the Duke leaves the kingdom in the charge of his aide, Angelo, only to return disguised as a friar to observe his protegee’s progress. Angelo sets about doling out punishment left, right and centre, but comes undone when his lust for a trainee nun overpowers his moral authority. The Duke swoops in at the last moment to restore order, but the audience is left wondering how he justified leaving in the first place.</p>
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<p>What springs to mind here is ex-prime minister David Cameron leaving government in the aftermath of the EU referendum. His <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Gz6mZYxS0A">casual singing</a> after having resigned seemed to betray a lack of care for the Brexit debacle. More recently, I’m reminded of another former prime minister, Boris Johnson, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-fall-of-boris-johnson-any-democracy-should-look-to-his-case-and-ask-if-it-is-enabling-machiavellian-leaders-186597">whose morally ambiguous premiership</a> ended with a series of <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/insider/boris-carrie-johnson-honeymoon-slovenia-holidays-b1017414.html">luxurious holidays</a> as the kingdom crumbled.</p>
<h2>2. King Lear</h2>
<p>Throughout Johnson’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/boris-johnsons-messy-political-legacy-of-lies-scandals-and-delivering-brexit-to-his-base-186601">scandal-ridden time in office</a> I thought of King Lear, a tale of kingly disconnect.</p>
<p>King Lear’s court is stacked with flatterers who provide no good counsel so that he can only hear what he wants. The parallels reached their height in the latest Tory leadership contest in which loyalists emerged from the woodwork to endorse Johnson’s return. Such shows of devotion were for nought, however, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/23/boris-johnson-says-he-will-not-stand-in-tory-leadership-contest">as he decided not to run</a>. </p>
<p>Lear is also a family psychodrama. He pits his daughters against each other, asking each to express how much they love him. When Cordelia doesn’t do so satisfactorily, she is exiled and the kingdom is bequeathed to her sisters, who promptly oust their father. </p>
<p>The play’s betrayal speaks directly to the endless <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/928edf07-e468-40d4-b1b7-bc2266b25ac1">in-fighting in the Tory party</a>. What is, however, remarkable about this play, and distinctly absent in the Tory party, is the depth of remorse felt by Lear. Cast out of his castle, Lear experiences life as one of his subjects – reduced to a “bare forked animal” (or no different to an animal). In a scene that will have chilling resonance with the winter much of Britain currently faces due to rising food, mortgage and fuel costs, Lear repents having ignored his people:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,<br>
That bide the pelting of this miserable storm,<br>
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,<br>
Your looped and windowed raggedness defend you<br>
From seasons such as these? Oh, I have ta’en<br>
Too little care of this!</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>3. Anthony and Cleopatra</h2>
<p>Anthony and Cleopatra might best befit the ill-fated and short-lived reign of Johnson’s successor Liz Truss and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng.</p>
<p>From the opening scene, Anthony makes his lack of care for reality known. He dismisses messengers from Rome, declaring: “Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch /Of the ranged empire fall! […] Kingdoms are clay.” </p>
<p>If love comes at the expense of good leadership for Anthony and Cleopatra, Truss and Kwarteng’s fatal flaw was their unbridled love of free market economics at the expense of <a href="https://theconversation.com/liz-truss-this-is-what-happens-when-governments-pursue-growth-at-all-costs-191716">reality</a>. </p>
<p>But both Truss and Kwarteng might have taken note of the end of Shakespeare’s tragedy in which Anthony and Cleopatra die in agony. Under Truss’s short reign the economy tanked and so did her standing. Her <a href="https://theconversation.com/kwasi-kwarteng-only-a-desperate-prime-minister-sacks-a-chancellor-192544">sacking of Kwarteng</a>, in what looked like an attempt to save her premiership, seems itself Shakespearean. It did not stop her from being forced to resign, making her the <a href="https://theconversation.com/liz-truss-is-now-the-uks-shortest-serving-prime-minister-how-does-she-stack-up-against-george-canning-who-previously-held-the-record-193031">shortest-serving prime minister</a> in British history. A painful end, to say the least. </p>
<p>The lesson from Anthony and Cleopatra, and Truss and Kwarteng, is what you idolise beyond all sense – be it another person or free markets – might just kill you. </p>
<h2>4. Titus Andronicus</h2>
<p>Shakespeare’s plays often end with a restoration of order after a tussle for power. Richard III ends with the dawn of the Tudor age and, in Macbeth, the rightful heirs ascend the throne. For some, Truss’s successor Rishi Sunak is seen as a “<a href="https://www.costar.com/article/141611567/new-uk-prime-minister-sunak-considered-safe-pair-of-hands-by-real-estate-industry">safe pair of hands</a>”.</p>
<p>But what feels more fitting to me is Titus Andronicus. In Shakespeare’s bloodiest play, nobody emerges unscathed. Violence begets violence as the body count mounts and Romans, Goths and Aaron the Moor fight for supremacy. Unable to call a general election in the face of terrible polling and imminent <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-63388007">difficult decisions</a> on public spending, Sunak faces a daunting task. In the words of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown”.</p>
<p>While we might often focus on Shakespeare’s main characters in analysing his drama – the Richards and Macbeths – now is a time to consider the collateral damage. The Tory’s ongoing psychodrama might resemble Elizabethan amusements but, unlike Shakespeare, the impacts are real.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193248/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Orlaith Darling receives funding from the Irish Research Council. </span></em></p>Shakespeare often portrayed crises of legitimacy and reflected on the politics of his day but the Tories might not fare so well in a modern production.Orlaith Darling, Early Career Researcher in Contemporary English Literature and Critical Theory, Trinity College DublinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1894022022-08-31T16:23:40Z2022-08-31T16:23:40ZFive myths about Shakespeare’s contribution to the English language<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481760/original/file-20220830-19040-xflx1d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=20%2C0%2C2000%2C1401&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Untitled design</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_of_William_Shakespeare#/media/File:Shakespeare_Droeshout_1623.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Shakespeare’s language is widely considered to represent the pinnacle of English. But that status is underpinned by multiple myths – ideas about language that have departed from reality (or what is even plausible). Those myths send us down rabbit holes and make us lose sight of what is truly impressive about Shakespeare – what he did with his words. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/shakespearelang/">Encyclopedia of Shakespeare’s Language</a> project at Lancaster University, deploying large-scale computer analyses, has been transforming what we know about Shakespeare’s language. Here, incorporating some of its findings, we revisit five things that you probably thought you knew about Shakespeare but are actually untrue. </p>
<h2>1. Shakespeare coined a vast number of words</h2>
<p>Well, he did, but not as many as people think – even reputable sources assume more than 1,000. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust puts it at <a href="https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/shakespeares-words/">1,700</a>, but carefully add that this number concerns words whose earliest appearance is in Shakespeare’s works. </p>
<p>The word “hobnail” first appears in a text attributed to Shakespeare, but it’s difficult to imagine it arose from a creative poetic act. More likely, it was around in the spoken language of the time and Shakespeare’s use is the earliest recording of it. Estimates of just how many words Shakespeare supposedly coined do not usually distinguish between what was creatively coined by him and what was first recorded in a written document attributed to him. </p>
<p>Even if you don’t make that distinction and include all words that appear first in a work attributed to Shakespeare, whether coined or recorded, numbers are grossly inflated. Working with the literature and linguistics academics <a href="https://english.asu.edu/content/jonathan-hope-professor-literature">Jonathan Hope</a> and <a href="https://slt-cdt.sheffield.ac.uk/students">Sam Hollands</a>, we’ve been using computers to search millions of words in texts pre-dating Shakespeare. With this method, we have found that only around 500 words do seem to first appear in Shakespeare.</p>
<p>Of course, 500 is still huge and most writers neither coin a new word nor produce a first recording.</p>
<h2>2. Shakespeare IS the English language</h2>
<p>The myth that Shakespeare coined loads of words has partly fuelled the myth that Shakespeare’s language constitutes one-quarter, a half or even all of the words of today’s English language.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A closeup on the spine of a book of the complete works of Shakespeare." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481763/original/file-20220830-8838-chnq8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481763/original/file-20220830-8838-chnq8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481763/original/file-20220830-8838-chnq8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481763/original/file-20220830-8838-chnq8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481763/original/file-20220830-8838-chnq8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481763/original/file-20220830-8838-chnq8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481763/original/file-20220830-8838-chnq8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shakespeare’s complete works could only ever have constituted a small proportion of the English Language.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/shakespeares-complete-works-6793507">Jon Naustdalslid/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The number of different words in Shakespeare’s texts is around 21,000 words. Some of those words are repeated, which is how we get to the total number of around one million words in works attributed to Shakespeare. (To illustrate, the previous sentence contains 26 words in total, but “of”, “words” and “to” are repeated, so the number of different words is 22). The Oxford English Dictionary has around 600,000 different words in it, but many are obscure technical terms. So, let’s round down to 500,000. </p>
<p>Even if every word within Shakespeare had been coined by him (which is of course not the case, as noted above), that would still only be 4.2% of today’s English language. So, Shakespeare could only ever have contributed a very small fraction, though quite possibly more than most writers.</p>
<h2>3. Shakespeare had a huge vocabulary</h2>
<p>Ludicrously, popular claims about Shakespeare’s huge vocabulary seem to be driven by the fact that his writings as a whole contain a large number of different words (as noted above, around 21,000). But the more you write, the more opportunities you have to use more words that are different. This means Shakespeare is likely to come out on top of any speculations about vocabulary size simply because he has an exceptionally large surviving body of work.</p>
<p>A few researchers have used other methods to make better guesses (they are always guesses, as you can’t count the words in somebody’s mind). For example, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/sq/article-abstract/62/1/53/5064657?redirectedFrom=fulltext">Hugh Craig</a>, a Shakespearean scholar who has pioneered the use of computers for analysing language in literature, looked at the average number of different words used across samples of writings of the same length. He found that, relative to his contemporaries, the average frequency with which different words appear in Shakespeare’s work is distinctly … average.</p>
<h2>4. Shakespeare has universal meaning</h2>
<p>Sure, some themes or aspects of the human condition are universal, but let’s not get carried away and say that his language is universal. The mantra of the historical linguist is that all language changes – and Shakespeare isn’t exempt.</p>
<p>Changes can be subtle and easily missed. Take the word “time” – surely a universal word denoting a universal concept? Well, no.</p>
<p>For each word in Shakespeare, we used computers to identify the other words they associate with, and those associations reveal the meanings of words.</p>
<p>“Time”, for instance, often occurs with “day” or “night” (for example, from Hamlet: “What art thou that usurp'st this time of night”). This reflects the understanding of time in the early modern world (roughly, 1450-1750), which was more closely linked to the cycles of the moon and sun, and thus the broader forces of the cosmos. </p>
<p>In contrast, today, associated words like “waste”, “consume” and “spend” suggest that time is more frequently thought of as a precious resource under human control.</p>
<h2>5. Shakespeare didn’t know much Latin</h2>
<p>The myths above are popular myths, spread by academics and non-academics alike (which is why they are easy to find on the internet). Myths can be more restricted.</p>
<p>Within some theatrical circles, the idea that Shakespeare didn’t know much Latin emerged. Indeed, the contemporary playwright Ben Jonson famously wrote that Shakespeare had “small Latin, and less Greek”. Shakespeare lacked a university education. University-educated, jealous, snooty playwrights might have been keen to take him down a peg. </p>
<p>Working with the Latin scholar <a href="https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/english/staff/caterina-guardamagna/">Caterina Guardamagna</a>, we found that Shakespeare used 245 different Latin words, whereas in a matching set of plays by other playwrights there were just 28 – the opposite of what the myth dictates.</p>
<p>That Shakespeare used so much Latin without a university education makes his achievement in using it all the greater.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189402/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span><a href="mailto:j.culpeper@lancaster.ac.uk">j.culpeper@lancaster.ac.uk</a> receives funding from the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), grant reference AH/N002415/1. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mathew Gillings does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>He is certainly important to English but he isn’t responsible for as much of it as you might think.Jonathan Culpeper, Chair professor in English Language and Linguistics, Lancaster UniversityMathew Gillings, Assistant Professor, Vienna University of Economics and BusinessLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1888062022-08-19T14:48:09Z2022-08-19T14:48:09ZHow drama can help open up conversations on suicide for young people in post-pandemic times<p>Suicide is the <a href="https://www.kff.org/news-summary/suicide-represents-2nd-leading-cause-of-death-among-young-people-ages-15-29-who-notes-on-world-mental-health-day/">second highest cause of death</a> in 15-to-29-year-olds around the world, according to UK charity <a href="https://www.youngminds.org">Young Minds</a>, an organisation set up to help children and young people with mental health issues. </p>
<p>Many young people have experienced problems with their mental health during and since the COVID-19 pandemic, which is <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n614">predicted</a> to lead to a mental health epidemic. Factors such as the move to home schooling, physical isolation from friends and uncertainty over easing of restrictions have all contributed to poor mental health. But my <a href="https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/intellect/jaah/2019/00000010/00000003/art00002">research</a> has shown that using drama to explore these sensitive issues could be one way to tackle the emerging crisis.</p>
<p>Against the pandemic backdrop, it is likely that there will be a rise in young people <a href="https://cls.ucl.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Mental-ill-health-at-age-17-%E2%80%93-CLS-briefing-paper-%E2%80%93-website.pdf">attempting suicide</a> and, in some cases, taking their own lives. Recent research has found that 7% of British children have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/21/uk-17-year-olds-mental-health-crisis">attempted suicide by the age of 17</a>. </p>
<p>So there is an urgent need for early intervention and prevention strategies to be devised and implemented in schools to reverse the potential increase in suicide amongst young people.</p>
<p>In 2019, as a lecturer in performance, I carried out a drama research <a href="https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/intellect/jaah/2019/00000010/00000003/art00002">project</a> in South Ayrshire schools which aimed to change attitudes towards talking about suicide. Contrary to popular belief, if there are serious concerns about someone’s safety, asking them directly if they’re contemplating suicide is recommended by mental health charity <a href="https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/helping-someone-else/supporting-someone-who-feels-suicidal/talking-about-suicidal-feelings/">Mind</a>.</p>
<p>This project, part of a <a href="https://publichealthscotland.scot/">Public Health Scotland</a> strategy, was called <a href="http://www.healthscotland.com/documents/6021.aspx">Read Between The Lines</a> and aimed to spread this message to young people in the hope of opening up conversations about suicide. My current research aims to develop the work done in Read Between The Lines and, after the restrictions of COVID-19, learn lessons from digital innovations in teaching and learning in addressing mental health issues around suicide.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sRo5Db_7yVI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>The play’s the thing</h2>
<p>In Read Between The Lines, a short play was presented to an audience of 11-to-18-year-olds which showed the difference talking can make in keeping young people safe. In the play, a teenage girl shows signs of contemplating suicide. </p>
<p>By talking to a friend, she is supported through her difficulties and ultimately turns away from the idea. Using drama to represent such difficult and sensitive conversations allowed the audience to <a href="https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/intellect/jaah/2019/00000010/00000003/art00002">explore these issues in a safe and supportive space</a>.</p>
<p>Without such opportunities to talk freely about subjects like suicide, <a href="https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/intellect/jaah/2019/00000010/00000003/art00002">young people might otherwise be drawn</a> to other fictional and sometimes sensationalised depictions of suicide. Following <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/may/11/netflix-criticised-over-return-of-suicide-drama-13-reasons-why">criticism</a> from mental health organisations, in 2019 Netflix <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jul/16/netflix-cuts-controversial-suicide-scene-from-13-reasons-why">removed a controversial scene</a> from its show <a href="https://www.netflix.com/search?q=13%20%20reasons%20why&suggestionId=81233040_collection&jbv=80117470">13 Reasons Why</a> which showed a character taking her own life. </p>
<p>Acknowledging the potential vulnerability of some young people, Netflix then developed a <a href="https://www.wannatalkaboutit.com/gb/">website</a> which offers support for a range of mental and physical wellbeing issues. Despite such resources, there is a need for more direct local responses to suicide prevention education using both digital and in-person approaches. </p>
<p>Building on the Read Between The Lines project, I am currently exploring ways of using digital resources, such as those developed by <a href="http://realtalk.film/">Grassroots Suicide Prevention</a>. This resource, largely aimed at men, is a good example of how conversations on suicide can be generated safely. </p>
<p>But using such digital resources is only part of an effective approach; role playing with young people can be also a powerful tool to <a href="https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/intellect/jaah/2019/00000010/00000003/art00002">bring about change</a>. This is why I believe that drama is one of the best ways to reach young people and help them talk comfortably about issues such as suicide.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two teenage girls sit on floor and talk to each other." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479356/original/file-20220816-5564-ywqf10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479356/original/file-20220816-5564-ywqf10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479356/original/file-20220816-5564-ywqf10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479356/original/file-20220816-5564-ywqf10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479356/original/file-20220816-5564-ywqf10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479356/original/file-20220816-5564-ywqf10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479356/original/file-20220816-5564-ywqf10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A scene from the Read Between The Lines project.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">James Layton</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Drama: inhabiting different worlds</h2>
<p>Brazilian theatre director and activist <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/may/06/augusto-boal-obituary">Augusto Boal</a> argued that drama can allow two worlds to be simultaneously inhabited, which he describes as “<a href="https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/957720/metaxis-the-transition-between-worlds-and-the-consequences-for-education">metaxis</a>”, meaning that someone can play a role without getting lost in a character or situation. In this way, individuals can explore difficult and challenging scenarios.</p>
<p>For Boal, being an active participant is a powerful tool in bringing about change. In a similar way, <a href="https://www.mantleoftheexpert.com/what-is-moe/dorothy-heathcote/">Dorothy Heathcote’s</a> pioneering drama education work of the 1970s placed children in the role of expert in exploring a range of topics.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://youtu.be/owKiUO99qrw?t=1561">BBC documentary</a> from 1971, a child reflecting on one of Heathcote’s sessions commented that she’d rather explore a drama of her own making rather than a play because “a play is not our own words”. Allowing the children to play out their own (real) world through their own (imagined) drama world is an essential ingredient in Heathcote’s approach and one that helps bring about dialogue. </p>
<p>Drama can produce meaningful and productive dialogue about suicide and the mental health issues around it, as both my own and Heathcote’s work demonstrate. Heathcote’s use of dramatic spaces allows roles to be assumed intuitively, where the relationship between “expert” and “learner” is equally balanced.</p>
<p>In doing so, the boundaries between the expert and the learner become blurred which helps to develop spaces and communities where proper, ongoing dialogue actually happens.</p>
<p>A delicate balance is necessary when dealing with sensitive topics like suicide if it is to help nurture a society where young people can talk and listen to each other. The exploratory nature of drama offers a way to build such an environment and a promising way to tackle a mental health crisis in which lives are needlessly lost.</p>
<p><em>If you’re struggling with suicidal thoughts, the following services can provide you with support:</em></p>
<p><em>In the UK and Ireland – call Samaritans UK at 116 123.</em></p>
<p><em>In the US – call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or IMAlive at 1-800-784-2433.</em></p>
<p><em>In Australia – call Lifeline Australia at 13 11 14.</em></p>
<p><em>In other countries – visit IASP or Suicide.org to find a helpline in your country.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188806/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Layton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Role play and drama offer young people struggling with mental health issues an opportunity to explore the feelings that can lead to suicide.James Layton, Lecturer in Performance, University of the West of ScotlandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1722102021-11-24T13:57:44Z2021-11-24T13:57:44ZZadie Smith: how the Wife of Willesden brings to life Chaucer’s tale of sex and power<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433500/original/file-20211123-20-82ghqz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1200%2C671&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">They call her The Wife of Willesden.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://kilntheatre.com/whats-on/the-wife-of-willesden/">Marc Brenner</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It could be easy to assume that <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-canterbury-tales-by-geoffrey-chaucer">The Canterbury Tales</a>, a collection of stories written in Middle English at the end of the 14th century, would not hold much relevance to contemporary debates about sexuality and empowerment. </p>
<p>But as Zadie Smith shows in her new adaption and her first play, this definitely isn’t the case. <a href="https://kilntheatre.com/whats-on/the-wife-of-willesden/">The Wife of Willesden</a>, is a high-spirited take on Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath”, one of the 24 stories in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. </p>
<p>The Canterbury Tales tells the story of a group of 31 pilgrims who meet while travelling from the Tabard Inn in Southwark, South London, to the shrine of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury, Kent. Chaucer’s pilgrims - including Alysoun, the Wife of Bath - take turns telling stories on their travels. </p>
<p>Smith’s tale takes place during a pub lock-in – with locals celebrating the Borough of Brent winning the <a href="https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/arts-and-culture/current-culture-projects/london-borough-culture/london-borough-culture-2020-brent">London Borough of Culture 2020</a>. It was this win that led to Smith (Brent’s most famous writer) being commissioned to write a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-59307100">literary celebration of the borough</a>. This is what prompted her to recreate Chaucer’s Wife of Bath in a modern form.</p>
<p>In the original text, audacious Alysoun gives the longest prologue of all of Chaucer’s pilgrims, describing how she has been married five times. She tells her tale about a knight of Camelot who rapes a maiden. As a result, the knight is sentenced by Queen Guinevere to find out what women want most. </p>
<p>For a year he has no luck, but he finally meets an old hag who gives him the answer and in return, he promises to repay her as she wishes – a rash promise he’ll soon regret. The answer turns out to be that women desire “sovereignty” over their husbands, and the knight’s promise means he ends up forced to marry the hag. Luckily for him, she also has the magical capacity to be a beautiful maiden, provided he grants her autonomy to choose which form she takes.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2021/nov/21/the-wife-of-willesden-zadie-smith-kiln-review-rare-earth-mettle-royal-court">The Wife of Willesden</a>, Smith takes audiences from the medieval Southwark Tavern to the present-day Sir Colin Campbell pub on Kilburn High Street. And it is here we meet the red dress-clad, fake Jimmy-Choo sporting, cunnilingus-loving Alvita, played by <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0673907/">Clare Perkins</a>. </p>
<p>The tale told by Alvita, a 21st-century Wife of Bath, moves the location from the court of King Arthur to 18th-century Jamaica. Smith weaves medieval, contemporary and colonial contexts together with fiercely lewd humour that echoes Chaucer’s own bawdiness.</p>
<h2>Shame and Choice</h2>
<p>The lesson of Chaucer’s Wife of Bath about female sovereignty is particularly poignant because Chaucer was <a href="http://www.umsl.edu/%7Egradyf/chaucer/cecily.htm">embroiled in a rape case</a> of his own. Not much is known about the case other than the fact that Chaucer was released in 1380 from a charge of “raptus” made by Cecily Champaigne, the daughter of a London baker. </p>
<p>“Raptus” in court documents could indicate sexual assault, but also <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/07/document-casts-new-light-on-chaucer-rape-case">abduction</a> for an arranged marriage. But whether or not the Wife’s Tale held personal significance to Chaucer, he chose to add the crime of rape to the tale and had Alysoun tell a story about sexual violence and choice. In fact, the rape does not appear in any of the source texts he worked with when writing his version.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433502/original/file-20211123-15-bc54ba.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Opening page of The Wife of Bath's Prologue Tale, from the Ellesmere manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433502/original/file-20211123-15-bc54ba.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433502/original/file-20211123-15-bc54ba.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433502/original/file-20211123-15-bc54ba.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433502/original/file-20211123-15-bc54ba.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433502/original/file-20211123-15-bc54ba.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433502/original/file-20211123-15-bc54ba.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433502/original/file-20211123-15-bc54ba.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Opening page of The Wife of Bath’s Prologue Tale, from the Ellesmere manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wife-of-Bath-ms.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In many ways, Chaucer’s Alysoun is a woman well ahead of her time. She condemns biblical scripture and medieval writings about women’s “chaste” conduct in marriage, arguing that God gave people reproductive organs to use, and she will use hers for profit and pleasure. Alysoun rejects literature that advises women to dress to protect their modesty. Instead, she wears scarlet stockings and new shoes – and goes on pilgrimage to be seen and to potentially woo a new lover. </p>
<p>Alvita is an unashamedly sex-positive woman in her mid-50s. She, like Alysoun, has been married five times. And, in Smith’s rough iambic couplets that render Willesden’s multicultural London dialects into verse, Alvita explains how she refuses to be told, by society, the church, her husbands, how to behave or dress:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My thing is: you want to think you’re a saint?<br>
Fine. But don’t slut-shame me because I ain’t</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Women’s Voices</h2>
<p>In Chaucer’s time, Willesden was itself a place of pilgrimage, not least for what was thought to be a black Madonna shrine, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/virgin-mary-in-late-medieval-and-early-modern-english-literature-and-popular-culture/walsingham-or-falsingham-woolpit-or-foulpit-marian-shrines-and-pilgrimage-before-1538/0036FA1CFF1396B17C2043C40661CDA0">known as Our Lady of Willesden</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433491/original/file-20211123-21-28hxf3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black Madonna and Child" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433491/original/file-20211123-21-28hxf3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433491/original/file-20211123-21-28hxf3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433491/original/file-20211123-21-28hxf3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433491/original/file-20211123-21-28hxf3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433491/original/file-20211123-21-28hxf3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=663&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433491/original/file-20211123-21-28hxf3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=663&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433491/original/file-20211123-21-28hxf3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=663&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Black Madonna and Child statue of Our Lady of Willesden.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Our_Lady_of_Willesden_-_black_madonna.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Smith plays on this by taking Chaucer’s “gat-tothed” (gap-toothed) Alysoun, imagining her as Alvita: “gap-toothed like (pop-star) Madonna”, a smile which Alvita tells us, “suits us both; symbolises passion”. </p>
<p>The comparison with the singer is one of the many instances where Alvita pleads that her many spouses should not treat her like the virgin she assuredly isn’t, but rather as an empowered, independent and experienced partner. </p>
<p>As with Chaucer’s Alysoun, Alvita rated three of her five husbands as good, because they were old and she was able to manipulate them, while two were bad: younger men who cheated, lied and abused her. </p>
<p>Smith’s adaptation uses Chaucer’s references to sexual desire, domestic violence and freedom of choice to explore contemporary concerns such as the sex-positive movement, #MeToo, and incels culture or “<a href="https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a20078774/what-are-incels/">involuntary celibates</a>”. Indeed, Alysoun’s arguments about clothing and sexuality become strikingly relatable to Alvita’s critiques of “slut-shaming” and <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/men-sexual-assault-clothes-women-victim-blaming-rape-a8792591.html">victim-blaming</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Woman in red dress flirtatiously sits on man's knee in a pub." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433503/original/file-20211123-23-1nnfrnv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433503/original/file-20211123-23-1nnfrnv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433503/original/file-20211123-23-1nnfrnv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433503/original/file-20211123-23-1nnfrnv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433503/original/file-20211123-23-1nnfrnv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433503/original/file-20211123-23-1nnfrnv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433503/original/file-20211123-23-1nnfrnv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Zadie Smith transports Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath to 21st-century northwest London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://kilntheatre.com/whats-on/the-wife-of-willesden/">Marc Brenner</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Alvita is a thrilling (and perhaps troubling) reminder of the way that the concerns of Chaucer’s medieval characters are still relevant today. Though Smith’s more inclusive rendering gives a voice to those silent in the original text, like Alysoun’s “gossib” (close friend) who becomes Alvita’s outspoken “ride-and-die bitch”, Zaire. </p>
<p>Ultimately though, at a time when even famous women can struggle to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/59338205">tell their stories</a> against powerful men, such tales about female agency have never been more crucial.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172210/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natalie Hanna does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Zadie Smith’s first play delivers on what women want.Natalie Hanna, Lecturer in English, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1623212021-07-18T07:47:42Z2021-07-18T07:47:42ZOla Rotimi: the enduring influence of a Nigerian theatre giant<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411440/original/file-20210715-32662-6nmmfx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nigerian playwright Ola Rotimi on one of his stage sets.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bernard Weil/Toronto Star via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Twenty years after his death, the Nigerian dramatist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ola-Rotimi">Ola Rotimi</a> is attracting <a href="https://guardian.ng/art/theatre-scholar-craftsman-ola-rotimi-returns-two-decades-after/">renewed interest</a>. San Diego State University hosted a <a href="https://sdsu.zoom.us/rec/share/vN4_ejA8p3TrXFTcXPrMvkaDcHPiykJp22x3klzHMHz81c1J_p-6I5kHePUzxn5H.UQSRLKD-iwGRSnpi">webinar</a> in April 2021 where the affection and reverence for the playwright were clear. Another <a href="https://thenationonlineng.net/remembering-ola-rotimi-complete-man-of-theatre/">webinar</a> was held in his honour in August 2020 at Bowen University in Nigeria.</p>
<p>The appeal of Rotimi’s theatrical practice and vision is that they are based on his infectious humanism, conviviality and reciprocity. The playwright, director and scholar was born in Sapele, Nigeria, in 1938 and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/oct/17/guardianobituaries1">passed away</a> in 2000. He made a tremendous impact on Nigerian theatre as a director in a time when theatre played a significant role in shaping political thought around colonialism, the <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/nigerian-civil-war-1967-1970/">Nigerian Civil War</a> and postcolonial society. In short, he was a decolonial artist (before the term came into vogue) who fostered <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/atheism/types/humanism.shtml">humanism</a>.</p>
<p>Rotimi’s theatre collective, <a href="http://worldcat.org/identities/nc-ori%20olokun%20company/">Ori Olokun</a>, which he established in Ile Ife in south-western Nigeria in 1968, was a breeding ground for some of the most talented, resourceful and successful theatre artists to have emerged in Nigeria. The bonds they forged with each other also grew stronger as they aged. They developed a powerful camaraderie which was evident in the San Diego State University webinar.</p>
<h2>The plays</h2>
<p>His <a href="http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n80094519/">plays</a> – known throughout Africa – include <a href="https://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/our-husband-has-gone-mad-again"><em>Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again</em></a>, <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/kurunmi-an-historical-tragedy/oclc/3120294"><em>Kurunmi</em></a>, <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/ovonramwen-nogbaisi/oclc/593450604"><em>Ovonramven Nobaisi</em></a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Blame-Three-Crowns-Books/dp/0199110808/ref=pd_lpo_14_t_0/147-1177838-9647343?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0199110808&pd_rd_r=e1b934d3-2eff-42d2-a069-b13653b5582f&pd_rd_w=xT4Gx&pd_rd_wg=LOOk1&pf_rd_p=fb1e266d-b690-4b4f-b71c-bd35e5395976&pf_rd_r=8237MVQ3X0P9VJ4A3KE6&psc=1&refRID=8237MVQ3X0P9VJ4A3KE6"><em>The Gods Are Not To Blame</em></a> which adapts the plot of Sophocles’ <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Oedipus-Rex-play-by-Sophocles"><em>Oedipus Rex</em></a> for Nigeria’s cultural context. </p>
<p>They focus on moral dilemmas: good versus evil and right versus wrong. Rotimi’s plays are easy to stage. They do not require elaborate or expensive sets and props. They also do not require theatre virtuosos or unfamiliar metaphysical constructs or conceits. And so they were accessible to African audiences, who were invariably moved by the productions.</p>
<h2>Theatre for the people</h2>
<p>Rotimi was also an innovator in his approach to what theatre can achieve and the tools it can use. He drew from indigenous traditions of drama, song, dance and mime. Though trained in Western theatrical tradition, he sought to break away from it and connect with homegrown theatre practices. </p>
<p>Local costumes, geographical settings, song and dance are prominently featured in all his major productions. He also innovated by challenging cultural boundaries: between professional performer and amateur; actor and singer; male and female; old and young; ivory tower and town. </p>
<p>Rotimi promoted a populist theatre, a theatre of conviviality that represented everyone within the community. This is evident in all his plays. Inclusion and community were ideas that informed his plays and practice. </p>
<p>And this has had a lasting impact. His concepts continue to inspire the people he trained in the Ori Olokun collective. </p>
<h2>Theatre and community</h2>
<p>Rotimi <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ola-Rotimis-African-Theatre-Development/dp/0773461477">viewed theatre</a> as a way of building community both inside the theatre world and beyond. He <a href="https://www.thefreelibrary.com/A+director%27s+vision+for+theater+in+Africa%3A+Adeniyi+Coker+interviews...-a0113562799">saw theatre</a> not as a closed and artificial art form but a way of connecting past, present and future. In this view, theatre serves as a link to the wider community and ultimately our common humanity.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411448/original/file-20210715-32667-1n0la8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="three actors on an outdoor stage, trees in the background. A man carries a yelling man on his shoulders, moving away from a woman yelling back at the man." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411448/original/file-20210715-32667-1n0la8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411448/original/file-20210715-32667-1n0la8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411448/original/file-20210715-32667-1n0la8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411448/original/file-20210715-32667-1n0la8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411448/original/file-20210715-32667-1n0la8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411448/original/file-20210715-32667-1n0la8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411448/original/file-20210715-32667-1n0la8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A scene from outdoor pidgin version of Grip Am, Ola Rotimi’s play, staged in Lagos in 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After the play has ended, after the curtains have fallen and the lights are out, the community beyond continues. And all – performers, singers, actors and dancers included – have to return to it. But they do not return to it empty handed. They are supported by morals, ethics and a sense of social purpose and cohesion acquired during the play. It is the duty of each member of a cast to uphold and spread these ideals.</p>
<p>Thus Ori Olokun instilled within its members the belief that theatre is a community-building exercise, a project for engendering a sense of worthiness and belonging in every member of a production, including directors, performers, set designers, costumiers, lightning technicians and so on. </p>
<hr>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-theatre-can-help-young-nigerians-who-are-living-with-hiv-150378">How theatre can help young Nigerians who are living with HIV</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This conception of theatre is a contrast to the view offered by playwrights who explored alienation in the modern world – the likes of Ireland’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Samuel-Beckett">Samuel Beckett</a>, France’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Eugene-Ionesco">Eugene Ionesco</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Genet">Jean Genet</a> and Britain’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Harold-Pinter">Harold Pinter</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joe-Orton">Joe Orton</a>. They wrote about despair, solitude, sterility, grim fate. </p>
<p>Rotimi’s theatre and teaching presented a vista of humanity. Though slightly idyllic, it was also practical and often realisable. For Rotimi, theatre is community, and ultimately, community is everything. </p>
<p>Rotimi’s humanism – like the southern African concept of <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/the-meaning-of-ubuntu-43307">ubuntu</a> or the Tanzanian <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/what-was-ujamaa-44589">ujamaa</a> – sees the collective rather than the individual as the predominant vehicle of social transformation. And if Rotimi continues to exert an influence more than 20 years after his passing, it is simply because his sense of humanism was both genuine and relevant.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162321/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sanya Osha does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The renowned playwright saw theatre as a link to the wider community - and ultimately our common humanity.Sanya Osha, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Humanities in Africa, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1609162021-06-03T06:51:53Z2021-06-03T06:51:53ZBelvoir’s The Cherry Orchard is a laugh-out-loud tragedy for uncertain times<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404171/original/file-20210603-27-tywaa9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1597%2C1058&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Peter Carroll and Mandela Mathia in The Cherry Orchard, Belvoir St Theatre.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Belvoir/Brett Boardman</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: The Cherry Orchard, directed by Eamon Flack, Belvoir.</em></p>
<p>In 1904, when <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Anton-Chekhov">Anton Chekhov</a> wrote his last and greatest play, The Cherry Orchard, Russia was still 13 years away from the Bolshevik Revolution. But the conditions for those future events were already all around him. </p>
<p>Rapid industrialisation and urbanisation had ensured old relationships with the land and between people were no longer sustainable. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/serfdom">Serfdom</a>, which had tied peasants to landowners in the bonds of slavery, had been abolished a generation before. Old certainties were slipping away in favour of a future that was probably already there but out of focus. </p>
<p>In the play, the cherry trees on the vast estate of the bankrupt landowner, Ranevskaya, have become so old and tired they only fruit every second year. There is nobody left who can remember what to do with them when they do. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404188/original/file-20210603-15-1n79ahu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="actors in stage scene" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404188/original/file-20210603-15-1n79ahu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404188/original/file-20210603-15-1n79ahu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404188/original/file-20210603-15-1n79ahu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404188/original/file-20210603-15-1n79ahu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404188/original/file-20210603-15-1n79ahu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404188/original/file-20210603-15-1n79ahu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404188/original/file-20210603-15-1n79ahu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">And all the while, the sound of axes chopping down the trees.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Belvoir/Brett Boardman</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A future out of focus</h2>
<p>Belvoir’s production is timely. We are still emerging, bleary-eyed into a world we know has changed, and has been changing economically and environmentally for decades now. But we have no collective capacity to see or to control the horizons against which this change is taking place. Will this future that is already happening have room for people who live, behave and consume like we do? Probably not. </p>
<p>So, how should we behave now? Is it okay to cling to the past for as long as we can? Or should we already be living differently, <em>be</em> different? What does it mean to still laugh and enjoy company if these are the very things that might be shielding us from reality? </p>
<p>At the height of the gloriously insane third act of the play, Ranevskaya — here played by <a href="https://belvoir.com.au/pamela-rabe/">Pamela Rabe</a> in a role she embraces with all of her considerable resources — shouts out, “This might not have been the best moment for a party!” You think? </p>
<p>As she and her extended family await the fate of the auction on their home, they drink, laugh, sing and dance. Until they don’t. </p>
<p>But Chekhov and director Eamon Flack both want us to laugh, and to laugh loud at the absurdities and ironies of the situation in which they find themselves. Chekhov insisted on his play being a comedy and Flack draws out its capacities for absurdity with what Belvoir audiences have come to recognise as his customary generosity of spirit. </p>
<p>This is a big, warm-hearted production. And the third act is central to this as characters all cling to actions and habits that make increasingly little sense in terms of their actual situation: from the brilliantly comic turns of Lucia Mastrantone as the governess Charlotta to the futile love affairs of Sarah Meacham’s Dunyasha. </p>
<p>Flack has a great directorial eye for presenting actions and gestures that have become unmoored from the social contexts that gave them meaning.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-lies-of-happiness-living-with-affluenza-but-without-fulfilment-42886">The lies of happiness: living with affluenza but without fulfilment</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Changing roles</h2>
<p>This sense of a future that is already disrupting the present condenses itself in the character of Lopakhin, here played brilliantly by Mandela Mathia. Lopakhin is the offspring of serfs who previously worked on the estate. He is now a wealthy bidder for the property. </p>
<p>Casting a Black actor in this role vividly adds racial context around the narrative of slave turned financial saviour. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404189/original/file-20210603-13-4vh69y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Man onstage" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404189/original/file-20210603-13-4vh69y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404189/original/file-20210603-13-4vh69y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404189/original/file-20210603-13-4vh69y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404189/original/file-20210603-13-4vh69y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404189/original/file-20210603-13-4vh69y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404189/original/file-20210603-13-4vh69y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404189/original/file-20210603-13-4vh69y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Serf turned saviour, played by Mandela Mathia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Belvoir/Brett Boardman</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The play does not shy from its potential for tragedy. The last words go to the family’s old butler, here played to comic perfection by the inimitable Peter Carroll. </p>
<p>Firs is a servant who regrets the emancipation of the serfs and wishes he were still indentured to the family. As he lies down, alone and left behind in the deserted old house, he finally faces his situation: “Well, that was my life,” he says. “It’s just as if I’d never lived at all”. </p>
<p>All this to the soundtrack of the axes finally being taken to the cherry orchard, now auctioned off to recover the family’s debts. How to craft a comedy in the face of an ending that is seemingly so bleak?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-samuel-becketts-waiting-for-godot-a-tragicomedy-for-our-times-157962">Guide to the Classics: Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, a tragicomedy for our times</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>To laugh or cry?</h2>
<p>Chekhov was famously upset The Cherry Orchard’s first director, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Konstantin-Stanislavsky">Konstantin Stanislawski</a>, played it for more for its pathos and tragedy than its comedy. But the ongoing critical question of the play’s tone or genre misses the point. </p>
<p>The play is a tragicomedy: not just a mix of the tragic and comic but an attempt to come to terms with their complex overlap. </p>
<p>Key to genuine tragicomedy is a sense of forgiveness: that we can forgive ourselves as much as we can forgive others. Take the ending of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. For that play to achieve the wonder of its final moments, the characters have to have gone through years of coming to terms with the tragic events that have set up the play’s narratives of loss and estrangement.</p>
<p>There is potential for forgiveness, too, in The Cherry Orchard, but it is a mark of the play’s modernity that we can’t quite be sure it will bring off a happy ending. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404190/original/file-20210603-13-z407yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="actors in stage scene" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404190/original/file-20210603-13-z407yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404190/original/file-20210603-13-z407yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404190/original/file-20210603-13-z407yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404190/original/file-20210603-13-z407yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404190/original/file-20210603-13-z407yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404190/original/file-20210603-13-z407yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404190/original/file-20210603-13-z407yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Playing tragedy for laughs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Belvoir/Brett Boardman</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-picture-of-dorian-grey-review-eryn-jean-norvill-stuns-in-all-26-roles-150165">The Picture of Dorian Grey review: Eryn Jean Norvill stuns in all 26 roles</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In one of the most affecting scenes of Belvoir’s production, Rabe’s Ranevskaya confronts the young student, Petya (Priscilla Doueihy plays the traditionally male role), angry at her idealistic and unforgiving belief she might be able to rise above current circumstances. </p>
<p>The older woman demands a more forgiving attitude that accommodates the attachments of the past. And that forgiveness is forthcoming, both from the young student and the production. She — and we — understand why so many of these people want to blind themselves to the abuses of the past and attach themselves to its comforting memories. And we forgive them for it. </p>
<p>But this forgiveness doesn’t bring reconciliation. The future happens anyway, whether we dance or not. The cherry orchard still gets chopped down. </p>
<p><em><a href="https://belvoir.com.au/productions/the-cherry-orchard/">The Cherry Orchard</a> plays at Belvoir, Sydney, until 27 June.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160916/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Huw Griffiths does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When the future is clearly changing but we can’t focus on tomorrow, should we just keep dancing? Pamela Rabe anchors the absurdity of The Cherry Orchard.Huw Griffiths, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1492802020-11-05T11:59:18Z2020-11-05T11:59:18ZJohn Pepper Clark-Bekederemo: Nigeria’s bard, playwright and activist<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367684/original/file-20201105-21-1y3q4bb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=35%2C6%2C545%2C304&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy pmexpressngr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ahead of <a href="https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2020/10/13/family-confirms-jp-clarks-death/">his death</a> on October 13, 2020,the renowned Nigerian poet and playwright John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo had given instructions on his burial. </p>
<p>He wrote a poem, <a href="https://www.vanguardngr.com/2020/10/my-last-testament-j-p-clarks-premonition-of-his-own-death/">“My Last Testament”</a>:</p>
<p><em>This is to my family</em></p>
<p><em>Do not take me to a mortuary,</em></p>
<p><em>Do not take me to a church,</em> </p>
<p><em>Whether I die in or out of town,</em> </p>
<p><em>But take me home to my own, and</em> </p>
<p><em>To lines and tunes, tested on the waves</em></p>
<p><em>Of time, let me lie in my place</em></p>
<p><em>On the Kiagbodo River.</em> </p>
<p><em>If Moslems do it in a day,</em></p>
<p><em>You certainly can do it in three,</em> </p>
<p><em>Avoiding blood and waste,</em> </p>
<p><em>And whatever you do after,</em> </p>
<p><em>My three daughters and my son</em></p>
<p><em>By the only wife I have,</em> </p>
<p><em>Do not fight over anything</em> </p>
<p><em>I may be pleased to leave behind</em> </p>
<p>(From Full Tide, collected poems, page 385)</p>
<p>At 11:30pm on October 15, the “Last Testament” was fulfilled when <a href="https://tribuneonlineng.com/jp-clark-buried-at-1130-pm-in-a-quiet-funeral-in-delta/">Clark’s body was interred</a> after a brief ceremony attended by a few relations, including his wife, Professor Ebun Clark (née Odutola), and children. His remains had earlier arrived at Kiagbodo from Lagos in a wooden boat. The bard went into ancestry within three days of his transition.</p>
<h2>Poems and plays</h2>
<p>Professor J.P. Clark, as he was more widely known, was largely popular for his poems. These are still studied at secondary and tertiary levels in Nigeria and beyond. His rich repertoire includes <a href="https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/john-pepper-clark-the-casualties/">The Casualties</a>, <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/21150276">A Reed in the Tide</a>, <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/john-pepper-clark-a-decade-of-tongues-selected-poems-1958-1968-a-critical-view/oclc/13904074">A Decade of Tongues</a>, <a href="https://books.google.com.ng/books/about/State_of_the_Union.html?id=sDS-DcemCgsC&redir_esc=y">State of the Union</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com.ng/books/about/Mandela_and_Other_Poems.html?id=pboIAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">Mandela and Other Poems</a>. </p>
<p>These poems and others like <a href="https://allpoetry.com/poem/10602495-Night-Rain-by-John-Pepper-Clark">Night Rain</a> and <a href="https://afrilingual.wordpress.com/2013/10/12/abiku-john-pepper-clark/">Abiku</a> relay pungent messages on diverse issues such as causes and effects of violence and protests, corruption in government, the beauty of nature, pride in African values and the evils of neo-colonialism. Many of his poems, particularly the early ones, celebrate musical beauty through repetitive use of sounds at strategic points. Some observers point to the way sounds at the end of his lines load the poems with meaning and feeling.</p>
<p>His plays – <a href="https://www.amazon.com/SONG-GOAT-NIGERIA-PEPPER-CLARK/dp/B01N64F065">Song of a Goat</a> (1961), <a href="https://books.google.com.ng/books/about/Three_Plays.html?id=B0BMAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">The Masquerade</a> (1964), <a href="https://books.google.com.ng/books/about/Three_Plays.html?id=B0BMAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">The Raft</a> (1964), <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bulletin-of-the-school-of-oriental-and-african-studies/article/j-p-clark-the-ozidi-saga-collected-and-translated-from-the-ijo-of-okabou-ojobolo-xxxvii-408-pp-ibadan-ibadan-university-press-and-oxford-university-press-nigeria-1979-1995/721F606706BF600CC9CFF62799E846BE">Ozidi</a> (1966), <a href="http://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/the-bikoroa-plays">The Boat </a>(1981), <a href="https://guardian.ng/art/in-the-wives-revolt-women-demand-equal-opportunities-justice/">The Wives’ Revolt</a> (1991) and <a href="http://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/all-for-oil">All for Oil</a> (2009) – all address salient socio-political, cultural and economic issues on the African continent. While some critics have accused him of presenting unrealistic stage devices in his plays, others have applauded him for his ingenuity in blending African and European imageries.</p>
<p>His other works include Ozidi Saga (1977), an oral literary epic that takes about seven days to perform; <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Example-Shakespeare-J-P-Clark/dp/B000I81BAM">The Example of Shakespeare</a>, which articulates Clark’s aesthetic views about poetry and drama; <a href="https://www.amazon.com/America-Their-J-P-Clark/dp/B000WTTUFA">America, Their America</a>, in which he compared Western values to his African values; and the African Writers Series, to which he contributed his literary and editorial works.</p>
<p>He was one of the four literary giants who pioneered modern African literature in Nigeria. He was a colleague and friend of the poet <a href="https://boydellandbrewer.com/christopher-okigbo-1930-67.html">Christopher Okigbo</a>, who died during the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-1970; the novelist <a href="https://www.biography.com/writer/chinua-achebe">Chinua Achebe</a>, who died in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/mar/22/chinua-achebe">2013</a>, and Wole Soyinka, the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1986/soyinka/biographical/">first black African winner</a> of the Nobel Prize for Literature. </p>
<p><a href="https://guardian.ng/opinion/farewell-to-a-pioneering-african-bard/">In 1986</a>, Clark, Achebe and Soyinka visited Dodan Barracks, the then seat of the Nigerian government, in Lagos to appeal to the military president, Ibrahim Babangida, to pardon Major General Mamman Vatsa for his alleged involvement in the coup d'etat of that year. They went as representatives of the Association of Nigerian Authors, of which Vatsa was a member. Sadly, Babangida did not grant their plea – Vatsa was executed a few hours after their visit. </p>
<h2>Early years</h2>
<p>J.P. Clark was born in Kiagbodo on June 6, 1934 to an Ijaw father and Urhobo mother. He had his early education at the Native Authority School, Okrika in the then Western Ijaw province, now Burutu Local Government Area. He later attended the popular government college, Ughelli, for his secondary education before proceeding to the University College, Ibadan where he bagged his BA degree in English and edited various magazines such as Beacon and The Horn. After graduating, he worked as an information officer with the Ministry of Information in the then Western Region. He also served as Features Editor for the Daily Express as well as a research fellow at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan.</p>
<p>He later moved to the University of Lagos, where he served for many years as Professor of English and co-editor of the Black Orpheus, a literary magazine, until <a href="https://www.vanguardngr.com/2020/10/the-pen-drops-as-renowned-poet-playwright-j-p-clark-dies/">he retired in 1980</a>. </p>
<h2>Life outside academia</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.shadesofnoir.org.uk/creatives/portfolio/j-p-clark/">In 1982</a>, Clark and his wife, Ebun, a director of the Centre for Cultural Studies at the University of Lagos, founded the PEC Repertory Theatre. </p>
<p>A recipient of the Nigerian National Order of Merit Award, Professor Clark was celebrated on December 6, 2011 with the publication of <a href="https://patabah.com/shop/books/j-p-clark-a-voyage/">JP Clark: A Voyage</a>, a creative biography by Femi Osofisan, another distinguished theatre professor and prolific playwright. </p>
<p>In 2007 I interviewed him on the set of one of his plays, <a href="http://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/all-for-oil">All for Oil</a>. He told me then that he wrote the play as a commentary on the undue reliance of Nigeria on crude oil for survival. He berated the government for neglecting agriculture, health, education, culture and tourism. Unfortunately his vision has become reality as the people of Nigeria continue to suffer from poverty and hunger.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149280/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sola Balogun does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Nigeria’s poet and playwright, John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo, died on October 13 aged 86Sola Balogun, Lecturer, Theatre and Media Arts, Federal University, Oye EkitiLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1372152020-05-12T12:33:43Z2020-05-12T12:33:43ZWhat FDR’s polio crusade teaches us about presidential leadership amid crisis<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331176/original/file-20200428-110785-1ygezfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C23%2C5201%2C4009&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President and Mrs. Roosevelt enjoying after-luncheon conversation with patients of the Warm Springs Foundation.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-and-mrs-roosevelt-enjoying-after-luncheon-news-photo/515383916?adppopup=true">Bettmann/Contributor via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Throughout much of the last century, a lethal and terrifying virus besieged America. Then, as now, the fear of contagion <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-history-dept/2015/04/10/398515228/defeating-the-disease-that-paralyzed-america">gripped ordinary Americans</a>. And then — unlike now — a president displayed decisive leadership in fighting the virus, maintaining an unfailingly good humor and leaving the immunology to the experts.</p>
<p>The scourge was infantile paralysis, or polio, and the president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was its most famous victim. First clinically described in the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4212416/">late 19th century</a> and persisting deep into the 20th century, the virus invaded the nervous system and destroyed the nerve cells that stimulate muscle fibers, resulting in irreversible paralysis and sometimes death.</p>
<p>The tally in heartbreak and death was staggering. In <a href="https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/polio-9780195307146?cc=us&lang=en&">“Polio: An American Story</a>,” the historian David M. Oshinsky chronicles the loss. In 1949, of the 428 cases recorded during an outbreak in San Angela, Texas, 84 victims — most of them children — were left paralyzed and 28 died. </p>
<p>In 1946, there were 25,000 reported cases across the country. By 1952, the figure had jumped to 58,000. Unlike the <a href="https://theconversation.com/10-misconceptions-about-the-1918-flu-the-greatest-pandemic-in-history-133994">Spanish flu</a>, whose special horror was to strike down the healthy in the prime of life, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/failure-to-count-covid-19-nursing-home-deaths-could-dramatically-skew-us-numbers-137212">COVID-19</a>, which places the elderly at greatest risk, polio targeted children mainly, crippling and killing with what seemed an almost premeditated malice. Always on the alert for symptoms, generations of parents felt a chill of their own when a child contracted a cold, complained of a headache or had a stiff neck. </p>
<p>In this sense, FDR was both a statistical anomaly and cautionary lesson. He was stricken with the disease in 1921, at the age of 39, grim proof that wealth and privilege granted no immunity. Against long odds, he was elected governor of New York in 1928 and, in 1932, to the first of four terms as president. During his first presidential campaign, Republicans whispered that a wheelchair-bound <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/05/opinion/IHT-fdr-a-giant-despite-his-disability.html">“cripple”</a> was unfit for the duties of the presidency. </p>
<p>“It is perfectly evident that you don’t have to be an acrobat to be president,” <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-fenway-park-boston-massachusetts">snarled Al Smith</a>, the former New York governor.</p>
<h2>FDR’s personal crusade</h2>
<p>As president, FDR made the eradication of polio his personal business. For <a href="https://www.amazon.in/Little-Lindy-Kidnapped-Covered-Century/dp/0231198485">media historians</a> like <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/facultyguide/person.html?emplid=0adcef42793cb212c9d013f9b84de92bfbcf6972">myself</a>, FDR has always been a towering figure for his prescient orchestration of electronic media — in this case, the radio — to forge his persona and further his policies. “My friends,” he would begin intimately, in his calming, conversational “fireside chats.” Less well known perhaps is his pioneering role as executive producer of a programming evergreen: the celebrity-driven fundraiser.</p>
<p>Beginning in 1934, he dedicated his birthday, Jan. 30, to a nationwide series of charity galas and “birthday balls” held to benefit the <a href="https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/science-medicine/roosevelt-warm-springs-institute-rehabilitation">Warm Springs Foundation for Infantile Paralysis</a>, named for the polio treatment site in Georgia he had been visiting since 1924. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt — not just FDR’s strong right arm but his legs as well — typically took on hostess duties, circulating among the guests and hustling back and forth among ballrooms around the capital.</p>
<p>And what swell parties they were. The 1937 bash attracted 15,000 donors and lookie-loos angling to get a glimpse of the main attractions, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer stars Jean Harlow and Robert Taylor. FDR called the money raised from the annual events his “finest birthday presents,” but he was not loath to accept other party favors. “Surround me with pretty girls at the luncheon,” he instructed the organizers of the 1941 celebration — and he was seated between Lana Turner and Maureen O’Hara, as a bemused article in Variety magazine recalled in 1945. </p>
<p>In 1937, FDR announced the establishment of a new charity created expressly “to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/04/28/franklin-roosevelts-battle-with-polio-taught-him-lessons-relevant-today/">lead, direct and unify the fight</a> on every phase of this sickness.” It was called the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, but everyone knew it as the <a href="https://www.marchofdimes.org/">March of Dimes</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332580/original/file-20200505-83751-j5o17j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332580/original/file-20200505-83751-j5o17j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332580/original/file-20200505-83751-j5o17j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332580/original/file-20200505-83751-j5o17j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332580/original/file-20200505-83751-j5o17j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332580/original/file-20200505-83751-j5o17j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332580/original/file-20200505-83751-j5o17j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332580/original/file-20200505-83751-j5o17j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Eleanor Roosevelt on the portico of the White House with celebrities taking part in the 1937 president’s birthday ball.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44095837">Library of Congress/Harris & Ewing</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Radio and motion picture superstar Eddie Cantor coined the phrase in 1938. He reasoned that even Depression-battered Americans wouldn’t begrudge a dime to a good cause. Cantor’s annual March of Dimes variety shows were simulcast by all the major radio networks, featured the biggest entertainers of the day and set a template for every all-star telethon broadcast by radio’s successor. </p>
<p>“A little change from big people will mean a big change in little people!” chirped Molly of the radio duo Fibber McGee and Molly, the Hollywood Reporter reported in January 1942. Dime by dime, the campaigns raked in millions.</p>
<p>However, as with the victory over Japan and Germany in World War II, the conquest of polio was a surrender ceremony FDR did not live to witness. On April 12, 1945, <a href="https://www.upi.com/Archives/1945/04/12/Roosevelt-dies-of-stroke-at-Little-White-House/6802441123641/">he died of a stroke</a> while visiting the Warm Springs spa.</p>
<p>Repurposed now as a fitting memorial to the late president, the March of Dimes campaign soldiered on. And, eventually, the medical research it supported paid off. On April 12, 1955, on the 10th anniversary of FDR’s death, the field trials for the oral <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6351694/">vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk</a> were declared a success. A wave of nationwide <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-history-dept/2015/04/10/398515228/defeating-the-disease-that-paralyzed-america">jubilation ensued</a>.</p>
<p>In those days, there was no such thing as an anti-vaxxer: Almost every American knew someone who had been stricken. By the mid-1960s, together with a more easily administered oral vaccine introduced by <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2636601/">Dr. Albert Sabin in 1961</a>, polio had been effectively eliminated as a public health menace in the U.S. It <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/polio/progress/index.htm">exists now only in isolated pockets</a> in the poorest regions of developing nations.</p>
<h2>A sorrowful salute</h2>
<p>Shortly after the success of the Salk vaccine, FDR’s fight against polio was given an elegiac salute in Dore Schary’s play <a href="https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/sunrise-at-campobello-2670#ProductionStaff">“Sunrise at Campobello</a>,” named after the island off the coast of New Brunswick where FDR was first stricken. It showed the late president as Americans never saw him — flat on his back, carried on a stretcher, falling on his face and crawling backwards up the stairs — before he reemerges to public life, in braces and crutches, at the 1924 Democratic Convention. </p>
<p>A generation of hard-boiled theater critics waxed sentimental at the portrait of a president many had voted for four times. A “deeply moving chronicle … of a vigorous man struck down by a terrible illness,” <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=_g3TvB8kjTgC&pg=PT8&lpg=PT8&dq=What+rose+from+the+invalid%E2%80%99s+chair+was+greater+than+what+had+climbed+into+it&source=bl&ots=Z9x2J_jYsB&sig=ACfU3U3AZbK9Sc3bBCV0bY1uVp3fw7mTSg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi5x_P6-4vpAhWhj3IEHTUXBkYQ6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=What%20rose%20from%20the%20invalid%E2%80%99s%20chair%20was%20greater%20than%20what%20had%20climbed%20into%20it&f=false">wrote Brooks Atkinson</a> in The New York Times. “What rose from the invalid’s chair was greater than what had climbed into it.” </p>
<p>“Sunrise at Campobello” <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054354/trivia">opened on Broadway on Jan. 30, 1958</a> — the president’s birthday — and the film version premiered in New York on <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1960/09/29/archives/review-1-no-title-sunrise-at-campobello-opens-at-the-palace.html">Sept. 23, 1960</a>, in time to give another patrician Democrat with liberal credentials then running for president a vicarious boost. The opening night’s proceeds from both the stage and screen versions were donated, of course, to the March of Dimes. It was a reminder of the other great battle that FDR waged, in public and in private.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Doherty does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s personal battle with polio, and his steady hand while overseeing a national eradication campaign, highlights decisive leadership against a virus that terrified America.Thomas Doherty, Professor of American Studies, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1000602018-07-27T14:10:41Z2018-07-27T14:10:41ZBrontë-k: the neo-Victorian play that pokes fun at the absurdity of Brontë family myths<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229528/original/file-20180726-106505-1aivqke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/woman-running-free-desolate-dark-land-340586333?src=33tuV2Hkjc9DGgxMsBSaqg-1-0">Captblack76/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Though the Brontës are known as English writers, their appeal has never been limited to the British Isles. From the Italian comic opera <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/bst.2002.27.3.241?journalCode=ybst20">Le Sorelle Brontë (1963)</a>, by Alexandrian writer Bernard de Zogheb, to Yoshishige Yoshida’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095786/">Arashi ga Oka (1988)</a>, set in medieval Japan, the sisters’ work has inspired numerous adaptations across the world. </p>
<p>Perhaps the most peculiar of these spin-offs is a biographical drama from post iron-curtain Hungary. Brontë-k (“Brontës”), first published by Hungarian writers <a href="https://sarkozyandco.wordpress.com/our-authors/zsolt-gyorei-csaba-schlachtovszky/">Zsolt Győrei and Csaba Schlachtovszky</a> in 1992, is a curiously playful, topsy-turvy and irreverent play about the Brontë family. </p>
<p>The play’s story is truly transnational. Set in late spring 1848 on the Yorkshire moors, it revisits the popular myths and mysteries surrounding the Brontës, but with a neo-Victorian (a modern reimagining what the Victorian era was like) twist. The events take place around the time of <a href="http://www.historynet.com/hungarys-war-of-independence.htm">the Hungarian revolution</a> against the Hapsburgs. Its language is historically layered, with traces of mock Renaissance and mock 19th-century registers, mixed in with the contemporary Hungarian it was written in.</p>
<p>Little actually happens in the drama, instead its purpose is to be a parodic take on the myths that surround the reclusive authors. Where others have been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/27/bronte-sisters-enduring-love-affair">far more serious</a> in their explanations of the Brontës’ lives, this is very much tongue-in-cheek. </p>
<h2>Brothers and sisters</h2>
<p>Brontë-k’s characters are unusual, to say the least. The drama features the three Brontë sisters, their father, “Patrik”, and a Belgian educator, Monsieur Heger (who, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/charlotte-bronte-a-life/">in real life</a>, was Charlotte’s teacher, mentor and platonic love interest from her time in Brussels). It also includes the real life 19th-century Hungarian revolutionary, Mihály Táncsics. </p>
<p>While Anne, Charlotte and Emily famously chose to <a href="https://longreads.com/2016/09/01/how-the-brontes-came-out-as-women/">write under the male pseudonyms</a> Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell, the sisters of the play (Anna, Sarolta and Emília) are actually men who have been brought up by their father as women. At the start of the drama Emília and Sarolta have just been summoned back from Brussels to the moors by Patrik and, with no access to pen and paper – despite asking “Santa”/Patrik for it – they spend their time embroidering their novels into their underwear. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229604/original/file-20180727-106514-1j2j67d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229604/original/file-20180727-106514-1j2j67d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229604/original/file-20180727-106514-1j2j67d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229604/original/file-20180727-106514-1j2j67d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229604/original/file-20180727-106514-1j2j67d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229604/original/file-20180727-106514-1j2j67d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229604/original/file-20180727-106514-1j2j67d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229604/original/file-20180727-106514-1j2j67d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The real Haworth Parsonage, circa 1863.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Haworth_parsonage_soon_after_Patrick_Bront%C3%AB%27s_death.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>The “sisters” (bearded men) are not allowed to go out, the doors are barricaded with wooden panels. But Emília, the romantic one who longs to be in the moors, goes out in “her” father’s clothes – only to catch a cold that later proves to be fatal.</p>
<p>Monsieur Heger, a hopeless bore of a bachelor with a domineering mother, who proposed to Sarolta in Brussels, arrives to elope with her (unlike the real life Monsieur Heger who is reputed to <a href="http://blogs.bl.uk/english-and-drama/2015/12/charlotte-bront%C3%ABs-letters-to-constantin-heger.html">have ripped up Charlotte’s letters</a>). Heger wears women’s clothing so as not to look suspicious to the protective and jealous Patrik, and introduces himself as Currer Bell, but wants to be called simply “Curry”. </p>
<p>Patrik, however, does not tolerate men around his “daughters”. He is distrustful of them and wants to protect the “girls” from all men – including himself. He constantly tries to suppress his physical desire for them, while also blaming the “girls” for the premature death of his wife.</p>
<h2>Subverting the stereotypes</h2>
<p>As Emília longs for a life of passion, the down-to-earth Sarolta cannot wait to get away with the man “she” is not in love with, but sees as an escape route. Emília carries some of the quintessential romantic and idiosyncratic passionate singleton stereotypes of the real-life Emily <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/21/emily-bronte-strange-cult-wuthering-heights-romantic-novel">held by some of her fans</a>. Sarolta, meanwhile, shares some of the pragmatism often mentioned <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/author-charlotte-bront-was-an-uncompromising-feminist-trailblazer-a6704921.html">in relation to Charlotte</a>. But, if anything, Sarolta takes this pragmatism to a degree of selfishness and superficiality. </p>
<p>As these events occur, the pensive, sacrificial Anna is corresponding with Táncsics, the Hungarian utopian socialist and writer. Táncsics is in prison for his radical views and – needless to say – “she” has never seen him. If the play rehabilitates any of the Brontë siblings, it is the <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/was-the-other-bronte-the-best-of-them-all/">one whose work has been least read – Anne</a> (Anna in the play). She is presented with almost redeemable features through “her” sacrificial attitude and platonic love for the imprisoned Hungarian intellectual. While this depiction is also recycling the “long-suffering, self-denying, reflective” image of Anne, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JRLiDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA142&lpg=PA142&dq=Long-suffering,+self-denying,+reflective,+and+intelligent,+a+constitutional+reserve+and+taciturnity+placed+and+kept+her+in+the+shade&source=bl&ots=wR--kUs-kb&sig=A8ITWw9s1fIQyxYEQ4w6JfHcC1g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiHzpHHlb_cAhXiKcAKHcIwCBYQ6AEwAHoECAEQAQ#v=onepage&q=Long-suffering%2C%20self-denying%2C%20reflective%2C%20and%20intelligent%2C%20a%20constitutional%20reserve%20and%20taciturnity%20placed%20and%20kept%20her%20in%20the%20shade&f=false">to use Charlotte’s words</a>, the play treats Anna as “her” siblings’ equal.</p>
<p>Even though Brontë-k was, on one level, simply the work of two young university students who wanted to write drama differently, there is no denying that it stands on its own in its playful and irreverent depiction of the Brontë sisters. As with Julian Barnes’s playful postmodern take on the life of French novelist Gustave Flaubert in <a href="http://www.julianbarnes.com/books/flauberts.html">Flaubert’s Parrot (1984)</a>, Brontë-k warns readers against looking too much at the significance of biography. But at the same time it allows them to be fans, devotees, mythmakers (and mythbreakers) who are capable of laughing at themselves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100060/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This article is based on a talk originally given at a Cardiff BookTalk event (<a href="https://cardiffbooktalk.org/">https://cardiffbooktalk.org/</a>).</span></em></p>Brontëk is a rare work that encourages Brontë fans not to take the sisters too seriously.Márta Minier, Senior Lecturer in Drama, University of South WalesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/964722018-07-12T04:33:56Z2018-07-12T04:33:56ZDreams in an Empty City: a strikingly prescient morality tale about banking<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226849/original/file-20180710-122247-1kr05hq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"> Jacqy Phillps as Karen and Russell Kiefel as Chris in the State Theatre Company of South Australia's 1986 production of Dreams in an Empty City.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Wilson</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In our Great Australian Plays series, we nominate the best of Australian drama.</em></p>
<p>There is no single event foreshadowing the darker mood of the 1980s, as the election of the Whitlam Labor government presaged the expansive atmosphere of the 1970s. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Margaret-Thatcher">Margaret Thatcher</a>, “the Iron Lady”, became UK Prime Minister in 1979. The neo-conservative <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ronald-Reagan">Ronald Reagan</a> was elected US President in 1981. Thereafter came a firestorm of social and economic changes: the deregulation of financial markets; the rise of Islamic fundamentalism; the dismantling of trade barriers; the collapse of Eastern bloc communism; the re-opening of China to the West; Fukuyama’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man">End of History</a>.</p>
<p>No one could accuse 1970s Australian drama of being simplistic or trouble-free. But its spirit is rambunctious. Its love affair with the popular theatre of the past ensures that even its most serious offerings have a bright and breezy feel. This quality disappears entirely in the 1980s, to be replaced by a grim preoccupation, a tonal umbra flecked with fury, phantasmagoria and perturbation. Realism and anti-realism – the two stalwarts of our play classification system thus far – writhe in their genre categories, as if possessed by an alien intelligence. Individual plays of the period are neither one style nor the other, or both simultaneously, or a new, disturbing mutation.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/when-the-cultural-cringe-abated-australian-drama-in-the-1970s-95855">When the cultural cringe abated: Australian drama in the 1970s</a>
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<p>In the 1980s, people held their breath, waiting to see if nuclear conflict would reduce the planet to atomic dust. There is a similar feel to its drama, a muted despair and a latent fear. </p>
<p>Stephen Sewell’s <a href="https://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/event/81055">Dreams in an Empty City (1986)</a> was written in the middle of the decade and exemplifies these traits. It is apocalyptic in feel, epic in scope and unforgiving in length. A so-called “state of the nation” play, it is eager to tackle big ideas and problems, and unapologetic about the resulting speechifying. It is political drama at its most thrilling and perilous. Hence it’s now-to-us obvious topic: international banking.</p>
<h2>How little has changed</h2>
<p>When I selected Sewell’s play for this series, in December last year, <a href="http://www.afr.com/business/banking-and-finance/financial-services/asic-says-westpacs-bbsw-manipulation-was-like-a-virus-20171212-h03bwo">Australian banks were in the media spotlight for manipulation of the benchmark bill swap rate</a>. Now their immoral behaviour is the focus of a full-blown Royal Commission. Dreams in an Empty City was thus a drama ahead of its time. In 1986, the banks had not yet achieved the general repugnance and distrust they now lay claim to. Or perhaps Sewell recognized the age we have been living in all the while. It points to how little has really changed in 32 years that the play might have been written last week.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/evidence-from-the-banking-royal-commission-looks-like-history-repeating-itself-97090">Evidence from the banking royal commission looks like history repeating itself</a>
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<p>Its complicated plot defies detailed summary. Three main storylines can be identified, which wind in and out of each other like a knot garden. The first is a high-stakes feud between Simon Wilson, an ageing, silver-tail financier, and Derek Wiesland, an uncouth, criminal billionaire of the sort Australia regularly produces. This narrative, which has a number of subplots to it, is one in which two men attempt to destroy each other for strictly business reasons, thus demonstrating, in Wilson’s words, “moral death, the capacity for passionless violence, the terror of meaningless”. (Dreams is exceedingly existential in some of its dialogue).</p>
<p>The second storyline revolves around an ex-priest-turned-actor, Chris O’Brian, who discovers there is a contract out on his life. Chris is the emotional heart of the action. Renouncing pre-emptive violence, yet refusing to run, he has no choice but to await his fate and try to find out the reason for it. He lives with Karen, a one-time socialist, and many of their conversations involve a lugubrious thrashing-through of ethical questions, both personal and political. Chris is starring in a play where he is a South American priest caught up in a scenario of self-sacrifice and redemption. (Dreams eschews light irony in favour of full-strength symbolism).</p>
<p>As it turns out, Chris himself is also looking for redemption: for a murder he committed years previously in Thailand. The skeletal hand of the past is felt everywhere in Sewell’s play, reminding audiences of Karl Marx’s famous saying that “the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living”. (You can watch part of a major speech by Chris performed by a young actor <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc9-yPzKN-I">here</a>).</p>
<p>The third and final storyline is about banking itself. At its centre is Interbank Australia, a subsidiary of an American investment firm so large that if were to fail, it would crash the banking system and the economy around it (sound familiar?). Interbank’s biggest debtor is Derek Wiesland, who it discovers has been inflating the value of his property portfolio in order to borrow more money, in order to buy more property, in order to borrow more money… etc.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226850/original/file-20180710-122253-1j5vvkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226850/original/file-20180710-122253-1j5vvkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226850/original/file-20180710-122253-1j5vvkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226850/original/file-20180710-122253-1j5vvkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226850/original/file-20180710-122253-1j5vvkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226850/original/file-20180710-122253-1j5vvkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226850/original/file-20180710-122253-1j5vvkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226850/original/file-20180710-122253-1j5vvkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Gaden as Wilson and Warwick Moss as Wiesland in the 1986 production.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Wilson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Instead of being contrite, Wiesland, a potty-mouthed thug with no time for bankers’ hypocrisies, insists his debt is Interbank’s problem, and it should buy back his buildings on terms favourable to him. As it turns out, Interbank has no choice but to do this, because the US company who own them is going down the gurgler thanks to their own poor loan strategy (familiar again?).</p>
<p>Thus a foul and insolvent entrepreneur is propped up by a duplicitous bank. Between them, they decide there is only one way out of their dilemma – to heat up the Australian property market, attract mums-and-dads investors, and pass on their losses to them.</p>
<p>What brings these three storylines to the point of convergence is a decision by Chris’s brother, Mark, who ran the O’Brian family building company before it was taken over by Wiesland, to reveal to Wilson the extent of Wiesland’s debts. The three men are thus feloniously linked. Some months previously, Wilson set up an offshore tax fraud scheme for Wiesland – Caracalla Ltd – which Mark abetted, secretly putting Chris’s name on company deeds.</p>
<p>Chris’s murder is necessary to either hush him up, lest the tax fraud scheme be exposed, or revenge Mark’s betrayal of an unforgiving employer. Whichever way, Chris is a dead man, and for no other reason, ultimately, than the people around him are totally corrupt. The name <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caracalla">Caracalla</a>, it is revealed, is taken from the Roman Emperor who killed his brother to gain power, and then destroyed all images of him, to hide his crime.</p>
<h2>Money and morality</h2>
<p>The dialogue of Dreams in an Empty City is as layered as its narrative, and deftly switches between different registers. The two most important are talk about money, and talk about morality. In respect of the first, Sewell shows an astounding ability to parse the language of banking and present it to audiences in such a way that its complexity is acknowledged, even as its consequences are rendered accessible.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223685/original/file-20180618-85840-1d4f74i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223685/original/file-20180618-85840-1d4f74i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223685/original/file-20180618-85840-1d4f74i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223685/original/file-20180618-85840-1d4f74i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223685/original/file-20180618-85840-1d4f74i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223685/original/file-20180618-85840-1d4f74i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223685/original/file-20180618-85840-1d4f74i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223685/original/file-20180618-85840-1d4f74i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stephen Sewell has an astounding ability to parse the language of banking.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Maja Baska NIDA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Here, for example, is Interbank Australia’s floor manager, Harry (a good American) chatting to a friend he runs into at an Embassy dinner. It’s early in the play, before trouble starts:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>George: What kind of loan policy you got?</p>
<p>Harry: I’m not in loans but I think it’s the same policy as back home: energy and real estate.</p>
<p>George: So what sent Continental to the wall?</p>
<p>Harry: They were cowboys. You could tell ‘em you had an oil well in your wisdom tooth and they’d give you a loan.</p>
<p>George: Al reckons International was up to the same thing.</p>
<p>Harry: No. I don’t believe it. There was something else.</p>
<p>George: What?</p>
<p>Harry: (after a slight pause) The bastards were into tax avoidance – the same thing Chase was up to.</p>
<p>George: What Cayman Islands?</p>
<p>Harry: Yeah, the works.</p>
<p>George: You blow the whistle on them?</p>
<p>Harry: I took it as far as I could.</p>
<p>George: So you end up here.</p>
<p>Harry: In a word, yes.</p>
<p>George: Tax avoidance – everyone’s in to it. You’d be a dope not to.</p>
<p>Harry: It’s wrong.</p>
<p>George: Why?</p>
<p>Harry: You and I end up paying for it – the ordinary people. When the government can’t afford to fix the roads, it’s not because we’re cheating on our tax.</p>
<p>George: For the roads – the bastards are paying defence contractors six hundred bucks for an ashtray. Don’t make me laugh, Harry: it’s crooked from the top down.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sewell is a playwright who loves words. For state of the nation drama, less is not more. More is more. Dreams in an Empty City exudes verbal superfluity, a compulsion to give audiences in excess of what they paid for. This prolixity is not gratuitous, however, but is motivated by an obsessive desire to communicate. The play wears its heart on its sleeve, even as its story traverses strange intellectual and emotional pathways.</p>
<p>An example of the dialogue around morality comes at the end, when Wilson, who has engineered Chris’s death, offers to save him if he will agree to become his heir. Wilson is dying of cancer, and lost his only son years before. During the course of the play he befriends Chris, attracted to the ex-priest’s agonized integrity as necessary to a fully human existence. Being who he is, however, Wilson tries to lure Chris to his own debased view of life:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Wilson: Let me show you what I know! (He begins to pull the curtain aside)
Let me show you the power of evil! The city, Chris; one of the most beautiful cities in the world. A city sprung from greed and ambition, built from human flesh, every building the grave of a labourer whose life was less important than the profit its construction meant. The city, Chris, thrown up by finance and speculation, conceived in bribery, corruption and murder. A sparkling, empty edifice of dreams and nightmares. Listen to it, Chris, listen to it sigh: listen to its misery, its glory, its hunger. Feel the hum as power flows through it, organizing it, animating it, connecting every part of it from the magnate in his penthouse to the single mother in her room. The city, Chris, the city of death glistening in the light of its own conceit…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If audiences discern echoes of Satan’s temptation of Jesus in the desert, they’d be correct. Dreams in an Empty City is saturated in Christian eschatological imagery; of blood, guilt, sacrifice, the beauty of innocence, the horror of sin and, ultimately and most importantly, the rejection of violence. </p>
<p>The dramatic use of religious symbolism is reminiscent of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-australian-plays-the-cake-man-and-the-indigenous-mission-experience-88854">The Cake Man</a> ten years prior. But whereas Robert Merritt blends Christianity and Dreamtime story, Sewell blends Christianity and modern economic and political theory.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-australian-plays-the-cake-man-and-the-indigenous-mission-experience-88854">The great Australian plays: The Cake Man and the Indigenous mission experience</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The discombobulation is similar, but the dramatic results strikingly contrast. In mood and mode, The Cake Man is warm, elegiac and bittersweet. Dreams in an Empty City is as cold and bare as bones in a crypt. As Interbank’s manager Nat Boas (a bad American), admits at the end of the play, when asked why she has unscrupulously precipitated global financial collapse, “because banking’s the only industry that runs on trust, and bankers are the last people you should”.</p>
<p>A provocative statement in 1986. Today, more like the unvarnished truth.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96472/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Meyrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Stephen Sewell’s 1986 exemplifies the traits of the decade: apocalyptic in feel, epic in scope and unforgiving in lengthJulian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/941102018-03-31T11:23:52Z2018-03-31T11:23:52Z‘Oklahoma!’ at 75: Has the musical withstood the test of time?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212737/original/file-20180330-189824-yxmwky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">After opening in 1943, “Oklahoma!” was an instant hit and had a run of over 2,000 performances.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-NY-USA-APHS369511-Richard-Rodgers/12cfd96e2cf34438974dbd9fbd7fedce/10/0">Charles Lucas/AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Musicals have long depicted utopian worlds, offering an escape for audiences, if only for a few hours. When Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” premiered in March 1943, the musical was a perfect reprieve for audiences immersed in the day-to-day anxieties of World War II. </p>
<p>It offers a classic narrative: Two men, cowboy Curly McLain and farmhand Jud Fry, fight for the affections of one woman, farm girl Laurey Williams. This love triangle is played out against the backdrop of westward expansion at the outset of the 20th century. In the end, Curly prevails, and the musical closes with a rousing celebration of unity, statehood and nation-building. </p>
<p>“We know we belong to the land / And the land we belong to is grand! … ” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbrnXl2gO_k&feature=youtu.be&t=1m43s">the cast sings</a>. “You’re doin’ fine, Oklahoma! Oklahoma, O.K.” </p>
<p>It’s the sort of all-American story that connects audiences to our collective past – one of the same appeals that has made “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvBYOBTkDRk">Hamilton</a>” a huge success today.</p>
<p>But as we celebrate the 75th anniversary of “Oklahoma!,” I wonder, as a scholar of American music, if the favorite musical of high school drama teachers no longer resonates as it once did. </p>
<p>Said another way: Whose America did “Oklahoma!” depict? And is the musical’s vision of the nation relevant today?</p>
<p>“Oklahoma!” was Rodgers and Hammerstein’s first time working together as a team, and the duo based their musical on “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Grow_the_Lilacs_(play)">Green Grow the Lilacs</a>,” a 1930 play by Lynn Riggs. </p>
<p>That story is also about white Americans and westward expansion, but there’s a key difference: References to Native Americans and African Americans appear in Riggs’ play. Characters talk frequently about “Indian Territory” and acknowledge the dangers of living there. </p>
<p>When Rodgers and Hammerstein adapted this narrative, their characters became blissfully unaware of the racial realities of their setting. Even though <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/lesser-known-history-african-american-cowboys-180962144/">one in four</a> cowboys were black, they didn’t incorporate African-Americans; and while the show is set in Claremore, Oklahoma – smack in the middle of Cherokee Nation – there’s no mention of the violent conflict and division of tribal lands that had been taking place since the 1887 passage of the <a href="http://legisworks.org/sal/24/stats/STATUTE-24-Pg387.pdf">Dawes Act</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212741/original/file-20180330-189821-wvpwv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212741/original/file-20180330-189821-wvpwv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212741/original/file-20180330-189821-wvpwv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212741/original/file-20180330-189821-wvpwv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212741/original/file-20180330-189821-wvpwv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212741/original/file-20180330-189821-wvpwv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212741/original/file-20180330-189821-wvpwv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Oklahoma!’ celebrates its fifth birthday at St. James Theatre in New York on March 31, 1948.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Entertain-/5cbd064243234a4ab8673720696d0fa8/12/0">Ed Ford/AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So where did they go? Musical theater scholar <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=fv4IAQAAMAAJ">Andrea Most</a> argues that the non-white figures find a home in the antagonist, Jud Fry.</p>
<p>In the musical, Fry is the embodiment of all things dangerous and dark, a brute who consumes copious amounts of alcohol and lives in a squalid shack plastered with pornography. At the time, in American entertainment, whenever writers wanted to set a character apart from proper, white society, it was common to deploy this trope. The symbolism isn’t reserved for African Americans and Native Americans. Jud’s character also embodies the looming danger of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. </p>
<p>When Curly sings “everything’s going my way” in the opening number, he’s not just talking about their collective prosperity; he’s also referencing military victories abroad. Jud’s continued presence threatens the forward motion of Claremore. According to Most, after Jud dies from falling on his own knife during a fight with Curly, he becomes “a sacrificial scapegoat … whose death cleanses the community of darkness.”</p>
<p>The death of Jud is Manifest Destiny and a new world order two-stepping its way into the 20th century. </p>
<p>Of course, real life isn’t so black and white: The day “Oklahoma!” premiered, Allied forces killed hundreds of civilians when they accidentally bombed a neighborhood in <a href="http://www.brandgrens.nl/en/the-bombing-of-rotterdam">Rotterdam</a>. </p>
<p>“Oklahoma!” ignores all of this. It favors a nostalgic vision of America’s actions in the world, a necessarily reductive spin for theatergoers of its day.</p>
<p>But audiences of 2018 are more culturally sophisticated. Does “Oklahoma!” have a place in this America? </p>
<p>Musicals – then, just as now – offer an important window into American culture. And “Oklahoma!” can be seen as a work that captures an optimistic vision of America at a moment when its future remained very much up in the air. </p>
<p>But treating “Oklahoma!” as a museum piece – a work frozen in time, performed with full fidelity to the original version – doesn’t feel quite right to me. At the same time, neither does removing it from the regularly performed repertoire of American musical theater. It remains an important show.</p>
<p>Perhaps it’s on modern audiences to read between the lines when they watch classic musicals – to think about what’s not appearing on stage, and why that might be the case.</p>
<p>But directors and performers can also play a role and can make creative choices that open up the narrative a bit. What if the cowboys were all dressed as police officers? What if Laurey was played by a Native American actress? What if Curly actually drove the knife into Jud, rather than Jud falling onto it on his own? </p>
<p>Creative re-envisioning doesn’t need to only apply to “Oklahoma!” Any Broadway classic, from “Show Boat” to “A Chorus Line,” should be eligible. Doing so can allow American actors, directors and audiences alike to reclaim the narratives of the past, while maintaining dialogue with the realities of our present moment.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94110/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ryan Raul Bañagale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Broadway hit offered an escape from the anxieties of World War II. But the America it portrayed – unified, patriotic and white – rings hollow today.Ryan Raul Bañagale, Crown Family Professor for Innovation in the Arts, Colorado CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/884682017-12-07T00:20:18Z2017-12-07T00:20:18ZWould you buy a theatre ticket for someone who can’t afford it? Now you can<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198039/original/file-20171206-31552-1ehe8au.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A scene from The Cocoa Butter Club: Midsumma Special, a special cabaret performance that will make its Arts Centre Melbourne debut on Friday, January 19 2018. It uses a NOTAFLOF ticketing system. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A new ticketing system that allows people to buy tickets for others who may not be able to afford them is gaining traction in the performing arts industry. NOTAFLOF (an ungainly acronym which stands for “no one turned away for lack of funds”) is an option that many are including in their ticketing process, such as the forthcoming Arts Centre Melbourne production of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TheCocoaButterClub/">The Cocoa Butter Club</a>.</p>
<p>The NOTAFLOF system has been used at both <a href="http://periwinklecinema.com/">queer cinema</a> and <a href="https://dothebay.com/events/2017/12/6/the-red-shades-a-trans-superhero-rock-opera-notaflof">trans theatre</a> in San Francisco. In the UK, the <a href="https://www.arcolatheatre.com/">Arcola Theatre</a> off the West End has a “pay what you want” Tuesday, as a commitment to providing accessible world-class theatre. </p>
<p>The NOTAFLOF pricing system is still in relative infancy. Given that, there is little evidence to suggest that more people are attending cultural events who would not have otherwise. But what we do know from research experiments is that individuals who do elect to “pay it forward” are likely to pay more, even when they do not know who it is they are <a href="http://rady.ucsd.edu/docs/faculty/PIF_JPSP.pdf">paying for</a>. </p>
<p>The main motivation for using NOTAFLOF in the arts is to create a space for inclusive and diverse audience participation in the arts and culture. Many advocates of NOTAFLOF see an individual’s ability to pay as being linked to issues such as racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism or other forms of adverse social judgment and oppression. </p>
<p>But beyond these societal issues, why would an individual pay more for someone else?</p>
<h2>Charitable instinct</h2>
<p>People often look to the behaviour of others to help them decide how to behave themselves. As a result, the role of social media is vital. The promoters of the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=VOLUMES%20Presents%20tickets">Volumes Festival</a>, for instance, have used Facebook to advertise their flexible payment system, in order to reflect the community-minded principles they wish to be associated with (and believe their audience is attuned to). </p>
<p>NOTAFLOF can be a marketing tool, used to attract a greater audience that reflects a diversity of individuals across a wider spectrum of price points. If pricing at a play is more flexible and responsive, more theatregoers are likely to attend. </p>
<p>But, to be sustainable, this type of system requires patrons to be honest. Sometimes, when a “pay what you want” model is used, an even higher degree of price discrimination – charging different consumers different prices for the same good – can occur. </p>
<p>By framing NOTAFLOF as a community-minded project, a signal is created that compels people to behave generously. The idea that you are able to pay for another person who might otherwise not be able to attend an event has benefits for both the receiver and the giver.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/october-2005/the-economics-of-charitable-giving-what-gives">Research</a> has found that most individuals behave charitably when given the option to pay on behalf of someone else. Interestingly, even when individuals are able to receive a good for free through these schemes, <a href="http://rady.ucsd.edu/docs/faculty/PIF_JPSP.pdf">many still choose to pay</a>. Even more surprising is that within these pricing models, participants can be <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/12338.html">unexpectedly generous</a>, given these exchanges allow the opportunity to act selfishly.</p>
<p>The other main reason people pay more is that acts such as donating and volunteering elicit “warm glow” feelings of social connection. </p>
<p><a href="http://file.scirp.org/pdf/AJIBM_2015082114261580.pdf">How much a person is willing to contribute</a> depends on how they feel about social norms such as altruism and fairness, and the level of social interaction with those who are offering the service or good. However, there is also a case that some people respond to an element of <a href="https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/127/1/1/1832520">social pressure</a> when choosing how much to pay.</p>
<p>Paying it forward is similar to “pay what you want” pricing used by Radiohead for their 2007 album <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Rainbows">In Rainbows</a>, which became one of their most downloaded albums. Likewise, Amanda Palmer’s 2012 <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/amandapalmer/amanda-palmer-the-new-record-art-book-and-tour">Kickstarter campaign</a> raised more than US$1 million by giving consumers choice in how much they would pay. Elective pricing allowed fans to demonstrate the true value of their relationship with the artist.</p>
<p>So far examples of these types of payment and pricing models are mostly limited to youth and fringe orientated forms of culture, rather than high arts like opera performances, where audiences are typically more stratified and less diverse. Cultural events are increasingly being fuelled by social media and increased levels of social consciousness.</p>
<p>As that happens, new forms of payment are growing: especially those that appeal to the socially minded ethos.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88468/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new form of ticketing is becoming more popular in the arts – and it might help us be more charitable than before.Meg Elkins, Lecturer with School of Economics, Finance and Marketing, RMIT UniversityBronwyn Coate, Lecturer in Economics, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/856982017-10-16T13:24:38Z2017-10-16T13:24:38ZAssassinating Katie Hopkins may be bad taste but theatre-goers may just love it<p>Katie Hopkins, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/katie-hopkins-and-the-sun-when-the-unreadable-prints-the-unspeakable-40505">controversial British media commentator</a>, has become the subject of a new stage play guaranteed to inflame the public as much has her <a href="https://theconversation.com/katie-hopkins-proclaims-herself-the-jesus-of-the-outspoken-its-a-very-dangerous-message-78544">own extreme columns</a> do.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/oct/11/theatre-to-stage-musical-based-on-imaginary-death-of-katie-hopkins">Assassination of Katie Hopkins</a> musical is due to open in spring 2018 at Theatr Clywd in north Wales. Tucked away in the market town of Mold, Flintshire, one may not expect it to be the venue for such a topic, and yet Theatr Clwyd has <a href="http://www.dailypost.co.uk/whats-on/theatre-news/rhyl-murderer-ruth-ellis-story-12644097">long held a reputation</a> for excellent, thoughtful, and entertaining stage productions, often attracting <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2012/jul/08/toby-robertson">luminaries of British Theatre</a> to tread the boards there. </p>
<p>One can already hear the knives of public opinion being sharpened. The Twitterverse went into spontaneous combustion as those both for and against the controversial celebrity mouth piece etched the lines of battle into virtual sand. Of course, whether any of them will look up from their smartphones long enough to actually go see the musical in spring, is another matter. </p>
<p>I for one applaud writer Chris Bush, director James Grieve and artistic director Tamara Harvey for daring to provoke. This is part of theatre’s rich history – theatre is an art and art should provoke. In the late 1820s and early 1830s Daniel Auber’s opera <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/04/30/opera-on-the-barricades">La Muette de Portici</a> inspired not only the July Revolution in 1830s France, but also the establishment of an independent Belgian nation, from under the yoke of King William I’s Dutch kingdom. </p>
<p>Closer to home, on the streets of Dublin in 1907, there were riots after a performance of <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/1010/">The Playboy of the Western World</a> by John Millington Synge. The play’s plot centred around Christy Mahon who, on the run after murdering his father, is ironically turned into a local celebrity. The play was attacked at the time for a lack of moral decency – Arthur Griffith, founder of Sinn Féin and later president of Ireland, called it a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2003/apr/16/theatre.samanthaellis">vile and inhuman story told in the foulest language</a>”. Yet The Playboy went on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2011/sep/23/playboy-western-world-old-vic">to be performed globally</a>, and is now studied by Irish school children as the master work of a major writer.</p>
<p>Moving forward to 1960s London, playwright Joe Orton, a working class, gay man had his breakout play, <a href="http://www.joeorton.org/Pages/Joe_Orton_Plays3.html">Entertaining Mr Sloane</a>, which also used patricide as a theme. In it, Sloane murders Kemp, the elderly father of Kath and Ed, who are both sexually attracted to Sloane. The play of course was extremely controversial. One Telegraph reader complained “I myself was nauseated by this endless parade of mental and physical perversion”. The reader, one Edna Welthorpe, was actually an <a href="http://www.joeorton.org/Pages/Joe_Orton_Life9.html">alter ego character invented by Orton</a>, a master of social and transmedia before such things existed. </p>
<p>Orton was a playwright with his finger on the pulse of British Society. He knew how to press buttons and get a reaction. Orton, who was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/from-the-archive-blog/2017/aug/09/joe-orton-death-archive-1967">brutally murdered</a> by his lover Kenneth Halliwell in 1967, has inspired many a writer since. It is hard to imagine that there would be a <a href="https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/mark-ravenhill">Mark Ravenhill</a> without a Joe Orton. Ravenhill first came onto the scene with a play entitled <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-shopping-and-fucking-royal-court-london-1356460.html">Shopping and Fucking</a>, directed by Max Stafford-Clark in 1996, in which there were portrayals of male rape and perhaps the first use of the word “rimming” on the British stage. Outrage followed, but the play had a serious message about consumerism, and indeed the state of the nation. </p>
<p>Another controversial playwright at this time was Sarah Kane, whose play Blasted <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/young-playwright-blasted-for-brutalist-debut-work-1568794.html">was so controversial</a> it was debated on the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme Newsnight. A middle-aged, bigoted, male journalist rapes an innocent young girl in a hotel room, a soldier then appears in the hotel room with a sniper rifle and we are transported into a different reality that is of war and inhumanity as jogtrot. Jack Tinker of the Daily Mail called it a “disgusting feast of filth”. Today it is considered as an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2015/jan/12/sarah-kane-blasted-was-dismissed-by-critics">incredibly important play</a> by a playwright who sadly left this world too soon. </p>
<p>I was also writing controversial plays in the 1990s: <a href="https://carolinefarrellwriter.com/2015/08/24/doing-it-with-passion-writers-in-ireland-series-len-collin/">Box</a> looked at two London runaways who find the diary of a British soldier who fell in love with a German soldier in the trenches of the World War I. It challenged male sexuality and, though it did attract some criticism, it was also named critics’ choice in Time Out and City Limits – a rare thing at the time.</p>
<p>Despite each of these plays causing a stir, the performances were well attended, and several have been revived in more recent years. While assassinating Katie Hopkins may seem like the perfect type of clickbait headline to encourage a new young audience to go to the theatre, the fact of the matter is that the stage has been home to this kind of content for centuries. Closed off from the world for a few hours, one can delve into the depths of the human psyche. It is one of the last places where a watcher is forced to form their own views of the performance before heading to the social media platforms beloved by the likes of Hopkins to praise or complain.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85698/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Len Collin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The stage is the perfect place to explore dark thoughts.Len Collin, Senior Lecturer in Screenwriting and Media Production, Northumbria University, NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/819162017-08-07T02:23:33Z2017-08-07T02:23:33ZRural America: Where Sam Shepard’s roots ran deepest<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181052/original/file-20170804-10088-1unz4a0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Sam Shepard died of complications from ALS on July 27, 2017, at his home in Kentucky.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-California-Unite-/1a0ef9a602e5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/6/1">Jakub Mosur/AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Sam Shepard <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/theater/sam-shepard-dead.html?_r=0">died on July 27</a> the world lost one of the greatest playwrights of the past half-century. He was an artist renowned for bravely plumbing his own life for material, spinning much of his own pain into theatrical gold. His best work revealed the hollowness behind the idea of the happy family and its corollary, the American dream. Subversive and funny, Shepard had the soul of a poet and an experimental streak that never faded. </p>
<p>The American family was, no doubt, Shepard’s great subject. His quintet of family plays that premiered between 1978 and 1985 – “Curse of the Starving Class,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Buried Child,” “Fool for Love,” “True West” (both nominated for Pulitzers) and “A Lie of the Mind” – form the foundation of Shepard’s lofty reputation. </p>
<p>While researching <a href="http://www.counterpointpress.com/dd-product/sam-shepard/">my recent biography of Shepard</a>, I found that most critics and scholars focused on the playwright’s relationship with his father. Rightly so: Samuel Shepard Rogers suffered from alcoholism and his only son grew up bearing the brunt of his abuse. Shepard’s family plays turn on the collateral damage of the fathers.</p>
<p>Less frequently examined is the playwright’s fixation on the land, and the ways in which this plays out in his work. Both as a writer and in his personal outlook, Shepard drew deeply from the old trope that nature and innocence are intertwined. And according to critic Harold Bloom, Shepard saw doom in the “materialistic and technological obsessions of modern society.” </p>
<p>Throughout his work, Shepard decried so-called progress, especially the rampant development of open space. Whether it was the forced sale of a family farm (“Curse of the Starving Class”) or Native Americans being driven off their reservation (“Operation Sidewinder”), it all came to no good.</p>
<p>To Shepard, a relationship with the land was nothing short of existential. As the playwright told an interviewer in 1988: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“What’s most frightening to me right now is this estrangement from life. People and things are becoming more and more removed from the actual. We are becoming more and more removed from the earth to the point that people just don’t know themselves or each other or anything.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Shepard arrived at this impulse naturally. When he was in elementary school, his family settled in a small house on Lemon Street in Bradbury, California. An orchard of 80 avocado trees attached to the house meant that Shepard – then known by his birth name, Steve Rogers – was kept busy irrigating and harvesting the crop. He also raised dogs and sheep, and when he had free time he worked the fields belonging to his neighbors. During high school, he was an eager member of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-H">4-H Club</a> and Future Farmers of America, and spent his summers tending to the thoroughbreds at nearby Santa Anita Park.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181055/original/file-20170804-21730-1kwm9c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181055/original/file-20170804-21730-1kwm9c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181055/original/file-20170804-21730-1kwm9c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181055/original/file-20170804-21730-1kwm9c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181055/original/file-20170804-21730-1kwm9c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181055/original/file-20170804-21730-1kwm9c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181055/original/file-20170804-21730-1kwm9c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181055/original/file-20170804-21730-1kwm9c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">To Shepard, the creep of development threatened the innocence and vitality of the natural world.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ikewinski/8622447090/in/photolist-e8Wi7S-eg4ifa-dM2HQ5-hu5Hw-3NUR3-8xtDZy-7FgWeC-56SeoU-6DKnyA-35pzNp-2tFKBy-ebuhpu-aeAYgQ-4WXR8T-nPTHS-asXkJC-9rEJ7f-6Aat7S-4z7f6i-eh7G2U-iKkoC-HZyxq-hu6Ss-cn3RdA-e8Whtu-cUdsUq-asUJPc-VzDn7-cu3V45-4sRZrd-pZJNNV-8qBNUp-5nYutD-6KevqQ-eaS2HC-7QrZGj-96PnEC-oxgmJp-e8LWhq-4b744D-9k6GcD-ectZgu-9k6FS4-9k6ERr-9k6GfB-eaLoun-VeAeu7-ectYDQ-9crhPB-9k9KPu">Mike Lewinski</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In college, Shepard’s major wasn’t theater but education. As he once wrote to a friend, back then he wanted to become a “veterinarian with a flashy station wagon, and a flashy blond wife, raising German shepherds in some fancy suburb.” He never finished college nor became a vet. Instead, Shepard left home and made his way across the country to New York City and the East Village, where he would quickly transform himself into the brightest light of the nascent off-off-Broadway scene. </p>
<p>But even as his reputation grew, he never left his agricultural roots behind. In fact, one of Shepard’s early one-act plays was titled “<a href="http://www.sam-shepard.com/4hclub.html">4-H Club</a>” (1965). </p>
<p>Other plays from the 1960s combine his old life with his new one. Rural scenes are full of characters who talk in the hip argot of the Village streets, characters caught in an absurdist situation go “fishing” off the edge of the stage, and Native Americans, by their very presence onstage in plays like 1970’s “<a href="http://www.sam-shepard.com/operation.html">Operation Sidewinder</a>,” stake a claim to the land that’s been stolen from them. </p>
<p>With time, the playwright would more directly address the scourge of overdevelopment that he saw happening around him. It would become a running theme of sorts, as Shepard saw the nation growing and changing – but not for the better. </p>
<p>“One of the biggest tragedies about this country was moving from an agricultural society to an urban, industrial society. We’ve been wiped out,” <a href="http://bit.ly/2u9gidC">he told Playboy in 1984</a>.</p>
<p>Shepard’s characters embody this loss. In “<a href="http://www.sam-shepard.com/geography.html">Geography of a Horse Dreamer</a>” (1974), one character is a gambler who can predict tomorrow’s winners at the racetrack, but loses that power once he’s physically forced from his usual haunts to a new, strange locale. In “<a href="http://www.sam-shepard.com/buriedchild.html">Buried Child</a>” (1979), the land holds the answer to the play’s central mystery: At play’s end, the fallow backyard gives up a baby from a shallow grave, shining a light on the incestuous relationship that has led to the ruination of this family – as if the purity of nature had been offended by a terrible transgression. And in Shepard’s late masterpiece, “<a href="http://www.sam-shepard.com/ages.html">Ages of the Moon</a>,” two old friends finally find solace by communing with nature at a small, remote campsite.</p>
<p>Nowhere in Shepard’s oeuvre does land play a bigger role than in 1978’s “<a href="http://www.sam-shepard.com/curse.html">Curse of the Starving Class</a>.” The Tate family’s farm stands between husband and wife: He wants to unload it to pay off his gambling and drinking debts; she wants to sell it and use the money to escape her marriage and take the children to Europe. The culminating scene features the husband, Weston, coming to his senses after sobering up and walking around his property. Reconnecting with his land, Weston turns his life around, “like peeling off a whole person.”</p>
<p>Shepard’s love of the country and its open spaces would mark all aspects of his career. Also a celebrated actor, he favored “rural” dramas, those set on farms, racetracks or some windswept piece of desert. In his screen debut, Shepard starred as the doomed farmer in Terrence Malick’s “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077405/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Days of Heaven</a>” (1978). In his screenplay for the cult classic film, “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087884/">Paris, Texas</a>,” (1984) Shepard mirrored the desolation of the South Texas desert in the soul of his protagonist, Travis, a man suffering from a malady that Shepard often said he himself felt: “lostness.”</p>
<p>Shepard felt most at home traversing what one western historian called this “strange land full of mystery.” He took pride in being a western writer.</p>
<p>“I was never interested in the mythological cowboy. I was interested in the real thing,” <a href="http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1981/01/11/page/160/article/theater">he once said</a>.</p>
<p>“He would call me late in the night,” <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/my-buddy-sam-shepard">Patti Smith wrote in a loving tribute</a>, “from somewhere on the road, a ghost town in Texas, a rest stop near Pittsburgh, or from Santa Fe, where he was parked in the desert, listening to the coyotes howling. But most often he would call from his place in Kentucky, on a cold, still night, when one could hear the stars breathing…” </p>
<p>She knew, better than anyone, that such places constituted Shepard’s emotional and physical territory. He adored the vastness of the plains, the green of loping pasturelands; he cherished his time running the highways and byways in his pickup, or sitting next to the campfire on a real-life cattle drive, and reveled in the grit of this country’s less-traveled corners. </p>
<p>Shepard loved America for its beauty, its danger and its promise, forever transforming her in our imaginations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81916/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John J. Winters does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>To the recently deceased playwright, the nation’s greatest tragedy was its move from an agricultural society to an urban, industrial one.John J. Winters, Adjunct Professor of English, Bridgewater State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/767992017-05-03T05:38:53Z2017-05-03T05:38:53ZThe great Australian plays: sex, poetry and The Chapel Perilous<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167631/original/file-20170503-4099-agoekw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Chapel Perilous follows the life of Sally Banner “a rebel in word and deed”.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/fishyone1/8657979960/in/photolist-ec5pNy-naFZMc-RzmMsq-8ASC8P-fz2Pbj-nXXRQL-i3miUc-T2MjjA-jRGc4F-vedzAc-gAmZhB-RBcfxJ-dRCtE5-4pApc-zqK5U-j2sQkt-fUfXdX-g1kmG6-5y9oZc-S1nmgH-RBceXL-3zmTpp-gQjAhM-fUoWep-ssu7-kP3E26-8AVGcA-SGeEv6-9SXBn4-g2un44-7LmuBk-anaTDB-2bKBuo-8LNZr7-8ASnKB-g1k43v-9dEUm7-foQ4vc-7WWrcX-aAd6GA-7BZuM4-g2tNZ5-8ZLFgh-87NKYX-p16LHe-eeYq3i-8ASDS8-aJwB78-7JNnzE-qC2vcZ">Flickr/Andrew Sutherland</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When she died in 2002, The Age hailed Dorothy Hewett as “<a href="http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/08/25/1030053009913.html">the grande dame of Australian literature</a>” and gave a thumbnail sketch of her remarkable life as poet, dramatist, novelist, Communist Party activist and serial lover. Calling her a free spirit doesn’t come close to capturing the turbulent, at times self-destructive energy that marked Hewitt’s relationships and her work.</p>
<p>In Wild Card (1990), an autobiography written at the prompting of another theatre maverick, Hal Porter, Hewett gave a taste of her feisty existence as a young woman working on the factory floor in the 1950s:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was sacked from the Alexandria Spinning Mills for being eight months pregnant, but before I left I managed two quixotic gestures. I stood up at the annual meeting of the Textile Workers’ Union and demanded equal pay for woman workers. There was a bit of furore, they moved a point of order, and that was the end of it. [And] I organized the Redfern Branch of the Communist Party to [copy] and distribute a bulletin called “Bobbin Up” outside the mill. The leading article began with Les Flood’s immortal words: “There’s a name for a man who lives off a woman”.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is important to recall Hewett’s life when considering her work because no other Australian playwright has infused their plays with so much autobiographical matter, to the point where they become one, self-revelatory, expressive act.</p>
<h2>A very personal play</h2>
<p>Seeing or reading Hewett is a very personal encounter, a communicative exchange of great potency, intimacy and candour. Her passionate personality frequently got her into trouble with family, friends and colleagues. Such things pass without comment in other (usually male) writers. With Hewett, one feels, the world forgave neither her transgressions nor her virtues. She was held to higher account, often unreasonably so.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167668/original/file-20170503-4099-9exezk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167668/original/file-20170503-4099-9exezk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167668/original/file-20170503-4099-9exezk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167668/original/file-20170503-4099-9exezk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167668/original/file-20170503-4099-9exezk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167668/original/file-20170503-4099-9exezk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167668/original/file-20170503-4099-9exezk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167668/original/file-20170503-4099-9exezk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dorothy Hewett in 1965.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">University of Western Australia archives.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hewitt was her own most withering critic. The creative pay-off was not only that she transmuted the tidal wave of a tumultuous life into art, but that she was searching and truthful in doing so. An absence of self-pity, self-justification and self-congratulation pushes her plays out of the confessional category, and turns them into brilliantly illuminated self-immolations.</p>
<p>The Chapel Perilous (1971), one of her earlier works, is an expressionist drama that follows the emotionally epic journey of Sally Banner “a rebel in word and deed” from young, uncompromising schoolgirl to older, still uncompromising thirty-something woman.</p>
<p>In no way is it naturalistic, though the narrative does have a chronological beginning, middle and end. The stage setting described at the start of the play hints at the progression of dream-like scenes to come:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Upstage against the cyclorama is the outline of a school chapel with a stained-glass window discovered later to contain a figure of Sally Banner. Three shallow steps lead to the chapel and … [i]n front … are three rostrums and an altar on a platform. Large masks of the Headmistress, the Canon and Sister Rose remain constant throughout the play, standing on the three rostrums and large enough to hide an actor behind each. Three loudspeakers are prominently placed. The three masked figures play the roles of judges of the action against the landscape of the profane chapel. Sometimes they play themselves, sometimes they step from behind the masks into the body of the play and become other characters.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Poetry on stage</h2>
<p>It is impossible to briefly summarise the plot of The Chapel Perilous, as its form is too disjunctive and unpredictable. But two things stand out. First, it is deeply, iridescently poetic. Songs, doggerel, hymns and dance numbers jostle with snatches of verse – some quotations, some Hewett’s own – to create an acoustic patchwork of heightened meaning.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167633/original/file-20170503-4102-1xa4r32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167633/original/file-20170503-4102-1xa4r32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167633/original/file-20170503-4102-1xa4r32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167633/original/file-20170503-4102-1xa4r32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167633/original/file-20170503-4102-1xa4r32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167633/original/file-20170503-4102-1xa4r32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167633/original/file-20170503-4102-1xa4r32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167633/original/file-20170503-4102-1xa4r32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Like her protagonist in The Chapel Perilous, Hewett spent her childhood in rural Western Australia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wheatbelt image from www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By approaching playwriting in this way, Hewett reconnects Australian drama with Australian poetry: with <a href="https://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/mcauley-james">James McCauley</a>, <a href="https://www.adelaide.edu.au/library/special/mss/harris/">Max Harris</a>, <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/slessor-kenneth-adolf-11712">Kenneth Slessor</a> and above all <a href="https://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/stewart-douglas">Douglas Stewart</a>, whose verse dramas Ned Kelly (1942) and Fire on the Snow (1944) gesture towards a marriage between the two art forms, where the spoken word achieves sacred power.</p>
<p>Here’s a sample of Hewett’s mix of alliterative deftness and vernacular force:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The voices of the AUTHORITY FIGURES come through the amplifier.</p>
<p>AMPLIFIER [HEADMISTRESS’s voice] Sally Banner was one of my girls who went on to university. Many of the old girls came back to see me. I waited but she didn’t come back. When France fell I cried before my class. Not one of them understood why.</p>
<p>[SISTER ROSA’s voice] Atheist, pacifist, communist, blasphemer, she whored her youth away and there was no peace in our time.</p>
<p>[CANON’s voice] I will give her a reference, because, as far as I know, she is a clean-living Christian girl.</p>
<p>… An ABC INTERVIEWER enters with a microphone.</p>
<p>INTERIVEWER: And everyone’s talking about Sally Banner’s grand slam: first, second and third in the Jindyworobak Poetry Competition. Mrs Banner, I believe Sally was wild – er, a live-wire in her university days?</p>
<p>MOTHER: Well, no more than most really. They were unsettling times. The Americans were here, lacing our daughters’ milk shakes with Spanish Fly. It turned their heads. We all worried about our daughters. What decent mother wouldn’t? [ASIDE] She was a real trollop. She’d lie down anywhere and do it like a dog. It was as if she wanted to punish us for something. Why, what had we done? We only loved and protected her. (Act 1)</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Symbolising the sexual revolution</h2>
<p>The second feature of The Chapel Perilous is the sexuality that flows through it from opening line to final moments like molten clinker. Nothing is directly shown and erotic talk is minimal. Yet despite this – or perhaps because of it – the pursuit, practice and passion of sex drenches the action of the play at every turn.</p>
<p>From Sally’s childhood in 1920s rural Western Australia, to her first boyfriends, swept away by World War II, to her days Sydneyside as a Communist Party organiser and straying wife, she is looking for sex, and the love that comes with the sex, and the sex that is love’s best expression and reward.</p>
<p>More than the many portrayals of male libido that can be found in other <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_New_Wave">New Wave plays</a>, Sally Banner symbolises the Sexual Revolution in its purest and most interesting form. For Sally, sex is rebellion, a quest for authentic human connection that is, alas, unmet by the creeps, shits, evaders, woman-haters and thugs she seems to fall in love with.</p>
<p>Men do not come out well from The Chapel Perilous. Women don’t come out much better either. Yet Sally outlives all the humiliations, betrayals and pratfalls, to emerge a girl of yearning heart, looking for love, hungry for life.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>SALLY: I passed my love on the street today, </p>
<p>He looked through my head and he looked away.</p>
<p>When I searched in the dust I could only find</p>
<p>A man with his lips and his eyes gone blind,</p>
<p>And all that we were, and all that we knew,</p>
<p>Has gone with the wry, dry dust that blew</p>
<p>O where has he gone? O where has he gone,</p>
<p>My love on whom the good sun shone? (Act II)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The fluidity, inventiveness and momentum of The Chapel Perilous is spectacular. There are five named parts and a chorus of unspecified size. Between them they enact dozens of characters and moments in Sally’s big river of a life. There is no rest, only change, and the end of the play is a temporary halt rather than a resolution. Sally still has so much more to give and to get.</p>
<p>Like <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/august-strindberg-21429601">August Strindberg</a>, a playwright she admired, Hewett treated her own life as an experiment. She was the opposite of a celebrity. She was a gifted poet who sought to express universal experience; or more precisely, to elevate her experience to a universal level, where it might burst forth in meter and image to touch other people, and in some way change them.</p>
<p>Bob Carr called her an authentic working class voice, one of the last Australian playwrights to do factory labour. Hewett fits no easy category. She was a feminist with few illusions about women, a one-time Communist with few illusions about men, and a lover with few illusions about love, either with men or women.</p>
<p>The Chapel Perilous, like Sally Banner herself, is a force of nature. That the play is not often revived is deeply regrettable given its richness and imaginative force. It cries out for the skills and resources of a modern director, someone who will interpret it with the right mixture of audacity and fidelity.</p>
<p>When that day comes Hewett will take her rightful place in the Australian repertoire as one of our most original and daring dramatic voices.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76799/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Meyrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>No other Australian playwright has mined their own life as much as Dorothy Hewett. In this expressionist drama, she depicts a girl of yearning heart, looking for love and hungry for life.Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/729562017-02-14T19:08:57Z2017-02-14T19:08:57ZThe Great Australian Plays: The Front Room Boys and New Wave theatre<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156726/original/image-20170214-26003-kji9qg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The swinging sixties arrived in Australian theatre with a bang. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/hwmobs/8571842844">Aussie~mobs/Flickr</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Fucken boong”. With these words Australian theatre entered the swinging sixties – eight years after the decade began. </p>
<p>The two profanities capture the spirit of rebellion that characterised a new generation of theatre artists. They are the last line of Alex Buzo’s play <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_and_Ahmed">Norm and Ahmed</a> (1968) and the actors who uttered them were <a href="http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1265&context=ltc">prosecuted for obscenity</a> when it was produced in Queensland and Victoria. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sV66Nln--NA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The full County Court turned up to assess Norm and Ahmed’s performance in Melbourne.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Only in retrospect does the police pursuit of stage drama look quaint. At the time, it was in deadly earnest, and in Australia the shadow of government censorship hung over international productions as varied as Jean-Claude van Italie’s America Hurrah! (1968), Mart Crowley’s Boys in the Band (1969), and James Rado and Gerome Ragni’s musical Hair (1969).</p>
<p>The theatre of the forties and fifties was not without its confronting plays. Offensiveness was not invented in the sixties. What makes sixties drama noteworthy is that giving offence often seems to be its aim, as if offending the audience – the title of a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offending_the_Audience">1966 play by Austrian writer Peter Handke</a> – is the chief purpose of theatre.</p>
<p>Alex Buzo, the author of Norm and Ahmed, went on to write a clutch of plays in similar style, including The Front Room Boys (1969). They are all cool, comic, and disturbing. They are also supremely self-possessed. Despite his youth – Buzo was only 24 when Norm and Ahmed premiered – and the lack of Australian theatre companies committed to Australian drama, these plays demonstrate an assurance of tone, a complexity of idea and a mastery of form that is truly breathtaking.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156727/original/image-20170214-25995-hsjf5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156727/original/image-20170214-25995-hsjf5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156727/original/image-20170214-25995-hsjf5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156727/original/image-20170214-25995-hsjf5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156727/original/image-20170214-25995-hsjf5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156727/original/image-20170214-25995-hsjf5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156727/original/image-20170214-25995-hsjf5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156727/original/image-20170214-25995-hsjf5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alex Buzo: his writing was cool, comic and disturbing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Emma Buzo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Where did it come from, this remarkable body of work? Where did the plays of Australian writers such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Hibberd">Jack Hibberd</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Romeril">John Romeril</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Ellis">Bob Ellis</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alma_De_Groen">Alma de Groen</a>, <a href="https://australianplays.org/playwright/CP-blasur">Ron Blair</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Hewett">Dorothy Hewett</a>, and <a href="http://www.timgooding.com.au/biography">Tim Gooding</a> come from? It’s as if they arrived by spaceship from another, more confident planet.</p>
<p>Gone are the over-worked literary allusions and rickety plot structures of earlier playwrights. In their place we find wit, precocity, and deftness of touch. The drama of this “new wave” of writers has a mercurial intelligence and an unselfconscious ease, as if plays don’t have to be arduously constructed but simply proffered forth, a native gift.</p>
<p>In 1971 the critic Katharine Brisbane and her scholar husband Philip Parsons began publishing this new Australian drama at the still-prolific <a href="http://www.currency.com.au/">Currency Press</a>. Its authors’ list grew rapidly in quantity and diversity, and today stands as a testament to, and resource for, this unique time.</p>
<p>There is more to theatre than written drama. But the plays of the 1960s and 1970s bear witness to the fact that not only did Australian theatre radically change during the period, but so did the country around it.</p>
<p>The Front Room Boys is set in a bog-standard corporate office in a non-specific Australian city, where a small group of put-upon middle management minions toil in meaningless servitude to grindingly minor administrative tasks. It’s both awful and awfully familiar. Here’s a taste of the dexterity and humour with which Buzo explores his theme – all of the male characters, by the way, have names ending in “o”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A day in January, Monday 9am. Lights up on THOMO at his desk. He is reading some reports. ROBBO enters.</p>
<p>ROBBO: G’day Thomo.</p>
<p>THOMO: G’day Robbo.</p>
<p>[ROBBO hangs up his coat, sits down and reads a report. GIBBO enters.]</p>
<p>GIBBO: G’day Thomo.</p>
<p>THOMO: G’day Gibbo.</p>
<p>[GIBBO hangs up his coat, sits down and reads a report. Presto enters.]</p>
<p>PRESTO: G’day Thomo.</p>
<p>THOMO: G’day Presto.</p>
<p>[PRESTO hangs up his coat, sits down and reads a report. JACKO enters.]</p>
<p>JACKO: G’day Thomo.</p>
<p>THOMO: G’day Jacko.</p>
<p>[JACKO hangs up his coat, sits down and reads a report. HENDO enters. He crosses the room and goes out by the back door.]</p>
<p>GIBBO: Hendo’s early.</p>
<p>JACKO: I don’t know why he bothers getting here on time. If I were one of the back room boys, you wouldn’t see me here before noon. I’d be down by the pool or out for a fang in the Jag. Or I’d be on the deck of a yacht with a bird in the raw.</p>
<p>GIBBO: Shows how much you know. Those back room boys work harder than any of us. They’re at it day and night, mate.</p>
<p>JACKO: Ar bulls. I reckon it’d be a pretty soft cop being a back room boy. Look at Hendo. He’s got it made. Look at us, we’re sweltering here on a stinking hot day while he can do whatever he likes. He could fly to Switzerland, go for a ski in the snow, sip a Campari at Chamonix, what a life! Look at that picture on the calendar there. That’s where the back room boys let their hair down.</p>
<p>ROBBO: Jeez, I wouldn’t mind being up that mountain today, either.</p>
<p>JACKO: We could sit out on the terrace and have Dubonnet by the Matterhorn.</p>
<p>ROBBO: A what?</p>
<p>THOMO: All right, you blokes, let’s get on with the work, eh?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Front Room Boys is comprised of twelve scenes spaced over a year – one scene per month. On the wall behind the desks where the characters work is a Swiss calendar, kindly provided by the senior management, “the back room boys”. While the front room swelters in unbearable summer heat, it displays images of cool mountain delight, and while it freezes in mid-winter, images of bucolic warmth.</p>
<p>As they pursue their <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Sisyphean">Sisyphean</a> labours, the men jostle, wheedle, dodge, and whinge. They are true-blue, dinky-di Aussies, “bloke[s] who do the right thing by a bloke they know is a bloke who’ll always do the right thing by a bloke”. On the surface they are egalitarian and easy-going. </p>
<p>Underneath, they are racist, sexist, shallow and cruel, preternaturally disposed to worship the hand that whips them. The more they are abused by the backroom boys, the more accustomed they become to being abused – and the more they abuse each other.</p>
<h2>A cognitive dissonance</h2>
<p>The Front Room Boys is unlike anything seen in Australian drama before. Its cyclical structure gives it a processional feel, almost like a religious drama. But its mocking irreverence runs directly counter to this. The result is a cognitive dissonance that is both punchy and fun – we feel we should know what’s going to happen next, given the archetypal characters and the ritualistic form, but the narrative is full of surprises.</p>
<p>A good example is Scene 7 – the mid-point of the play – where the characters act out a pantomime, The Sultan of Jodhpur, at the annual office revue. It’s a mad interpolation in an already mad play, but is written with such gusto, ingenuity and cheek that it goes off like a firecracker.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[GIBBO enters… wearing a bed sheet with colourful headpiece, and a beard. He has beads and ornaments strung around his neck and giant rings on every finger… A gong is heard and JACKO strides in L. full of confidence]</p>
<p>JACKO: Your esteemed excellency, I am your humble servant.</p>
<p>[Bows.]</p>
<p>GIBBO [regally, pursing his lips]: You may kiss my ring.</p>
<p>[JACKO kisses his ring.]</p>
<p>Arise, brave Prince Jacomo, and tell me, how have you fared? Have you performed your daring feats to win the hand of my daughter, the beauteous Princess Sunflower?</p>
<p>JACKO: I have, my liege, more or less.</p>
<p>GIBBO: Our noble ancient law, handed down by our fore-fathers, decrees that to win the hand of a princess, the suitor must perform three feats to prove his manhood. He must drink five pints of toddy juice, capture a Bengal tiger, and root three Moslem women, all of these feats being performed within one day. Have you done this brave Prince Jacomo?</p>
<p>JACKO: Uh, not exactly. You see, I drank five pints of toddy juice, captured a Moslem woman, and rooted three Bengal tigers.</p>
<p>GIBBO: Ah well, it’s the thought that counts. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It should be clear by now that New Wave drama was innovative not just in style and theme, but in its whole approach to the theatre experience. Yes, it is sometimes tasteless and offensive, but this is rarely the only thing it is. It has a charm born less of polish and craft than instinctive talent and a desire to be enjoyable. We laugh, even though we are appalled, and the two responses work together, so that the comedy doesn’t take us further away from the politics, but right into its heart. </p>
<p>In his introduction to The Front Room Boys, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeme_Blundell">Graeme Blundell</a>, that ubiquitous New Wave apparatchik and the director prosecuted for performing Norm and Ahmed, wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The new dramatists are not aggressively chauvinistic. Their influences and models are drawn from a wide variety of sources. This is not new of course. What is different is that [they] seem to be closer than any before to that elusive combination of an Australian viewpoint with an eclectic theatrical approach.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/browse/">The AusStage database</a> lists few productions of The Front Room Boys after 1970, and this reflects the level of disconnection we have from our own cultural history, as well as the difficulty of reviving New Wave plays in an appropriate style and context. (How to recreate the spirit of liberation they sprang from?) </p>
<p>But perhaps the important thing to acknowledge is that New Wave playwrights booted Australian drama into a fresh and fruitful orbit and produced work that, if occasionally flawed, was also fresh, compelling and highly original. It is a significant theatrical legacy of which Australians can be rightly proud.</p>
<p><em>This article is part of an on-going series examining <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/the-great-australian-plays-33740">the great Australian plays</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72956/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Meyrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The plays of Alex Buzo captured the spirit of rebellion of a new generation of theatre artists.Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/699902016-12-08T06:10:24Z2016-12-08T06:10:24ZThe great Australian plays: The Torrents, the Doll and the critical mass of Australian drama<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149204/original/image-20161208-31370-1w1ws0g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is one of the most famous – and most revived – Australian plays of all time.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Melbourne Theatre Company/Jeff Busby</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1955, two plays, The Torrents by Oriel Gray and Summer of the Seventeenth Doll by Ray Lawler, shared first prize in a Playwrights Advisory Board Competition (about £200). Such competitions were a regular feature at the time: earnest, if limited attempts to kick-start Australian drama into life.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149017/original/image-20161207-3992-b8esph.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149017/original/image-20161207-3992-b8esph.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149017/original/image-20161207-3992-b8esph.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149017/original/image-20161207-3992-b8esph.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149017/original/image-20161207-3992-b8esph.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149017/original/image-20161207-3992-b8esph.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149017/original/image-20161207-3992-b8esph.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149017/original/image-20161207-3992-b8esph.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Torrents.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Australian Playhouse</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gray was an experienced writer, and a member of Sydney’s New Theatre (a Communist affiliated organisation), though she left the Party in 1949. Lawler had a background in vaudeville, and was director of the most recent addition to Melbourne’s theatre scene, the Union Theatre Repertory Company – today, the Melbourne Theatre Company.</p>
<p>Many Australians are familiar with the Doll. It is a frequently revived Australian play (the AusStage database lists over 150 professional productions). The Torrents is less well known, but is an important work for its type, if not for its individual qualities. Together, the two works mark a new horizon of creative possibility for Australian theatre. If there is a year in which our national drama can be said to have achieved critical mass, 1955 is it. Dennis Carroll puts it this way:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The best of the 1950s plays… open up themes of wider universality than those of earlier plays, themes that transcend Australianist specifics… [They] often use a family or domestic setting, which [makes] the conflicts more archetypal and puts the local context and social specifics into a more widely applicable human perspective… </p>
<p>They exemplify a level of dramatic and theatrical craftsmanship which earlier generations [of writers] could not match, not least for the organic connection between the material and its expression.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Torrents is a comedy-drama set in the newsroom of a regional paper, the Koolgalla Argus, in 1890. It has a double narrative. In the first storyline, Koolgalla, a gold town, grapples with its future as an agricultural one. A struggle ensues among its civic leaders over water use, and the issues explored are those of personal courage and political vision.</p>
<p>The second storyline revolves around the Argus’s latest employee, J. G. Milford, hired sight unseen by the paper’s redoubtable editor, Rufus Torrent. When Milford arrives it is immediately apparent that “J” stands for “Jenny”. A struggle ensues in the newsroom over women’s rights, and the issues explored are ones of class identity and gender equity.</p>
<p>In the middle of the play, the two storylines neatly intersect. Rufus’s son, Ben, drafts an article in support of a new irrigation scheme. He immediately backtracks, but Jenny publishes it without either Torrent’s consent. </p>
<p>Her actions prompt both men to a new awareness about what must be done if the town is to survive in the fragile landscape around it.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>RUFUS: I think it is only right that I should tell you that my son accepted full blame for that statement. He said he had done it alone. But I am not a complete fool, Miss Milford.</p>
<p>JENNY: You should be proud of him! He put into words the problem that everyone in Koolgalla has to face – and the solution to it. Though you publish fifty retractions, Mr Torrent, you can’t wipe that article from their thoughts.</p>
<p>RUFUS: I should have known, when I denied my better judgement, and took a woman into this office that we might expect some kind of specious underhand, interfering feminine logic…</p>
<p>JENNY: … instead of open, honest, manly illogic.</p>
<p>RUFUS: If you were a man, madam, I would know how to deal with your action.</p>
<p>JENNY: If you were a man, Mr Torrent, you’d stand by it.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Summer of the Seventeenth Doll</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149015/original/image-20161207-25753-kbqhq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149015/original/image-20161207-25753-kbqhq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149015/original/image-20161207-25753-kbqhq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149015/original/image-20161207-25753-kbqhq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149015/original/image-20161207-25753-kbqhq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149015/original/image-20161207-25753-kbqhq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149015/original/image-20161207-25753-kbqhq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149015/original/image-20161207-25753-kbqhq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">via Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is set in what was then up-to-the-minute inner city Melbourne. Every year for 16 years, two Queensland cane cutters, Barney and Roo, come to Carlton to lay over with two single women, Olive and Nancy, during the off-season. It is worth noting that in 1955 this was no longer deeply scandalous, even for Menzies Australia. It gives credence to Katharine Brisbane’s observation that Lawler’s play is “about growing up and growing old and failing to grow up”.</p>
<p>This year Nancy is absent, however, having recently got married. Olive, desperate to find a partner for Barney, talks the stiff-necked widow Pearl into making up a fourth. The men duly appear, bringing a kewpie doll with which they traditionally mark their visits: hence the play’s title.</p>
<p>The Doll is a tragedy of classical rigour and force. A single action is explored in a single setting over a limited period of time (a Melbourne summer). Despite its surface realism, its meaning lies in in the notes of mortality, failure and self-delusion that mark its downwardly-inclined narrative spiral.</p>
<p>There is no equivalent to the Doll in British or US drama. It relies on no pre-given overseas formula. It is a case of one. Right from its opening night, when Lawler played the part of Roo, this is how it struck Australian audiences. Niall Brennan, the manager of the Union Theatre where the play premiered, later recalled:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some strange conversion took place in the minds of the Australian theatregoers before they even saw the play; for it was the best dressed, and most sympathetic first-night audience I had ever seen as the Union. They came rolling in, in furs and starched shirts, and I remember saying to one of the usherettes…. ‘I think this play is going to be a great success’. </p>
<p>None of us could understand it. The jinx [on Australian plays] had just gone. They clapped the house curtain when it went up, and they clapped the set. They clapped every actor who came on and the roars which greeted Ray’s own entrance were tremendous. When the curtain came down at the end, the theatre almost shook… It was the first Union Theatre Repertory play ever to play to an extended season. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6fqhoFVgG20?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A rare recording of a 1977 Melbourne Theatre Company production of Summer of the Seventeen Doll.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In considering The Torrents and the Doll together, it is easy to make facile comparisons. Gray was influenced by theatrical superstar George Bernard Shaw, author of Pygmalion and 60 other stage works. Her play is witty, makes its points with a light touch, and is a vehicle for progressive political views. It carries messages about women, the environment, the media and so on, but can feel somewhat schematic.</p>
<p>The Doll contains no ideas of this kind. Its storyline does not develop themes in the Shavian mode but complicates its characters’ lives in a Shakespearean one. It offers not opinions to be considered but experiences to be ingested. Though it uses the same three-act structure and verbal techniques as The Torrents, its aim is not to instruct but to bear witness.</p>
<p>At the end of the play, when Roo finally asks Olive to marry him, there is little left to say:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>OLIVE: No!</p>
<p>ROO: Olive…</p>
<p>OLIVE: You can’t get out of it like that – I won’t let you…</p>
<p>ROO: [appalled] Olive, what the hell’s wrong?</p>
<p>OLIVE: You’ve got to go back. It’s the only hope we’ve got.</p>
<p>ROO: Stop that screamin’, will yer?</p>
<p>OLIVE: You think I’ll let it all end up in marriage – every day – a paint factory – you think I’ll marry you?</p>
<p>ROO: [grabbing her and shouting back]: What else can we do? You gone mad or something? First you tell me I’ve made you low, and now look – you dunno what you want!</p>
<p>OLIVE: [breaking away, possessed] I do – I want what I had before. [Rushing at him and pummelling his chest] you give it back to me – give me back what you’ve taken.</p>
<p>ROO: [grabbing her wrists and holding them tight] Olive, it’s gone – can’t you understand? Every last scrap of it – gone!</p>
<p>[He throws her away from him, and she falls to the floor, grief-stricken, almost an animal in her sense of loss.]</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Do these differences make the Doll a better play than The Torrents? There are two reasons why absolute verdicts about play texts are unwise. The first relates to their staging. A production of a play is more than an extension of its literary features. It is another form of life. There may be circumstances where a good production of Gray’s play works better than a bad one of Lawler’s.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149205/original/image-20161208-31396-j200n2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149205/original/image-20161208-31396-j200n2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149205/original/image-20161208-31396-j200n2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149205/original/image-20161208-31396-j200n2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149205/original/image-20161208-31396-j200n2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149205/original/image-20161208-31396-j200n2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149205/original/image-20161208-31396-j200n2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149205/original/image-20161208-31396-j200n2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Summer Of The Seventeenth Doll.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MTC/Jeff Busby</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There may also be occasions when we would prefer reviving The Torrents to reviving the Doll: if it is infrequently produced, for example, or speaks to the current moment in a pertinent way (literary managers talk of plays going in and out of “the time envelope”).</p>
<p>When we take a broad view, comparative judgements are even harder to make. The Torrents has a place in a certain <em>genus</em> of Australian comedy. It harks back to Louis Esson’s The Time is Not Yet Ripe and forward to Joanna Murray-Smith’s Female of the Species. Its stylistic approach can be seen in TV comedies like Utopia and Upper Middle Bogan.</p>
<p>The Doll, by contrast, is inimitable. Famously so. The tributary plays that followed in its wake were dubbed by the theatre critic Harry Kippax “the Doll clones”, and were largely unsuccessful. Australian drama in the 1960s did not build on the achievement of the 1950s. It remained an uneven terrain of “oncers” and playwrights who fled the country (as Lawler did, for over ten years).</p>
<p>The Doll exhausts the conventions it uniquely exploits, while The Torrents suggests their further development. This is no small point. The fate of a single play is, from the perspective of a national drama, unimportant. What matters is the corpus from which the collective theatrical imagination flows in infinite potential. The Doll had few successful imitators, The Torrents many. Which is the more important play in the end?</p>
<p>The question is specious, of course. Each makes a bespoke contribution to Australian culture. As we construct our canon, we shall make this pledge: each time we visit our list we will change one name on it. By doing this, we engage with the plays of the past in the way that truly matters: as drama serving our present needs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69990/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Meyrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In 1955 two plays – The Torrents and Summer of the Seventeenth Doll – burst into Australian theatre. Funny and tragic in deeply Australian ways, they marked a new horizon of creative possibility.Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/696422016-11-30T04:09:19Z2016-11-30T04:09:19ZThe great Australian plays: speaking ‘Orstyrlian’ in Rusty Bugles<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148047/original/image-20161130-17028-31hn49.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">‘Molly? Molly? MOLLY?’ Tony Barry as Keghead in Rusty Bugles. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC/National Film and Sound Archive</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusty_Bugles">Rusty Bugles</a> is a comedy-drama by Sumner Locke Elliot, one of the many talented writers to abandon Australia in the 1940s and 1950s in search of an artistic living overseas. </p>
<p>First produced by Sydney’s Independent Theatre in 1948 it was (up until the appearance of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll six years later) the best known and most successful Australian play of its day, extensively touring the state capitals, the regions, and New Zealand.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147829/original/image-20161128-22761-tjbrjx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147829/original/image-20161128-22761-tjbrjx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147829/original/image-20161128-22761-tjbrjx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147829/original/image-20161128-22761-tjbrjx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147829/original/image-20161128-22761-tjbrjx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147829/original/image-20161128-22761-tjbrjx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=994&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147829/original/image-20161128-22761-tjbrjx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=994&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147829/original/image-20161128-22761-tjbrjx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=994&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">New Theatre, Newtown</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The play is set in the Northern Territory, in an army supply depot in middle-of-nowhere Mataranka, where a bunch of khaki cast-offs are doing what soldiers do best: moaning, flaking, dodging and rorting. Most of the year the weather is hot and unbearable. In the rainy season – “The Wet” – the land turns to swamp and pushes conditions to another dimension of hellish awfulness.</p>
<p>The action takes place in the autumn of 1944, with no end of the war yet in sight. The first sounds we hear are the distant shouts of a game of two-up. The first character we meet is Rod Carson, a new recruit. His green eyes become our green eyes for a journey into military mateship and its dysfunctional, colourful ways. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>GIG: How’s this? Me brother’s home from New Guinea on twenty-four days’ leave.</p>
<p>ANDY: How long’s he been up there?</p>
<p>GIG: Not much more’n a year.</p>
<p>ANDY: There you are, see. I tell you those cunts are better off than we are. We’re the bloody forgotten army here.</p>
<p>OT: How’s that? ‘I kiss your photo every night and pray that you will soon be back at our place…’ Ohhhh, the little Rosebud. ‘Mum says tea of a Sunday night isn’t the same without you’re there making us all have a good old laugh’.</p>
<p>GIG: Aw, shut up. How can I read my letter with you maggin’.</p>
<p>OT: ‘P.S. if you’re not using your cigarette ration how’s about sending me yours.’ How is she?</p>
<p>[Silence for a second]</p>
<p>MAC: Jesus Christ, I’m going to have another baby!</p>
<p>ANDY: That’ll be your ninth, won’t it?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This sliver of dialogue hints at the revolutionary features of the play. First, there is little plot in it. Instead, over the course of ten scenes we get what looks like slice-of-life realism, with days spent engaged in ordinary, repetitive tasks – drinking, swearing, washing and lounging around. </p>
<p>Actually, Locke Elliot, the son of a novelist and a novelist of distinction himself (he was the author of the Miles Franklin Award winner <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1702042.Careful_He_Might_Hear_You">Careful, He Might Hear You</a>) has a sure sense of how to build mood and atmosphere out of carefully chosen details.</p>
<p>So it is the characters who are the story: Mac, a slothful, resentful giant and Andy, his short, chirpy side-kick; OT doing sentry duty for extra pay so he can buy his fiancé a ring (she eventually runs off with someone else); Darky, who has been at the depot the longest and whose determined truculence looks like keeping him there forever; and Vic, a working class man with nothing to look forward to (as he sees it) who strikes up an unlikely friendship with the educated Rod, though not without some initial sparks.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147857/original/image-20161129-10966-v5bdrl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147857/original/image-20161129-10966-v5bdrl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147857/original/image-20161129-10966-v5bdrl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147857/original/image-20161129-10966-v5bdrl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147857/original/image-20161129-10966-v5bdrl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147857/original/image-20161129-10966-v5bdrl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147857/original/image-20161129-10966-v5bdrl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147857/original/image-20161129-10966-v5bdrl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rod Carson, played by Ian Gilmour and Vic Richards, played by Harold Hopkins, in the 1980 telemovie Rusty Bugles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC/National Film and Sound Archive</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The second feature of the play is, of course, the language, or what the Sun newspaper called its “unladylike, but beautifully lusty, and one hundred per cent Orstyrlian”. This immediately got it <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/18093381">into trouble</a> with the Chief Secretary, who sent the Vice Squad along to opening night to take notes. </p>
<p>Thereafter began a protracted wrangle about which words could or could not be said on stage; some blue-pencilling by the director Dorothy Fitton; some concessions by the censor; and, over the course of a long run, the gradual restoration of many original terms, to the delight of Australian audiences (Newcastle’s were especially appreciative) and the appalled shock of New Zealand ones.</p>
<p>The language of Rusty Bugles is not only remarkable; it is remarkably assured. While British dramatists were stuck in the tar pit of what critic Ken Tynan scathingly called “the Loamshire play”, Locke Elliot was idiomatically portraying the realities of class and region. In so doing, he advanced Australian drama by more than an addition of one good play.</p>
<p>For non-Indigenous Australians do not speak a separate language to Britain and America. Our theatre is not bound up with linguistic revival, like the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, or the Finnish National Theatre in Helsinki. Yet the acoustic space our plays occupy – not just colloquially, but in accent, tone, pitch and rhythm; the whole lexical understanding that accompanies words when spoken aloud – is key to our social identity.</p>
<p>Australian drama is a fugue drama, at once part of the larger body of Anglophone playwriting and radically distinct from it. Rusty Bugles is an important link between the plot-based realism of the 1920s and 1930s, exemplified by companies like The Pioneer Players, and the radical explorations of the Australian voice that characterise 1970s writers like Jack Hibberd, David Williamson, Alma de Groen and Dorothy Hewett. </p>
<p>It introduced a new tone, and thus a new horizon of creative possibility. As Fitton wrote in the introduction to the 1980 republication of the play text (which restored all the original language):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I consider Rusty Bugles to be the war play, at least for this country. Rusty Bugles was based in reality, in people that Sumner knew; and based on the little things, however trifling, that happened from day to day in this isolated ordnance camp. </p>
<p>He had written the play, he told me, as a protest against bureaucracy: in memory of hundreds of men up there rotting in an ordnance depot who had wanted to be on active service to their country. Of course, it is a long time ago that we first presented Rusty Bugles; but I still believe it to be the best Australian play ever written.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The AusStage database lists only a handful of productions of Rusty Bugles, the last notable one in 1979, for the New Theatre, directed by the late John Tasker. A cast of eighteen makes it hard for cash-strapped contemporary companies to revive it, even assuming they are inclined to works from this period of the Australian repertoire, which not all of them are.</p>
<p>But this is not the only reason. The view of war in Rusty Bugles is practical, weary, sardonic, disrespectful. It is too much to call it an anti-war play. But it certainly rejects any heroic posturing. When the war is mentioned, it is in terms of its cost: its disruption to life, love and happiness; the people it puts in harm’s way. Have we forgotten this about the war I wonder, in our eagerness to “honour the sacrifice” of those caught up in horrific conflicts?</p>
<p>Rusty Bugles is a drama of undercurrents and shadowy themes, and there are indications that the soldiers are anti-Semitic, racist and paranoid. It has a “warts and all” quality which is also part of its unheroic worldview. But this is not all that the soldiers are, and their resilience, good humour and solidarity also shine through.</p>
<p>An example is the leave-taking between Rod and Vic at the end of the play, as Rod stays on at the depot while Vic, now in full uniform, goes off to the Pacific:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>ROD: The Wet…. she come.</p>
<p>VIC: The Wet…. I go.</p>
<p>ROD: Well… I reckon you’d better go and pick up the others… Almost time for you to be over at the R.T.D.</p>
<p>VIC: Yes – well…. So long, Sammy [He shakes hands.]</p>
<p>SAMMY: Hooray, Vic.</p>
<p>VIC: Ot.</p>
<p>OT: So long. Make sure you don’t come back.</p>
<p>VIC: Don’t worry. It’ll be the islands for me next time. The real dinkum war. No more sitting on my pratt among the forgotten legions.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is great thing to write a play about human affection that has little affectionate dialogue in it; a play about war that has no fighting in it; a play about Australia with no self-consciousness, stridency or nationalist bathos.</p>
<p><br></p>
<hr>
<p><em>In the first three articles of the series The Great Australian Plays, Julian will look at Australian plays from the years after War War II. Next will be The Torrents by Oriel Gray, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll by Ray Lawler and A Cheery Soul by Patrick White.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69642/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Meyrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The best Australian play ever written is revolutionary in its treatment of plot, character and language. It has a weary, sardonic perspective on war and an unheroic worldview.Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/673412016-11-21T01:21:32Z2016-11-21T01:21:32ZHow ‘cutting up’ Shakespeare’s plays can be an act of creative destruction<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145478/original/image-20161110-25097-g5gmg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Anita Francis, 'The Complete Works of Shakespeare,' book sculpture, 2014. By permission of the artist.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anita Francis</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) has been the site of many creative adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays. The latest, Ivo van Hove’s “Kings of War,” which ran at BAM from Nov. 3 to 6, is a multimedia mashup of characters, lines and scenes from Shakespeare’s <a href="http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/plays.php">history plays</a>. </p>
<p>“Extensively cut,” “deeply cut” and “severely cut” are some of the favorite phrases used by the reviewers of these types of experimental stage and film adaptations. Ben Brantley, in his <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/05/theater/review-shakespeares-take-on-the-game-of-thrones.html?r=0">New York Times review of “Kings of War,”</a> observes that Van Hove and his adapters have decided “to strip the texts down to their political marrow.” </p>
<p>The implication is that deleting lines – not to mention deleting entire scenes and characters – is an act of cultural vandalism. It recalls Velázquez’s “Rokeby Venus,” <a href="http://artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=47248#.WCTLOhQyfzK">slashed with a chopping knife by suffragette Mary Richardson in 1914</a>, and Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch,” attacked three times during the 20th century, <a href="http://artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=47248#.WCTLOhQyfzK">twice with knives</a>.</p>
<p>Cutting, however, doesn’t necessarily mean getting rid of something. It could mean prizing something so much that you want to cut it out and save it, perhaps putting it to creative use in something you’re making yourself. A “cut,” in this sense, could be a speech that you’re using for an audition or a scene you’re reworking in a short story or a character you’ve decided to make the subject of a painting. Cuts cut both ways. What has been cut out can be discarded on the cutting-room floor or it can be made the centerpiece of something new.</p>
<p>In such cases, cutting up Shakespeare is not an act of destruction but an act of creation. Professional playwrights in Shakespeare’s time even thought about creating scripts as “cutwork,” like constructing costumes by cutting and stitching. When playwrights collaborated on a script, each writer got separate pieces, in the form of separate scenes. Shakespeare participated in several such joint-author enterprises in the course of his career, and an argument has been made recently that <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/25/books/shakespeare-christopher-marlowe-henry-vi.html">Christopher Marlowe was one of his collaborators</a>. </p>
<p>In the four centuries since Shakespeare’s death, artists in all kinds of media have carried out creative cutwork of their own.</p>
<h2>Cutwork across four centuries</h2>
<p>Decades before the types of cutwork we’re seeing today, beat writer William S. Burroughs and his friend Brion Guysin wielded pairs of scissors, cut up Shakespeare’s texts and rearranged them into verbal collages alongside cuts from other writers. </p>
<p>Particularly fruitful, they discovered, were cuttings that juxtaposed fragments of Shakespeare’s sonnets with fragments of Arthur Rimbaud’s poems. The effect, they said, was the creation of “a third mind.” I came across these examples in the Berg Collection in the New York Public Library, and they’re published, for the first time, in my recent book “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/shakespeare--cut-9780198735526?cc=us&lang=en&">Shakespeare | Cut</a>.”</p>
<p>But creative cuts have actually been taking place since the 1590s, when readers came into possession of Shakespeare’s plays in their earliest print editions. In diaries and so-called “commonplace books,” these early readers transcribed the phrases, sentences and speeches that they found to be particularly striking. Cuts of a different sort were inserted by printers on title pages: woodcuts and engravings showing particular characters (often depicted, cartoon-like, with banderoles coming out of their mouths) and particular scenes. </p>
<p>Cuts of characters and scenes were joined by author cuts, beginning with the engraved portrait of William Shakespeare <a href="http://collation.folger.edu/2014/06/four-states-of-shakespeare-the-droeshout-portrait/">on the title page of the 1623 First Folio</a>.</p>
<p>Yet another variety of cuts came to the fore in the 18th century, when cuts of the actors playing certain characters emerged in paintings and engravings. Successive forms of new media – lithography, photography, sound recording, video – have brought actor cuts, in particular, to the forefront in public consciousness of Shakespeare. Think of David Tennant’s Hamlet, Judi Dench’s Cleopatra, Laurence Fishburne’s Othello, or Michael Fassbender’s Macbeth. </p>
<h2>Why cuts? Why now?</h2>
<p>Today, Shakespeare cutwork takes place on stage, in film, in installations and online. Van Hove’s “Kings of War,” with its video monitors giving access to hidden spaces, mirror close-ups and news conferences, exemplifies how media can converge in contemporary cutwork. </p>
<p>The cutwork in Annie Dorsen’s “A Piece of Work,” <a href="http://www.anniedorsen.com/showproject.php?id=14">an adaptation of “Hamlet” that ran at BAM in 2013</a>, was even more radical than Van Hove’s work. Each performance of Dorsen’s “Hamlet” was different, thanks to computer algorithms that generated entirely new combinations of words, visuals, lighting and music over the course of five “parts” corresponding to Shakespeare’s five acts. The algorithm shifted from one part to the next. And from one performance to the next. </p>
<p>The resulting cuts – including speech prefixes and stage directions – were projected on a large screen. Only in Part Four/Act Four did a live actor come up from the audience to speak a soliloquy that was being created then and there by the computer’s algorithm-of-the-moment and transmitted to the actor, in real time, via earbuds.</p>
<p>Mashups of Shakespeare on YouTube may be less pretentious than these theatrical performances, but they speak to a strong desire to intercut 400-year-old fragments from Shakespeare with everyday modern life. Craig Barzan’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa-cfEncd6Y">“Hamlet on the Street”</a> and Noor Ghuniem’s <a href="https://bardbox.net/">“The Tempest – The Missing Scene”</a> are particularly striking examples. </p>
<p>If you watch YouTube on a smartphone while you walk or let your attention wander to other people, objects and events around you, the intercut between art and life becomes a physical fact. Make the device a smart watch, and the time factor is palpable: 1616 is juxtaposed with 2016 “in real time.”</p>
<p>But if cutwork with Shakespeare is nothing new, why has it become a fetish in the 21st century? One reason, surely, is the ease of making cuts with digital technology. Another reason, just as surely, is fragmentation in contemporary culture – fragmentation that may itself be a function of digital technology. A related factor is the general speeding up of contemporary life, exemplified in the clip culture that dominates YouTube. Judging from YouTube postings, the two-hour duration of Shakespeare’s stage performances can now be no longer than 15 minutes, preferably 10. </p>
<p>More disturbing is the thought that the violence of contemporary cutwork – its radicalism, its defiance of tradition, its psychological fascination – is connected with actual violence in the culture at large. </p>
<p>If so, the situation now may not be so different from the situation in Shakespeare’s lifetime, when most adult males carried weapons in the form of knives or swords and violent crime was rife. Shakespeare most frequently uses the word “cut” in relationship to body parts. At a deep level we should acknowledge the connections, in early modern culture and in contemporary culture, between cuts as bodily violence and cuts as violent ways of making art.</p>
<p>At a more fundamental level still we can point to the “gappy” nature of perception: We perceive the world in a series of cuts lasting no longer than three seconds. </p>
<p>Most important of all, however, is the selection and arrangement of experience that goes into the making of all forms of art. Cutting can create as well as destroy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67341/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For over four centuries, Shakespeare’s plays have been picked apart and reimagined.Bruce Smith, Dean's Professor of English and Professor of Theatre, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/682292016-11-09T19:06:14Z2016-11-09T19:06:14ZIgnore the doubters: here’s why Christopher Marlowe co-wrote Shakespeare’s Henry VI<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145111/original/image-20161108-16702-a4r84z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An artwork by James C. Christensen, which represents Shakespeare with characters from all of his plays.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/tracyleephoto/3186046746/">Tracy Lee/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A new edition of Shakespeare’s works has identified Christopher Marlowe <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/oct/23/christopher-marlowe-credited-as-one-of-shakespeares-co-writers">as a co-author</a>. The editors of the New Oxford Shakespeare believe that Marlowe collaborated in Parts 1, 2 and 3 of Henry VI. The conclusion was reached on the advice of an “Attribution Board” of three specialists in the field of literary authorship.</p>
<p>I was one of the members of this board. I first used computers in the late 1980s for attribution and have worked in this area ever since. Still, as I have discovered, a new Shakespeare attribution (or indeed a de-attribution – when a work by a noted author turns out to be written by someone else) – meets an interesting range of responses.</p>
<h2>The sceptics</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145112/original/image-20161108-20183-wtocyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145112/original/image-20161108-20183-wtocyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145112/original/image-20161108-20183-wtocyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=740&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145112/original/image-20161108-20183-wtocyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=740&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145112/original/image-20161108-20183-wtocyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=740&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145112/original/image-20161108-20183-wtocyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145112/original/image-20161108-20183-wtocyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145112/original/image-20161108-20183-wtocyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of a supposedly 21-year-old Christopher Marlowe in 1585.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marlowe-Portrait-1585.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>First, there are those who think that attribution – the process of finding an author for anonymous or disputed works – is itself misguided, because it doesn’t matter who wrote a play or an act or a scene. The work is interesting, or not, regardless of author. </p>
<p>Then there is the view that authors aren’t the most important creators of literary works. All authors borrow from a common stock of language, the genre of writing is all-important, and everyone in a given era or group shares so much in attitudes and expressions. In the case of Shakespeare, there is the added point that authors don’t seem to have mattered much then – plays were often printed with no author mentioned, or just mysterious initials.</p>
<p>Others think attribution, though important, is impossible. There is so much mutual influence, imitation, and even plagiarism that we can’t distinguish one author’s voice among all the noise of others.</p>
<p>A second often cited obstacle to reliable attribution is the fact that authors change their styles over their careers. There is early Shakespeare and late Shakespeare.</p>
<p>Plus the nature of drama is that the author doesn’t speak and creates all sorts of different voices, inevitably disguising his or her own style. Added to this are the problems of transmission. What happened between the author’s first hand-written version and the frail printed book that happens to have survived from the 1590s?</p>
<p>Last in this group of attribution sceptics are those who think “Shakespeare” is a fraud anyway – the plays were really written by a committee, or the Earl of Oxford, or Sir Henry Neville, or indeed Marlowe. </p>
<p>A second group is those who think that authorship attribution is important, and possible, but this particular one is wrong. There is a better candidate, they say, or the case is not properly conducted, so we must remain in doubt.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145113/original/image-20161109-16712-ql44hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145113/original/image-20161109-16712-ql44hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145113/original/image-20161109-16712-ql44hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145113/original/image-20161109-16712-ql44hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145113/original/image-20161109-16712-ql44hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145113/original/image-20161109-16712-ql44hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145113/original/image-20161109-16712-ql44hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145113/original/image-20161109-16712-ql44hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A modern reconstruction of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, approximately 230m from the original site.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/marcusmeissner/9842586713/">Marcus Meissner</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Two new plays credited to the Bard</h2>
<p>Strange as it may seem after that litany of objections, Shakespeare attribution powers ahead and is now, with the new Oxford edition, changing how Shakespeare is read. </p>
<p>The edition includes 40 plays. Two new ones originally published anonymously, <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/arden-faversham">Arden of Faversham</a> and<a href="http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/edwardIII.html"> Edward III</a>, have been added to the usual tally of 38. New research in the Authorship Companion, which is to be published alongside the edition, strengthens the case that Shakespeare wrote parts of these two plays. </p>
<p>Of these 40, 12 are listed as collaborations between Shakespeare and other writers. The edition also includes two sets of scenes Shakespeare added to existing plays, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spanish_Tragedy">The Spanish Tragedy</a> and <a href="https://www.playshakespeare.com/sir-thomas-more">Sir Thomas More</a>.</p>
<p>My view is that it does matter who wrote what. If we now know more about Shakespeare’s early collaborations, for instance, we can stop regarding unexpected styles in the plays as “apprentice work” and see them as simply a mixture of another writer.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145110/original/image-20161108-16721-2roc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145110/original/image-20161108-16721-2roc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145110/original/image-20161108-16721-2roc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145110/original/image-20161108-16721-2roc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145110/original/image-20161108-16721-2roc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145110/original/image-20161108-16721-2roc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145110/original/image-20161108-16721-2roc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145110/original/image-20161108-16721-2roc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The first page from Henry VI, Part 1.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:First-page-first-folio-1henry6.jpg">Folger Shakespeare Library Digital Image Collection/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When we thought the poem A Funerall Elegie was Shakespeare’s, it was not only of intense interest in itself, but changed what “Shakespeare” is. Now that we know it is by Shakespeare’s fellow playwright <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3070371?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">John Ford</a>, there will be fewer people reading it, inevitably, and “Shakespeare” changes again. </p>
<p>On the question of internal variation cutting across the authorial voice, there are ways of testing this as a factor. We can set up an experiment to see whether with a given classifying system – a set of data, variables and procedures – we can tell Shakespeare’s writing from others despite the obstacles put in the way by the nature of drama, the influence of genres, and authors changing styles over their career. This testing generally shows that while the other factors do matter, they don’t drown out the voice of the author.</p>
<p>This self-testing aspect is the most reassuring part of attributing (say) parts of the three Henry VI plays to <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/christopher-marlowe-9399572">Marlowe</a>, the author of Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus and Edward II, who died at just 29. Using the same method, we can see whether when we treat parts of known Shakespeare and known Marlowe as anonymous we get a reliable attribution.</p>
<h2>How were the Henry VI plays written?</h2>
<p>There is a long tradition of authorship work on Shakespeare, going back to the 18th century, and many people around the world, in universities and outside them, involved. What has happened with the Henry VI plays is that older ideas that Shakespeare was influenced by Marlowe and closely imitated him gave way to suggestions that Marlowe wrote parts of the plays.</p>
<p>Probably the two playwrights were commissioned by a theatre company to write designated separate sections within a plot that was given them. In the first two parts, for instance, Marlowe’s work seems to have focused on the characters Joan la Pucelle (Joan of Arc) and the rebel Jack Cade.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145109/original/image-20161108-16727-uh9d2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145109/original/image-20161108-16727-uh9d2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145109/original/image-20161108-16727-uh9d2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145109/original/image-20161108-16727-uh9d2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145109/original/image-20161108-16727-uh9d2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145109/original/image-20161108-16727-uh9d2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145109/original/image-20161108-16727-uh9d2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145109/original/image-20161108-16727-uh9d2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A portrait of King Henry VI.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Portrait Gallery/Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>An independent scholar, Tom Merriam, first argued this on the basis of Marlowe-like phrases in the first part of the play. My own work in a 2009 book supported this and added sections of the second part. Newer work on very rare phrases by John V Nance and Gary Taylor, and tests using networks of words by Gabriel Egan and others, have confirmed it. John Burrows, the doyen of computational stylistics, and I have a chapter in the Authorship Companion adding sections of Henry VI, Part 3, to the tally of Marlowe contributions. </p>
<p>Thus there is now a body of work published and forthcoming from the New Oxford Shakespeare team, which we believe is state of the art and as rigorous as we can make it. Nevertheless not everyone will be persuaded, and that is their right. </p>
<h2>But what about Thomas Kyd?</h2>
<p>For instance, <a href="https://theconversation.com/those-who-think-marlowe-co-wrote-plays-with-shakespeare-may-kyd-themselves-67622">a recent article</a> by Darren Freebury-Jones argues that it was Marlowe’s fellow dramatist Kyd who collaborated with Shakespeare on the first part of Henry VI, and Shakespeare alone who wrote the other two.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145114/original/image-20161109-16724-1tgxhqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145114/original/image-20161109-16724-1tgxhqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145114/original/image-20161109-16724-1tgxhqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145114/original/image-20161109-16724-1tgxhqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145114/original/image-20161109-16724-1tgxhqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145114/original/image-20161109-16724-1tgxhqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145114/original/image-20161109-16724-1tgxhqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145114/original/image-20161109-16724-1tgxhqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A portrait of William Shakespeare, believed to be painted by John Taylor.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare#/media/File:Shakespeare.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>In specific criticisms of the Marlowe attribution work, Freebury-Jones wonders if individual words taken out of context are reliable for attribution, whether shared phrases need to be vetted to see if they are really evidence of a single mind at work, and whether the numbers of words and phrases can ever distinguish between other writers. </p>
<p>My answer would be that all these questions can be tested, and indeed have been, and that while there will never be complete certainty, we can show that there is a high degree of reliability. And of course, these doubts about reliability also apply to the work Freebury-Jones cites in favour of his alternative attributions. </p>
<p>Ultimately we have to return to the detailed work presented in published articles and books. By my count, Freebury-Jones mentions three experts other than himself who support his views on the authorship of the Henry VI plays. None of them has published their work on this topic in an article or a book as far as I am aware. </p>
<p>It’s a risk going out there with a Shakespeare attribution, but we do think that it matters who wrote what, that it’s possible to be pretty sure in some cases, and that we have done our due diligence in what we are proposing in the edition.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68229/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hugh Craig receives funding from the Australian Research Council which has supported the work mentioned in the article.</span></em></p>Attributing a Shakespeare work to another writer attracts plenty of critics. But an attribution specialist says his team’s decision to name Christopher Marlowe as a co-author is based on state of the art research.Hugh Craig, Professor of English, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/676222016-10-25T13:53:08Z2016-10-25T13:53:08ZThose who think Marlowe co-wrote plays with Shakespeare may Kyd themselves<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143099/original/image-20161025-4735-oi5h7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C46%2C883%2C625&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A portrait believed to be of Marlowe.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Christopher Marlowe, 16th-century playwright and contemporary of Shakespeare, is to be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/oct/23/christopher-marlowe-credited-as-one-of-shakespeares-co-writers">given co-writing credit alongside Shakespeare</a> for the Henry VI trilogy in the New Oxford Shakespeare edition of the Bard’s collected works. This decision follows computerised textual analysis of the plays by a group of researchers <a href="http://www.english.fsu.edu/faculty/gtaylor.htm">led by Gary Taylor</a> of Florida State University – techniques which have also identified Shakespeare’s “literary fingerprints” in the domestic tragedy <a href="https://www.rsc.org.uk/arden-of-faversham">Arden of Faversham</a>.</p>
<p>Arguments over the authorship of these plays have been bandied about by generations of scholars, but could current advancements in technology finally have put paid to doubt?</p>
<p>As an attribution expert who has devoted years to <a href="http://www.fupress.net/index.php/bsfm-jems/article/view/18089/16843">examining the authorship of the Henry VI trilogy</a>, I am uneasy about these headlines. Unfortunately, while statistical analysis, like literary analysis, can aspire to an objective viewpoint, it also relies upon subjective interpretation. Taylor and colleagues don’t appear to have paused to consider whether individual words, denuded of their linguistic context, can be relied upon in analyses of early modern plays – a genre that contains a multitude of characters, each of which speak with individualised voices.</p>
<p>Can the mere regularity with which certain words and phrases appear in the text really distinguish between different authors – considering at the time of writing allusion, parody and appropriation were rife? Shakespeare borrowed words and phrases from Marlowe’s plays. Marlowe borrowed phrases and images from Shakespeare, and also from his fellow dramatist and lodger, Thomas Kyd, who in turn borrowed phrases from him. Matters are complicated further by the fact that there are many other hands – compositors, editors, scribes – involved in the creation of the folios through which the plays have survived the centuries to reach us today.</p>
<p>As the scholar Muriel St Clare Byrne demonstrated in her 1932 work <a href="http://library.oxfordjournals.org/content/s4-XIII/1/21.extract">Bibliographical Clues in Collaborate Plays</a>, the number of parallels alone cannot be used to distinguish authors. Scholars must also examine the qualitative aspects of shared phrases – and whether these reveal distinct combinations of both thought and language, indicative of a single mind. Reading-based methods still have a place in modern authorship studies but, unfortunately, all too many scholars are convinced by studies that take a number-crunching approach to play texts.</p>
<h2>By whose hand?</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143089/original/image-20161025-31489-6he5vg.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143089/original/image-20161025-31489-6he5vg.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143089/original/image-20161025-31489-6he5vg.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143089/original/image-20161025-31489-6he5vg.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143089/original/image-20161025-31489-6he5vg.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143089/original/image-20161025-31489-6he5vg.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1192&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143089/original/image-20161025-31489-6he5vg.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1192&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143089/original/image-20161025-31489-6he5vg.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1192&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Woodcut and title page from The Spanish Tragedy, Kyd’s first major work.</span>
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<p><a href="http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/kydbio.htm">Kyd</a> is very much the ghost at the feast here. One of the most famous dramatists of the period, he revolutionised tragedy as a genre and paved the way for Shakespeare’s dramaturgy with his <a href="http://www.sparknotes.com/drama/spanishtragedy/context.html">Spanish Tragedy</a>. Contemporary writing and allusions indicate that he wrote a Hamlet play, now lost, while evidence drawn from the characteristics of the text demonstrates that he was responsible for the anonymously-authored Elizabethan play <a href="http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/kinglear/kingleir.html">King Leir</a>, which served as a source for Shakespeare’s King Lear.</p>
<p>Kyd had considerable influence on Shakespeare, and also <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/shakespeare-survey/thetwo-authors-ofedward-iii/91725BE607DC18E9D6E4675D1834FB96">collaborated with him on Edward III</a>. But due to the small number of acknowledged works, his name is not as well-known as that of Marlowe or Shakespeare. So the notion that it was the more infamous Marlowe – secret agent! Murdered! Conspiracy! – who collaborated with Shakespeare has perhaps greater appeal to would-be buyers of the forthcoming New Oxford Shakespeare edition. </p>
<p>However, there is firm evidence that Kyd collaborated with the pamphleteer and playwright Thomas Nashe on the play that became Henry VI Part One. This play was an attempt by theatrical company <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lord-Stranges-Men">Lord Strange’s Men</a> to capitalise on the success of Shakespeare’s two-parter dealing with the young king’s disastrous reign. All three Henry VI plays were acquired by the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lord-Chamberlains-Men">Chamberlain’s Men</a>, for whom Shakespeare seems to have added a few scenes to the first part, perhaps in an attempt to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/211LBPTmBYp2rbh4bSQlSTS/who-wrote-shakespeare">link it with his two plays on the Wars of the Roses</a>. </p>
<h2>Different approach, different answer</h2>
<p>There are methods that have proven effective in distinguishing authors, such as analyses of verse style (such as the rates in which dramatists employed an extra syllable at the end of lines), prosody (pauses and the positions they appear in the verse), and collocations of words and phrases. </p>
<p>Taken together these support the theory that it was Kyd and not Marlowe who had a main hand in writing the first part of the trilogy. These traditional methods also support the hypothesis that Shakespeare wrote Henry VI Part Two and Part Three for Pembroke’s Men without the aid of another dramatist. But even so, echoes of his contemporaries’ works abound in these texts, as we might expect in drama of the period. </p>
<p>Attribution experts Marcus Dahl and Lene Petersen have also <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?isbn=0521765226">analysed frequencies of single words</a> in Shakespeare’s texts, but they have reached entirely different conclusions to the New Oxford Shakespeare team. Martin Mueller of Northwestern University has conducted <a href="http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/8/3/000183/000183.html">quantitative analysis of both common and unique phrases</a> that shows that again it is Kyd’s written characteristics that appear in Henry VI Part One and Arden of Faversham, whereas there is very little verbal evidence to support crediting Shakespeare as co-author of Arden of Faversham.</p>
<p>So in short, while it makes for good headline material, claims of co-authorship for Marlowe are only one side of an involved and long-running argument. In my view, these new attributions are unlikely to withstand close scrutiny, but one hopes that the ensuing discussions will help bring Shakespeare’s contemporaries such as Kyd to wider public appreciation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67622/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Darren Freebury-Jones does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There is more than one hand at play behind some of Shakespeare’s work, but it’s not necessarily Marlowe’s.Darren Freebury-Jones, Research fellow, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.