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The Addresses of Cass Mcguire’ 14 https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ Theses Digitisation: https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/research/enlighten/theses/digitisation/ This is a digitised version of the original print thesis. Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] DEVISING AN OFFSTAGE: THE DRAMATURGY OF BRIAN FRIEL EMMA FAULKNER M.Phil (Research) UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW ENGLISH LITERATURE OCTOBER 2004 © EMMA FAULKNER 2004 ProQuest Number: 10390766 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10390766 Published by ProQuest LLO (2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLO. ProQuest LLO. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.Q. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 5Lasg6 w^ |'UNIVER:.?TY LIBRARY ABSTRACT In some theatre there is a sense that what you see is all you get; in, for instance, circus or many plays of Samuel Beckett or most plays of Frank McGuirmess. But on the other hand, there is another mode of theatre, where what you get is always more than the action of the immediate moment onstage. This is evident in the theatre of Jean Racine, the late plays of William Shakespeare, the late plays of Henrik Ibsen and in many of the plays of Sean O’Casey. Brian Friel belongs to this latter tradition and it is from this perspective that his work is studied in this thesis. Philadelphia, Here I Come!, because it was Friel’s first big theatre success, is regarded by many critics as his springboard. Although I refer to that play in my thesis, it is his second play The Loves o f Cass McGuire that is taken as his seminal work. The Loves o f Cass McGuire, which was the first play that Friel wrote for Broadway for the internationally renowned American actress, Ruth Gordon, is a play that relies heavily on the verbal technique of audience address and it is this device that will be the focus of my first section in which offstage action is examined. Chapter I analyses the way in which the audience address in this early play gives flexibility to the dramatic form of Friel’s work by allowing Cass to address the theatre audience in a way that flits between the world of thought, which concerns her remembrance of the past, and the present world of action onstage. Chapter II investigates how Friel reworked and reworked this device of audience address in plays after The Love o f Cass McGuire so as to evoke not only real but also imagined and invisible audiences. The second section considers the way in which offstage time and spatial margins are demarcated by verbal and aural techniques. In Chapter III, the stage window - as an object of the fourth.wall - becomes a spatial marker and provides a view on offstage activity, which is conveyed verbally by the protagonist that peers through it. Friel’s experimentations with the window in The Loves o f Cass McGuire, The Gentle Island, Translations and Dancing at Lughnasa is compared to its use in the work of the 1960’s Avant-Garde Polish theatre director, Tadeusz Kantor. In Chapter IV the aural fabric of music is examined as Friel uses it to highlight boundaries between on and offstage space and the time frames of the past and present, so that a double perspective is offered in Philadelphia, Here I Come!, The Loves o f Cass McGuire, Aristocrats, Dancing at Lughnasa and Performances, In Chapter V, the time frames of the past - of necessity and indeed by definition, offstage - and the present action that takes place onstage are distorted through the oral vehicle of remembrance and reportage. The discrepancy between what the audience sees and hears contributes to a plural rather than singular perspective in Lovers, The Freedom o f the City, Volunteers, Faith Healer, Living Quarters and Afterplay. Moving away from stage devices, my last section considers the built-in metaphor of blindness in FrieFs late play, Molly Sweeney. The play’s monologue structure obliges the audience to engage with verbal and aural perceptions, to focus on what is offstage to make sense of what we simply see. The ensuing theatrical experience is therefore one whereby what you see is only the beginning of what you get. CONTENTS Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 5 References and Abbreviations 6 INTRODUCTION 7 I) AUDIENCE ADDRESS Chapter 1 : ‘The Addresses of Cass McGuire’ 14 Chapter 2: Addressing A fter‘Cass’ 31 II) MULTIPLES PERSPECTIVES ON SPACE Chapter 3: The Looking Glass 51 Chapter 4: Musical Soundscapes 60 Chapter 5: Friel’s Time Warp? 70 III) BLINDSIGHT Chapter 6: The Blind Field: A Metaphor for Offstage Theatre? 97 CONCLUSION 108 BIBLIOGRAPHY 112 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is the unfortunate case in Britain today that most research students must plunge recklessly and regardlessly into the dark abyss of debt and part-time employment that has hung over them from undergraduate days, to finance projects such as this. Without the least indignation in tone towards funding bodies such as the AHRB or local education authorities, I would like to wish one Emma C. Faulkner the best of luck in her hopes of seeing the word ‘credit’ on her bank statements ever again! Thankfully, support (albeit, not financial) has been abundant from my supervisor: Paddy Lyons. Sincere thanks for all his energy, enthusiasm, and comic relief, and also to Elwira Grossman for her help and her lively insights into the world of Polish Avant-Garde theatre. I would also like to thank Chikako Sawada and Kim Hunter Gordon for their wicked wit and warm advice and also Rebecca Deeny, for providing luxury accommodation and company during all those Friel performances in Dublin. Lastly, I would like to thank both my parents, Vivienne and Norman, my twin, Sars, and my adopted sister, Chicky, for enduring encouragement and support. They all now imagine, in delight and relief, that the word ‘Friel’ will no longer haunt every conversation that we have! REFERENCES AND ABBREVIATIONS The bibliography at the close of this thesis provides a full list of those works by Brian Friel and other writers on whom I have drawn while developing this thesis. For works cited in the body of the thesis, full bibliographical details are given in the footnotes at the end of each page. However, in the case of frequently cited plays by Brian Friel, I have adopted a system of abbreviations followed by page references, immediately after the passage cited. These abbreviations relate to the following texts and editions: EfV The Enemy Within (Dublin: Gallery Press, 1979) LCM The Loves o f Cass McGuire (Dublin: Gallery Press, 1984) L Lovers (Dublin: Gallery Press, 1984) CF Crystal and Fox (Dublin: Gallery Press, 1984) GI The Gentle Island (Dublin: Gallery Press, 1993) V Volunteers (London: Faber and Faber, 1979; Dublin: Gallery Press, 1989) T Translations (London, Faber and Faber, 1981) SP Selected Plays, introduced by Seamus Deane (London: Faber and Faber, 1984) DL Dancing at Lughnasa (London: Faber and Faber, 1990) P2 Plays 2 (London: Faber and Faber, 1999) TPA Three Plays After (London: Faber and Faber, 2002) P Performances (Dublin: Gallery Press, 2003) INTRODUCTION Of the Stage: ‘this world, when seen from backstage, is artificial, cheap, disposable ... Penetrating behind this “magnificent” imitation and “facade”, we reach the “BACK” - A True Stage. This stage is huge, awe inspiring, and as if laying in wait’ - Kantor^ Brian Friel is a dramatist who pays as much attention to action that takes place offstage as that which takes place onstage. In this thesis, reference to ‘offstage’ space and action will be understood as that which does not take place on the main stage space. There are three main situations when there is such action that is invisible to the theatre audience. Firstly, action may be offstage because it takes place in another theatrical space, such as the backstage, or even in the auditorium. Secondly, action may be heard taking place during the immediate moment of the play from the wings or backstage but without visual spectacle in the main performance space that corresponds to it. This has the effect that the audience’s attention is diverted away from the visual world onstage. Thirdly, action may be situated in a past that is imagined as having taken place before the immediate time of the play, and such action can also be considered as that which takes place offstage because it is not visually perceivable by the theatre audience. By limiting the audience’s vision of the play’s action, Friel may appear to undermine the visual spectacle that is theatre. But his decision to experiment in his work with invisible action and stage space need not be regarded as a stubborn disrespect for the conventions of theatre nor a convenient way of ^ Kantor, Tadeusz, A Journey through Other Spaces: Essays and Manifestos, 1944-1990, trans.
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