Alvin Tan Cheong Kheng
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POSTMODERN ELEMENTS OF THEORIES AND PRACTICE IN THE COLLABORATIVE WORKS OF THE NECESSARY STAGE, CARYL CHURCHILL AND THE WOOSTER GROUP by ALVIN TAN CHEONG KHENG A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts of The University of Birmingham for the degree of Master of Philosophy. (Arts) Department of Drama And Theatre Arts The University of Birmingham Edgbaston Birmingham B15 2TT United Kingdom November 1998 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT This thesis investigates collaboration as a creation method that contests the assumptions behind traditional theatre's hierarchical structure. Tradtionally, the playwright occupies the primary creation phase, leaving the director, designers and actors to fulfill an interpretative function. However, works primarily reliant on non-literary signifiers require a methodology that involves artists from varied disciplines earlier in the creation process. Collaborating hierarchically gives way to co-authorship collaboration, revising the natures of artistic roles, relationships and composition. Interdisciplinary practice is adopted by practitioners interested in exploring the interactions between the literary text and the resources of other disciplines, giving rise to hybrid and semiotic-based performance texts. The aim of this thesis is to appreciate the ways in which issue-orientated '60s and '70s social transformation theatre is contemporised to a theatre of empowerment whose object is to challenge rationalised mindsets and empower imaginations through engaging the audience as co-artist. The collaborative practices of British playwright Caryl Churchill and American's Wooster Group are compared to examine the relationships between their processes and application of artistic strategies in organising their materials. The thesis concludes with an analysis of how a Singaporean theatre company, The Necessary Stage modifies and applies the lessons learned in its collaborative works Pillars and Galileo (I Feel The Earth Move). 43,736 words DEDICATION For my Father and Mother ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank: 1. Dr. Brian Crow, my supervisor, for being the 'Devil's Advocate'. 2. Haresh for 10 years of working together and his help and support during the writing of this thesis. 3. The Necessary Stage for sponsoring my sabbatical, research and the time off to complete this thesis. POSTMODERN ELEMENTS OF THEORIES AND PRACTICE IN THE COLLABORATIVE WORKS OF THE NECESSARY STAGE, CARYL CHURCHILL AND THE WOOSTER GROUP CONTENT Introduction Collaboration And The Necessary Stage The Necessary Stage 4 Brief Hi story of English Language Theatre in Singapore 7 English Language Theatre and the Authoritarian State 9 Redefining Political Theatre - Performance and Sign Systems 11 Rationale of Thesis Structure 21 Chapter One Caryl Churchill: The Iconoclastic Playwright Churchill in Context 25 Devices and Strategies 32 Self-Reflexivity: Presence and Absence 36 Political Ideology Inscribed in the Stage Semiotics 41 Appropriation and Institutionalisation 47 Text and Performance: 'New Realism' in The Skriker 53 Conclusion 58 Chapter Two The Wooster Group: "The Dance Represents All The Work I've Done" The Wooster Group in Context 60 The Politics and Aesthetics of The Wooster Group 64 Strategies and Devices 67 Intermedia in Brace Up!, Route 1 & 9 and L.S.D. (..Just The High Points...) 77 'Absence' in L.S.D. (...Just The High Points...) 80 Contextual Versus Textual 83 Conclusion 91 Chapter Three Collaboration And Interdisciplinary Works Collaboration as a Creation Process in the Theatre of Empowerment 93 The Joint Stock Model 95 The Second Stride Model: Crossing Disciplines 96 Comparisons Between the Joint Stock and the Second Stride Models 98 The Wooster Group Model: Collaboration and Chaos 98 The Director-Author, the 'Outside Eye' 101 Comparisons Between the Churchill and the Wooster Group Models 104 Audience as Co-Artist 107 Churchill and LeCompte - Strategies and Devices 112 Chapter Four Theatres Of Empowerment The Rise and Fall of the Performant Function 119 Criticisms of Deconstruction 124 Art of the Future: The Political Resistance of New Realism 126 Chapter Five Theatre Of Empowerment And The Necessary Stage Brief Description of Pillars 131 Brief Description of Galileo (I Feel The Earth Move) 132 Reviewing Pillars and Galileo 133 Too Many Cooks Spoil the Soup? 140 The Pitfalls of Collaboration and Lessons Learnt Conclusion A Return Journey To The Local Reflections on a Theatre of Empowerment in Singapore 148 Post-Colonial Anxieties 149 Endnotes 155 Appendices Appendix A TNS' early collaborative Methodology: Those Who Can't, Teach 165 Appendix B Off Centre 167 Appendix C Forum Theatre 168 Appendix D Moving Home Stones 169 Appendix E Pillars 170 Appendix F Galileo (I Feel The Earth Move) 178 Appendix G Exemption from Submission of Scripts - NAC letter 185 Appendix H Source texts used in The Wooster Group's St. Antony 186 Appendix I "Zones" in The Wooster Group's Brace Up! 188 Bibliography and References Cited 189 PLATES FOR PILLARS Please refer to Appendix E for the content and structure of Pillars. Plate 1 Prologue - Colonial perceptions comparing the Malays and Chinese. Plate 2 Sang Nila Utama has a Vision for Tomorrow. Plate 3 The 1960s Race Riots. Plate 4 SitiMat tells the Legend of Laksamana Bintan. Plate 5 The Collage Episode : A quarrel between a Malay housewife and a Chinese woman. Plate 6 The Collage Episode : A corporate-suited Malay delivers a speech on how Malays must upgrade themselves. Plate 7 Three Virgins Bathing at a Well. Plate 8a Smile: A Chinese family dispute scene replays with different characters from previous episodes taking up the father, mother and daughter roles. Plate 8b As the different characters interchange, a Malay family gradually emerges, substituting the original Chinese family. Here Sang Nila Utama laments the erosion of Malay tradition, one of them being a wife's duty to serve her husband. Plate 9 Epilogue : The Chinese mother appears at the table-top. Plate 10 Goodbye. PLATES FOR GALILEO (I FEEL THE EARTH MOVE) Please refer to Appendix F for the content and structure of Galileo (I Feel The Earth Move). Plate 1 Galileo. Plate 2 Galileo. Plate 3 The Fly narrative : episode 1. Plate 4 The Fly narrative : episode 2. Plate 5 Pak Noh and Leong Chee Meng episode. Plate 6 Pak Noh and Leong Chee Meng episode. Plate 7 Pak Noh and Leong Chee Meng episode. Plate 8 Doreen and Tutik episode. Plate 9 Ah Geok and Ah Mei episode. Plate 10 Ah Geok and Ah Mei episode. Plate 11 Ah Geok and Ah Mei episode. Plate 12 The Epilogue. INTRODUCTION COLLABORATION AND THE NECESSARY STAGE (TNS) This thesis examines why and how collaboration can be a way of creating a "theatre with a politics"; a theatre that draws from its society the essence and means to confront that society penetratingly, without the need to moralise. Collaboration, as a method of working thaws theatre-making's hierarchical structure so that the playwright and/or the director shares authorial space with the cast, designers and artists from different disciplines. Collaboration makes it possible to employ other performance disciplines or mediums as aesthetic strategies for composing a work. To exploit the wider range of vocabularies as signifiers, evident in interdisciplinary works, the co-authorship nature of collaboration is a necessary mode of working. As a theatre director, I have become increasingly interested in employing different disciplines to create issue-based works that engender the participation of the audience as a more active collaborator or co-artist. Co- artist in this thesis refers to the opportunities within the framework of a performance, for the audience to exercise their imagination in order to disrupt prescribed ways of seeing; to create meaning, make conclusions and take a stand with as little reliance on the work's privileged viewpoint and/or discourse as possible. The thesis will focus on two practitioners who work collaboratively. As I am interested in interdisciplinary collaboration, the practitioners are Caryl Churchill and The Wooster Group (TWO). Although both employ collaboration to create new works, Churchill is a playwright and Elizabeth LeCompte, a director (TWO). My interest in these two practitioners is simply because Haresh Sharma (resident playwright) and I (director) have been working collaboratively to create new plays for 10 years. I find it necessary to expose myself to other relevant collaborative outfits for professional development. Secondly, my interest is also to study how their issue-based works are composed so that they are powerful yet unprogrammatic. Issue-based plays run the risk of being didactic since an alternative programme or Utopia is usually suggested, either directly or by implication. Churchill is clear about her Utopian values: [W]hat kind of society I would like: decentralized, nonauthoritarian, communist, nonsexist - a society in which people can be in touch with their feelings, and in control of their lives. [Thurman, 1982:54] However, through innovative devices, her audiences have had to revise their conventional expectations of theatre, and when confronted, perhaps employ different reading strategies to get to the kernel of what she is proposing. TWO appropriates and juxtaposes texts and events, ranging from personal to cultural and political histories, provoking multiple responses without allowing a controlling perspective to guide how the audience thinks. The devices and strategies used by both playwright and director to create open texts or performances and hybrid works aim at empowering the audience's imagination by engaging them as a collaborator.