University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/34731 This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. 1RRATIONAL. THEATRE The Challenge Posed by the Plays of Howard Barker for Con temporary Performance Theory and Practice Three Volumes Volume 1. Bond and Barker - A Comparison By Charles Lamb For the Degree of PhD oint School of Theatre Studies University of Warwick September 1992 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In producing this study, I owe particular thanks to: - the directors, Danny Boyle and Kenny Ireland, for allowing me to observe their rehearsals - the actors and crews of the RSC production of THE BITE OF THE NIGHT and The Wrestling School production of VICTORY for their ideas and suggestions - David Thomas, my supervisor, for reading and commenting on my work - Howard Barker, for being unstinting with his time and generous with advice and assistance SUMMARY This study arose out of an awareness that contemporary performance theories and production techniques were not appropriate to the plays of Howard Barker. The first section, a comparison of Barker with Edward Bond, attempts to 'situate' the former with reference to a major dramatist of the seventies and early eighties. This reveals a number of significant differences, including almost diametrically opposed conceptions of the function of drama. In the second section, I consider Barker against a wider background of deconstructive and postmodernist thinking. As opposed to Bond's Brechtian notion of a Rational theatre, I argue that Barker's theatre is irrational and suggest that irrational interaction is Seduction. Barker's plays are considered from the point of view of a theory of seduction - in particular Jean Baudrillard's. There follows a review of a range of discourses on performance by influential practitioners such as Stanislavsky. Although seduction is identifiable in all their practices, it is almost universally denied or shunned - except by Grotowski. Also the focus of acting technique is invariably on the actor/character relation with little consideration of interaction with others. The third section considers in some detail two plays by Barker - JUDITH and THE CASTLE, analysing them from a seductive perspective. Contents Page 1 CONTENTS Introduction SECTION ONE: Bond and Barker - A Comparison (VOLUME 1) 1. Beginnings - a consideration of early work 1. - the issue of articulacy 2. Literature and Politics - the development of Bond's literary style 62. - the 'rational' play of objects - the 'Irrational' play of subjects 3. History - 'the struggle for reason' 108. - 'pain' SECTION TWO: Seduction (VOLUME 2) 4. Postmodernisin and Theatre - deconstruction 155. - 'realism' arid 'rational theatre' - SzondI's theory 5. Seduction - the basis of an irrational theatre - BaudrIllard 182. - seduction In Barker's plays Contents Page 2 6. Seductive Performance - Barker in performance 228. - the seductive performance - Stanislavsky 7. Stanislavsky's 'heirs' - Meyerhold - Strasberg - Michael Chekhov 258. 8. Brecht and the British Theatre 282. 9. Grotowski and the Academic Theorists 312. SECTION THREE: Analyses Of Plays (VOLUME 3) 10. 'Judith' 342. 11. 'The Castle' 370. NOTES. 468. APPENDIX 1. Interview with Howard Barker 492. APPENDIX 2. Stanislavsky's Method of Physical Actions(Hapgood) 520. APPENDIX 3. Stanislavsky's Method of Physical Actioris(Gordon) 522. APPENDIX 4. Notes on Seduction for 'The Wrestling School' 524. SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY 533. INTRODUCT ION My point of departure for this study lay with my perception of the inadequacy of contemporary performance theory to cope satisfactorily with the dramas of Howard Barker. This perception was based on my own experience of directing and acting in Barker plays as well as a wide acquaintanceship with major professional productions of his work. I felt somehow that the full dramatic potential especially of the later texts was not being realised in performance. On the other hand there was throughout the sixties, seventies and eighties, an unprecedented interest in and awareness of theatre as theatre. By this I mean that the theatrical performance was no longer seen as a simple 'fleshing out' of the dramatic text but rather as a craft in its own right quite separate from literary fiction and from film. This period witnessed the widespread dissemination of Theatre Studies in Universities and Colleges, while In schools drama was established as an independent subject within the curriculum. There was, consequently, a considerable new interest in theoretical approaches o performance. During the seventies, I was personally very much drawn to the dramas of Edward Bond. As a school teacher I was searching for playscripts suitable to stage with students which would at the same time be interesting and (i) Introduction challenging for me to direct. So my first real acquaintances.ip..-with Bond was Vat. when I took THE NARROW ROAD TO THE DEEP NORTH from a Foyles' bookshelf and skim-read it. This was very much my practice at the time: first a glance at the cast list - which ruled out most plays immediately; most others were returned to the shelf after a couple of pages of scene one. I read THE NARROW ROAD, however, in Its entirety and decided there and then to stage it. I wonder now what attracted me to it? I had never seen or read a Bond play, though I had heard of Bond In connection with the SAVED and EARLY MORNING controversies. Apart from strictly practical considerations, there were three things in the maIne I feel, which recommended Bond's text to me: firstly there was the literary quality of the writing. The text was poetic without being rarefied or versified' (like Fry) but at the same time had a certain colloquial force. Bond seemed to juxtapose speech from registers which had hitherto existed in hermetically sealed worlds the very clash of which created a kind of unique music rarely found outside Shakespeare. Secondly, the play was full of dramatic incident, vivid, 'theatrical' characters and fascinating visual images which offered good opportunities for a youthful and physical ensemble. Thirdly, the play seemed to evade all the conventional processes of definition - tragedy? comedy? farce? caricature characters? It didn't fit the established slots but seemed to unwind along a trajectory defined solely by its own unique and secret inner necessity: that seemed to me to be a good thing. Staging the play served only to increase my interest in and respect for Bond as a dramatist. I read all of his plays and attended as many professional productions of his work as I could. A production (ii) Introduction of LEAR by the RSC in The Other Place at Stratford provided one of the most dramatically powerful and aesthetically rich theatrical experiences I had ever witnessed. Bond seemed at his peak to have attained a complete technical mastery to complement his creative Imagination. During this period, Bond was engaged not merely In writing plays but also in setting out his political and social views and relating these to his crusade for a 'Rational Theatre'. This latter coincided fairly closely with the aims of Brecht whose approach to performance enjoyed a certain 'radical' vogue in Britain during the seventies and eighties. During the seventies, I could not really see how there could be any substantial case against a theatre dedicated to a clear sense of social, moral and (consequently) political purpose. I found myself broadly In sympathy with Bond's views. Also during the seventies, I became interested In the plays of Howard Barker who tended to be grouped with a generation of radical, 'political' dramatists of a post-war generation younger than Bond - people like Brenton or Hare. Having produced some of Barker's work, it became clear to me that he was a very different sort of writer from Bond. Especially as Bond defined further his conception of a Rational Theatre. These were not merely differences of style but profound divergences about the role of theatre. Bond was in tune with a particular strand of the received thinking of his times and pushed this line of thought to an extreme - effectively isolating himself in the process. Barker was also increasingly at odds with the current theatrical climate(directors) of 70s (iii.) Introduction and 80s but in an entirely different way. he appeared to be pursuing a more classical and perhaps conservative aesthetic - though his plays did not demonstrate the 'accessibility' that such an approach might suggest; on the contrary they became increasingly 'difficult.' There is a sense now that directors have very little idea of how to 'cope' with these texts. I think this is in no small measure owing to the lack of any kind of theoretical basis on which to proceed with them. My starting point for this exploration was the problem - the challenge - that Barker's plays posed to contemporary performance theory. I therefore decided initally to examine Barker in conjunction with a comparable writer whose work has, in my opinion, been successfully staged - Edward Bond. I felt that such an exercise offered a number of significant parallels and contrasts which would be useful in initially 'situating' Barker's dramaturgy within the context of contemporary British theatre. While working on this study, I have been fortunate in being permitted to observe rehearsals of professional productions of Barker's plays. It was at one of these - during the RSC's work on THE BITE OF THE NIGHT, that I devised the strategy which informs the second section of this study. The director, Danny Boyle, was having difficulty working on some scenes in the third act and I noticed that a consistent pattern was emerging.