Carnival Texts: Three Plays for Ensemble Performance
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Carnival Texts To Martin Harvey – who brought my best work to life Carnival Texts Three plays for ensemble performance James MacDonald afl]dd][l:jaklgd$MC';`a[Y_g$MK9 First published in the UK in 2011 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK First published in the USA in 2011 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Copyright © 2011 Intellect Ltd All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission. Series: Playtext Series Series Editor: Roberta Mock A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Cover designer: Holly Rose Copy-editor: Macmillan Typesetting: Mac Style, Beverley, E. Yorkshire ISBN 978-1-84150-416-2 / EISBN 978-1-84150-500-8 Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta. Contents Preface 7 PART ONE: TEXTS 11 Strangers To Paradise 13 Brides, Bombs and Boardrooms 77 Fete 145 PART TWO: ESSAYS 217 Fear into Laughter 219 James MacDonald Bodies in Pain: Realism and the Subversion of Spectacle in Brides, Bombs and Boardrooms 227 John Lutz Blowing Up the Nation: Vulnerability and Violence in James MacDonald’s Post-national England 239 Jessica O’Hara Notes on Contributors 247 Preface arnival Texts takes its eponymous lead from the work of the Soviet critic Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975), specifically his theory of Carnival. This is very much a Ccontemporary appropriation, but then Bakhtin himself carries forward a concept rooted in medieval culture in applying it to such diverse authors as Rabelais, Shakespeare and Dostoevsky. The intersection of various texts from different cultures and eras is the subject of the companion essays, but it may be helpful to introduce the topic here. Carnival, in the Bakhtinian sense, has essentially to do with spectacle, and it seems altogether fitting that it should occupy a place in current performance theory. These performance texts began life, in fact, as part of an undergraduate module in Interpretive Acting at the University of Exeter’s drama department, and Bakhtin already formed part of the curriculum. A more formal inquiry into Carnival seemed a natural progression from what the students were studying by way of Stanislavsky and Brecht and what came to be known as Political Theatre and Ensemble Acting. Broadly speaking, this has involved a larger than average group of performers presenting a scripted piece whose theme partook of contemporary issues and whose style involved addressing the audience directly. One of the basic tenets of Bakhtin’s Carnivalesque is the slippery relationship between spectator and spectacle, and this was key to our productions as well by treating the audience as an additional character through the removal of the fourth wall. Carnival also posits a reversal in the established order by having the disenfranchised celebrated as aristocracy. Our latter day appropriation rendered this as a celebration of physical deformity and ethnic diversity in the free play of characters who are laws unto themselves. It was not so much a case of offending the audience as of disorientating them with unfamiliar characters who behave in ways that even miscreant nationals are unaccustomed to doing. In the introduction to Russia, Freaks and Foreigners – my earlier volume of performance texts for Intellect – I speak of writing about non-British characters in foreign contexts, a number of whom are also severely deformed. This present volume develops these elements by presenting non-British characters in a British setting and several British characters who are severely deformed. The idea is to create a world of the Carnivalesque in which the unfamiliar is featured as standard. This may well be interpreted by some as postmodern and as a dystopia, and they are welcome to their views. My own view, for all that it is worth, is Carnival Texts that this special meaning of Carnival empowers both spectator and performer and celebrates what in more familiar contexts would be shunned as grotesque to the point of repulsive. Our aim was not so much to suspend judgement as to invite engagement with the unfamiliar through Carnivalesque celebration and, if possible, laughter. In the case of Strangers To Paradise – the signal text, performed out-of-doors, in a carnival setting – spectator response was ideally receptive. People were especially responsive to the forthright presentation of deformity, laughing in a way I had never known them to do. The aim was similar to the aim of disabled stand-up comedians like Liz Carr and Laurence Clark, who invite their audiences to laugh at the interaction between the disabled and the ordinary public – without depicting the one as saintly victims or the other as inhuman villains. The humour was simply in the juxtaposition of the strange and the less strange. Judgement might be withheld through the inability to categorize – a welcome element of all artistic expression. But certainly the spectators’ predilection to laugh in the presence of physical deformity was cause for Carnivalesque celebration. This is the governing feature of all three texts, as it was of their productions. These texts could be marketed as disability plays, since I am congenitally disabled and these partake directly of my disabled experience. But the term ‘disability’ suggests a relaxing of standards and a special-interest audience, and, in this sense, I would no more wish to be a ‘disability’ playwright than Tennessee Williams is a ‘gay’ playwright. He used his unique experience to comment on the general human condition; that’s how I’d like to use mine. The demarcations aren’t always clear, though. The incidence of discrimination and interaction with the police is very much based on personal experience. The director/ module leader encouraged me to be as open as I dared about my experience. To illustrate how this translates into dramatic action, I was once targeted by a young cerebral palsy woman for money. If the transaction had been allowed to take place, I’d have given her everything I had on me except for the fare home. But someone who knew her caught sight of us and intervened: ‘Is this guy bothering you, Kate?’ And he proceeded to knock me over and ‘rescue’ the woman. The normal response would be to tell the man I was trying to help the woman. But would an able-bodied person even have been stopped? I don’t want to come across as a victim, but my point is that this is an experience that only a disabled person would know, and in these plays I’m using that uniqueness to comment on the human condition. Chronic disability revises everything one knows about the status quo: how one receives and bestows love, the sources of income one has, literally, how one moves and interacts with the world as a whole. Some day there is going to be a movement where disabled experience takes its place alongside ethnic, gender and orientational representations of the status quo. The presence will be greater than mine, the statements will be full and clear. I’m content that I’ve gone as far as people in my circumstance can go right now. But I’m also aware that these people need to go farther. It’s probably utopian to wish for a removal of difference. But the easiest recognition of differenceis possible, and this is why the Carnivalesque is so attractive to me and why it is central to these plays. 8 Preface The realization of the productions, like the coming to pass of this volume, was quintessentially a collaborative achievement and needs to be acknowledged as such. This was all the more vital for the death of my father, which coincided with the production of Brides, Bombs and Boardrooms. Withstanding their own real needs to make a success of the project, the performers embodied compassion and sensitivity to a degree that my father would have cherished. All three groups paid me the ultimate tribute of claiming ownership of the texts and giving owners’ commitments to their realization. Martin Harvey, the volume’s dedicatee, crowned nearly a quarter century’s working together by making these the best texts we have ever brought to performance. Our colleague, Jon Primrose, managed the technical side of the performances with consummate skill and also provided the photos for this volume. Thomas Fahy and I have worked together for nearly ten years, an association whose brilliance is reflected in the excellence of the essays he organized. Tom it was, also, who alerted me to the relevance of Bakhtin’s Carnival in his own inspired research. And his colleagues’ excellence is more than enough to convince any interested reader that cultural discourse in the 21st century is more vibrant – and necessary – than it has ever been, conclusions certified by the continuing courage and enterprise of Intellect and its staff. Of course, I am especially indebted to Roberta Mock and to Jelena Stanovnik for their instrumental work in bringing this volume to life. Everyone here mentioned deserves my heartfelt thanks. Without any one of them, this project would not be the solid thing that it is. I consider it nothing less than the best thing I have done, and this is largely because of what these collaborators have done in bringing it to life. James MacDonald 9 Part One Texts Claire Holdsworth (foreground), Lorna Davis, Kim Williams and Bill Wilson opening ceremony of Strangers To Paradise. Amy Mellor and Lauren Parkes disrupt festivities in Strangers To Paradise. Vicki Martin and Aaron Turner in private cross- cultural accord in Strangers To Paradise.