The Loss of Small White Clouds: Dementia in Contemporary Performance
Morgan Batch Bachelor of Fine Arts (Drama) (QUT) First Class Honours (Drama) (QUT)
Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
School of Creative Practice Faculty of Creative Industries Queensland University of Technology 2019
Abstract
Statistics consistently report that dementia is on the rise. Cultural studies scholarship finds that despite growing research, there remains a lack of understanding of the condition and of people with dementia. The Western cultural construction of dementia renders those with the condition as vulnerable, burdensome, and even brain dead. Journalistic and fictional accounts of people with dementia echo these perceptions. Although a significant academic literature exists on the representation of dementia in poetry, novels, and photography, there is, a dearth of research that addresses the staging of dementia in theatre. Research at the intersection of dementia and drama is currently preoccupied with applied practices. This thesis investigates contemporary theatre about dementia. It examines a number of performances for emergent themes, trends, tendencies, and resonances of the prevailing Western view of dementia, and asks how these develop in the particular medium of live performance. The core findings of this thesis are related to clinical markers, demarcation, the generational discourse, performance forms, constructions of diegesis, erasure, and selfhood.
Keywords Contemporary theatre, Dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, Gerontology, Western culture, Representation, Positioning, Narrativisation
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | i Table of Contents Abstract ...... i Keywords ...... i Table of Contents ...... ii List of Figures ...... v Abbreviations ...... vii Statement of Original Authorship ...... viii Acknowledgements ...... ix 1. Introduction to the Research ...... 1 1.1 Significance of the Research ...... 1 1.2 Research Problem ...... 2 Key Research Questions ...... 2 Sub-questions ...... 2 1.3 Framing ...... 2 1.4 The Layout of this Document...... 3 2. Methodology ...... 7 2.1 Lenses and Framing ...... 7 2.2 Methods ...... 8 2.2.1 Textual Analysis ...... 8 2.2.2 Interviews ...... 10 2.3 Available Materials ...... 11 2.4 Limitations ...... 12 3. Literature Review: Dementia in Medicine and Culture ...... 13 3.1 An Introduction to Dementia...... 13 3.2 Dementia in Medicine ...... 15 3.2.1 Dementia and Cognition ...... 16 3.2.2 Clinical Presentations of Dementia ...... 17 3.2.3 Clinical presentations: Memory ...... 17 3.2.4 Clinical presentations: Communication ...... 18 3.2.5 Clinical presentations: Behaviour ...... 20 3.3 The Medicalisation of Dementia ...... 21 3.4 Stigma ...... 23 3.5 Dementia in Western Culture ...... 24 3.5.1 Notions of Burden ...... 28 3.5.2 Dementia and Euthanasia ...... 29 3.5.3 Selfhood ...... 30
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | ii 4. Literature Review: Representations of Dementia in Media ...... 34 4.1 Journalistic Media ...... 34 4.2 Images and Illustrations ...... 37 4.3 Photography and Portraiture...... 40 4.4 Novels and Memoir ...... 41 4.5 Screen ...... 43 4.6 Applied Arts and Dementia ...... 47 4.6.1 Music Therapy ...... 48 4.6.2 Dance Movement Therapy ...... 49 4.6.3 Reminiscence Therapy ...... 49 4.6.4 Dramatherapy ...... 50 4.6.5 Intersections of Applied Drama and Performance ...... 50 4.7 Conclusion and the Current Gap in the Knowledge ...... 52 5. Contextual Review: The Existing and Emerging Landscape of Dementia in Theatre ..... 54 King Lear – a historic case study ...... 58 5.1 Performance Styles – a guide to terminology ...... 60 Dramaturgy ...... 60 Structure and Diegesis ...... 61 Language ...... 62 Postdramatic Performance ...... 62 5.2 Contemporary Performance ...... 63 5.2.1 The Generational Discourse ...... 65 5.2.2 Settings ...... 70 5.2.3 Type of Dementia ...... 72 5.2.4 Development ...... 73 Research-based Theatre ...... 75 5.2.5 Reportage ...... 78 5.2.6 Performance Dramaturgy: Composition and Forms ...... 79 5.2.7 Reframing ...... 87 5.3 Conclusion ...... 89 6. “We’re All in Our Own Little World” ...... 91 6.1 Introduction ...... 91 6.2 Autobiographer ...... 93 6.3 Really Old, Like Forty Five ...... 105 6.4 Inside Out Of Mind ...... 119 6.5 Discussion ...... 132 6.6 Conclusion ...... 136 7. Active and Passive Embodiment ...... 138
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | iii 7.1 Introduction ...... 138 7.2 Sundowner ...... 141 7.3 1 Beach Road ...... 151 7.4 D-Generation: An Exaltation of Larks ...... 159 7.5 It’s Dark Outside ...... 165 7.6 Discussion ...... 174 7.7 Conclusion ...... 177 8. Post-dramatic Dementia ...... 179 8.1 Introduction ...... 179 8.2 Memory Point(s): The Beauty of Remembering ...... 180 8.3 RUFF ...... 190 8.4 On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God ...... 202 8.5 Discussion ...... 209 8.6 Conclusion ...... 212 9. Discussion ...... 214 9.1 Three Layers ...... 216 9.1.1 Clinical Layer ...... 216 9.1.2 Linguistic Layer ...... 218 9.1.3 Visual Layer ...... 220 9.2 Three Motifs ...... 221 9.2.1 Place ...... 221 9.2.2 Relationships ...... 224 9.2.3 Endings and Erasure ...... 228 9.3 Three Forms ...... 231 9.3.1 Sound ...... 231 9.3.2 Physicality ...... 233 9.3.3 Puppetry ...... 234 9.4 Conclusion ...... 237 10. Conclusion ...... 239 References ...... 243 Appendix A: Visualisation of Key Discussions ...... 265 Appendix B: Performance Catalogue ...... 266
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | iv List of Figures
Figure 1 Neurodegeneration (Shutterstock 2013) Page 39
Figure 2 Alzheimer’s Disease Robs (Kinetic 2011) Page 39
Figure 3 A mind with dementia is a theatre set (Coxon 2015) Page 39
Figure 4 Alzheimer’s disease (the-infinite-opi 2009) Page 39
Figure 5 Alzheimer’s disease (Simmons Holcomb 2008) Page 39
Figure 6 King Lear (photo by Mark Douet) Page 60
Figure 7 The Keys are in the Margarine 2018 poster Page 77
Figure 8 The father and daughter in State of Grace (photo unattributed, Page 86 Reckless Kettle) Figure 9 Four versions of Flora in Autobiographer (photo by Monika Page 95 Chmielarz) Figure 10 Autobiographer (Photo by Monika Chmielarz) Page 102
Figure 11 The family home in Really Old, Like Forty Five (photo by Page 109 Robbie Jack) Figure 12 The government office in Really Old, Like Forty Five (photo by Page 113 Robbie Jack) Figure 13 Mimi and Monroe in The Ark, in Really Old, Like Forty Five Page 115 (photo by Robbie Jack) Figure 14 The set of Inside Out of Mind (photo by Alan Fletcher, cropped) Page 121
Figure 15 Mr P in the light of the digital projection in Inside Out of Mind Page 126 (photo by Alan Fletcher) Figure 16 Anna flapping a book like a bird in Inside Out of Mind (photo by Page 130 Alan Fletcher) Figure 17 Peggy in front of her desk in Sundowner (photo by Jeff Busby) Page 143
Figure 18 “Get Out and Get Under the Moon” in Sundowner (photo by Jeff Page 146 Busby) Figure 19 Sundowner (photo by Jeff Busby) Page 147
Figure 20 Seaside nostalgia in 1 Beach Road (photo unattributed, RedCape Page 152 Theatre)
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | v Figure 21 Doctor’s visit in 1 Beach Road (photo unattributed, RedCape Page 154 Theatre) Figure 22 Jane hangs from a cliff in 1 Beach Road (photo unattributed, Page 157 RedCape Theatre) Figure 23 The collection of TimeSlips data is staged in D-Generation Page 159 (photo by Joe Mazza) Figure 24 A TimeSlips story is performed in D-Generation (photo by Joe Page 160 Mazza) Figure 25 D-Generation (photo by Joe Mazza) Page 161
Figure 26 A puppet dances in D-Generation (photo by Joe Mazza) Page 162
Figure 27 The bounty hunter in It’s Dark Outside (photo by Richard Page 166 Jefferson) Figure 28 The man at home in It’s Dark Outside (photo by Richard Page 167 Jefferson) Figure 29 The loss of small white clouds in It’s Dark Outside (photo by Page 169 Richard Jefferson) Figure 30 The man flies through the air in It’s Dark Outside (photo by Page 170 Richard Jefferson) “Gaudy with colour” – costumes and projection in Memory Figure 31 Page 182 Points (photography attributed to Tom Houser, Gerald White and Su Houser) Figure 32 Seaside nostalgia in Memory Points (photography attributed to Page 184 Tom Houser, Gerald White and Su Houser) Figure 33 The lockers in Memory Points (photography attributed to Tom Page 187 Houser, Gerald White and Su Houser) Figure 34 Peggy Shaw in RUFF (photo by Alexei Taylor) Page 191
Figure 35 Shaw in front of her pre-recorded motion-captured self in RUFF Page 195 (photo by Michael Conti) Figure 36 Shaw in front of a projected video in RUFF (photo by Alexei Page 199 Taylor) Figure 37 Role-reversal in On the Concept (photo by Christophe Raynaud Page 203 de Lage) Figure 38 The boys throw grenades in On the Concept (photo by Klaus Page 205 Lefebvre) Figure 39 The father walks among the grenades in On the Concept (photo Page 205 by Klaus Lefebvre) Figure 40 The portrait performs in On the Concept (photo by Christophe Page 207 Raynaud de Lage)
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | vi Abbreviations
AD Alzheimer’s disease ADLs activities of daily living BPSD1 behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia DAT dementia of the Alzheimer’s type DMT dance movement therapy IADLs instrumental activities of daily living LTC long-term care (facilities/settings) MT music therapy PLWD2 people living with dementia QOL quality of life RT reminiscence therapy RVB repetitive verbal behaviours
Some key performance titles may be shortened when referenced in-text:
D-Generation D-Generation: An Exaltation of Larks Inside Out Inside Out of Mind Memory Points Memory Point(s): The Beauty of Remembering On the Concept On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God Really Old Really Old, Like Forty Five
1 Many people with dementia and advocates contest the notion of BPSD. 2 While PWD (people with dementia) is in common usage, advocates tend to prefer PLWD.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | vii Statement of Original Authorship
The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made.
Signature: QUT Verified Signature
Date: March 2019
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | viii Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I need to thank my supervisors Bree Hadley and Caroline Heim for their patience and encouragement. My parents have also been enduringly supportive. And, to Shannon, Brendan and Justin, thank you for your humour and belief. The community of HDR students at QUT (particularly my comrades in L-block, R-block, and Z2-202) have always been willing to give up their time and energy to offer advice and validation. I would like to thank the editors of The Routledge Handbook of Disability Arts, Culture, and Media, Bree Hadley and Donna McDonald, for their support. I’d particularly like to thank Donna for her feedback on my contribution to the book. Finally, I would like to express my appreciation to the members of ADSA for their feedback on my work at the 2017 and 2018 conferences and their collegial approach to academia.
Some of the ideas presented in the literature reviews and contextual review, as well as discussion from Chapter 7, were published in a chapter in The Routledge Handbook of Disability Arts, Culture, and Media (2019).
This thesis was copy edited by Rebecca Stafford who applied her expertise to give the writing clarity and elegance.
For Ellen and Pat Batch, and Arthur and Phillis Vonhoff.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | ix 1. Introduction to the Research
This project investigates contemporary theatre that stages dementia. It provides a guide of features that frequently occur across a number of catalogued works. This guide is applied to a selection of ten works in Chapters 6 to 8. Overall, this research offers a discussion about reoccurring features and outlying factors in the analysed performances that represent dementia on stage. The performances in focus are recognised as existing in a Western cultural context, and their analysis reflects this.
1.1 Significance of the Research Not only is dementia reportedly on the rise, but there are also strongly held ideas that amplify its cultural significance. These ideas have become manifest in media and art, and it is important to consider how theatre performance may confirm or dispel them. Hannah Zeilig (2015, 13) states that academics have acknowledged the significance of “exploring stories about dementia,” adding that when “these narratives are scrutinised they can help to uncover truths about how a society imagines, and most importantly, how it engages with the people who live with a dementia”. Encompassing language, image, and sound in a live environment, where audience and performer share bodily presence, theatre has the capacity for the live exchange of meanings. It is, therefore, a potential conduit for expressing or challenging existing stories about dementia.
The intersection of dementia and drama does have a place in the current literature, but prevailingly in the applied sector. Research in the applied arts is primarily concerned with dramatherapy for people with dementia. The use of drama as an educational tool to explore dementia is also an emerging practice. While these are undoubtedly valuable subjects, analyses of performances that depict dementia have received disproportionately little scholarly attention by comparison. A topic so important and prevalent should not be confined to academic trends of any kind. Currently, no extensive or significant research investigates a range of theatre performances that represent dementia and people with dementia as characters. In particular, the Western cultural portrait of dementia requires examination, considering that it engenders serious implications for positioning people with dementia as lacking selfhood or humanity. Owing to its social significance in an ageing society and the issues of ageism and the discursive
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 1 dehumanisation of people with dementia, this is an important academic discussion on which to expand.
1.2 Research Problem
Key Research Questions What are the emergent themes, trends, tendencies, and resonances in contemporary Western performance that stages dementia and people with dementia? And, how do these develop in performance?
Sub-questions 1. What does dementia mean in Western culture? 2. What trends currently exist in performances that stage dementia? 3. What theatre conventions and technologies are employed to illustrate dementia in the works? 4. What is the significance of these theatre technologies? 5. How do the representations echo or challenge predominant understandings of dementia?
1.3 Framing According to Zeilig (2014a) dementia is more than a diagnosis and, therefore, proves difficult subject matter to represent authentically and fairly as it has no singular meaning. Instead, dementia is multilayered, highly individual, and informed by culture and society. Layers include: the neurological, clinical, personal, familial, social, and societal. Stemming from the clinical layer, the familial perspective of dementia describe the experience of the families of people with dementia. The social layer of dementia is related to the effects of the cognitive changes on social engagement and resulting stigma. Finally, the societal view is preoccupied with the ageing population and rising rates of dementia, as well as the potential for emotional and financial burden. These layers, though they represent different areas of literature, have a clear cause-and-effect relationship that is illustrated in the literature review. It is necessary to outline clinical presentations in order to understand the social aspects of dementia and its resulting cultural construction. In the medical section of the literature review, dementia refers to dementia of the Alzheimer’s type (DAT). This decision is influenced by the abundance of existing medical information in proportion to the scope of the project. DAT is an appropriate route to cover a range of symptoms, many of which constitute the public view of dementia, as Alzheimer’s disease and dementia are often discussed in layperson media as though
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 2 synonymous with one another. Where cultural perceptions are concerned, the distinction is less clear than in medicine and dementia becomes a more generalised concept. For this reason, throughout the research I mostly use the word ‘dementia’ to refer to both the general idea of dementia, as well as clinical dementia that is related to Alzheimer’s disease.
This study focuses on dementia as it presents most commonly, as an age-related condition; early-onset dementias are not specifically discussed. Additionally, the stigmatisation of dementia is almost intrinsically linked to ageism; both ideologies share common attitudes and justifications. I also recognise – as Anthea Innes (2009, 137) does – that “parallels that can be drawn between movements in the dementia field and the disability movement” regarding stigma and social attitudes. However, this study does not directly approach this connection, due to scope. Stigma is discussed in the literature review, as it represents a significant dialogue in cultural studies. Cultural studies is becoming an increasingly significant forum for discussions on dementia, indicating that there are worthy areas of the literature supplementary to the purely medical. Current discussions in the area of cultural studies are interrogating the way dementia is viewed and described both in media and by individuals indirectly involved with the disease. Such discussions are drawn upon to frame the Western positioning of dementia. There is a consensus in the literature that the issue of selfhood is pertinent to discussions about dementia. Hence, the loss-of-self notion associated with dementia is worthy of attention. The review of the literature also demonstrates how media and public rhetoric inform cultural understanding.
For this project I have catalogued a range of theatrical works that vary in processes of development, style, and perspective. Of the range of works selected for analysis, plays that contain dementia merely as subplot may be mentioned in the contextual review, but do not feature in the analytical discussion in the thesis. The performances analysed make use of multiple theatrical tools or disrupt traditionally dramatic realism in some way. Thus, their analysis can reveal different ways that theatre tools and technologies can be employed to represent dementia. This analysis identifies representative trends and examines the positioning of people with dementia in performances that stage the condition.
1.4 The Layout of this Document The methodology that follows describes the lenses and methods that are applied in the research. Following this, a two-part Literature Review examines dementia, beginning with a medical foundation and then, more importantly, explores dementia in Western culture. The second part
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 3 of the literature review discusses media, arts, and drama in relation to dementia, including applied arts for therapeutic purposes. Following the two Literature Review chapters, the Contextual Review examines key trends and begins to chart the current landscape of dementia in theatre, as well as identifying key narrative touchstones. This constitutes an important building block for future scholarship around how dementia is represented in performance. In Chapters 6 to 8 a more rigorous analysis is conducted to examine these trends and uncover other tendencies as well as divergences.
The parameters for performances chosen for analysis were:
- the character/s with dementia are at the centre of the narrative - where necessary, the dialogue is in English, or an appropriate translation is available3 - the work was first performed in or after 2010
A selection of ten performances are discussed in three analysis chapters. A brief description of each work is provided below. Chapter 6, “We’re All In Our Own Little World,” primarily investigates linguistic and auditory aspects of the works, but also introduces the notion of layered worlds and realities – often achieved through the intersection of spoken language and other theatrical signage. The chapter investigates: Autobiographer (Melanie Wilson, England), Really Old, Like Forty Five (Tamsin Oglesby, England) and Inside Out of Mind (Tanya Myers, England). Next, Chapter 7, Active and Passive Embodiment, represents a shift away from the spoken word and towards a predominantly physical dramaturgy. This chapter examines: Sundowner (KAGE, Australia), 1 Beach Road (RedCape Theatre, England), D-Generation: An Exaltation of Larks (Sandglass Theater, USA) and It’s Dark Outside (The Last Great Hunt, Australia). Chapter 8, Postdramatic Dementia, is concerned with performances that demonstrate outlying features that deviate from emerging compositional and representational trends. The final performances analysed are: Memory Point(s): The Beauty of Remembering (Platform 4, England), RUFF (Split Britches, USA), and On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God (Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, Italy). The final two chapters are the discussion, which presents the key findings of the research, and the conclusion, which gives a summary and final thoughts. An infographic presentation of the key discussion points emerging from this research comprises Appendix A. A tabulated catalogue of performances identified thus far is attached as Appendix B.
3 Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio’s On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God is an Italian work. However, its dramaturgy – and therefore its analysis – is not reliant on spoken language. That is, the visual, physical, auditory, and immersive aspects of the performance are most significant.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 4 Autobiographer (2011) is a sound- and language-based work. Its progression is non- linear and its staging is non-naturalistic. The experience of the play is one of a non- reality – it is without place and without time. Audiences of the work sit around the circumference of the performance space and the actors sometimes address them directly.
Really Old, Like Forty Five (2010) is a more traditionally dramatic work than others under analysis. Its narrative follows a linear structure and its characters are presented in a conventionally dramatic manner. However, it is dystopian and may be described as “speculative fiction,” as it draws on negative attitudes about the ageing population and people with dementia.
Inside Out of Mind (2013) was scripted from 600,000 words of ethnographic field notes. The ethnographers observed the residents and healthcare assistants in a dementia care ward, the setting of the resulting performance. The project was intended as an educational tool for healthcare assistants who work with people with dementia.
Sundowner (2011) is a dance theatre work. The central character is a woman grappling with an early-onset dementia. Throughout the work, her children visit her home, in which the piece is set. The piece combines spoken language with music, dance, and physical theatre performance.
1 Beach Road (2011) is a physical theatre performance with an abstract set design. The work revolves around the central theme of erosion and allegorises a character’s early- onset dementia as such. Its predominantly visual and physical dramaturgy includes language that both speaks to the central metaphor and signposts dementia with clinical linguistic markers.
D-Generation: An Exaltation of Larks (2013) was devised using verbatim stories from a series of visits to nursing homes; it was produced using a storytelling method called TimeSlips. The performance uses puppetry and projection to present the collected stories as well as the experience of collecting the stories. In this way, the play contains two narrative levels, the overarching diegesis being set in residential dementia care.
It’s Dark Outside (2012) makes use of puppetry and other visual forms and omits spoken language completely. Its presentation modes include: live performers, masks, puppetry, shadow theatre – using both puppetry and the silhouettes of live performers,
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 5 and video projection; as well as music and liberal sound effects that produce a perpetual soundscape.
Memory Points (2012) is a work of promenade theatre. The creators worked with several community groups to collect stories and workshop ideas for the performance. The piece is designed to be performed in and around a theatre venue. When staged, audience numbers were restricted to a maximum of six.
RUFF (2013) was developed after actor Peggy Shaw’s stroke in 2011. Although it is ostensibly a monologue delivered by Shaw, the show also features video projections of an accompanying band and contributions from its director (Shaw’s long-time collaborator, Lois Weaver) who sits in the audience. In this way, RUFF is part monologue and part cabaret.
On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God (2010) is an Italian-language work constructed in three scenes that become increasingly abstract and decreasingly verbal. It contains religious overtones: a portrait of Christ oversees the work. Dementia is not directly referenced in the performance but is evoked via themes of old age and senility, impaired language, and family caregiving.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 6 2. Methodology
2.1 Lenses and Framing This research is framed by a Western cultural construction of dementia. This perspective is built on a medical narrative of dementia as well as social expectations typical of Western culture. As such, the binary treatment of health and non-health – arbitrary medical taxonomies (Harding and Palfrey 1997) – result in similarly binary understandings of dementia in cultural, social, and familial contexts. This lack of nuance would be disputed by the posthumanist and poststructuralist paradigms that have informed the discussion and analysis in this thesis.
Poststructuralism acknowledges that texts (including works of written literature and, specific to this context, live performance) contain a plurality of meaning. Poststructuralism distinguishes itself in its critique of the structuralist valuation of binaries. The poststructuralist perspective challenges the construction of human beings as male or female, rational or emotional, and healthy or unhealthy. The paradigm, therefore, welcomes the instability of meanings of words and concepts that define humanness. Importantly, poststructuralism advocates that to examine any object, its cultural, historical, and social contexts must also be considered. Thus, this study considers the medical, cultural, social, and familial portraits of dementia. An argument can be made to connect poststructuralist and posthumanist thinking, to create a new paradigm that pushes against humanist ideals. On Humanism, Rosi Braidotti (2013, 1) observes that: “The idea of the ‘Human’ implied in the Humanities […] has historically been the image of Man as a rational animal endowed with language”. Braidotti (2013, 2) also explains that this model “implies the dialectics of self and other, and posits the binary logic of identity and otherness”. If, as Humanism denotes, “subjectivity is equated with consciousness, universal rationality, and self-regulating ethical behaviour” (Braidotti 2013, 2), then people with dementia, who are often considered to lack rational though and self- regulation, are excluded. Posthumanism offers “alternative views about the human and the new formations of subjectivity […that] do not merely oppose Humanism but create other visions of the self” (Braidotti 2013, 4). In this study, dementia is considered not simply as a loss of selfhood – as it may be in relation to Humanism – but as an experience that remains on the spectrum of humanness.
Cultural studies literature encompasses a range of theoretical approaches and is concerned with investigating social phenomena and meaning-making within a culture. Such research is,
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 7 therefore, crucial considering that poststructuralism necessitates these contexts. Social studies, a related field of study, also represent a significant sector of dementia literature. Social studies focuses on the examination of social science, human interrelationships, and humanities. This area of scholarship is significant to the destigmatisation of dementia and similar debates. However, it is the examination of meaning-making and phenomena from the cultural studies standpoint that more strongly frames the analysis in this thesis.
Chapter 3 provides a useful foundation for developing a workable model of dementia. In terms of analysis, the contextual review in Chapter 5 is also instrumental in identifying trends amongst the works catalogued in the study and offers a way to take the pulse of dementia represented in theatre. The contextual review discusses some additional theory, namely that pertaining to: performance terminology, postdramatic treatment of theatrical elements, the inherent power of spoken language, place, mothers, and puppetry. Chapters 6 to 8 discuss the use and implications of presentational forms and narrative tendencies at greater depth.
2.2 Methods
2.2.1 Textual Analysis The selected performances featured in Chapters 6 to 8 were examined using qualitative textual analysis. Text here refers to performances, which of course may employ multimedia, with the media contributing independently or collectively to meaning. That which concerns the text (or weave) of the performance forms and technologies can be referred to on the whole as “dramaturgy”. The analysed performances were accessed through a combination of written scripts, videos, and descriptions. Some videos were available and these afforded a full analysis of the dramaturgy. However, for several text-based works, scripts were appropriate proxies for a live showing. In some instances, descriptions garnered from reviews or interviews gave sufficient information to analyse the themes and stories in the performances. Textual analysis was applied to the weave of the performances evinced in these various materials. Alan McKee explains that textual analysis “is a way for researchers to gather information about how other human beings make sense of the world” (McKee 2003, 1). In order to guide this gathering of information, the below set of questions was developed. The questions are arranged under eleven headings related to dramaturgy and the narrativisation of dementia and people with dementia.
Style - What is the style of the diegesis, that is, how is the internal storyworld of the performance constructed, visually, sonically, and linguistically?
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 8 - Is it mimetic or otherwise? Structure - Is the structure linear, non-linear, or fractured? - Is the structure representative of something? Narrative - Who or what is the story about? - Who tells the story and from what perspective? - How does the point of view of the narrative marginalise or speak for the person with dementia? - What are the major themes of the performance? - What is shown and what is told? Stage space and location - Where is the story set? Is there a recognisable place? - How significant is the location of the story to the overall performance experience? - How does the constructed space contribute to the experience of reality? - How do the performance locations construct familiarity vs. unfamiliarity? - Does the staging or setting reference social issues like institutionalisation, independence, isolation, stigmatisation, or power dynamics? Visual dramaturgy - How does the stage space represent place? How are certain places positioned and constructed in the performance? Does this positioning reflect Western cultural views? - How is clinical dementia represented through physicality? - What does technology (e.g., projection) – if featured – contribute to the performance? Language - Does the performance use clinical language to represent dementia? - Is the language ir/regular, fractured, in/cohesive, in/consistent, in/comprehensible? - What cognitive picture is evoked in the communication by characters with dementia? - How do the characters without dementia talk to the characters with dementia? - How does communication affect relationships? - How does language align or not align with Western cultural constructions of selfhood? - How is language used to describe dementia within the work? Does it employ metaphor or other imagery? Does it reflect medicalisation or stigmatisation? Metaphor - What metaphors can be found in performance and what may they describe or embody? - What imagery-laden or allegorical language is used to describe dementia, the effects of the condition, or the person with dementia? - Are there metaphors in the work that are associated with natural disasters, demons, larger-than-life catastrophes, epidemics, or battles? Relationships - Who are the people/characters in the drama? - What are the roles (family, professional, social) of the characters - What are the relationships between the different characters? - How does dementia affect the relationships in the drama?
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 9 - How does the performance represent role changes? Selfhood and Identity - How are characters, in general, represented within the storyworld? - How are the characters with dementia distinct from those without dementia? - What power dynamics exist between the characters in the drama? - How are the identity and selfhood of the subject/s with dementia constructed? - Is a loss of independence represented? - Is isolation represented? - Does the work represent a fragmented, lost, or slipping, self? How so? Intention - What is the purpose or aim of the work stated by its creators (for education, broadening understanding, or to present research findings or interview material)? Western cultural portrait - Do the cognition, communication, behaviour, or relationships of the character/s with dementia deviate from acceptable social behaviour according to Western cultural views? - Is the independence, social capacity, or selfhood of the individual implicitly or explicitly undermined by their dementia – or the way others treat their dementia – in the performance? - Is the Western construction of dementia challenged or upheld? Is this implied, hidden, or incidental? These guiding questions principles and the findings presented in the contextual review inform the analyses in Chapters 6 to 8. The contextual review outlines a series of tendencies and prevalent performance technologies used in the catalogued works, and the analysed performances have been examined for these trends. Additional features of note develop out of this smaller selection of works. Overall, this research investigates ways of realising dementia on the contemporary stage and questions whether the selected performances broaden our understanding of dementia or echo existing stereotyped views. Textual analysis is, therefore, the best method for this research, as it seeks to identify representations of dementia that demonstrate an alignment with prevailing Western cultural constructions or present a different way of thinking about people with dementia. While this thesis only investigates 10 (mostly Anglophone) performances in depth, the emerging discussions and the tendencies noted in the broader survey of works can inform future analyses of dementia’s representation in theatre.
2.2.2 Interviews A small number of semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with performance-makers took place in June 2017 (QUT Ethics Approval Number: 1700000224). In this style of interviewing, the researcher steers the topic of discussion, but flexibility is allowed for a range of responses from interviewees (Ayres 2012). The interviews were based on a number of open-ended questions about performance research, development, themes, and style. The interviewees were
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 10 associated with the following performances: 1 Beach Road (Cassie Friend and Catherine Dyson), Autobiographer (Melanie Wilson), Inside Out of Mind (Tanya Myers and Professor Justine Schneider), Memory Points (Catherine Church), and Really Old, Like Forty Five (Tamsin Oglesby). These performances represent a variety of dramaturgies and processes, and each had different instigating factors. The responses from these interviews primarily relate to development processes. As such, the findings of the interviews are not intrinsic to this thesis, though the descriptions from practitioners in some cases informed the analysis. In cases where the performance could not be viewed, the interviewees provided descriptions of the dramaturgy.
2.3 Available Materials The performances under analysis were chosen based on their inclusion of certain theatrical elements and the accessibility of their materials. These elements and their significance are discussed in Chapter 5. As noted, the textual analysis is based on available materials, including: written script, video recording, live performance, online video clips, images, and critic reviews. The chosen performances and the materials that have informed their analysis are tabulated below. For the broader catalogue of dementia performances (in Appendix B), in the most problematic cases, only a title, the names of several creatives, and a brief description were discoverable. In other cases, professional reviews and online images and trailers may have been accessed.
Script Other materials (e.g., program) Permanent access to video Viewed live/recorded performance Access to online video clips Images Interview with performance-makers Reviews 1 Beach Road Autobiographer D-Generation: An Exaltation of Larks Inside Out of Mind
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 11 It’s Dark Outside King Lear4 Memory Point(s): The Beauty of Remembering5 On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God6 Really Old, Like Forty Five RUFF7 Sundowner
2.4 Limitations The broader catalogue of performances, and descriptions therein, is limited to that which can be accessed online. It is recognised that some performances that are particularly pertinent to the current landscape cannot be analysed in the body of the thesis because of limited access to materials. The contextual review attempts to mitigate this limitation by covering several key works in brief.
4 King Lear does not appear in any analysis chapter as it is not a contemporary work. However, the 2014 National Theatre staging in London is a pertinent example of a classical play that was staged with a deliberate dementia diagnosis in mind. A description appears in the contextual review.
5 Memory Points was inaccessible as a live work due to the year of its production and its immersive style. However, in an interview, the director provided a detailed description of the performance. A published book – containing development history, descriptions, and photos – was used for image references.
6 On the Concept was reviewed by Michael Billington (2011), Ben Brantley (2013), Pat Donnelly (2012), Martin Paul Eve (2011) and Jake Orr (2011). This work is in Italian, though the spoken word is not a primary aspect of the performance. Additionally, in his review, Brantley (2013) provide translations for pivotal spoken moments, as the performance included English surtitles.
7 RUFF was reviewed by The Feminist Spectator (2014), Benjamin Gillespie (2013), Charles Isherwood (2013) and Kim Solga (2014), among others.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 12 3. Literature Review: Dementia in Medicine and Culture
Dementia is difficult to define succinctly because of its historically changing meaning and the powerful connotations that the idea of dementia evokes. Moreover, dementia can be studied from a range of angles. The following literature review approaches two areas of literature: medical dementia and the Western cultural construction of dementia. Chapter 4 then examines media representations of dementia and applied arts practices related to dementia. In this study, dementia is framed as the Western cultural portrait of dementia. Literature taken from both cultural theory and medical research is explored in order to provide an important foundation for understanding how cultural perceptions are generated.
For the sake of conciseness, the medical aspect of the literature review focuses specifically on dementia of the Alzheimer’s type (DAT), although lay perceptions of dementia tend to be generalised. Articles in the public media often use the broad term ‘dementia’. As one of the most common presentations of the condition, aspects of the DAT symptomology are reflected in the general Western cultural portrait of dementia.
Medical information is organised under clinical presentations of memory, communication, and behaviour. These aspects of the pathology are pertinent to the independence, relationships, social engagement and, by extension, the perceived selfhood of people with dementia. These resulting social factors are fundamentally linked to the Western cultural construction of dementia. Following this, I investigate the Western cultural attitude towards dementia and draw particular focus to the popular loss-of-self assumption that dominates the understanding of dementia.
3.1 An Introduction to Dementia Dementia is a complicated term with a range of interpretations. The original meaning is ‘out of the mind’ from the Latin de mentis (Zeilig 2014a). The word has also been the subject of “subtly changing psychiatric, biomedical, and socio/cultural stories” (Zeilig 2014a, 260). Thus, the condition is difficult to categorise or discuss as a finite concept. Even within a scientific context, Alan Mandell and Robert Green (2011, 5) recognise that there is no “universally accepted definition” for the condition, which may present as one of over 200 subtypes (Mandell and Green 2011). Types of dementia include: Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia,
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 13 frontotemporal dementia, Lewy bodies dementia, Parkinson’s disease dementia, Huntington’s disease dementia, AIDS-related dementia, and dementia related to cancer treatment. Mixed dementias can also occur. It is, therefore, important to this study – which draws some information from medical literature – to specify the type of dementia. The research focuses on dementia of the Alzheimer’s type (DAT). Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is neurologically characterised by plaques (formed of amyloid beta protein) and tangles (formed of tau protein) in the brain, resulting in neural deterioration (de Rover et al. 2008, 607). This degeneration is not only part of AD’s medical pathology, but also a fundamental constituent of the Western cultural fear of dementia. Dementia is a syndrome of AD, meaning that it is a resulting “group of symptoms” (Cohen and Eisdorfer 2001, 27). Generally speaking, “the dementia syndrome is characterised by progressive decline in cognition of sufficient severity to interfere with activities of daily living” (Zeilig 2015, 12). AD is not only the most common form of dementia but is also sometimes considered by laypeople to be synonymous with dementia (Mandell and Green 2011, 5). However, this distinction still does not simplify the subject. Presentations of DAT are highly heterogeneous and, therefore, must be discussed in a generalised way, its symptoms cited as potentialities. On the whole, Mandell and Green (2011, 5) associate dementia with phrases like “progressive deterioration, incurability, and irreversibility,” evidencing the doom of the medical narrative. This discourse also permeates the lay media and, therefore, social attitudes. In support of this idea, Zeilig (2014a) notes that dementia and AD are more than diagnoses; they are socially constructed concepts which, therefore, induce emotional responses. Hence, Western cultural views of dementia are significant. This review demonstrates that Western attitudes toward disease are, at least in part, informed by medical accounts. Medical narratives are dictated by taxonomies of deficit, difficulty, damage, deterioration, and deviations from ‘normal ageing’. These perceived changes that occur in a medical context clearly follow through to the layperson discourse and, by extension, the Western cultural view of dementia.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 14 The notion of brain death, from neurology
Clincial features that are described in terms of decline and disruption
Social positioning within the context of Western social expectations
Western cultural positioning
DIAGRAM | Layers/views of dementia: The physical change in the brain (AD, Vascular dementia, etc.) causes the group of clinical symptoms called ‘dementia’. These clinical features are described in relation to social convention. The inherent challenge of social convention informs the Western cultural positioning of dementia and dementia-related illness.
3.2 Dementia in Medicine The following discussion of medical dementia examines DAT specifically. Even within this scope, though, it is difficult to describe dementia either succinctly or comprehensively. Below, I provide the diagnostic outline of DAT, explain the significance of cognition, and describe some basic clinical pathology under the headings of memory, communication, and behaviour. Both the cognitive and the outwardly presented clinical pathologies are significant to Western cultural attitudes toward dementia. DAT “is a chronic disorder distinguished by a global and progressive deterioration of memory, cognition, and personality” (Salmon, Heindel, and Butters 1991, 37). Its symptoms generally consist of memory deterioration, linguistic difficulty, changes in mood and personality, impaired judgement, and the loss of capacity for everyday tasks (Mandell and Green 2011). According to diagnostic criteria, a person must present with “memory impairment beyond that associated with normal aging” and at least one other feature of cognitive decline (Kelley and Petersen 2009, 1066; Salmon, Heindel and Butters 1991, 44). Additionally, “these cognitive deficits [...must be] of sufficient severity to compromise daily functional activities” to merit a diagnosis of DAT (Kelley and Petersen 2009, 1066). This description is the result of decades of medical research that began with the work of Alois Alzheimer. Alzheimer – for whom AD is named – published findings of his first case
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 15 study in 1907 (Robinson 2009, 15). Alzheimer began his study of 51-year-old Auguste D. in 1901 (Mandell and Green 2011; Howes 2007; Robinson 2009). He reported memory loss, impaired recognition, cognitive impairment including an affectation of speech, and changes in mood and behaviour (Mandell and Green 2011; Howes 2007; Robinson 2009). In addition to psychological symptoms, Auguste also developed difficulties with daily living activities, most perceptibly pertaining to housework (Mandell and Green 2011, 3) and the use and identification of everyday objects (Howes 2007, 346). After her death in 1906, Alzheimer performed an autopsy that “revealed dramatic shrinkage and deterioration of her brain” (Robinson 2009, 15). In addition, this procedure exposed plaques and tangles which have come to characterise the neurological pathology of AD (Robinson 2009, 15). For decades after this first case AD was used to describe the occurrence of these symptoms in those who had not yet reached old age (Robinson 2009, 15). Connections were soon made between the dementia of AD and the dementia that affected people who had reached old age, though it had been believed that age- related dementia was normal (Robinson 2009, 15). As a result of the ‘medicalisation’ of dementia, the condition is now labelled a disease and regarded with dread in Western culture.
3.2.1 Dementia and Cognition Cognition is important to acknowledge as its decline is a factor that contributes to the fear of dementia in Western culture. Cognition is derived from Latin meaning ‘to know’ (Cohen and Eisdorfer 2001, 39), yet carries far greater significance in Western culture, pertaining to the construction and value of self. Accompanying the various facets of ‘knowing,’ Donna Cohen and Carl Eisdorfer (2001, 174) add that cognition is responsible for our “moving around intelligently in the environment”. Accordingly, when a diagnosis of AD reveals cognitive decline there is an immediate interpretation of this information that translates to a decreased capacity for daily tasks, a loss of self, and a deterioration of relationships. Cognitive decline presents in a variety of ways, depending on which areas of the brain are affected. Affectations of cognition involve “thinking, judgement, talking, remembering, or decision making” (Cohen and Eisdorfer 2001, 39). For example, DAT generally affects visuospatial and perceptual cognition, eventually contributing to the inability to complete everyday tasks independently (de Rover et al. 2008). People with AD begin to struggle to grasp place and chronological time (Robinson 2009). Time, more specifically, becomes blurred across bygone years and the present (Robinson 2009, 160). An overall a lack of awareness (Clare 2003) and deficient attention ultimately results (de Rover et al. 2008). Cognitive loss is commonly translated to the idea of brain death. In turn, brain death is associated with the perception of lost selfhood resulting from dementia. Therefore, recognising the decline in cognitive abilities characteristic
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 16 of dementia is an essential factor in understanding its interpretation in the Western psyche that is investigated in this study.
3.2.2 Clinical Presentations of Dementia DAT is convoluted in that its cognitive symptoms “are interrelated and affect each other” (Cohen and Eisdorfer 2001, 39). Any attempts to describe and diagnose the condition are inherently complicated. There are, however, several major types of clinical symptoms that commonly present in DAT. The clinical presentations outlined here describe what can be outwardly perceived and can be catalogued as behaviour, as opposed to a neurobiological perspective. It is important to consider the clinical presentation of DAT, albeit briefly, in order to better understand how dementia (or AD) is outwardly perceived, as such perception is reflected in the Western cultural view of dementia. Below are descriptions of memory, communication, and behaviour, as they appear in clinical DAT, and an explanation of the way this pathology impairs daily living. These foci were chosen because they are pathologically significant, related to effects on relationships, social engagement, and selfhood, and highly relevant to the cultural construction of dementia.
3.2.3 Clinical presentations: Memory Consistent with the diagnostic criteria, memory tends to be the primary feature of DAT (Salmon, Heindel, and Butters 1991). “Initially, the patient may not remember names, errands, or items on shopping lists. Later, the person may become disorientated and loose [sic] his way around town and around the neighbourhood” (Haberlandt 1997, 265). The memory impairment continues to worsen until – in advanced cases – memory is “barely testable” (Saxton and Boller 2006, 44). Memory difficulties begin with anterograde amnesia, which compromises the “ability to remember new information” (de Rover et al. 2008, 608), to “form new memories” (Osimani and Freedman 1991, 24). The next stage of memory loss is retrograde amnesia. Retrograde memory loss affects memories that were already ‘recorded’ before the AD became apparent. Notably, the retrograde amnesia works backwards, showing a “temporal gradient” (Osimani and Freedman 1991). Therefore, “the more remote the events were better preserved than the more recent ones” (Osimani and Freedman 1991, 24). These categories of memory may also be called short-term (anterograde) and long-term (retrograde) memory. Retrograde amnesia is significant for its effect on long-term episodic memory, which Giuseppe Sartori, Michele Miozzo and Remo Job (1994, 104) describe as “an autobiographical record of personally experienced, unique events encoded in relation to a spatial-temporal context”.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 17 Episodic/autobiographical memory, therefore, contributes to what is called ‘narrative identity’. Narrative identity operates on the notion that memory has self-forming qualities.
However, episodic memories are not necessarily autobiographical. Autobiographical memory “has personal significance that goes beyond that of much episodic memory” (Nelson 2003, 8). In explaining autobiographical memory, Katherine Nelson argues that: “This level of self understanding integrates action and consciousness into a whole self, and establishes a self- history as unique to the self, differentiated from others’ experiential histories” (Nelson 2003, 7). Emma Naylor and Linda Clare (2008, 590) concur that a “[s]ense of identity is thought to be closely related to autobiographical memory”. Locke pursues this idea and recognises that if memory constitutes identity, then memory loss is an interruption of self (in Katz 2013, 309- 310). Stephen Katz himself elaborates: “If a person cannot recollect, remember, or retain experiences, then they are not the same person who had such experiences in the first place” (Katz 2013, 310). Neil Levy, too, asserts that “our identities are very importantly constituted by our memories” (Levy’s emphasis 2007, 158). The loss of autobiographical memory is, therefore, considered existentially threatening. A major constituent of the dominant cultural perception is the rendering of ‘demented’ persons as being robbed of their humanity. Emotive language and imagery are usually employed in such descriptions, examples of which feature in the discussion of media below. As Susan Behuniak notes in her article ‘The living dead? The construction of people with Alzheimer's disease as zombies’, “in both scholarly and popular literature” (2011, 70) the assumed loss of humanity has manifestations as extreme as an individual being called a zombie. When other areas of cognitive impairment act in tandem with memory loss, the “individual's ability to function in social interactions” is diminished (Small et al. 1998, 291). For example, short-term memory loss and anterograde amnesia exacerbate communicative difficulty, as one’s ability to hold a conversation is largely dependent on remembering and understanding what is being asked of, or told to, them (Small et al. 1998, 291).
3.2.4 Clinical presentations: Communication
Communication is made up of speech, physicality, and facial expression. In this thesis, I mainly focus on spoken language. Verbal communication is considered in the West as imperative to social engagement. Language is more than a physiological capacity/function. It is culturally moderated and the expected mode of communication. So, a deterioration of this faculty naturally impairs social interaction. For many, speech and language are the prevailing means
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 18 of self-expression and connecting with other people. Its deterioration is, therefore, critical to the socio-cultural positioning of someone with dementia.
Linguistic impairments of DAT typically reflect memory loss (Dijkstra et al. 2004, 263), yet independently create issues for the individual. A wide range of verbal communication features may weaken the coherence of speech, including aphasia, circumlocution, paraphasia, and repetitive verbal behaviours. Aphasia can also be described as word-finding difficulty and can inhibit naming people or objects (Cohen and Eisdorfer 2001). Circumlocutory discourse is a compensatory measure for aphasia. As Nancy Harding and Colin Palfrey (1997) explain, circumlocution is a description of a thing’s function in lieu of its name. Paraphasias occur where substitutions are made for words or sounds (Kempler 1991; Osimani and Freedman 1991). A variety of repetitive verbal behaviours may occur in AD-affected speech (catalogued by Jacqueline Guendouzi and Nicole Müller 2006, 169-170), which impair clear communication, sometimes without the person with dementia being aware.
Advanced AD renders coherent conversation very difficult. In addition to the features indicated above, late-stage DAT corrodes the connection between thoughts and words (Orange 1991), causes the individual to make disruptive topic shifts (Dijkstra et al. 2004) and produces nonfluency (Osimani and Freedman 1991; Kempler 1991). The above impairments on the whole affect the clarity of communication to the point where speech is incomprehensible and nonsensical. The social result is an inability to converse and connect with others through what is widely considered to be normal communication. Further, self-expression through speech becomes unfeasible (Newhouse and Lasek 2006). Individuals with severe dementia may avoid “social interaction through language or any other communicative modalities” (Kempler 1991, 100; Orange 1991). At the terminal stage, mutism may occur (Osimani and Freedman 1991, 27). Severe linguistic decline, in tandem with other cognitive affectations, can render a person with dementia unable to express their wants and needs. This is reflected in the unfair social diagnosis of demented people as the living dead, as Behuniak (2011) describes, and a person with dementia is afforded little power to refute such notions. Hence, media and artistic illustrations of the condition are influential in shaping the disease culturally.
Concurrent with speech decline, throughout the mid- and late-stages of DAT, the individual may begin to use compensatory physical cues, for example, “pantomime, gestures, facial expressions, body postures, and exaggerations in paralinguistic features” (Orange 1991, 178).
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 19 Such physical presentations arguably affect the way the individual is perceived by those around them. This component is associated with behavioural symptomology.
3.2.5 Clinical presentations: Behaviour
The behavioural pathology of DAT, as described in medical literature, is characterised by what deviates from acceptable adult behaviour. This implication that DAT produces unacceptable conduct is also embedded in cultural attitudes. David Matsumoto (1996) refers to ethnocentrism, a theory that certain standards, acceptable behaviours, expectations, and judgements held by individuals are, in part, programmed by culture. He defines ethnocentrism as “the tendency to view the world through your own cultural filters” (Matsumoto 1996, 146). In Matsumoto’s view, we have both expectations of people’s behaviour and, more importantly, “learned patterns of judgements about those behaviours” (1996, 144). The divergent behavioural pathology of dementia puts the affected individual at the mercy of these expectations. In this way, dementia represents nonconformity with social norms. This causality demonstrates how dementia’s clinical narrative can impact its cultural narrative.
In one study, more than half of the participants with DAT “had significant behavioural symptomatology” (Molloy and Lubinski 1991, 6). This symptomology may involve: delusions and hallucinations (Orange 1991; Molloy and Lubinski 1991; Newhouse and Lasek 2006), agitation or aggression (Orange 1991; Molloy and Lubinski 1991; Byrne, Collins, and Burns 2006; Newhouse and Lasek 2006), disinhibition (Orange 1991; Byrne, Collins, and Burns 2006), diurnal rhythm disturbances, that is, day-night reversal (Logsdon, Teri, and McCurry 2006), sleep and appetite disturbance (Byrne, Collins and Burns 2006), and personality dysfunctions and changes (Molloy and Lubinski 1991). Mood and personality changes are commonly cited symptoms of DAT (Brown and Hillam 2004; Robinson 2009; Mandell and Green 2011) and were reported in Alois Alzheimer’s first case study. These changes, amongst other behavioural shifts, contribute to the prevailing loss-of-self assumption associated with dementia, a view augmented by the concurrent memory loss and speech interference. Steven Sabat corroborates, enumerating a series of behavioural and psychiatric symptoms that are attributed to DAT, and stating that “[g]iven descriptors such as these, when combined with deficits in memory functions […], it is not surprising that it would be surmised that the afflicted person also experiences a loss of self as a result of the disease” (2001, 274). Sabat, however, represents a cultural studies movement that refutes the caustic notion that a person with dementia experiences a loss of self. This issue is more deeply explored below.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 20 The overall clinical pathology of DAT is seen to impair both social functioning and personal relationships. The decline of social interaction and difficulty with self-expression mean that individuals with dementia are not afforded the opportunity to contest this idea. These consequences and the reduced capacity for daily tasks render DAT an intimidating diagnosis in Western culture. The clinical presentations of DAT explored here, as well as the related cognitive deterioration, have consequences for the individual’s capacity to perform daily tasks and live independently. It is understood that dementia involves “ruptures that threaten the continuity and familiarity of assumptions that enable us all to live day-to-day” (Mitchell, Dupuis, and Jonas-Simpson 2011, 23). For this reason, among others, dementia represents a threat to a person’s life in terms of both daily living and long-term quality of life. Beyond the concern that dementia’s clinical presentations evoke, the notion of brain shrinkage is significant. This image of the dementia neuropathology, the diminished brain, is a part of the daunting social illustration of dementia. In this thesis, ideas such as this, which are readily associated with dementia, are investigated in the performances to determine if they infiltrate contemporary theatre about dementia or are instead subverted. The image of brain death, though it is derived from medicine, is exaggerated in the Western psyche because of the weight ascribed to cognition and intellect. Gillian McColgan (2004, 172) agrees with Zeilig (2014a) on the idea of dementia as a social construct and adds that, historically, “academic literature relating to dementia was dominated by the medical model”. If the medical taxonomies of health and deficit also inform cultural thought, those with dementia are marked by their inconsistency with established social norms. Thus, the medical and social aspects of dementia share strong ties. The medicalisation of dementia has been widely criticised within cultural studies.
3.3 The Medicalisation of Dementia While the research and information are extensive, much remains unknown about DAT. Medicine, at least, allows dementia to be classified and quantified. Despite this imperative to comprehend, the medicalisation of dementia – that is, the way the medical perspective dominates dementia literature – has been widely criticised (McColgan 2004, 172). Despite several arguments in favour of medicalisation, the general sentiment within social and cultural studies is decidedly anti-medicalisation. Those who oppose medicalisation have several key points: dehumanisation, arbitrary taxonomies of health, and the negative connotations attributed to old age.
The argument regarding dehumanisation is based on the dissociative language of medical texts. In such writing, the disease is the subject, and the patient is the object. According to Innes
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 21 (2009, 11), “[s]ocial psychologists have clearly demonstrated that biomedical views have overshadowed the individual who is given the diagnosis of dementia”. This overshadowing renders the individual passive. Another feature of medical literature is the establishment of parameters to define what is healthy and unhealthy. Medical knowledge operates according to statistics and thresholds (Douthit and Dannefer 2007, 236). Medicine, therefore, may gauge what is ‘wrong,’ by what deviates from ‘normal’. Negative connotations are easily drawn from the DAT pathology, because it is characterised by a departure from what is understood to be successful ageing (Mandell and Green 2011, 5). Subsequently, the medical narrative of dementia is dictated by change, decline, and loss. Harding and Palfrey (1997, 109) argue that “taxonomies are arbitrary, historically and culturally bound classification systems”. While such taxonomies exist, there is very little justification or explanation for laypersons to fully cognise them. Nevertheless, this is what prescribes our biology and informs cultural understandings of it. The third key argument against medicalisation is that it perpetuates the idea of old age as an “unappealing” phase of human life (Douthit and Dannefer 2007, 236). Similarly, Urs Kalbermatten (2009, 20) agrees that “deficit models,” like those that permeate medical literature, have facilitated prevailing “negative images and stereotypes of old age”.
Margaret Lock (2013, 14) presents an interesting counter-argument: that the “process of medicalisation means that, in theory, diseases shed much of the shame and stigma associated with them”. She goes on to say, however, that in reality “although stigma has indeed diminished in connection with AD, its persistence continues to be all too often present” (Lock 2013, 14). If stigmatisation is about labelling, Harding and Palfrey’s (1997) insight is also pertinent. Neither condemning nor defending medicalisation, they ascribe it to a need to control – or, at least, understand – chaos: “Society needs dementia to be medicalised, as if it is classified as a disease it holds out the prospect of a cure for ageing and for death” (Harding and Palfrey’s emphasis 1997, 139). This compulsion to name and explain the condition reflects its chaotic pathology and the difficulty that society has in accepting it.
Societal attitudes are significant not only to this study, but also to the experience of individuals living with DAT. As Tom Kitwood notes: A person with dementia is involved in two kinds of change, going on side by side. First, there is the gradually advancing failure of mental powers [...]. Second, there are changes in the social-psychological environment – in patterns of relationship and interaction [...]. It is impossible, of course, to distinguish clearly between the two kinds of change – the one neurological and the other social-psychological. (1997, 20)
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 22 This second kind of change – the social – is intrinsically linked to the stigma associated with dementia and AD. Reduced levels of social interaction promote the assumption that a person with dementia is incapable of communication as well as forming and maintaining relationships. Ironically, the stigma can itself be grounds for reduced social interaction. This demonstrates that the medical and socio-cultural aspects of DAT do dovetail.
3.4 Stigma Sarah Robinson (2009, 91) describes AD as the “affliction haunting and stigmatizing the late life years”. Danny George and Peter Whitehouse (2010, 343) add that in the “rapidly ‘graying’ Western culture that often satirizes but mostly laments the ageing process, the benefits conferred by increasing years [....] are often buried beneath the perceived deficits”. Similarly, Innes (2009, 10) observes that “the conceptualization of dementia used within Western societies binds dementia to old age, and the fear of ageing, disease and death that is associated with an ageing body”. Ageism, that is, stigma towards the elderly generally, already exists in Western culture8. Because the majority of DAT cases are age-related, ageism and age-related illness stigma are highly relevant to this research. Robinson deduces the genesis of the ageing stigma: After centuries of respecting and caring for the elderly as a part of God's eternal order, the Age of Reason and the Industrial Revolution inverted Western conceptions so that aging came to be perceived as a sort of personal failure of the human body as opposed to a mark of God's favor; it was viewed as a deficiency in self-reliance as opposed to a balanced form of interdependency within a community (2009, 87-88).
Harding and Palfrey (1997) and Cecil Helman (2007) similarly implicate Western societies in ageism. In particular, industrialism facilitates systemic ageism. Helman (2007, 10) recognises that in the industrial West “loss of productivity (and reproductivity) with age, usually means a steep drop in social status”. The elderly are often considered dependent, vulnerable, and, ultimately, “non-contributors to society,” a judgement compounded when a person is both elderly and sick (Tătaru 2009, 18). Some social theory supports this view, for instance, “biological reductionism” (McColgan 2004, 172). McColgan (2004, 172) argues that “ageism
8 For comparison, it is acknowledged that the culture of ‘groupism’ is ingrained in East Asian nations, which include: Korea, China, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, and Hong Kong (McCann et al. 2004). This is demonstrated by the predominant model of family structures and relationships that attributes great value to one’s elders. Current studies in the region are concerned with the incidence of elder abuse, as the globally ageing population complicates the tradition of family-based elderly care (McCann et al. 2004; Erlingsson et al. 2012; Kawakami and Son 2015; Shea and Zhang 2016). However, contemporary researchers are finding evidence to suggest that globalisation is influencing these group-orientated cultures and, as a result, alternatives to family- based care are gaining popularity in these nations and East Asian communities internationally (McCann et al. 2004; Kawakami and Son 2015).
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 23 arises both in social structures, as seen in policy, and in individual attitudes”. So, it would follow that dementia stigma operates in a similar vein. The notion of stigma is a strong theme within dementia literature, namely in social and cultural studies. Innes (2009) relates dementia’s stigmatisation to the stigma towards mental illness. “Stigma related to mental illness has been found to indiscriminately over-emphasise social losses, leading to social isolation and distress for those with mental illness” (Innes 2009, 73). This observation reflects Kitwood’s (1997) comments on social-psychological change.
As can be seen, medical models of DAT are significant to this study as AD is the most common type of dementia. Clinical features of the condition are those that can be externally experienced and, therefore, interpreted in a social and cultural context. These medical perspectives of dementia and AD greatly influence lay attitudes and, as social and cultural studies overwhelmingly report, are agents in perpetuating stigma and the negative views of dementia which come to form the Western cultural view of dementia.
3.5 Dementia in Western Culture In contrast to the above review of medical literature, where it is important to specify the type of dementia, the cultural studies component of this research must be more general. In social discussions and cultural representations, it is difficult to distinguish perspectives on dementia from those on AD. The attitudes overlap to the point of frequent interchangeable use by laypeople. At any rate, dementia and AD are not afforded clear distinction from one another in public media. This confusion further clouds any information about what either term may represent. Hence, in the discussion and citation of cultural studies texts, the general term ‘dementia’ is used.
This section examines how Western society largely fears dementia. Several beliefs are widely held by the public in Western society. I do not intend to contest these beliefs, but merely present them and consider their genesis and implications. Several key terms are common to this discussion: self/selfhood, identity, memory, health, dependency, burden, social interaction/engagement, euthanasia/assisted suicide. The general sentiment towards dementia is one of fear, dread, and existential threat. As Guendouzi and Müller (2006, 147) state, the “public is very aware, and indeed very fearful, of the growing threat of dementia”. Zeilig (2015, 17) observes that because dementia “brings together a heady combination of anxiety about old age and about mental illness” it induces a compounded fear.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 24 For the layperson, the most accessible information about dementia is embedded with prevailing cultural attitudes and the rhetoric and imagery associated with the condition. The common rhetoric about dementia includes analogies of large-scale disasters like tsunamis (Zeilig 2014a) or warfare in the case of the caregiver experience (Innes 2009). Additionally, people with dementia have been called zombies (Behuniak 2011) and their experience described as “the death that leaves the body behind” and “the funeral that never ends” (Downs, Small and Froggatt 2006, 194). These phrases reflect the experiences of family members and companions. Steven Zarit and Joseph Gaugler (2006, 191) describe the sense of relief that can be associated with the death of a person with dementia: “The death of the patient is the end of a long journey for the family. When death occurs in the late stages of dementia, families are often prepared and view it as an end to the patient’s suffering” (2006, 191). While the effect of dementia on families is acknowledged, such descriptions dehumanise the people with dementia. In particular, Behuniak (2011, 85) recognises that the zombie trope reflects an understanding of dementia as “a lethal threat at both the individual and social levels”. On the whole, dementia metaphors are invariably characterised by loss. With regards to AD more specifically – images of which are not dissimilar to those of dementia – Megan-Jane Johnstone (2013, 24) remarks that it “has been conceptualized and used as a clichéd, yet potent and unsettling metaphor for ‘losing one’s mind’ and ultimately ‘personal control’”. Such attitudes are essentially medical narratives simplified and filtered through the Western ideals of health, social function, and ultimately selfhood. Simplification is an obvious necessity. Among other factors, the unpredictable nature of the disease’s onset and its heterogeneous pathology and progression means that understanding the condition in depth is unlikely for anyone without a medical degree. What is transmitted, however, is the overall sentiment of medical writing. The clinical perspective and dissociative language in medical narratives and the treatment of ‘the patient’ have implications for the way laypersons mentally frame dementia. Firstly, the discourse renders the individual passive. Additionally, medical writing overall is characterised by change, decline, and loss, and descriptions can be interpreted by laypersons as being black and white: someone is healthy or unhealthy. This binary interpretation of health is accessible to laypeople through statistics. Statistical reporting on dementia frequently illuminates the prevalence of the condition, its financial strain on both families and the broader economy, and personal implications for the individual and those around them. Thus, medical descriptions of this type do influence cultural constructions. As Innes outlines: the public interest in dementia is threefold: demographic, financial, and that of “personal implications (loss of abilities leading to the removal of the pre-dementia self replaced by the physical shell of the person)” (2009, 9).
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 25 Accordingly, the cultural idea of dementia overshadows individuals with the condition. This makes for more impactful media content – a subject discussed below – and perpetuates the daunting image of degenerative disease.
Murna Downs, Neil Small, and Katherine Froggatt (2006, 194) cite Jennings’ explanation that “dementia undermines those qualities which we in the West consider to be distinctly human – coherent communication, memory, being socially orientated, and having behavioural self- control”. Overall, the narrative of loss, decline, and impairment that arises from medical texts illustrates a ‘lessening,’ not only of cognitive capacity, but also of humanity, particularly according to Humanist thinking. If the Western ideal of health is derived from medical taxonomies, then the ideals of social function and selfhood are influenced by both clinical presentations of dementia as well as the cultural positioning of these notions. Note John Rowe and Robert Kahn’s model for successful ageing. Their model outlines three criteria: lack of disease, sufficient cognition and physical ability, and maintaining independent living and social engagement (Rowe and Kahn 1997, 433). By this model, those with dementia, who are unlikely to pass these criteria, are considered biologically and socially unsuccessful. Rowe and Kahn’s criteria have since been challenged by cultural gerontologists, yet such assumptions have maintained some currency in Western culture. The threat to social success appears to be a major aspect of dementia’s cultural portrait. Other factors of Western construction discussed here are the disruption of self, the loss of independence, and the alteration of relationships. The disruption of self comes about as a result of memory loss and the decline of communication skills. Loss of independence is the consequence of general cognitive decline as well as the subsequent difficulty to perform everyday tasks. Relationship shifts transpire because of personality changes, dementia’s obstruction of conversation, and the potential for personal relationships to become care relationships.
Memory loss is cited as the first sign of dementia and a reason to suspect a dementia-related illness (Salmon, Heindel, and Butters 1991; Robinson 2009). However, some memory loss is a common aspect of ageing in general, and official clinical diagnoses of AD are based on memory loss in addition to evidence of at least one other cognitive deficit (Salmon, Heindel, and Butters 1991; Small et al. 1998). Regardless, memory loss is a major element of the West’s concern about dementia (Robinson 2009). Anne Basting notes “the mistaken notion that personal memory alone constitutes selfhood” (in Zeilig 2014b, 164). Downs, Small, and Froggatt (2006) acknowledge the belief that dementia’s attack on memory disconnects a person from their ‘former self’. It follows that people view dementia-related memory loss as a self-
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 26 eroding symptom. This “discourse of loss” drives public perception (Beard et al. 2009, S41), demonstrating that cognitive impairment influences how others view and treat someone with dementia. A strong “emphasis on rationality and memory…wrongly excludes people with dementia from the sphere of human dignity and respect” (Post quoted in McColgan 2004, 179). Research reflects that a dementia diagnosis and symptomology alters a person’s social engagement and relationships. Pia Kontos (2004, 829) calls AD “the most frightening condition that faces the older population in the 21st century [...] that carries with it a sentence of social death”. This judgment hinges on the perception that “everyday interaction is no longer of interest or relevant to those diagnosed” (Beard et al. 2009, S41). As people with dementia lose linguistic skills, it is often assumed that they no longer have the capacity to communicate at all. Downs, Small, and Froggatt (2006, 194) add that because a person with dementia “cannot communicate coherently it is assumed they have stopped being a person”. In this way, dementia represents a breakdown in social and personal relationships due in part to its interference with communication skills.
In addition to communicative difficulties, personality changes, and memory loss, relationship changes can result from parent-child role reversals and unbalanced spousal relationships that may occur when a family member is engaged as the primary carer (Rau 1991; Jarvik 2007; Zimmermann 2013). Barbara Purves and Joann Perry (2009, 172) argue that a diagnosis of dementia disrupts the balance of family interrelationships. More severely, Dr. Lewis Thomas once stated that “Alzheimer’s causes more damage to the family than any other disease I can think of” (quoted in Rau 1991, 152). However, Jiska Cohen-Mansfield, Hava Golander, and Giyorah Arnheim (2000, 381) report that, while a person with dementia’s social roles change with disease progression, family-related roles are the most well-maintained. Despite this observation, the idea that dementia disintegrates the person as a family member is widely held to be valid. Therefore, even if the relationship is to an extent maintained in the mind of the affected individual, the external perception that relationships are diminished persists because the individual no longer has the capacity for verbal expression.
Cognitive decline, which may be read as ‘brain death,’ is assumed to diminish the self-worth of an individual with dementia. Trevor Elton quotes Dr. Sadowski who states that dementia eventually destroys up to one-third of brain mass, leading to an individual who “is lost but still present” (in Elton 2008, 271). This conception of the dementia experience has its roots in the Western “philosophical tradition that separates mind from body, and positions the former as superior to the latter” (Kontos 2004, 829). Zeilig (2015) observes that decreased cognition
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 27 poses a threat to selfhood as it is constructed in the West. Kontos (2004, 829) similarly notes the supposition that “selfhood is the exclusive privilege of the sphere of cognition”. This belief is attributed to the cultural emphasis of “achievement and maintenance of self-worth through the display of cognitive or intellectual abilities” (Zeilig 2015, 16). Since communicative difficulties impair self-expression, the person with dementia cannot dispel the social assumptions associated with reduced cognition. Cognitive decline also compromises the capacity for independent living. Andre Smith (2009, 37) explains that “individuals with dementia gradually lose the ability to make informed choices about matters of concern, including personal finances, self-care and decisions pertaining to medical treatment”. The resulting dependency on family and community exacerbates anxieties about self-loss because of the slipping control over one’s life.
3.5.1 Notions of Burden
The notions of burden, dependency, and institutionalisation are intrinsically linked. The ageing population results in a greater number of people with age-related dementia and is reported as a cause for societal concern (McColgan 2004). However, the term ‘burden’ is frequently used to describe the caregiver relationship. The matter of caregiver burden is active in both academic literature and the public media about dementia. Marie Rau (1991, 152) cites studies that document “devastating physical, psychosocial, and financial costs” of caregiving in a long- term capacity. Elton (2008, 271) supports this, arguing that because “there is no stabilization of, or cure for, the disease, substantial emotional and financial burden is placed upon patients and their families”. While it would be inane to argue that caregivers experience no strain, the word ‘burden’ is loaded with negative connotations and potential misrepresentation. ‘Caregiver burden’ is analogised as a battle (Innes 2009, 24) and a “36-hour day” (Rau 1991, 152). Furthermore, descriptions of carers as “hidden patients” or “hidden victims” (Rau 1991, 152) dominate discussions about caregiving. Although common to layperson and media conversations about the condition, such emotive descriptions fail to provide appropriate context or differentiation between the varying experiences of dementia (Innes 2009; Bastawrous 2013). It is not the task of this study to contest carer burden. It should be recognised, however, that care narratives can erase or deprioritise the individual with dementia.
Care for a person with dementia can take place in both the home and in institutionalised care. The latter setting is at an intersection between the domestic and the public spheres. Lindsay Graham, Samuel Gosling, and Christopher Travis (2015, 346-347) regard that “[q]ualities such
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 28 as community, privacy, self-expression, personal identity, and warmth are used to describe homes but not mere residences”. Alison Blunt and Robyn Dowling (2006, 3) similarly recognise that “[a] house is not necessarily nor automatically a home”. The move to a nursing home or dementia ward is often “accompanied by feelings of loss or even banishment with such homes bearing none of the characteristics of a private home” (Brickell 2012, 232). Such facilities are described in terms of transience and anonymity (Milligan 2003). In contrast to a mere residence, a home is often considered a site of memory, security, and belonging (Milligan 2003; Blunt and Dowling 2006; Graham, Gosling, and Travis 2015), qualities that are reinforced by personal possessions (Milligan 2003, 461). Yet, even the familiar home can be endowed with unhomeliness: As a hospice, home becomes coded as both good and bad – a familiar, non- institutional setting, but also a site of unresolved family tensions. When home becomes a place of terminal caregiving it remains associated with comfort and control, but there is also lack of control, as strangers (publicly provided caregivers) and/or relatives may move in. (Blunt and Dowling 2006, 100) . This description of home care is significant, first, in the notions of control, comfort, and familiarity, and, second, in the suggestion that home care makes home the “site of unresolved family tensions”. This implies that the home becomes the locus of the familial burden and altered relationships associated with dementia. Regarding other spaces of care, it is difficult to comprehensively discuss institutionalisation within the scope of this thesis. Overall, though, I assert that even the word ‘institutionalisation’ renders the person with dementia passive to their own life event and implies that the individual has no agency. 'Agency and burden are also pertinent to the euthanasia debate.
3.5.2 Dementia and Euthanasia Dennis Cooley (2007, 37) considers the Kantian paradigm that “those who will lose their moral identity as moral agents have an obligation to themselves to end their physical lives prior to losing their dignity as persons”. He applies this model to people with dementia, asserting that the suicide of a person with dementia is both moral and ethical, because they are eventually robbed of their “moral life” (Cooley 2007, 41). Suicide here represents choosing the moral over the physical. Arguments such as this are also presented as a line of reasoning for the legalisation of euthanasia, or assisted suicide. Johnstone (2013) describes the ‘Alzheimerization’ of the euthanasia debate: the way in which both sides of the debate have been coloured by representations of, and discussions about, AD. While Johnstone’s book (Alzheimer’s Disease, Media Representations and the Politics of Euthanasia, 2013) is neither pro- nor anti- euthanasia, she reports on the “use and misuse of Alzheimer’s disease in public policy debate
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 29 on the legalization of euthanasia” (2013, 6). Johnstone (2013) acknowledges that depictions of AD in media are deeply influential to this debate. In Johnstone’s (2013) view, metaphorical and emotive illustrations of dementia and AD cloud the euthanasia debate, to the point where one may justify the decision to euthanise based on negative beliefs about AD or dementia generally. A potent example is Baroness Mary Warnock’s view on euthanasia in the context of dementia: “If you’re demented, you’re wasting people’s lives – your family’s lives – and you’re wasting resources of the National Health Service” (quoted in Johnstone 2013, 3). This validation of assisted suicide in the context of dementia implies that a person has lost their selfhood, a belief influenced by the cognitive and social deficits of dementia. The erosion of self is an idea present in medical texts, cultural and social studies, as well as in public rhetoric and the media.
3.5.3 Selfhood
At a fundamental level, it is the perceived erosion of selfhood resulting from dementia that founds the West’s fear of the condition. Traits of dementia that threaten selfhood include cognitive decline, memory loss (particularly loss of autobiographical memory), communicative difficulty, and the effects of these factors on relationships. The range of studies that focus on the selfhood of people with dementia indicates the pervasiveness of the subject. See: Jeff Small et al. (1998), Jerome Bruner (2003), Kontos (2004), Julia Twigg and Christina Buse (2013), and Lieslot Mahieu, Luc Anckaert and Chris Gastmans (2014). The literature on the Western positioning of dementia definitively testifies that the general cultural view is one of fear and unease (Kontos 2004; Guendouzi and Müller 2006; Twigg and Buse 2013; Zeilig 2014a and 2015).
Zeilig (2015) observes that dementia poses a threat to selfhood in the West because the Western notion of selfhood relies upon cognitive and intellectual maintenance as self-worth. Kontos (2004) also cites cognitive decline – specifically weakening memory – as a factor in the loss- of-self assumption. Downs, Small, and Froggatt (2006) also recognise that the broader dementia symptomology – including cognitive decline, memory loss, reduced social interaction, and behavioural changes – undermines humanity, according to Western attitudes. In consideration of this common sentiment, it is conceivable that the cognitive decline resulting from DAT has the potential to rupture identity according to Western ideals. However, the idea of a ruptured self is often supplanted by the idea of a lost self. As reflected throughout this review, the most compelling presentation of cognitive decline in this context is memory.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 30 The literature demonstrates that memory loss has consequences for identity. Levy notes the belief that “[m]emory links my past to my future self, and makes me the person I am” means that dementia is seen “as the gradual unravelling of the person themselves” (Levy 2007, 159). I refer again to the concept of ‘narrative identity,’ which denotes that identity is an arrangement of our memories of life experiences and relationships. As Robyn Fivush and Janine Buckner (2003, 149) state: “Who we are is very much created through autobiographical narratives”. The matter of narrative identity in relation to dementia is not a niche one: Dan McAdams (2003), Nelson (2003), Robyn Fivush and Catherine Haden (2003) and McColgan (2004) discuss this notion, predominantly in relation to autobiographical memory. The memory loss resulting from dementia is, therefore, thought to fracture narrative identity. Marie Mills (1998, 175) suggests that as “memory structures and processes weaken, through the progressive nature of dementia, the narrative dissolves and fades into oblivion. Narrative identity is lost”.
Downs, Small, and Froggatt (2006, 194) recognise that a person with dementia is seen as one who can no longer connect to their past self through memory or express themselves in a logical way. This insight has the potential to produce a perception that the former person is gone and that the current person no longer has selfhood. Mahieu, Anckaert, and Gastmans (2014, 379) cite the eventual “unbecoming” of self that people with dementia face. Guendouzi and Müller (2006, 147) observe that the “most dominant theme relating to dementia in Western cultural texts is that of loss of self; the person with dementia is portrayed as an empty shell”. Gail Mitchell, Sherry Dupuis, and Christine Jonas-Simpson (2011, 22) elaborate: “Persons with dementia are often described as empty shells, demented, vegetative, broken, dysfunctional, costly, high maintenance, and burdensome”. Cohen-Mansfield, Golander, and Arnheim (2000, 381) employ similarly evocative language to describe dementia: “It destroys the brain and confuses the mind; it disintegrates the self and degrades one's dignity and soul”. This statement makes a leap from a confused mind to a disintegrated self, further evincing the significance of cognitive decline in the Western psyche.
While the inference of a loss of self is a contentious one, a change in personality is typical of the condition from a medical point of view (Salmon, Heindel, and Butters 1991; Mandell and Green 2011). In fact, this idea can be detected in the literature as early as Alois Alzheimer’s notes on his first case (Robinson 2009, 92). Loss-of-self impressions may be derived from the clinical presentations of memory loss, mood and personality changes, conversational difficulty, and uninhibited behaviour. In this manner, Kontos (2004, 845) identifies that it “is through modern science and its deep philosophical roots that Alzheimer’s disease and its symptoms are
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 31 thought to signal the erasure of selfhood”. Again, the medicalisation of dementia can be seen as a strong influence on Western constructions.
There are, however, a range of studies that compellingly contest the perceived loss of self that results from dementia (Kitwood 1997; Kontos 2004; Downs, Small, and Froggatt 2006; Millet 2011; Mahieu, Anckaert, and Gastmans 2014; Batra et al. 2015). Mills (1998, 25) points out that “[t]heoretical arguments suggest that dementia sufferers have a rich and powerful emotional life”. Millet (2011, 510) elaborates that “people with dementia have an affective response to certain stimuli: they laugh, cry, express frustration and disappointment, engage playfully with others, and so on”. Mahieu, Anckaert, and Gastmans (2014, 379) recognise that despite the “growing body of literature that fights rationalistic theories on personhood,” there continues to be a strong discourse of the eroding self, resulting from the progression of dementia. The above arguments notwithstanding, the loss of self attributed to dementia is an idea that has “wide currency and informs both lay and professional understanding of dementia” (Millett 2011, 509). Robinson (2009, 92) similarly reports that the “belief that Alzheimer's affected people are doomed to endure the loss of self, personhood, and humanity is extremely prevalent in the West”. Overall, the literature on Western culture overwhelmingly declares that dementia is constructed as an existentially threatening condition that compromises selfhood, humanity, and dignity.
A loss of dignity may be embodied in infantilisation. Carers sometimes infantilise older people in care generally, and people with dementia in particular (Marson and Powell 2014). Stephen Marson and Rasby Powell (2014, 143) define infantilisation as “a behavioral pattern in which a person of authority interacts with, responds to, or treats an elderly person in a child-like manner”. This can entail speech that is patronising in pitch, intonation, and vocabulary (Marson and Powell 2014). Other examples include “overly familiar forms of address, such as pet names, publicly disclosing the client's personal and medical information, and using age inappropriate recreational activities” (Marson and Powell 2014, 144). A diminished self – or diminished adulthood – is not limited to the lay understanding of dementia (Millett 2011). Some health professionals and care staff use infantilising speech believing it to be “nurturing and supportive,” while “most elders view [it] as patronizing and disrespectful” (Marson and Powell 2014, 145). In fact, studies have shown that the residents of care facilities may become antagonistic and even avoid conversations with care staff in order to avoid being infantilised (Marson and Powell 2014). Alexa Andrew (2006, 419) recognises that in the “new culture of care, which promotes a person-centered approach […], infantilization can be seen as
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 32 inappropriate”. A topic of contention is the use of dolls and soft toys in care facilities for the management of behaviour related to agitation and aggression (Andrew 2006). Andrew makes a case for the use of the toys based on the benefits and effectiveness in abating difficult behaviour, but recognises that their use “in dementia care settings raises questions regarding its ethical nature” (2006, 419). In any case, infantilisation is contentious as it assumes reduced selfhood.
Despite dialogue amongst cultural and social studies writers refuting the loss-of-self notion and, further, some scientific evidence drawing the conclusions that the self does not become lost, the idea nonetheless prevails in Western culture. The conclusion is drawn from the cognitive deficits that result from dementia and the social positioning of such function. Furthermore, because dementia affects memory, communication, behaviour, and personality, the individual is unable to outwardly express themselves as they once did. The social change that ensues is consequently perceived to be a reduction of the person as a whole, or the person with dementia is assumed to suffer a “social death” (Kontos 2004; Downs, Small, and Froggatt 2006) or, more extremely, a “living death” (Innes 2009; Behuniak 2011). Such is the progression of thought from reduced social engagement to self-loss. This thesis examines the representation of dementia (in its Western context) in contemporary theatre. The analysis, therefore, draws on notions of self-loss, social engagement and worth, infantilisation, relationships, behaviour, and communication. The loss-of-self assumption has its roots in the way in which Western culture construes selfhood: successful self-maintenance, coherent communication, sufficient social engagement, behavioural self-control, and autobiographical memory. This construction is upheld in some media representations. Not only do cultural constructions form the basis for how dementia is portrayed, predominant attitudes are further allegorised in emotive language, metaphor, and other types of imagery.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 33 4. Literature Review: Representations of Dementia in Media
If the Western cultural portrait of dementia can be cognised as clinical presentations of the condition interpreted through Western ideals of selfhood and social worth, then the influence of media representations and public rhetoric is important to consider. This chapter surveys media depictions of dementia and discusses the predominant narratives that emerge. It first introduces three devices frequently used to describe dementia: emotive language, imagery, and metaphor. The review then discusses how dementia is represented in journalistic media and images, and briefly examines dementia in novels and on screen. This review also investigates existing intersections of dementia and drama, including work in the applied theatre sector.
Metaphor, imagery, and emotive language are three basic devices used in media representations of dementia, including news broadcasting. Moreover, these descriptive features influence everyday conversation about dementia, perpetuating negative attitudes towards the condition. I do not intend to investigate a plethora of media depictions in order to catalogue representative trends. Instead, I draw on sources that give a sense of the tendencies and demonstrate the influence of language and images. This review shows that the prevalent, pessimistic attitudes presented in the media are agents in perpetuating the stigmatisation of dementia. Many theorists assert that dementia is unfairly portrayed. Guendouzi and Müller (2006) present an analysis of dementia in the media that reveals a predominantly negative angle. Similarly, McColgan (2004, 169) maintains that “[d]espite a definitive research focus on finding the social meaning of dementia developed over the last decade, lack of understanding and negative popular representations of dementia persist”. As such, an existentially threatening dementia is the dementia that prevails in journalistic reporting and artistic portrayals, sometimes including misrepresentations of the condition. Significantly, many agree that media depictions are “a greater influence on what people think, believe and do than are the so-called facts” (Johnstone 2013, 23).
4.1 Journalistic Media The selected information and representations employed in journalistic media facilitate the existential anxiety that currently defines the idea of dementia. Johnstone (2013, 23) states that media “can (and does) have a potent influence on public attitudes and opinions”. David Salter (2007) declares that consumers tend to accept that news media outlets report the absolute truth:
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 34 “it is so easy to deceive. Words printed on a page assume immediate authority when we have no more than our own experience and knowledge as a benchmark” (Salter 2007, 38). Johnstone (2013, 23) agrees with Salter and adds that what is provided to the public is “mediated” and not necessarily factual; important issues are reduced to clichéd headlines and snapshots. Salter believes that this fragmented format is the result of a “standard television current affairs story […shrinking] from six minutes to three” and a newspaper’s lead story running at about half the word count compared to fifty years ago (Salter 2007, 236). In his view, “[n]ews becomes information snack food,” as images, sound bites and bullet points are used to deliver information quickly (Salter 2007, 237). Salter provides further explanation: The combined effect of an emotive headline, dramatic picture, stark caption and sensational lead paragraph make a powerful package. Many of us will have neither the time nor the interest to read much further, so that first impression – right or wrong – becomes the whole story (2007, 38). Reductive representations can lead to a misinterpretation of the subject (Johnstone 2013; Salter 2007). When trusted sources, that are openly available to the public, base their reporting on bold statistics without a full explanation of their meaning, only an overall sentiment endures. The overall sentiment attributed to dementia is a decidedly negative one.
Language is a powerful tool that is sometimes utilised to yield a biased image. In the case of dementia, that image is of a larger-than-life condition that is descending on humankind. Salter (2007) notes the great subconscious power of language and his observation of its frequent manipulation in Australian media. It is feasible, then, that sensationalist media informs public opinion under a convincing guise of factual information. For instance, projections of the increase of dementia and statistics regarding the potential financial implications are contextualised as emotional topics because they are framed by “emotive language” (Innes 2009, 29). Dementia statistics consistently report its rise (Lock 2013; Innes 2009; Zeilig 2014a; Johnstone 2013). While factual, the affective language evokes a social dread to accompany the proclamation. Allegorical language amplifies the condition further. The dementia ‘epidemic’ joins a list of other epidemics: “obesity, diabetes, autism, prostate cancer, breast cancer, HIV/AIDS, child abuse, crime, and terrorism, to name a few” (Lock 2013, 1). Zeilig (2014a, 260) discusses similarly metaphorical descriptions that evoke inevitable disaster, including “millennium demon” and “silent epidemic”. Other expressions are specifically related to natural disasters: “the rising tide” and “silent tsunami,” in addition to the oxymoron “slow- moving tsunami” (Zeilig 2014a, 260). The use of such expressions is a manipulation of language that fosters notions of dementia as something that is inevitable and to be dreaded.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 35 Without referencing any clinical symptoms, the condition is immediately rendered a threat. Johnstone (2013, 24) recognises that the use of metaphor to describe AD is significant in that “it encompasses much more than the mere use of everyday language”. Zeilig (2014a, 258) also asserts that “the metaphors persistently used to explain dementia shape our consciousness about the condition”. As to the question of why metaphor is a popular tool for describing and understanding, Zeilig (2015, 15) determines that “we turn to metaphor when attempting to explain difficult concepts – like love”. This would suggest that dementia is something that is a challenge to comprehend and that we feel we need to articulate in words. What results from this need is often unoriginal and even clichéd.
Salter (2007, 230) observes that certain clichéd phrases that frequently occur in journalistic writing “become accepted touchstones of contemporary cultural significance,” developing into staples of dinner-party discussions. He also reflects that:
Journalists, editors and producers will always to prefer to tackle material they know runs down dependable furrows of sentiment, and can be communicated through conventional forms. The definition of ‘news’ itself now turns more on default preconceptions than content. Events have no real meaning unless they can be packaged and presented within a familiar framework. Inevitably, stories that may not fit these templates of violence, novelty, shock, drama, conflict, celebrity or spectacle will be neglected (Salter 2007, 7- 8).
To Salter’s list of ‘templates,’ I add tragedy. It is within a frame of tragedy that dementia is often referenced and, therefore, its narrativisation tends to be reduced to the notions explored above, such as: memory loss, independence, social agency, and selfhood. Further evidence suggests that incomprehensive and skewed media depictions of the condition influence public opinion. Guendouzi and Müller’s are of the view that:
Much of the public’s knowledge about dementia comes via the media in the form of televised documentaries of people living with dementia (which often focus on the negative aspects of dementia because, as noted already, bad news is more newsworthy), health reports (often sound bites of research rather than proper summaries), and heath care brochures (often inadequate bullet points) (2006, 147)
It can be concluded that the media treatment of dementia is commonly sensationalised. Moreover, its depictions appeal to public anxieties and concerns, for instance, disruptions to memory, relationships, family, social engagement and, ultimately, selfhood. Overall, media representations demonstrate how dementia is positioned in the Western psyche; yet the construction is cyclical: these representations work because they reflect how we regard
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 36 dementia, and, in turn, these representations perpetuate prevailing understandings. Although the notion of media influence on societal thought is a commonly supported one, there is no consensus on this issue. In Ian Connell’s (1992, 139) opinion, “television journalism is made to appear to be a kind of megaphone by which ruling ideas are amplified and generalized across all sectors of the social formation.” While the literature validates this idea, Connell’s (1992) position does, at least, necessitate reflection on whether or not the depictions of dementia in media alone can be credited with dementia’s Western cultural portrait. Still, Salter (2007) acknowledges the power of the media to influence public attitudes and its misuse, a view supported by Johnstone (2013) and Zeilig (2014a), among others.
In addition to journalism and news and current affairs reporting, dementia has played a role in other media. Zeilig (2015, 14) addresses “an ever-increasing supply of these representations in film, TV, novels, plays, memoirs, newspaper stories, poetry and even opera” and considers that writers, filmmakers, playwrights, and artists bring “wider existential issues” into their stories of dementia (Zeilig 2014a, 259). This would suggest that artforms become platforms for dementia as more than a medical or social subject, but also an existential one. The following sections introduce three forms of media in the context of dementia representation: Images, Books, and Screen.
4.2 Images and Illustrations The kinds of images commonly associated with dementia complement the imagery-laden language used in public media. Images designed or employed to represent dementia echo the popular Western cultural views of the condition including those of brain death, memory as constituting selfhood, and the automatic association with ageing. A Google Image search of the words “dementia” or “Alzheimer’s” yields results that, for the most part, fall into several categories. Amongst the abundance of images of elderly people looking concerned, as well as brain scans, slices, and drawings, are abstract depictions based on metaphor that reflect Western cultural constructions. It should be noted that some images that result from these searches may not have been originally designed to depict dementia but have been used in the context of an article about the condition, which is significant in itself. The more abstract images can be sorted into several themes: human heads drawn as trees shedding leaves; heads in silhouette losing cogs or puzzle pieces; and erasers labelled “Alzheimer’s” rubbing out an image of a brain (see Figures 3 and 5, 1, and 4, respectively). Each of these themes illustrates cognitive loss. Moreover, many of the portraits are transient, demonstrating a process of
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 37 deterioration. In this way, brain shrinkage and loss of selfhood are the chief anxieties the images reflect.
The core notion of loss is present in each of these metaphorical interpretations of dementia. The pictures represent an indiscriminate eradication of the mind, despite dementia usually demonstrating regional focus. However, the key affectations of memory, communication, and social skills amount to global ‘brain death’ in the cultural psyche. As the above discussion has shown, when communication is compromised, it is assumed that social interaction is unfeasible. Similarly, cognition is equated to thought and social worth, and memory constitutes identity. These assumptions consequently render a demented brain useless and the ‘living death’ imagery ensues.
Some pictures employ text in addition to the imagery. Figure 3 embeds text in the tree-losing- leaves motif. Some of the words used are: lifestyle, reading, children, husband, wife, comfort, and socialising. The language is usually emotive, taking advantage of the fears associated with dementia. The image by Kinetic (Figure 2) is one example of a small series by the Singaporean company. The series dramatises a dementia experience akin to Cohen-Mansfield, Golander, and Arnheim’s (2000, 381) description: “Sufferers of dementia describe the disease as a frightening shadow which sneaks upon them and steals portions of their memories, dreams and selves”. The elderly subject trope is present and the choice of black and white further frames the content in an ominous way. Overall, the text reading “Alzheimer’s Disease Robs” clearly demonises dementia, but also positions the condition as subject and the individual as passive object. Language and imagery that renders a person with dementia as passive resonates with issues of medicalisation and institutionalisation.
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Figure 1: Neurodegeneration (Shutterstock 2013)
Figure 2: Alzheimer’s Disease Robs (Kinetic 2011)
Figure 3: A mind with dementia is a theatre set (Coxon 2015)
Figure 4: Alzheimer’s disease (the-infinite- opi 2009)
Figure 5: Alzheimer’s disease (Simmons Holcomb 2008)
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 39 4.3 Photography and Portraiture Xi Hsu (2014) discusses dementia’s representation in contemporary art and photography, drawing on historical examples of the depiction of mental illness in portraiture. Considering the history of dementia in medical literature, the accounts of how mental illness has been depicted in visual art are valuable in understanding dementia portraiture. For example, during the nineteenth century, the portraits of the mentally ill were commissioned for inclusion in medical treatises, the images for which were intended to accentuate the effects of the illness rather than represent the individual (Hsu 2014). Note the medicalisation of the person with dementia. While contemporary stock images that represent dementia have moved on to metaphor, the subject is still absent, replaced by evaporating humanoid silhouettes.
Contemporarily, dementia still proves problematic subject matter for visual artists. Hsu (2014, 42) reports that “[i]n comparison with other severe diseases that have been addressed by contemporary artists, such as cancer and AIDS, dementia has not been sufficiently represented in contemporary art”. However, Hsu (2014, 42) does offer one such example: “little-known” artist Jeff Bowering, who “painted a series of portraits of people with dementia”. Photography, with a shorter history, “has been commonly adopted by twentieth century artists to represent people with dementia because the camera could capture transient moments and changes in the sufferers’ features” (Hsu 2014, 43). Nicholas Nixon photographed a group of people with AD from 1983 to 1985. Despite this capacity to capture transient moments, “Nixon captures the emptiness of an elder’s face. The photograph gave little information to give viewers the means to identify with this person” (Hsu 2014, 44). Contrary examples are rare, but they do exist. A project led by a team from the Queensland University of Technology, “Inside Aged Care,” produced a number of outputs, including a photographic exhibition in 2017 (Inside Aged Care 2017). While the participant group numbering over one hundred was intended to include people living in aged care generally, some people with dementia were among them (Inside Aged Care 2017)9.
The general lack of representations of dementia in contemporary art speaks to, and reinforces, the impenetrability of the subject. Moreover, opportunities for visual artists to challenge the pervasive medicalisation of dementia have been largely missed. Even when illustrating or directly capturing the images of individuals with dementia (compared with stock images that
9 The broader project also produced a series of poems that provide insight into living in aged care (Miller, Donoghue, and Holland-Batt 2015; Miller 2018).
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 40 utilise metaphor) the person with dementia can still tend to be positioned as object instead of subject.
The point of difference between photography and portraiture and the other forms discussed here is that the latter tend to be more fictional than documentary in nature. Books about dementia can fall into either category; some are fictional, but there is a selection of memoirs that document a dementia experience.
4.4 Novels and Memoir As discussed, words can carry great influence in cultural constructions, particularly when the expression encompasses imagery, metaphor, and emotive language. For this reason, novels on dementia are worthy of mention. Books generally fall into one of the following categories: non- fiction texts for carers and families, books for individuals with dementia – though, these are far less common than reading material intended for the former audience, and fictional depictions that either centre on dementia or utilise the condition as a minor story arc. Non-fictional, personal accounts are also a popular medium, and are predominantly written by family members of people with dementia.
McColgan (2004) provides examples of fictional accounts of dementia in novels: Margaret Forster (1990) and Michael Ignatieff (1993). In contrast, Lisa Appignanesi (1999) and Linda Grant (1998) have both written about someone close to them who had dementia (McColgan 2004). The title of Appignanesi’s novel, Losing the Dead (1999) implies an erosion of selfhood, even though the dementia narrative is about a family member. John Bayley authored books (1998, 1999) about his wife’s (Iris Murdoch) dementia and “their evolving relationship” (McColgan 2004, 171). Sue Pieters-Hawke similarly wrote about her mother, Hazel Hawke’s, dementia (Pieters-Hawke and Flynn 2004; Pieters-Hawke and Flynn 2011). In this category, the stories are personal and present an authentic account of the familial experience of dementia, yet they still cannot fully convey the direct dementia experience. McColgan distinguishes a final category of novels, those authored “by people in the early stages of having dementia” (McColgan 2004, 170): Robert Davis (1984), Diane McGowin (1993), and Larry Rose (1996). This distinction of early-stage dementia, while perhaps unsurprising, is significant: only a specific part of the direct dementia experience is represented in literature.
Significantly, McColgan (2004, 170) recognises that “[o]ddly, these personal accounts, like the fictional ones, also characterise people with dementia and use stereotypical images”. Some narratives are characterised by the foci of loss and decline, illustrating the ‘demented’ as
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 41 “vulnerable and unable to cope” (McColgan 2004, 170). The titles of books are often a clear indication of the author’s positioning of dementia. McGowin (1993) allegorises her AD as a labyrinthine maze in her book’s title, Living in the Labyrinth: A Personal Journey Through the Maze of Alzheimer's. Some books marketed to help understand dementia also lead with a clichéd image of the condition by way of their title (Innes 2009), for instance, Alzheimer’s Disease: Coping with a Living Death (Woods 1989) and The Loss of Self (Cohen and Eisdorfer 2001). McColgan (2004 170) observes that “titles of personal accounts suggest journeys into dementia, being engulfed and lost, and longing to go home”. However, it should be noted that What the Hell Happened to my Brain? Living Beyond Dementia (2016) by Kate Swaffer – a well-known activist in Australia – challenges these themes.
Metaphor and allegory, and imagery-laden language, are common tools for narrativising dementia. I restate Zeilig’s (2015, 15) remark: “we turn to metaphor when attempting to explain difficult concepts”. The imagery evoked in the above examples is grounded in the narratives of loss, decline, and struggle influenced by the medical model. These constructions of dementia experiences run “down dependable furrows of sentiment,” to borrow from Salter (2007, 7).
Some fictional examples position the person with dementia and their experiences at the centre of the story. Emma Healey’s Elizabeth is Missing (2014) has been described as a “dementia detective story” (Gillies 2014). The protagonist, Maud, convinced that her friend Elizabeth has gone missing, sets out to uncover her disappearance. The novel is set both in this present of Maud’s, but also deals with events that occurred 70 years beforehand. Jonathan Witherick and Catherine Morgan (2015, 405) recognise that Maud’s “clarity of recall of her earlier life contrasts with her muddled, chaotic present-day thinking, and provides a clear illustration of the core clinical paradox of dementia”. Critics have – for the most part – given glowing reviews (Groskop 2014; Perry 2014), reporting the book as “strikingly realistic” (Witherick and Morgan 2015, 405), with most clinical details intact. What Healey’s book does – which has been both praised and criticised – is represent two different versions of Maud, one internal and one external. Maud’s internal monologue that the reader is privy to is clear and poetic, yet Maud’s external expression that other characters of the book witness is less coherent. “Inevitably, the interior Maud and the confused old lady she appears to be on the outside don't always seem as though they're the same person” (Gillies 2014). Although this dual, or demarcated, experience of selfhood cannot be properly corroborated, it does evoke the frustration and isolation that is reported to occur as a result of dementia, both clinically and in cultural studies. Considering the
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 42 overall positive sentiment of the reviews, story devices like dual selves, foggy histories, and the blurring of timelines are considered apt tools for representing dementia.
The final three examples are graphic novels and include Paco Roca’s Arrugas (Wrinkles), first published in 2007, Sarah Leavitt’s Tangles: A Story about Alzheimer’s, My Mother and Me (2010), and Clem and Oliver Martini’s The Unravelling: How Our Caregiving Safety Net Came Unstrung and We Were Left Grasping at Threads, Struggling to Plait a New One (2017). Wrinkles follows Ernest (Emilio in the original Spanish version) from his first steps into a care facility through to his getting to know the other residents. The novel takes detours into Ernest’s memories, which are triggered by his experiences in the home. Like a number of other novels and memoirs about dementia, in 2011 Wrinkles was adapted into a film. Leavitt’s Tangles is an autobiographical account of her mother’s early-onset AD that translated her journals into a comic book. The Unravelling is also an autobiographical work and focuses on the experience of caregiving. The examples cited here emphasise themes of loss and caregiving. Moreover, the imagery of the individual with dementia as the ‘living dead’ is echoed in several cases. There are, however, some emerging themes of layered selves and/or realities.
4.5 Screen One of the best-known fictional narratives exploring dementia is neuroscientist Lisa Genova’s Still Alice (2009). Hailed as a realistic portrayal of the dementia experience, Still Alice has won awards and a place on bestseller lists. Genova’s neuroscientific knowledge gave her insight to represent dementia. The 2014 film adaptation has also been hailed by critics and medical professionals alike as an accurate depiction of early-onset AD. Its cast of well-known actors and its successful Academy Awards campaign meant that Still Alice was paid substantial public attention.
Cinema is an effective medium through which to represent dementia. Because of the opportunity to engage imagery (cast, setting, colours, dress, makeup, and cinematography), music, and pace, film has the capacity to position an audience to view dementia in a particular way, either creating empathy for, or marginalising, characters. Despite cinematic achievements like Still Alice, dementia has previously been inaccurately represented in cinema.
A well-known Hollywood rendering of dementia takes place in another book-turned-film project, The Notebook (2004). The Nicholas Sparks story (published as a novel in 1996) narrativises the difficulty of having a family member with memory loss. While the elderly Allie, who has dementia, experiences severe retrograde amnesia, anterograde amnesia is
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 43 omitted. In reality, anterograde amnesia would unambiguously accompany the progression of retrograde amnesia. Moreover, there would be manifest cognitive deficits and behavioural symptomology, and yet these features are neglected. Allie’s verbal communication is lucid and her comprehension is intact, and hence the depiction of dementia is decidedly inaccurate. Granted, in the earlier stages of the disease there are moments of lucidity, yet this stage of dementia would not permit the clarity depicted in the film.
This suggests that what the author found most compelling as a story element was memory loss, specifically forgetting loved ones. While this is a significant part of the dementia experience, the reduction to this lone symptom perpetuates the taboo around dementia because it discourages honesty regarding the disease. Sparks’ interpretation may be a more flattering dementia, but the omissions would suggest that dementia on the whole was not considered appropriate to feature in a romantic novel or Hollywood film. The dementia of The Notebook is an idealistic one, not a true depiction of the condition. Roger Ebert – despite his review being a relatively positive one – described the film as a “sentimental fantasy” (Ebert 2004). This demonstrates that the imperative to entertain transcends the endeavour for authenticity. The Notebook takes advantage of our fear of forgetting ourselves and our loved ones, a sentiment derived from the Western portrait of dementia.
Despite its questionable portrayal of dementia, The Notebook did not garner the level of controversy that The Iron Lady did. The Iron Lady (2011) is a film about Margaret Thatcher – who was still alive at the time of the film’s release – and her years with dementia. Naturally, with Meryl Streep in the leading role and the ensuing ‘Oscar buzz,’ the film received a lot of public attention. Members of the British media ruled that the film was distasteful and a violation of Thatcher’s dignity. The Telegraph’s Max Pemberton takes issue with the way the film appeared “to show someone in the throes of an illness while they are actually experiencing it and in terminal decline is chillingly insensitive” (Pemberton 2012). While he says that Streep’s performance and the overall depiction of dementia is accurate, he agrees with then Prime Minister David Cameron that the film was of questionable morality (Pemberton 2012). He elucidates why he has deemed The Iron Lady as such: It is representative of how society largely views elderly people, particularly those with dementia. They are ignored. They are considered to be dead long before they actually are. Those with dementia experience a loss, not just of their memory and cognition, but of respect and dignity [Line break. ...] As people with dementia decline, they are no longer deemed worthy of attention or thought. As far as society is concerned, they are already history. This film gets away with treating
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 44 Lady Thatcher as though she were already dead, because that’s precisely how society behaves towards the old and infirm. (Pemberton 2012)
Other noteworthy cinematic illustrations of, or allusions to, dementia are present in: On Golden Pond (1981), Regarding Henry (1991), Iris (2001), Away from Her (2006) (based on Alice Munro’s short story “The Bear Came over the Mountain”), The Savages (2007), Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), Robot & Frank (2012), The Sideways Light (2014), Dementia (2014), Dementia (2015), The Visit (2015), Concussion (2015), Remember (2015) and Marjorie Prime (2017). The most recent film on this list, Marjorie Prime, is adapted from Jordan Harrison’s play. Dementia (2014), Dementia (2015), and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit all fall into the horror genre and subgenres. Tim Robey (2015) calls The Visit possibly “the most gerontophobic film ever made”. The working title of The Visit, “Sundowning,” is a reference to sundowner’s syndrome, a clinical phenomenon related to dementia. However, the portrayal in the film is inaccurate. It positions an elderly couple – one of whom has dementia – as a murderous duo, essentially movie monsters. The other two horror films similarly utilise dementia as a premise for an unpleasant turn of events.
Portrayals of dementia on television are more difficult to find, especially where the person with dementia is at the centre of the story. I suspect that this is due to the episodic nature of television programming that presupposes coherent character progression episode after episode. Dementia features as a subplot, that is, as a condition of someone other than a lead character in a number of shows. Well-known examples include: Uncle Junior Soprano in The Sopranos (1999-2007), Denny Crane in Boston Legal (2004-2008), Maw Maw in Raising Hope (2010-2014), and Jimmy in Orange is the New Black (2013- ).
Television programs that focus on dementia are typically of a documentary type. It should be noted that even documentary content is narrativised and, therefore, positions the person with dementia in the way that fulfils the filmmakers’ vision. In favour of documentary television, Michelle Heward, James Palfreman-Kay, and Anthea Innes (2015) investigate how television and visual media can raise awareness of dementia and address gaps in the public’s understanding. Their findings show that personal stories can be effective in achieving this: the combination of “words, faces, voices and stories of people who are affected” is impactful (Heward, Palfreman-Kay and Innes 2015, 238). They conclude that the media plays a “fundamental role […] in challenging negative stigma and stereotypes associated with dementia” (Heward, Palfreman-Kay, and Innes 2015, 239). Zeilig corroborates that personal stories are a popular format, but goes further: “the press and television documentaries abound
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 45 in ‘personal’ stories about dementia and in tales of cures that are imminent or preventative measures that can be taken to ward it off” (2014a, 261). The numerous programs that advise about prevention fall into the common pattern of catastrophising dementia and portraying people with dementia as hopeless victims, lost forever. Thus, people with dementia can inadvertently dehumanised in an effort to educate viewers about improving their health. Examples of documentary television about dementia include: Terry Pratchett: Living with Alzheimer’s (2009, UK) and, to a lesser extent, Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die (2011, UK), Louis Theroux’s Extreme Love: Dementia (2012, UK), and Dementiaville (2015, UK).
Several examples of main characters with dementia in fictional television shows do exist. Perhaps most famously, the eponymous pair at the centre of Mother and Son (1984–1994, AUS) live together, dealing with the mother’s dementia. The Australian sitcom makes light of Maggie’s memory loss and, to a greater extent, her son Arthur’s navigation of it. Much of the time, Maggie is shown to be shrewd, even mischievous, in spite of her failing memory and difficulty in undertaking activities of daily living.
Screen media is a popular artistic platform on which to examine major social concerns; its combination of the visual and the auditory – including cinematography, costume and makeup, language, speech, sound mixing, and musical score – provides fertile ground for layered representations. As novels deal in words alone, imagery-laden language is used to create abstract understandings of content amongst the realistic. Where language is included, the positioning of the content, while still metaphorical, is more explicit. Cinema has the luxury of language, image, and sound, as does theatre.
However, theatre performance is differentiated from film in a significant way: its liveness. The immediacy of live performance “depends, in its essence, on the dialogical creation and exchange of meanings; it is a performative art that engages and integrates voice, body and imagination” (Bernard et al. 2015, 1141). This integration of vocal and embodied expression with imagination also speaks to theatre’s ability to facilitate different modes of communication, that is, theatre tools. Thus, theatre can be layered in a way that is more immediately perceptible to an audience. Moreover, theatre presents greater possibilities for participation and proximity. The tactile qualities of theatre spectatorship may require a stronger suspension of disbelief from the audience. In response, some theatre practitioners heighten the wonder of live performance, despite the discord between the staged construction and the imagined diegesis. Such responses actually dismiss the endeavour for realism and stretch the possibilities of storytelling, often making use of diverse and layered theatre tools. Contemporary performance, in distinguishing
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 46 itself from other available mediums of entertainment and expression, has become a potential site for staging community theatre – often developed through a collaborative devising process – as well as works that embrace the interruption of realism to present diverse human experiences in new ways. These types of performance are both of interest to this study. The former is a potential outlet for dementia/performance research and projects.
4.6 Applied Arts and Dementia Currently, drama and dementia are involved in several capacities: dramatherapy, educational drama designed for audiences of family members and care staff, and the creative portrayal of dementia on the stage. Despite dementia’s high cultural currency, research at the intersection of dementia and drama is currently trending towards the applied, indicating an emphasis on dramatherapy and dramas representing dementia to promote a new understanding of the condition. The drama that is the focus of this thesis is that which does not prescribe any kind of therapy, but merely represents the condition. However, the state of arts-based therapy and applied performance is crucial to note.
Research into arts-based interventions for people with dementia is a growing area of literature. The related programs and studies are concerned with the management of behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia (“BPSD”)10, and take place in long-term care settings. Also called psychosocial or psychotherapeutic interventions, such practices represent an accompaniment to, not a replacement of, psycho-pharmaceutical solutions. Balakrishnan Nair and colleagues (2013, 47) note that “pharmacotherapy may be of limited benefit and its use is controversial”. Thus, exploration of alternate therapies is crucial. Helen Nicholson (2011, 47) considers that creative activity may “help to change a residential care home from an institution to a domestic space” and argues that “the arts have a significant role to play in end of life care”. The development of this research signifies the shift to a more holistic approach to dementia care. The phrase ‘low cost’ frequently features in the literature as a benefit.
Arts-based interventions – using visual art, music, dance, drama, or storytelling – can involve both the passive and active involvement of people with dementia. In the case of the latter, Anne Basting (2006) notes that barriers exist. Firstly, the professionalisation of the arts has led to thinking that artistic creativity is exclusive to professional artists and outside the capabilities
10 Many people with dementia and advocates contest the notion of BPSD. They suggest that the concept dismisses what may be rational responses and behaviours as clinical symptoms, potentially ignoring environmental influences. Those against the term do not dispute the use of associated medications, only their over/misuse.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 47 for people with dementia (Basting 2006). Additionally, when family members and care staff focus on the loss of dementia, they find it difficult to “look past the loss and open themselves to recognising and nurturing the strengths of the person with dementia” (Basting 2006, 19). This thinking reflects the perceived discord between creativity and ageing in general. Jocey Quinn and Claudia Blandon (2017, 580) recognise that while art is considered “a process of becoming,” dementia is deemed a process of degeneration. Thus, art and creativity are often thought to be out of reach for people with dementia. Additionally, activities facilitated for residents in long-term care tend to be activities with which the person with dementia is already familiar, as opposed to new creative skills (Quinn and Blandon 2017). This can be attributed to the fact that “the widely-promoted positive vision of lifelong learning throughout all ages does not extend to people with dementia. Constructions of learning for those with dementia are predominantly limited to the management of symptoms” (Quinn and Blandon 2017, 578). This emphasis on the management of symptoms (predominantly behavioural) is demonstrated across the literature on arts and dementia, with only a few exceptions.
4.6.1 Music Therapy Despite the impairment of language typical in DAT and related dementias, Quinn and Blandon (2017, 581) cite research that investigates the intersection between nonverbal conditions and the artforms of music and dance. Music therapy (MT) is a significant sector of arts-based intervention. MT has been shown to aid sleep and treat stress in people with dementia (Nair et al. 2013). Mayumi Sakamoto, Hiroshi Ando and Akimitsu Tsutou (2013, 775) emphasise that interactive interventions, as opposed to passive MT, are the most beneficial. Further, Ruth Melhuish, Catherine Beuzeboc and Azucena Guzmán (2017) demonstrate that MT and dance movement therapy (DMT) can have positive effects on the care staff to better understand the abilities and feelings of the residents. Huei-Chuan Sung and Anne Chang (2005) discuss the use of preferred music as therapy and argue for the positive effects. Similarly, Nair et al. (2013) note that reminiscence-based music therapy may been used to treat depressive symptoms in people with dementia. Current research shows compelling evidence for the short-term results of MT in managing “BPSD,” but researchers agree that longitudinal studies are needed to investigate long-term effects. Research by Nair and colleagues demonstrates this need. A pilot study using Baroque music showed positive results for managing “BPSD” with the music, but a second study, intended to replicate the results in a larger sample, resulted in “significantly more behavioural disturbances during the weeks when Baroque music was played compared to control periods” (Nair et al. 2011, 11). Thus, the researchers determined that while the “study
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 48 did not find that ambient Baroque music had any calming effect, it did highlight that music can significantly influence behaviour” (Nair et al. 2011, 13)
4.6.2 Dance Movement Therapy
Currently, DMT is problematic in a similar way. Research conducted by Vicky Karkou and Bonnie Meekums (2017) has found that more quality studies are required. Echoing the importance of a holistic approach to dementia care, Karkou and Meekums (2017, 2) explain that “[d]ementia literature argues for the need to address the complexity of the symptoms and work with the person as a whole”. They argue that “dance movement therapy, an embodied psychological intervention that uses movement and dance to express and explore emotions, may be useful for people with dementia” (Karkou and Meekums 2017, 2). However, their research also finds that the degree to which dance movement therapy is an effective intervention for people with dementia is not yet clear (Karkou and Meekums 2017). Teija Ravelin, Arja Isola, and Jari Kylmä (2013) examined dance as an intervention for older people with dementia, but their study’s participants were engaged only as spectators. However, Azucena Guzmán and colleagues (2017) discuss DANCIN, a study of Psychomotor DANCe Therapy INtervention and “argue in favour of further dissemination” of the program, based on the desire of the residents and staff to continue and support from family members. The DANCIN program was designed for the treatment of mild dementia and – like all arts-based interventions cited here – intended as part of a broader care plan. Despite largely lacking evidence for cognitive improvement with dance movement therapy, dance has proven to be an effective therapy for other neurological conditions. For example, the Dance for Parkinson’s Pilot Research project presented both quantitative and qualitative results, including improved functional mobility and gait and reduced bodily discomfort, as well as positive emotional, social, physical, and cognitive benefits (Jeffrey et al. 2014).
4.6.3 Reminiscence Therapy
Some arts-based therapies are intended to specifically address cognitive function. Some of these interventions make use of storytelling as a method, for example, reminiscence therapy (RT). RT is the “discussion of past activities, events and experiences, with another person or group of people, […] often assisted by aids such as videos, pictures, archives and life story book” (Woods et al. 2005, 2). Bob Woods and colleagues (2005) analyse a group of studies demonstrating that RT can improve mood and cognition even weeks after treatment. However, yet again, the literature consistently reports that further quality research is needed. RT is
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 49 particularly pertinent to this research because of its basis in storytelling and the use of visual and auditory stimulus materials. However, some researchers perceive the emphasis on the past, and remembering the past, as a failure to properly acknowledge the inherent nature of dementia and retrograde amnesia. They consider the practice to be setting up participants for failure. Moreover, interventions like RT are concerned with narrative identity, a potentially confronting exercise for people with dementia. Like Quinn and Blandon (2017), Shari Sabeti’s (2015) research into the perceived dissonance between creativity (future-oriented) and older people (past-oriented) reveals that the overwhelming proportion of projects for older people are focused on retrospection as a creative activity. RT operates on the assumption that people with dementia are not capable of original storytelling. The TimeSlips program, which is discussed in below, challenges this assumption.
4.6.4 Dramatherapy
A number of studies exist pertaining to dramatherapy in care facilities. The literature suggests that drama plays an important role in communication, expression, and reflection. A. Marijke van Dijk, Julia van Weert, and Rose-Marie Dröes (2012) discuss the Veder method, which includes communicative devices from drama, theatrical stimuli, and “emotion-oriented care methods” in therapeutic activities. Care staff are taught to apply the Veder method, which is known as a “communication method” (van Dijk, van Weert, and Dröes 2012, 367) as a group activity. Thus, dramatherapy may manifest as reflection and new understanding (Bolmsjo, Edberg and Andersson 2012). Ingrid Bolmsjo, Anna-Karin Edberg, and Petra Lilja Andersson (2012) recognise that people with dementia struggle to express themselves; they view drama as an instrument for reflection. Joanna Jaaniste (2011) more closely examines dramatherapy as a tool in dementia care, investigating the way it can be used to deal with the personal losses experienced by people with dementia. Activities are designed for those struggling with self- expression to explore “existential issues and key life questions” through dramaturgical devices (Jaaniste 2011, 16). Overall, the acknowledgement of the threat of dementia and drama’s capacity for reflection and new understanding is noteworthy.
4.6.5 Intersections of Applied Drama and Performance
Sometimes, applied drama and staged performance intersect. This may manifest as drama for education or research-based theatre; the two often overlap. These forms are discussed below. An example of this intersection in a therapeutic context is The Garden (2015, UK) a performance by Spare Tyre. The work is a multisensory, interactive installation focused on
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 50 non-verbal communication. The Garden tours to arts venues, community spaces, and residential care homes. While The Garden brings performance into long-term care settings, some projects do the inverse and dramatise research done in residential care for the stage.
An emerging type of research outcome in the applied sector is theatre about dementia in aid of reflection and understanding, created for families and carers. Such projects range in composition, purpose, and themes, yet most appear to aspire to cathartic and educative outcomes (Mitchell, Jonas-Simpson, and Ivonoffski 2006; Gjengedal et al. 2014; Gregory 2014). This area of inquiry reflects the need for greater layperson understanding of dementia, including by those with familial experience of the condition. Susan Feldman and colleagues (2011, 885) confirm that “[r]esearch-based community theater can address important life issues in a safe and entertaining environment”. However, Miriam Bernard and colleagues observe a gap: Despite the growing interest amongst gerontologists and literary and cultural scholars alike, in arts participation, ageing and the artistic outputs of older people, comparatively little attention has yet been paid to theatre and drama. Likewise, community or participatory theatre has long been used to address issues affecting marginalised or excluded groups, but it is a presently under- utilised medium for exploring ageing or for conveying positive messages about growing older. (2015, 1119)
Again the frequent association of dementia with old age necessitates acknowledgement of literature on ageing and the arts; and Bernard et al. (2015) critically reflect on this intersection. It is important to reiterate that ageing is not synonymous with dementia, or even cognitive decline necessarily; the aged and ageing encounter a great variety of experiences that exist beyond ill-health. Additionally, not all dementia is age-related. Yet, in light of the pervasive cultural entanglement of ageing and dementia, critical discourses on ageing and society and, more importantly, ageing and the humanities have a notable interrelation with this study.
Overall, research-based performance outputs are a growing area of interest in dementia studies. Examples include: I’m Still Here (2006), Cracked: New Light on Dementia (2014), Inside Out of Mind (2013), Time Slips (2000), and D-Generation: An Exaltation of Larks (2013). D- Generation is discussed in Chapter 7, Active and Passive Embodiment. Both D-Generation and Time Slips are based on stories produced by application of the TimeSlips method. Anne Basting, developed the TimeSlips program (https://www.timeslips.org/) in the late 1990s. The practice involves storytelling workshops for people with dementia. TimeSlips depends “on facilitators to weave together responses of people with dementia” (Basting 2003, 29), but the
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 51 focus remains on its participants’ contributions. Several facilitators accompany each group session and ask open-ended questions about an image that is passed around. These images are the stimulus for the storytelling, but the group generates all other elements of the story. Basting recognises that the emphasis on “imagination, rather than fact-based memory,” enables the story to include every response from the group, “from those that make sense to those that do not” (Basting 2003, 25). Using the TimeSlips method, even sounds and gestures can be embedded in the created story (Basting 2003). Originally intended only as a therapeutic activity, the program has nonetheless had some performance outcomes. Time Slips is a performance that stages the stories produced by a group of TimeSlips participants and features characters whose spoken language becomes increasingly fragmented (Basting 2001).
While the current emphasis in academic literature is on dramatherapy and dramas representing dementia to promote new understanding of the condition, Time Slips and D-Generation demonstrate how these programs may produce performance outcomes.
4.7 Conclusion and the Current Gap in the Knowledge The two literature reviews explore areas of dementia research and the representation of dementia in media and the arts. The first lays medical foundations, which are shown to influence cultural thought and artistic representation. Medicine is framed by taxonomies of dysfunction, change, or deficit. While cultural views are more flexible, standards of good health do persist. The prevailing Western cultural understanding of dementia is not only founded on medical narratives but is a product of filtering what is understood about dementia through Western ideals of relationships, social engagement, identity, self, and humanity. The Western cultural portrait of dementia demonstrates particular emphasis on selfhood and self-loss. Media representation echoes and perpetuates Western cultural views. Media commonly takes advantage of tropes that are associated with certain emotions. This review also recognised the triad of metaphorical, emotive, and image-laden language. As a vessel for language, image, physicality, direct audience engagement, and symbol, live theatre performance is a form deserving of academic attention within the sphere of dementia research.
As demonstrated in the above review, dementia is a topic of great public and academic interest. Yet, dramatherapy and the wider areas of the applied sector are currently dominate the discourse of dementia and drama. Overall, the medical humanities is a growing area of academia and, in the case of dementia, is becoming increasingly crucial. Particularly in light of the ageing population, the current positioning of people with dementia is problematic to say
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 52 the least. Therefore, artistic portrayals that may reframe the condition are worthy contributions to the performance industry, and the investigation of such work is essential. Insufficient academic attention is currently being paid to the representation of dementia in contemporary theatre, with consideration of Western cultural framing. It is this gap in the existing knowledge that this thesis explores. For reasons of scope and language analysis, the thesis focuses mostly on Anglophone performances, though the emerging findings may be applied to future research outside of this scope. The following contextual review addresses this research gap by recognising emerging trends and themes in the catalogue of identified performances. Chapter 6 to 8 then examine these themes at greater depth and draw out further representative motifs in performances of dementia. This study, therefore, considers contemporary theatre that stages dementia in the context of Western culture and investigates the representation of dementia and people with dementia.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 53 5. Contextual Review: The Existing and Emerging Landscape of Dementia in Theatre
This contextual review maps the territory of dementia in contemporary theatre through reference to a series of performances, both traditional and contemporary. It references the appended performance catalogue which tabulates information about the performances identified thus far. The review first cites some key texts on ageing in theatre. I then note several canonical works recognised for their underlying, or potential, representation of dementia, and examine Shakespeare’s King Lear. This catalogue provides a guide to some of the theatrical language used throughout the study. It discusses emerging trends, such as the tendency towards a generational discourse, the prevalence of women with dementia in the works, common settings, types of dementia, paradigms of performance development, reportage on works that stage dementia, theatre technologies, and performance forms of note. Lastly, it discusses several outlying features in identified performances.
As noted, there is a strong interrelation between discourses on dementia and ageing. Thus, to read about dementia in performance is to read about age in performance generally. Lawrence Switzky (2016, 135) argues that the “representation of aging in drama has a long and not altogether flattering history.” Representations of age on the contemporary stage bear signs of this long history of stereotyped ‘old’ characters (Mangan 2013). The ancient Greeks fetishised youth (Minois cited in Mangan 2013, 57), which demonstrates the strong roots of ageism in theatre, considering the influence of the Greeks on drama, and tragedy in particular. Michael Mangan (2013) recognises that the stock characters of the 19th century – including a typical Old Man and Old Woman – were influenced by 16th-century Commedia dell’arte. “Caricatures and stereotypes such as these continue [...] in contemporary performance culture, and have an important bearing on the master narrative of decline” (Mangan 2013, 23).
The theory of the master narrative of decline is taken from Margaret Morganroth Gullette’s Aged by Culture (2004), which dedicates a chapter to theatre: “Acting Age on Stage: Age- Appropriate Casting, the Default Body, and Valuing the Property of Having an Age”. Morganroth Gullette (2004) identifies the binary narratives of ageing: progress and decline, where the former describes growing up and the latter describes growing old/er. Elinor Fuchs11
11 Fuchs was a carer to her mother, who had Alzheimer’s disease. This experience stirred her interest in ageing studies and informs a number of her publications.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 54 (2014) identifies that the very plot structure upon which many classical and canonical works are founded embraces a peak-and-decline arrangement. This peak-and-decline has influenced the ‘master’ narrative of age that Morganroth Gullette and others, including Fuchs, reject. It should be noted that this view is potentially made more complex when ageing intersects with dementia, which is clinically characterised by decline. Mangan’s Staging Ageing (2013), borrowing from Morganroth Gullette, traces this ‘narrative of decline’ through historical and contemporary constructions of age in theatre. His book features specific discussions on representations of dementia, including an examination of Melanie Wilson’s Autobiographer, which is analysed in this thesis. In addition to Morganroth Gullette, Mangan (2013, 32) acknowledges Anne Basting’s work in “integrat[ing] performance theory into gerontological debates”.
Overall, ageing studies appear to be oriented towards old age. However, Valerie Barnes Lipscomb (2016b) proposes a broadening of how age is considered – that is, not just old age; she theorises that this may aid in weakening age-related stigma. In her 2016 monograph Performing Age in Modern Drama, she investigates ageing in well-known titles from the early twentieth century onwards. Lipscomb has highlighted the value of considering memory plays within a frame of ageing/theatre criticism. She considers Hwang’s M. Butterfly in this manner in her contribution to Modern Drama’s 2016 special issue Aging and the Life Course (see Lipscomb 2016a). Specifically, she notes that “the memory play as a subgenre can challenge contemporary Western culture’s binary construction pitting young against old, as it calls attention to all ages sharing a performative basis” (2016b, 6). In his introduction to the issue, Switzky (2016, 138) notes that “[d]espite […some] crucial analyses, theatre and performance criticism that responds to developments in age studies is in a germinal phase”. In the same issue, Fuchs applies Brecht’s theory of estrangement – an approach established in her 2014 article “Estragement: Towards an ‘Age Theory’ Theatre Criticism” – and considers it as a way of thinking critically about age, as well as a potential bridge between theatre studies and age studies. Some of the contributions to this special issue come from outside dramatic studies and apply expertise from other areas of age-related studies and other arts scholarship to drama. In the issue, there are several discussions of, or references to, dementia. As part of their contribution, Kim Sawchuk and Aynsley Moorhouse discuss three experimental sound works and argue that “through sound, we may gradually learn to destigmatize dementia and changes in memory to create connection between neurotypical and neurologically atypical people”
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 55 because the three works “assert the value of ongoing expressive capacity and collaboration” (Sawchuk and Moorhouse 2016, 177).
In addition to her 2016 monograph on drama, Lipscomb has contributed to ageing/arts scholarship in collaboration with co-editor Leni Marshall in their 2010 edited collection of essays. The collection features work from practitioners of theatre, film, and dance, as well as scholars writing in these areas and cultural studies, in the hope of inciting an interdisciplinary conversation. The discussions of theatre in the book cover a number of key playwrights throughout history, including Samuel Beckett, Molière, and Shakespeare. In a similar vein, Fuchs (2014) sheds new light on ageing in three of Ibsen’s late plays, which she names the ‘Ibsen Age Triptych. This name will also be used for the purpose of this analysis. The Master Builder (1892), John Gabriel Borkman (1896), and When We Dead Awaken (1899) comprise this triptych, which can be seen as “an evolving debate between Ibsen and himself on the respective values represented by or assignable to youth and age” (Fuchs 2014, 73).
Lipscomb (2012, 117) makes an argument for “theatre as a fertile ground for various theoretical angles in age studies.” She also notes key issues surrounding the current representation and exploration of age in performance, identifying that:
[t]heatre practitioners have too often compartmentalised treatment of the elderly, as drama activities commonly are arranged for the elderly in institutionalised settings, [and] while the working theatre unquestioningly welcomes the elderly as audience and excludes the elderly onstage, casting the younger to play the older, if older characters are included at all.” (Lipscomb 2012, 119)
Fuchs (2014) points out the overall dearth of age and theatre studies, especially when compared to other areas of identity studies. Despite these key contributions, ageing and performance is still a relatively recent area of scholarship. The prevalence of age-related dementia dictates that this scholarship will intersect with dementia studies. However, advocates for ageing who resist the narrative of decline will similarly resist the ingrained entanglement of ageing and cognitive deterioration.
Nevertheless, the exploration of dementia’s representation in contemporary performance is largely uncharted territory. As the cultural awareness of dementia is raised, theatrical depictions – dementia performance outside the educational and therapeutic realms – emerge more frequently. In addition to the focus on dementia in the applied sector, drama theorists and practitioners have begun to identify a dementia discourse in landmark plays. To demonstrate,
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 56 several iconic characters have become part of the wave of dementia awareness. The lead actor of Sam Mendes’ 2014 production of William Shakespeare’s King Lear (ca. 1606) sought information on dementia with Lewy bodies for his portrayal (Furness 2014). The presentation of dementia in this production of King Lear is discussed below. Additionally, a neurologist’s reading of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1615) reveals a “probable” diagnosis of dementia with Lewy bodies (García-Ruiz and Gulliksen 1999; Palma and Palma 2012). Quixote’s behaviour demonstrates mood lability, hallucinations, sleep disruption, and cognitive impairment (García-Ruiz and Gulliksen 1999; Palma and Palma 2012). As for more recent theatre work, Kevin Williamson (2012) notes that Willy Loman of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949) can be performed as though affected with dementia. These emerging interpretations indicate dementia’s high cultural currency.
The examples also demonstrate that renowned roles can be recognised as containing discourses of dementia without its explicit identification in the text. Additionally, Sam Shepard’s Heartless (2012) along with Curse of the Starving Class (1977), Buried Child (1978), and True West (1980) explore what Ben Brantley (2012) calls “portraits of domestic dementia”. Shepard’s plays contain themes of loneliness, internal “wars between self and illusion,” homelessness in one’s own home, insecure identities, and ceaselessly shifting personal histories (Brantley 2012). Brantley’s observations resonate with Zeilig’s (2014a, 258) comment that dementia itself has become a metaphor for “wider social ills”. An argument can also be made for Samuel Beckett’s dramatic work. Although Beckett’s plays do not directly reference dementia, Hugh Culik (1989) discusses references and allusions to Parkinson’s disease in Beckett’s work. Moreover, Beckett’s plays evoke images of the human being as moribund and, significantly, many of his onstage subjects are aged. In Endgame (1957), Beckett ascribes failing sight to Nell and Nag, Hamm’s parents who live in ash bins. An aged Krapp in Krapp’s Last Tape (1958) records his memories to tape and shows signs of memory loss in reaction to their playback. Lastly, the woman on stage in Rockaby (1980) exhibits incapacitation, akathisia (rocking), aphasia, and circumlocution, and speaks of an ending. Overall, Beckettian themes include memory loss, incapacitation, shifting identities, and isolation.
Changes to nosology and medical science must be acknowledged for these emerging diagnoses. While general senility with age may be found in historical performance works, along with a variety of conditions of madness, dementia – as we recognise it today – could not be explicitly referenced.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 57 King Lear – a historic case study King Lear (ca. 1606) is arguably the most widely recognised historical instance of dementia onstage, despite ongoing debate among psychiatrists as to whether Lear has dementia or not. Alexander Truskinovsky is a useful source in this manner; his 2002 article is a concise literature review on the various diagnoses of Lear throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. He notes that among Shakespeare’s plays, King Lear is the most heavily discussed in terms of psychiatric diagnosis. In addition to age-related dementia, diagnoses include: mania, delirium, depression, brief reactive psychosis, and bipolar I disorder (Truskinovsky 2002). Several authors cited in Truskinovsky’s article determine Lear’s condition to be senile dementia, including Kail (1983) and Kellogg (1866). However, Brigham uses the phrase “senile insanity” (in Truskinovsky 2002, 345) and Somerville in 1929 described Lear’s condition as “mental deterioration due to old age,” which has amplified existing character traits (in Truskinovsky 2002, 346).
Despite those who would attribute Lear’s state to mere old age, as well as other theories of Lear’s condition explored in Truskinovsky’s paper, including his own, it is the theory that Lear has dementia that is observed in the 2014 National Theatre production of the play. In this production, directed by Sam Mendes and featuring Simon Russell Beale in the title role, Lear is deliberately characterised as having Lewy bodies dementia (LBD). Some costumes and sets were utilised in addition to physical affectation on the part of Beale to communicate LBD. It is critical to note that Shakespeare’s original text contains various references to age and Lear’s progressive “madness”. In this staging, madness transcends its generalised connotation and is re-contextualised as a label for age-related dementia. While many linguistic descriptions of Lear’s ageing are archaic and are no longer considered acceptable classifications, some phrases echo contemporary stigmatisation of the elderly and people with dementia. The language in the play also makes use of metaphor and, at times, evokes a generational discourse, which is a key theme among contemporary performances that stage dementia.
When Lear announces that he will divide his kingdom into three parts, he notes his reasoning: “To shake all cares and business from our age,/Conferring them on younger strengths while we/Unburdened crawl toward death” (Shakespeare 2003, 1:1:37-39). Here begins the generational discourse in King Lear; the play’s catalyst is the passing on of his duties to younger strengths. The text contains several instances where age is associated with wisdom, yet this is arguably a device for comparison to position Lear’s behaviour as beyond normal ageing. Conversely, early in the play, Regan observes “’Tis the infirmity of his age” (1:1:293),
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 58 and Goneril describes the “waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them” (1:1:295-299), his daughters attributing his behaviour to his age.
As discussed, metaphor is an affective linguistic tool for describing dementia. This research into contemporary theatre seeks to identify metaphor and imagery-laden language in the selected works. As an example, in King Lear, the storm that rages in later acts is adopted as an allegory for Lear’s mood and behaviour. He is described as “One minded like the weather, most uniquely” (3:1:2). Additionally, at one point, Lear himself compares the storm to the malady in his mind, adding that the storm does no physical damage, because all his pain is in his head.
This 2014 production of King Lear is significant to this study because of the long history of the playtext in concert with the more recent history of psychiatric analyses of Lear’s state of mind. The National Theatre production layers a more emphatic dementia discourse over the original text. This is embodied in actor Beale’s physicalisation of Lear and in set and costume choices. The production, in its endeavour to diagnose Lear’s change as LBD, draws on key symptomology including movement problems, fluctuating moods, and hallucinations. Guidance was sought from geriatrician Dr Debbie Finch, who advised that LBD can present with the loss of inhibitions, jerky movements, and a shuffling walk.
To accompany the most perceptible of Lear’s changes, noteworthy visual signs are utilised in this production of King Lear. Several costume and prop choices featured in the play’s fourth act demonstrate a very deliberate underscoring of Lear’s infirmity. In the act’s sixth scene – as the script designates “Enter LEAR, mad” (4:6:81) – Beale enters wearing a hospital gown and the Fool’s hat, carrying flowers, and some tubing from an intravenous line is stuck to his hand. The image offers no specifics, but successfully gives Lear an appearance of ailing. During his speech, he hands a flower to Edgar, saying “Here’s your press money”. Here, Lear’s behaviour could be described as giddy, and is a distinct contrast to that of the king at the beginning of the play. The visual signposts continue, narrowing in on a mental illness. Following his line “Let me have surgeons./ I am cut to th’ brains” (4:6:180-181), Lear is fastened into a straitjacket. Dressed as he is now, his confusing speech earlier in this scene can be attributed to mental illness. However, to be accurate, dementia is known as a neurological disorder and straitjackets would not be used for people with dementia. Therefore, the question should be asked: if dementia was not introduced in marketing material, interviews, and intermission features, would the audience know that dementia (or LBD specifically) was Lear’s diagnosis in this
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 59 particular staging, or would general ‘madness’ remain the audience interpretation? Regardless, Lear’s age is positioned as a central driver in the play.
Shakespeare reflects on ageing in other plays, in both flattering and unflattering terms. Flattering accounts equate age with wisdom, a motif present in King Lear. Contrary descriptions declare old age to be “sapless,” a departure of wit, and a return to “childishness”. Jaques’ infamous ‘Seven Ages’ monologue in As You Like It demonstrates the narrative of decline that Morganroth Gullette theorises (2004). Herein, Shakespeare expresses clear ideas and images of ageing and, despite the antiquity of these plays, the descriptions of ageing are not far removed from more contemporary stigmatisation of the elderly. Maurice Charney’s Wrinkled Deep in Time: Aging in Shakespeare (2009) discusses constructions of ageing in Shakespeare’s Figure 6: King Lear (photo by Mark Douet, 2014) plays at greater depth, analysing a number of characters across the oeuvre.
King Lear contains dialogue that describes both age and the king’s dementia through explicit description, generational discourse, and metaphor, which are significant markers that emerge from the more closely analysed performances in this thesis. The contemporary context in this study considers original performances produced after 2000, though some previous works are named in this contextual review. Notably, the period of 2010 onwards shows an upsurge in the number of works staging dementia.
5.1 Performance Styles – a guide to terminology
Dramaturgy
Throughout the analyses in this thesis, the word dramaturgy is used to describe the composition of the work with regards to form. Dramaturgy is a way to discuss the role and interplay of theatrical codes and technologies. It is best described as the composition or fabric of the performance text (Turner and Behrndt 2008, 3). Cathy Turner and Synne Behrndt (2008, 25)
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 60 add that “dramaturgy concerns the relationship between subject matter and its framing”. Eamonn Jordan (2010, 19) likewise explains that dramaturgy is about “what narratives are being told [subject matter] and how they are being told [framing]”. He also observes that “[d]ramaturgy is thus concerned with how meanings are embedded in texts” (Jordan 2010, 19). Iain Sinclair (2014) observes that scripts should be read not as literature but as dramaturgy, in that they are more than words, instead they are “dramatic code”. He explains that “a playtext functions like musical notation rather than literature” (Sinclair 2014). Just as printed musical scores are “code for an experience performed in real space and real time” (Sinclair 2014), dramaturgy can be thought of as the arrangement of the drama (Sinclair 2014). Turner and Behrndt (2008, 3) similarly describe dramaturgy as the “‘composition’, ‘structure’ or ‘fabric’” of a performance. Similar to the fabric metaphor, Sinclair (2014) notes that the term ‘text’ is from the Latin meaning ‘to weave’ and the threads woven are events; as Sinclair explains, “[i]n Aristotle’s time, these threads started out as events. Their word for events was ‘drama’” (Sinclair 2014).
Structure and Diegesis Theatre is a constantly evolving and heterogeneous medium. In a historical sense, European (now Western) drama in general has been dictated by text-driven performance aspiring to mimesis, that is, imitation. Aristotle’s Poetics has largely informed dramatic theatre (Barranger 2004). Aristotelian convention dictates that theatre be a kind of illusion of the real, another way to describe mimesis (Barranger 2004; Lehmann 2006). Susan Broadhurst (1999, 1) recognises that Aristotelian drama presupposes that its “structure that will have coherence, self- inclusiveness and the possibility of a recognizable sequence; in short, a beginning, middle and end”. The notion of self-inclusiveness denotes a diegesis – that is, storyworld or the internal narrative space – that is complete in itself and uninterrupted by elements outside this internal logic. The sequence of a recognisable beginning, middle, and end is related to the evocation of catharsis, a mechanism that invites the audience to identify with the central character (often a tragic hero) and, at the end of the work, “substitutes pleasure for sorrow,” purging negative feelings of pity and fear aroused by the performance (Vives 2011, 1013; Auslander 1984). Milly Barranger (2004, 196) recognises that the Aristotelian model does not fit all performance. Despite the evolution of live performance, “The Poetics remains the guidepost for delineating alternatives to new play forms in the twenty-first century” (Barranger 2004, 227). Aristotle ruled plot, character, and language to be among the most important elements of drama (Barranger 2004, 195). Plot, character, and language, as they are constructed in traditionally dramatic work, are problematic ideals for the representation of dementia. Because dementia
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 61 affects memory, blurs time (Robinson 2009, 160), and impairs language, a typically dramatic performance positions a character with dementia as incongruous, irrational, and anachronistic.
Language The use of language in performance is significant. It may carry clinical markers of dementia, as well as common descriptions and metaphors. Moreover, the source – in this case, a character – of the language is noteworthy. Naturally, the reduction or omission of language in a performance carries weight. Jordan (2010, 184) recognises that “[l]anguage, particularly narrated language, is fundamentally linked to power, obedience, transgression, identity formation, citizenship, class, gender and race”. Considering the affectation of language in the dementia pathology, leading to incoherence and sometimes, eventually mutism, the power of spoken language in performance is a pertinent notion for analysis. Other performance elements used alongside language to the point of simultaneity can disrupt the hierarchy and destabilise the previously-accepted power dynamic of the stage (Lehmann 2006). For example, heightened physicality or dance, object theatre and shadow theatre, projection and video, and sound may be employed to create meaning alongside, or challenge the meaning of, the traditional codes.
Postdramatic Performance Often, contemporary theatre is considered in relation to postdramatic elements. Several performances analysed in this study feature traits that may be described as postdramatic, as theorised by Hans-Thies Lehmann. The strongest examples of this are Memory Point(s): The Beauty of Remembering (2012), RUFF (2013) and On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God (2010), which are analysed in Chapter 8, Postdramatic Dementia. Postdramatic theatre is characterised by a destabilisation of traditionally dramatic conventions, which can include non-mimetic presentation; the demotion of language or promotion of other “texts” or codes in the performance, fragmentation, and “the demand for an open and fragmenting perception in place of a unifying and closed perception” (Lehmann 2006, 82). The postdramatic label arose from a need to theorise new forms of performance that could no longer be described by existing theory. While Joseph Danan (2014, 3) calls the postdramatic a phenomenon and aligns it with “a radical transformation of the theatre,” Lehmann (2006, 86) identifies his theory as a “palette of stylistic traits”. The prefix ‘post’ refers to a theatre that “operate[s] beyond drama,” not in denial of it (Lehmann 2006, 27). Lehmann (2006, 27) explains that “[p]ostdramatic theatre thus includes the presence or resumption or continued working of older aesthetics”. Puppetry, shadow theatre, and dance are ancient forms of performance that are employed in many works discussed in this study. Their inclusion in performances of dementia
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 62 destabilises the Western dramatic tradition of mimesis. More recent technologies, such as sound recordings and effects and projection technologies, have also influenced contemporary theatre production. Sarah Bay-Cheng (2015) recognises this role of advancing technology, noting that practitioners are experimenting with technological elements to create their work. Alan Read (2013, 55) observes a “paradigm shift from a textual culture to a mediatised image and sound culture”. Even those works that represent the move away from logocentric drama (and the inherent power dynamic produced by language), stereotypical images of dementia are still reproduced onstage often.
Overall, Lehmann (2006, 18) argues that “rather than bemoan the lack of an already defined image of the human being in postdramatically organized texts, it is necessary to explore the new possibilities of thinking and representing the individual human subject sketched in these texts”. His thoughts echo a posthumanist ideology. This ideal is significant to representations of dementia, considering the stereotypical image of the person with dementia as burdensome, lost and without selfhood. The literature review demonstrated that many representations of dementia, across a variety of media, echo the prevailing Western cultural positioning of people with dementia. This research investigates what representative trends are emerging in contemporary theatre. The focus on works that deviate in some way from dramatic tradition is intended to uncover potential possibilities for re/presenting dementia that exist outside of stereotyped constructions. The section below introduces a number of performances and outlines emerging trends pertaining to geography, development, source material, thematic tendencies, general style, theatre forms, and technologies and representations.
5.2 Contemporary Performance A number of English-language works have emerged from the UK, Australia, USA, and New Zealand. The strongest push for the greater public’s awareness of dementia, and funding for performances that stage it, can be seen in the UK. “Dementia is a national health priority in the United Kingdom, which has led to a groundswell of national and local policies aimed at improving quality of life and care for those affected by the condition” (Heward, Palfreman- Kay, and Innes 2015, 230). Therefore, works produced in the UK, are often supported by, or developed with, inter/national organisations. For instance, Autobiographer playwright Melanie Wilson, in receipt of support from the Wellcome Trust, met recurrently with Professor Sube Banerjee, an expert in the field (Wilson 2017). The Wellcome Trust is a pharmaceuticals company based in London whose philanthropic arm works to further the scientific and medical understanding of the wider public. The Wellcome Trust also supported The Lion’s Face (2010)
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 63 and RUFF (2013). Similarly, the Arts Council in the UK is cited as a source of support for RUFF, Inside Out of Mind (2011), Grandma Remember Me? (2012) and State of Grace (2015). Platform 4’s initial funding to develop Memory Points (2012) was from a national lottery, and then the Arts Council. These cases represent the strong funding paradigm facilitating broader dementia awareness in the UK. Significantly, few of the catalogued performances from the UK that received public funding are traditionally dramatic, mainstage works, revealing an endeavour to stage dementia through abstract and varying dramaturgies.
Many theatre performances that stage dementia are small touring shows, especially those that represent dementia in a way that diverges from traditional drama. By contrast, mainstage productions – for example, those staged on New York’s Broadway or London’s West End – include works such as The Other Place (2011), Absence (2014), King Lear (2014), The Humans (2014), Marjorie Prime (2015), The Father (2015), and Really Old, Like Forty Five (2010). Tamsin Oglesby’s Really Old premiered in 2010 at London’s National Theatre. At its core it is a family drama, but the familial narrative is overlaid with societal, political, and pharmacological perspectives. Its style and structure are mostly dramatic and lend the work to a mainstage presentation, though it does contain dystopian and surreal elements. Fuchs raises a tendency of the recent past to perhaps shy away from dementia on the mainstage:
Not so long ago characters didn’t lose their memories onstage, […] unless you think King Lear has Alzheimer’s, when have you seen an older figure with dementia on the professional New York stage? [Line break.] But now suddenly, in the 2015-16 season, I counted four cases of Alzheimer’s. (Fuchs 2017a)
Fuchs (2017b) is less surprised by the incidence of dementia on the stage in general than she is by its appearance on Broadway in particular. Those plays that are traditionally dramatic (often produced in the mainstage sector of the industry) sometimes position dementia as a subplot or, at least, draw focus to the story of the affected family members around the person with dementia. An example of this kind of family drama is David Hare’s Amy’s View (1997). Dementia is a subplot in Hare’s play, affecting the mother-in-law of one of the central characters. Evelyn has Alzheimer’s disease or a similar dementia, which progresses over the sixteen years that pass during the play. Her dementia is not, however, part of the central conflict in the narrative. In works of this kind, dementia appears as a minor narrative strand, a stressor for the central protagonist or the family as a whole, or an additional quirk to an already dysfunctional family. As such, the character with dementia can be positioned more as an object
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 64 of the drama than a subject. Common themes in the family drama featuring dementia include family relationships, institutionalisation, burden, isolation, and the medical narrative decline. These plays typically draw on the symptomology of memory loss and communicative difficulty and may, therefore, disregard character development for the individual with dementia. The choice to include dementia as a subplot, while not the focus of detailed analysis in this thesis, requires acknowledgement because of the positioning of people with dementia in these performances. In contrast, when dementia and subjects with dementia appear at the centre of a performance, the dramaturgy of the work tends to move beyond realism and naturalism. As such, most performances analysed in detail in this study embody more contemporary notions of live performance and thus contain varying theatre tools and technologies. These technologies and styles are introduced below.
5.2.1 The Generational Discourse
The realistic family drama tends to be set in the family home, a private, domestic space. This proves an apt setting for staging the breakdown – or transformation – of familial relationships that result from dementia. Settings and familial relationships in dementia narratives represented in theatre are discussed below. In particular, the parent-child relationship is a dominant theme.
The role of grownup children as carers is explored in, among others: On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God (2010), Cracked: New Light on Dementia (2014), The Father (2014), Dot (2015), Marjorie Prime (2015), and Perish the Thought (2012). Susan Harris’ Perish the Thought (2012) is based on actual events. The performance uses puppetry, live music, and theatrical performance to present the father-daughter relationship at the centre of the production. The adult-child as carer is somewhat subverted in Really Old (2010), as discussed in Chapter 6.
The development of characters whose parents have dementia is made more complicated in works that examine familial early-onset AD which has a 50% chance of being passed to the next generation. A number of performances that stage this type of dementia are listed below, under “Type of Dementia”.
When adult-children are not carers, the care relationship then exists between the character with dementia and their spouse/partner or professional staff in an institutional care setting. The perspective of grandchildren also features in some works: Grandma Remember Me? (2012),
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 65 Finding Joy (2014), and Sundowner (2011). Belinda Lazenby’s Grandma Remember Me? (2012) is staged using a mix of puppetry and dramatic storytelling. It is based on Lazenby’s personal experience; she witnessed both her grandmother’s and her mother’s early-onset dementia. The show explores the relationship between grandmother and granddaughter. The work begins with humour, but becomes increasingly melancholy.
The generational effect of dementia is sometimes staged in a metatheatrical way, in the exclusive use of young actors. Examples of this kind of casting are Also a Mirror (2011), Moments (2014) and Memory and Beyond (2018). To illustrate, the Oldham Theatre Workshop produced Moments with a cast of eight- to twenty-five-year-olds playing various ages; the work has a cross-generational narrative, expressing different points of view on dementia. Additionally, a work by Fevered Sleep, On Ageing (2010), is a theatre piece for adults – about ageing generally, not specifically dementia – that is performed by children aged between 7 and 12 who deliver “first person narratives to recount the thoughts, memories and feelings of adults of different ages” (Nicholson 2011, 56).
Overall, the catalogue of identified performances shows a tendency towards women with dementia. Moreover, adult-child carers tend to be female. The literature on the representation of dementia on stage is scarce and appears as the description of works in isolation, for example in reviews. No literature found investigates a substantive body of dementia performances. A recent exception is Elinor Fuchs, whose two 2017 articles in The Theatre Times (the first of which declares dementia “the theatre season’s ‘in’ disease”) discuss Marjorie Prime (2015), Dot (2015), The Father (2014), and The Humans (2014). In her view, “a standard dementia plot is emerging: Older Daughter […] is sacrificing her life to caregiving” (Fuchs 2017a). Colman Domingo’s Dot made its premiere in 2015. The play, which centres on a matriarch and examines the subject of adult child caregivers, frames dementia in a funny and moving way. The work can be described as realism, due to its naturalistic set and mimetic acting. The Father – Christopher Hampton’s English translation of Florian Zeller’s Le Père (2012) – is arguably the most extensively reviewed play about dementia in English-speaking theatre. The play is about a man with dementia and his relationship with his daughter and son-in-law. Although the work is decidedly of a conventionally dramatic style, the incomprehension of the world in the “demented” mind is explored through a fractured narrative and contradictory actions. The Father is frequently used a point of reference in the sphere of dementia performances, to the extent that it is cited in reviews of other plays about dementia, positioning it as a kind of exemplar. The Father will not be analysed in this thesis, as it has received a great deal of
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 66 attention from critics and is a traditionally dramatic work. Instead, this study is concerned with different theatrical tools and modes of presentation. This discussion will be more effective for looking at non-traditional works or varying styles. Currently, most literature on dementia in live theatre is in the form of critic reviews that reflect on the overall quality of the production, so outputs like Fuchs’ that make commentary on the narrativisation of dementia in a number of works are valuable sources in this way. This thesis contributes additional observations of how dementia is represented in contemporary performance.
The standard dementia plot that Fuchs theorises (2017a) to be of the daughter as caregiver is part of a broader propensity towards a generational discourse. The generational discourse refers to the inclusion of, and sometimes the focus on the experiences of, children and grandchildren of the character with dementia. This discourse is a critical topic for analysis in this study. In addition to the aforementioned that stage the adult child-as-carer relationship, the generational motif features in, among myriad others: Mother and Son (2009), Really Old (2010), Finding Joy (2014), Sundowner (2011), Autobiographer (2011), Wither (2012), In Tune with Dementia (2013), It’s Dark Outside (2012), Grandma Remember Me? (2013), The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble (2013), Unraveled (2013), The Humans (2014), and Plaques and Tangles (2015). This generational discourse can be attributed to several factors. Firstly, the direct dementia experience presents a greater challenge for representation than the family experience of illness. Secondly, the process of memory loss has implications on the relationships between the person with dementia and their family members. Thirdly, as noted in the above literature review, the parent-child role reversal is recognised as a significant disruption to familial relationships (Zimmermann 2013; Jarvik 2007; Rau 1991). In addition to the expected theme of familial burden, the generational discourse easily facilitates comparisons between old and young (as demonstrated in King Lear), and the demarcation of those with dementia and those without. Additionally, as noted, family dramas are often set in a domestic place where the blurring of familiar and unfamiliar is played out. An additional phenomenon is emerging: there appear to be more mothers than fathers with dementia onstage.
Wives, Mothers, and the Motherline Some research demonstrates that age-related dementia affects more women than men (Nepal, Brown and Ranmuthugala 2008). However, women’s longer life expectancy is recognised as the driving factor (Nepal, Brown and Ranmuthugala 2008). Despite the observed female prevalence in dementia statistics, the number of females affected by dementia in the catalogued performances compared to male representations is remarkable. The women affected with
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 67 dementia in the performances tend to be wives, mothers and/or grandmothers, and these relationships are often foregrounded in the narratives. Examples of works that present a spousal relationship include: Holding the Man (2006), André y Dorine (2010), 1 Beach Road (2011), Jack and Jill & The Red Postbox (2013), Daisy (2011), Visitors (2014), The Carer (2004), and The Purple List (2017). In plays that centre on a heterosexual couple, it is the wife with dementia and the husband who must step into the role of carer or deal with his spouse’s decline/death. Alan Hopgood’s The Carer is about a man whose wife has died with AD. The action of the play is not about the person with dementia, but about their spouse and how they cope in the wake of the death. Barney Norris’ Visitors, inspired by his grandparents, is set in the farmhouse of long-married, elderly couple Arthur and Edie. Despite their happy marriage together, both Edie’s failing memory and incontinence are worsening. Institutionalisation seems imminent as Edie approaches severe cognitive deficit. Terry Mervin’s play Daisy depicts a more broadly familial experience of dementia. The family at the core of the performance consists of Daisy and her husband, their son and their daughter. The work revolves around how the family comes together to deal with Daisy’s dementia. In addition to the family theme, institutionalised care is discussed. It is important to note, though, that despite the wife/mother- with-dementia tendency, a number of works do subvert this trend. Several exceptions are analysed in the discussion chapters below.
Many works also contain a discourse of motherhood and the breakdown of parent-child relationships, if not a child-parent role reversal. Note the centuries-old emphasis on women as the primary carers of children (Stavrianos 2015; Connell 2009; Clatterbaugh 1990; Gustafson 2005a). The physical act of childbearing is a considerable factor because “biological ties are presumed to bind together mother and child emotionally, socially, and morally” (Gustafson 2005b, 26). Diana Gustafson (2005a, 3) also notes that no “paternal equivalent in everyday language similarly connects men to the care of their children”. Moreover, “tenderness, affection, uninhibited expression of feelings, generosity, [and] caretaking” are considered in many cultures to be feminine characteristics (Stoller and Herdt 1982, 34). Karen Blackford (1998, 155) concurs that “mothers tend to do the greatest proportion of nurturing” and adds that “children are shown to most often identify with a same-sex adult”. Constructions of parent- child relationships in the context of dementia narratives, as noted, are prevalent. However, these stories can tend to shift the focus from the person with the dementia onto their child, hinging the tension and resolution of the plot (a significant element of traditionally dramatic theatre) on the experience of the adult child. As Gustafson (2005b, 29) observes, “we learn
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 68 from popular representations of mothers and maternal absence tends to be from the perspective of those, particularly children, who are left behind rather than from perspectives of mothers who leave”. In this way, dementia narratives can be focussed on the familial ripple as opposed to the experience of the character with dementia. Naomi Lowinsky (2000) discusses the Motherline: a “worldview” that when they gather in groups or in pairs, women “tell one another stories from the Motherline […], stories of female experience: physical, psychological, and historical” (Lowinsky 2000, 227). She adds that mothers and grandmothers are the figures whose stories are our first memories and who teach us about life (Lowinsky 2000). In this way, women are positioned as the custodians of oral history, and our older female relatives are guides – through language and story. This is pertinent, considering the impact that dementia has on language. In view of this, perhaps a mother with dementia is considered a more acute experience of the condition because of the typical construction of mothers as nurturers and carriers of language. If this hypothesis may be accepted, then the adult-child’s experiences more easily become a focal point of the performance.
Women with dementia are mothers in: The Shadow Box (1977), I’m Still Here (2006), Don’t Forget To Remember Me (2009), Mind Away (2009), Really Old (2010), Sundowner (2011), Autobiographer (2011), In Tune with Dementia (2013), Wither (2012), Jack and Jill & The Red Postbox (2013), Still Alice (2013), The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble (2013), Unraveled (2013), and Plaques and Tangles (2015). Following Lowinsky’s notion of the Motherline, some theorists propose, that the relationship between mother and daughter is particularly significant (Blackford 1998; Valentich and Foote 1998; Lowinsky 2000). Demonstrating this, I’m Still Here was “informed by research conducted with persons living with dementia during the early and later parts of the journey, as well as with daughters whose mothers were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease” (I’m Still Here n.d.), emphasising the concept of the Motherline. Fuchs’ identification of the Older Daughter as a standard plot is, again, a significant observation. Raewyn Connell (2009, 3) recognises that fathers are traditionally positioned to be the family’s representative outside the home. The corollary is that motherhood is contextualised as a domestic role, and thus mothers are culturally connected to the domestic space (Blunt and Dowling 2006). Blunt and Dowling (2006, 15) note that “domestic relations are critically gendered, whether through relations of caring and domestic labour, affective relations of belonging, or establishing connections between the individual, household and society.”
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 69 5.2.2 Settings Two settings dominate the landscape of staged dementia narratives: the home and institutional care facilities. As established in the Literature Review, the family home can become a site for dementia care. To reiterate Blunt and Dowling’s (2006, 100) comments on home as a hospice, “home becomes coded as both good and bad – a familiar, non-institutional setting, but also a site of unresolved family tensions”. At-home care is, therefore, an important setting to explore in the analysed performances. Works that stage at-home care include: On the Concept (2010), Jack and Jill and the Red Postbox (2013), The Father (2014), State of Grace (2015), and 1 Beach Road (2011). Some works, including On the Concept and State of Grace, feature an adult-child as a carer in the home. While Blunt and Dowling’s (2006) theory is from outside of theatre studies, their comments are significant to staged narratives of dementia. They observe that: Children are presumed to be key inhabitants of ‘homely’ homes, though it is rare for children to be given any agency in the running or representation of these homes. Suburban homes are spaces of parental control and are spatially demarcated along generational lines. (Blunt and Dowling 2006, 115) The positioning of children in the home in this way is subverted in performances that stage care in the family home. While the prominent generational discourse speaks to the notion of children as a constituent of the homely home, adult children in the performances tend to fulfil a role of carer or quasi-carer. They must then acquire some of the agency in the home, subverting the home as a “space of parental control”. In turn, the parent with dementia loses some agency in their home and the “spatial demarcation” is broken down. Likewise, the traditionally gendered nature of the home “position[s] women as mothers and as primarily responsible for the domestic sphere” (Blunt and Dowling 2006, 110). This suggests that the male spouses opposite the wives and mothers with dementia in the performances are similarly positioned as incongruous when made carers in the home.
The other main setting for theatre performances about dementia is in an institutional care facility. These settings are also called: homes, nursing homes, long-term care, dementia wards and care facilities. These places are significant for the construction of home, as noted in the Literature Review. Blunt and Dowling (2006, 100) further state than in long-term care institutions, “[h]ome becomes much more public, a space entered and sometimes controlled by health professionals, as they care for the residents’ needs every day” (Blunt and Dowling). Additionally, “[t]hese spaces are both homely and unhomely at the same time, riven with feelings of belonging and attachment, alienation and detachment” (Blunt and Dowling 2006, 100). Further, these spaces embody transience as “residents often pass through a series of wings
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 70 (or wards) as their condition deteriorates over time” and “relationships formed with both staff and other residents within a wing can be relatively short-lived” (Milligan 2003, 466). Nicholson also emphasises the complexity of emotions attached to care facilities:
the social and emotional meanings of home are particularly complex for people living in residential care, especially for those with dementia and other mental health issues, where the process of inhabiting a new ‘home’ with unfamiliar people and places may leave residents oscillating between a sense of safety and fear. (2011, 57)
Here, Nicholson’s use of quotation marks around the word ‘home’ is noteworthy. It underscores the unease with which these spaces are called home. If home is a private and personalised place, then the description is incongruous with the nature of residential care. Nicholson also observes the matter of unfamiliarity. The un/familiar is a dichotomy explored in the performance analyses.
Performances that stage institutionalised care include: ‘A’: The Christmas Party (2008), An Evening with Dementia (2009), The Lion’s Face (2010), Inside Out of Mind (2013), D- Generation: An Exaltation of Larks (2013), and Cracked: New Light on Dementia (2014). Becky Shaw’s ‘A’: The Christmas Party is a verbatim play based on interviews conducted in a care facility. The work has had two incarnations as a blind table-read – where the performers had never seen the text before and could not ‘act’ it – and a radio play. Thus it is primarily language-based and the protagonist, A’s, language demonstrates clinical affectation. Trevor T Smith’s An Evening with Dementia (2009) is a comedic solo performance about a retired actor in a care facility who does not “suffer from” dementia, but accepts his condition (Warner 2010, 8). Although the content of the performance expresses the point of view of someone with dementia, the language is intact and linear, thoughts following one another coherently. An institutional setting is implied, though, the performance is not necessarily confined to this location. Really Old, Like Forty Five (2010) is an example of an exception to the family/nursing home trend, in that it takes place in domestic and institutionalised places as well as public and governmental places, introducing a broader legislative and societal discourse. Autobiographer (2011), RUFF (2013), and Dottie (2005) also deviate from this tendency and are instead placeless. Autobiographer and RUFF are analysed in Chapter 6 and 8, respectively.
The inclination towards setting performances in the family home or in a nursing home further demonstrates the propensity for a familial narrative. Nevertheless, several works do approach
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 71 a broader societal narrative as well, including Really Old and Tu Te Souviendras de Moi (2014). Francois Archambault’s Tu te Souviendras de Moi (English title, You Will Remember Me) investigates Quebec’s ageing population and employs philosophical, cultural and political discourses. The work makes political comments about the rights of people with dementia, namely their right to have their opinions heard. Stella Feehily’s This May Hurt a Bit (2014) makes commentary on the UK’s National Health Service, and is “set in a dysfunctional charnel house which calls itself a ‘hospital’” (Evans 2014).
5.2.3 Type of Dementia
Most dementias onstage are dementia of the Alzheimer’s type. However, some performances diverge, for example those that stage AIDS-related dementia – Dementia (2002) and Holding the Man (2006), chemotherapy-induced dementia – Unraveled (2013) and The Shadow Box (1977), and an instance of Picks disease – Inside Out (2013). Evelina Fernandez’s Dementia examines AIDS-related dementia. The performance content encompasses several substantial subject matters: dementia, AIDS, homosexuality, race. The set is non-naturalistic and additional elements of the performance complement this, yet are driven by narrative: the protagonist, Moises’ dementia causes a fluctuating clarity of reality. Additionally, different selves are presented, as a drag queen appears to represent Moises’ alter ego. Jennifer Blackmer’s Unraveled (2013) is about a mother-daughter relationship that is affected by the mother’s chemotherapy-induced dementia. Blackmer’s play is inspired by her own mother’s condition and her experience of the condition that changed their relationship. In other cases, the cause of the dementia is not specified.
Dementia is not limited to AD, nor is it limited to the ageing or elderly. However, the dominant public psyche is significant and is an influence on the work made. Dementia is intrinsically linked to ageing in the cultural psyche and, therefore, its stigmatisation, medicalisation, and representation are closely associated with ageism. Early-onset AD features in Sundowner (2011), 1 Beach Road (2011), Grandma Remember Me? (2012), The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble (2013), The Visitors (2013), Still Alice (2013), Plaques and Tangles (2015), and Don’t Leave Me Now (2015). Two true stories of early-onset dementia inspired Brian Daniels’ Don’t Leave Me Now. The play examines the rights of those with dementia to make their own choices and is officially associated with the ‘Mental Capacity Act’. In this way, it is an educational piece. Beth Graham’s The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble is a play with a focus on the family experience of dementia, which is significant as it deals in familial early-
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 72 onset AD. The story is told in two kitchens that occupy the same stage. In the work, a woman who witnessed her mother’s dementia must break the news of her own illness to her three children, who each have a 50/50 chance of developing the same disease.
Overall, few performances present detailed medical or clinical portraits of dementia. Instead, many use only easily recognisable clinical markers to signpost dementia. Because of the complex pathology and perhaps an anxiety around representing dementia, the development of many performances in the catalogue involve a research process.
5.2.4 Development With regards to instigation, there are two major trends among the performances. Most works were either (1) inspired by the creators’ own experience – for instance, a family member with dementia, or (2) informed by research. Personal experience inspired: Dottie (2005), This Is How I Lost My Memory (2008), Grandma Remember Me? (2012), In Tune with Dementia (2013), Wither (2012), Unraveled (2013) and Absence (2014). Peter M. Floyd’s Absence is staged as a tense family drama. In writing Absence, Floyd was trying to understand his mother’s experience of dementia through dramatic means. The development of some performances drew on both research and personal experience. The Australian work Sundowner (2011) drew from interviews and research and was developed in collaboration with the Victorian arm of Alzheimer’s Australia (Hawker 2012; Upton 2012). Further, the company staged several work- in-progress showings for a focus group of people with dementia and carers (Hawker 2012). However, in addition to these research measures, the lead actress Helen Morse – who was also involved in devising the performance – had the personal experience of her own mother’s AD to contribute to the development (Upton 2012).
As established in Chapter 4, some performances are grounded in research. However, not all works whose development involved research are considered research-based performances in this study. Choices are made as to whether or not to undertake research and of what kind, and how much the findings should inform the development of the performance. A sample of interviews conducted in June of 2017 sought information from practitioners behind 1 Beach Road, Autobiographer, Inside Out of Mind, Memory Points, and Really Old. The respondents reflect on some of these decisions.
With regards to clinically-focussed research, practitioners take one of two overall approaches: (1) research for authenticity, and (2) an aversion to research for fear of over-medicalising the condition and the person with dementia. For some, research is an integral part of the work’s creation, though the aims, types, and depth of research vary. By contrast, Tamsin Oglesby, who
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 73 authored Really Old, Like Forty Five, for example, did not want to make the dementia in the play too clinical (Oglesby 2017). Similarly, Catherine Church, artistic director of Platform 4 who produced Memory Points, “really fought against doing any research,” wanting instead to focus on “celebrating their life now as it was in the moment rather than making things too depressing” (Church 2017). When questions arose, Church consulted the leader of the dementia support group with which she was working, who at that time worked for the Alzheimer’s Society. However, Church’s creative partner and the designer for the performance, Su Houser, was interested in the medical narrative (Church 2017). When asked about their research process, the representatives of RedCape Theatre who created 1 Beach Road, responded that they read books, articles, and memoirs (Friend and Dyson 2017). This process included reading Genova’s Still Alice (before it became a film). The lean towards research appears to be a result of anxiety around representing dementia authentically. On this anxiety, performer Catherine Dyson acknowledges, “I suppose [there is] that kind of worry that you have when you're creating work about sensitive issues like that. About whether you're getting it right or whether you're sort of doing it justice” (in Friend and Dyson 2017). Co-director and performer, Cassie Friend, concurs that “You just don't want to get it wrong. You know these are people's lives. And we had a lot of carers who came and yeah, they seem to be … You are showing people's lives, you are reflecting it back to them” (in Friend and Dyson 2017).
Overall, practitioners are determined to do the subject matter justice. This may be through extensive research, or by focussing more on stories and relationships outside a medicalised frame. So, while the taboo around dementia is lifting, practitioners take particular measures to present dementia authentically.
1 Beach Road has a unique story of development, particularly as it did not begin as a performance about dementia. The first stimulus for the work was two aerial photographs, 10 years apart that showed the damage of coastal erosion in a seaside village in Norfolk. Friend, admits that “we can’t quite remember when dementia came into the room” (in Friend and Dyson 2017). The devising team were interested in staging the story of these homes falling into the sea, but felt that they needed to add a stronger human element for audiences to connect with the story. Dementia then became central to the story and the overarching erosion theme became a larger metaphor. On the type of dementia staged, early-onset AD, Friend describes that during the process the actors were playing the parts as women in their sixties, but the characters were not working. It was decided that the performers would play close their own age. With this shift, the company’s research turned to early-onset dementia: “we started to look into younger people
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 74 getting dementia and […] it was really something that was a real shock to all of us when we found out how young people can be diagnosed” (Friend and Dyson 2017). Friend and Dyson note that their producer had some personal experience with dementia and dementia care. They report that her presence in the rehearsal space (both physical and conceptual) was encouraging as she was able to validate the representation of the condition. 1 Beach Road is a rare, if not unique, instance where a performance came to be about dementia after the initiation of the project.
On Memory Points, Church notes her inspiration for beginning work on the project was not based on a personal connection to dementia (Church 2017). Instead, she says that “Initially it was just literally a feeling that as an artist I wanted to work with older people for a project. I’d never done that before […]. I’ve never done a project where older people were in the picture” (Church 2017). Church found a local social group that was also a support group for dementia and Memory Points is inspired by the lives of the people in the group, yet is not limited to their experiences with dementia. In its focus on the lives and memories of people with dementia, as opposed to the experiences of dementia exclusively, Memory Points differs from many research-based performances that are almost exclusively concerned with the experiences of dementia.
Research-based Theatre
Research-based performances include Time Slips (2000), I’m Still Here (2006), ‘A’: The Christmas Party (2008), Don’t Forget To Remember Me (2009), Also a Mirror (2011), Autobiographer (2011), Grandma Remember Me? (2012), Memory Point(s): The Beauty of Remembering (2012), D-Generation (2013), Inside Out of Mind (2013), Jack and Jill & The Red Postbox (2013), The Keys are in the Margarine (2014), Cracked: New Light on Dementia (2014), and The Nature of Forgetting (2017).
Cracked: New Light on Dementia (2014) is a Canadian work with deep roots in research. Theatre makers collaborated with prominent voices of the dementia cultural studies field: Sherry Dupuis, Gail Mitchell, Pia Kontos, and Christine Jonas-Simpson. Additionally, personal experience informed the production. The performance is set in an institution, yet some family relationships are explored; hence, the play has an overlap of two major narrative trends. The performance is intended as an educational tool, primarily for families of people with dementia. I’m Still Here was also created with an outlook to redress misunderstandings of and stigma around dementia. However, educational outcomes are not envisioned for all research-based
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 75 performances. Claire Webster Saaremets created Jack and Jill & The Red Postbox (2013) with Skimstone Arts, and also worked with a research team. The show was inspired by real life experiences taken from 89 interview transcripts, but only focuses on one family, husband and wife Jack and Jill and their children. The work incorporates multimedia, projection, original music, and physical theatre performance. As such, this work was developed from verbatim descriptions but resulted in a non-naturalistic performance.
Inside Out of Mind (2013) similarly makes use of various theatre technologies and is based on the experiences of healthcare workers. Playwright and director, Tanya Myers, was commissioned to weave ethnographic12 field notes into a script. See Justine Schneider et al. (2014) for a report on the process of “development from page to stage” and Schneider (2017) for a report on audience impact. According to Schneider et al. (2014, 61), “[c]onventional research outputs failed to engage the healthcare assistants themselves, so we turned to theatre to remedy this.” The work faced a challenge in that it was not designed for an audience of regular theatre goers, but instead aimed specifically towards aged-care workers. Dr Justine Schneider from the University of Nottingham had worked as a care assistant in her 20s and sought a grant from the National Institute for Health Research in the UK for the development of the work (Myers and Schneider 2017). A team of ethnographers spent six months working in a nursing home to compile the foundation for the script. Additionally, once a written script had been developed, two ethnographers came into the rehearsal space to inform the development of the performance. The resulting work is set in a care facility and has a strong clinical discourse throughout; the script is replete with medical language, and includes notes that help to decode the clinical vernacular. As discussed in Chapter 6 below, the work layers alternate experiences of reality over this foundation of realism.
Verbatim
Conducting interviews during visits to care facilities is a method of research that was employed in development of ‘A’: the Christmas Party (2008), D-Generation (2013), and The Keys are in the Margarine (2014), which are works of verbatim theatre. Whereas, works like Also a Mirror (2011) and Inside Out of Mind (2013) are verbatim/scripted hybrids. Sandglass Theater, who produced D-Generation, were initially commissioned to create a performance from content
12 Despite a lack of clear consensus on an exact definition of ethnography, it is generally accepted that this kind of study involves studying human behaviour “in everyday contexts” (Hammersley 1990, 1); data collection occurs “in an unstructured, unfixed manner” (Hammersley 1990, 2). Ethnographic research produces qualitative data and is being used increasingly for studies in health, including examinations of the behaviours of different patient groups and the outcomes of interventions (de Laine 1997).
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 76 collected as part of the aforementioned TimeSlips program. However, the group decided they needed to engage in the method themselves in order to create the work. As such, the resulting work stages both the process of developing two stories as well as the stories themselves. Sandglass is a puppetry theatre company and D-Generation is examined in Chapter 7. I suggest that verbatim scripting is employed for authenticity. As can be sensed in the devising processes of many works – that included research, interviews, the actioning of personal experience – there is an anxiety around representing dementia accurately.
As another example of verbatim work, The Keys Are in the Margarine premiered in Dunedin, New Zealand in 2014, after six years in development. The work had a primary devising team of a general practitioner, Dr Susie Lawless, and theatre-makers, Cindy Diver and Stuart Young. The work is a verbatim play based on interviews with 17 people. Six actors, each with an mp3 player in their pocket and a bud in their ear, deliver lines verbatim as they hear them. Moreover, the actors adopt an individual voice for each interviewee they represent (NZ Herald 2015; Dementia Daily 2015).
The inclusion of a GP in the devising process speaks to an endeavour for accuracy, as the method of interviews to shape the work also indicates. Lawless also notes that they gathered “a Kaitiaki group, an advisory group of people who are experts in medical ethics, the legal issues of consent, spirituality at the end of life, Maori health and verbatim theatre” (Lawless in Dementia Daily 2015). Lawless adds that the team “developed a three-stage consent process that involved gaining consent from the participants themselves, the collaborators, assent from their legal next-of-kin and an assessment from their doctor that they were able to understand what they were consenting to for Figure 7: The Keys are in the Margarine 2018 poster involvement in our play” (Lawless quoted in makes use of the tree-losing-leaves motif discussed in the previous chapter. Dementia Daily 2015).
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 77 Though these measures were taken to involve people with dementia, the play appears to be primarily focussed on the caregiver journey. Accordingly, many of the work’s reviews are preoccupied with this perspective. As the NZ Herald describes “The most compelling stories come from a diverse group of people whose lives have been turned upside down when someone they love slowly disappears through loss of memory and degeneration of mental faculties” (2015). More pointedly, Ewan Coleman (2015) reports that “while the stories of those with dementia describing the onset and gradual changes to their lives, such as not remembering things, is touching, but also sometimes funny, it is the effect on family members, especially partners, that comes out from this show the strongest”. This case indicates that the use of verbatim scripting in the endeavour for authenticity may risk precluding stories of dementia from people with the condition themselves, albeit addressing the familial or spousal experience. This also highlights the precariousness of using spoken language to represent the experiences of characters with dementia whose linguistic capacity becomes diminished. The Keys Are in the Margarine rests on language and some characterisation from its actors. Thus, language has unlevelled dramaturgical power in the play. The work depicts the familial experience authentically in its use of the verbatim technique. However, this means that the authority that language carries is lent primarily to descriptions about the person with dementia instead of from them.
Following the initial decision to create a performance about dementia, processes of development tend to be very deliberate. The process of development for many performances involves research. This research may focus on the medical narrative for clinical accuracy, or take the form of interviews or field notes to capture experiences. Overall, dementia seems to induce an anxiety around authentic representation. For the most part, performance makers tend away from the medical narrative in favour of staging more personal stories about the individual and their relationships, in particular care dynamics.
5.2.5 Reportage
While some works are intended to reconstitute views of dementia and lift the extant taboo, the ways these performances are reported on or promoted is sometimes at odds with this endeavour. Despite any efforts made to reframe, or shine new light on, dementia and people with dementia, reviews of performances, and sometimes even marketing materials step back into dominant representations of the condition. Many articles introducing the shows use phrases such as “tragic’ and “heart-wrenching” to describe the content of the performance, and fall into patterns
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 78 of describing the caregiver “battle” and the grieving of the “fading” loved one. Salter (2007, 230) may call these the “accepted touchstones of contemporary cultural significance” within the dementia conversation. As discussed, dementia is often illustrated in journalistic media as an existentially-threatening condition that impinges on social interaction, selfhood, and humanity. As a result, even performances that represent a more progressive view of dementia are presented to prospective audiences in a way that is parallel to public media. Still, some works – through their own media and within the performances – exhibit an express desire to enlighten audiences about dementia.
5.2.6 Performance Dramaturgy: Composition and Forms
A number of works identified in the catalogue are of the traditional dramatic style, including a linearly structured narrative. These performances tend to be older and have been mainstage productions. Examples include: The Shadow Box (1977), Gasp (1995), Amy’s View (1997), A Wedding Story (2000), Holding the Man (2006), Do Not Go Gentle… (2006), Gathering Shadows (2008), Never Too Old (2008), Don’t Forget to Remember Me (2009), 27 (2011), The Father (2012, 2014), Still Alice (2013), and Dot (2015). As noted, The Father is repeatedly referenced in reviews and articles like Fuchs’ (2017b), cited as a kind of exemplar, specifically of shows presented on Broadway and the like.
In traditional dramatic theatre, spoken language is central to conveying the story and its characters. As such, characters with dementia may be positioned as diminished and anachronistic, while the others around them continue to speak fluently. Some plays may employ dementia as a subplot, placing the condition among other issues in a family drama, and often positioning the person with dementia as an object instead of a subject in the story.
The performances of greater interest to this study are those that centre on the character with dementia and in some way disrupt realism or dramatic convention, that potentially contain postdramatic traits, that is, operating beyond drama. These works offer an alternative to merely staging the outward, clinical signs of dementia that risk portraying the person in some way cut off from the world. Several markers of DAT, for example – linguistic decline, incoherence and eventual mutism, memory loss, both anterograde and retrograde, mood lability, diurnal rhythm disturbances, and the perceived loss of self – can give the impression that they are cut off from reality. Shabahangi has an alternate view of the experience of dementia:
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 79 People with dementia are not present in the way our consensus of reality expects them to be, but they are there in their own way. Because [they] live in an altered state of consciousness, their behaviours are typically non-linear, and their actions are non-directed; they often inhabit dreamland and move fluidly through it (quoted in Nicholson 2011, 59)
If traditionally dramatic theatre is concerned with mimesis then it aspires to represent this consensus of reality. If drama must have coherence, a linear arrangement and catharsis, then narratives of dementia presented in this way typically lean into the loss-of-self construction of the person affected. Contemporary works that resist Aristotelian logic may, therefore, better facilitate the true experiences of people with dementia.
Contemporary theatre may employ other performative elements in the dramaturgy to disrupt the logocentric hierarchy of drama (Lehmann 2006). These forms may have basis in recent technologies, such as sound recordings and effects and projection technologies (Bay-Cheng 2015; Read 2013) or they may be “older aesthetics” Lehmann (2006, 27). These older aesthetics include puppetry, shadow theatre and dance, not to mention physical theatre forms that may be contemporary in Western performance, but actually have ancient roots in Eastern cultures. In Lehmann’s (2006, 18) view, contemporary theatre that draws on the postdramatic palette has the capacity to “explore the new possibilities of thinking and representing the individual human subject”. Multiple performance technologies and forms may contribute to these new possibilities. These forms may also be utilised to interrupt the consensus of reality, or present alternate experiences of reality concurrently.
As such, this study investigates the use of puppetry, shadow theatre, dance and physical theatre, projection and sound technologies, as well as dramaturgies that de-hierarchise coherent spoken language as key signifier. Additionally, it considers the disruption of chronological linearity in several of the selected works.
Performances in the catalogue that utilise these elements include Dementia (2002), as discussed, and Dottie (2005), discussed below, as well as Inside Out of Mind (2013), RUFF (2013) and On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God (2010). In addition, Also a Mirror (2011) uses abstract staging; Grandma Remember Me? (2012) combines puppetry, drama and storytelling; the actor in In Tune with Dementia (2013) plays himself and his mother in conversation with one another, destabilising dramatic characterisation; ‘A’: The Christmas Party (2008) constructs its language from lyrics and rhymes, disrupting the coherence of spoken word; similarly Absence (2011) becomes fractured and expressionistic as the language of the central character becomes increasingly impaired; Dark Matter (2013) “descend[s] into
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 80 the hallucinatory mind of [the central character]” (Performing Dementia 2014); Dementia, or the Day of My Great Happiness (2013) is described as “[moving] between a hyperreal world of psychiatry and a bizarre operetta” (Gessnerallee Zürich 2014); and Memory Points (2012) is an experiential promenade work.
In works like Memory Points as well as On the Concept and RUFF, chronology – and linearity in general – is made redundant by the dramaturgy, as is demonstrated in their respective analyses in Chapter 8.
Disrupting Chronological Linearity
In a review of The Lion’s Face, noting the fragmentation of the opera’s narrative, Bella Todd (2010) wonders “whether dementia is not so much a theatre taboo as innately anti-theatrical”. Her observation suggests that linearity is a core requirement of theatricality. Basting similarly recognises that the normative structure of storytelling is not necessarily conducive to dementia narratives. In an article about TimeSlips, she opens by acknowledging:
When as children we first learn stories, they begin with “Once upon a time,” proceed through several threatening but ultimately surmountable obstacles, and end with a “happily ever after.” As we age, we learn to see that pattern as an ideal rather than a mirror to our everyday live. We use this ideal to lift our spirits, help us carry on through difficult times. But this ideal can also seduce us away from recognizing the value of other kinds of stories that do not conform to this pattern. (Basting 2003, 25)
Here, Basting acknowledges that not all stories are linear in a fairytale or ‘well-made’ way and implies that this expectation disqualifies people with dementia as storytellers. Her comments also raise questions about the expectation for catharsis in stories about dementia, the “happily ever after”. If the condition is a threating obstacle, then it defies the ideal in that it is not surmountable, read: curable.
When the consensus of present reality is interrupted or alternate experiences of reality are presented as coexisting in the dramaturgy, linearity may be disrupted. Another element of narrative structure to be explored in this study is the way that performances are brought to a close. As discussed below, due to the chronic deterioration characteristic of the condition, dementia narratives that aspire to resolved or cathartic endings may place the character with dementia at risk of erasure.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 81 Identified works that disrupt chronology or disregard linearity include: Daisy (2011) in which she is represented as both her ageing and child self, Also a Mirror (2011), which is structured around vignettes, André y Dorine (2010), which features flashbacks to the couple’s youth and the beginning of their relationship alongside the changes to their relationship in present-day, Angeleta and Etelvina (2014) which contains a journey through memories and hallucinations, Sundowner (2011) which stages memories intruding on the present, and The Nature of Forgetting (2017) in which “tangled threads of disappearing memories spark [the central character] into life” (West Yorkshire Playhouse 2017a, 6). Other examples are: Autobiographer (2011), The Other Place (2011), Plaques and Tangles (2015), and On the Concept (2010).
The Other Place is a tense family drama, in which the protagonist’s dementia is gradually revealed amongst mystery and uncertainty. The acting style and costuming is in the convention of realism, but the work is set against an abstract background and set, as if to allude to the warped reality of the “demented” character. The production blurs fact and fiction, past and present. Nicola Wilson’s Plaques and Tangles presents its central character, Megan, at different ages and, “[a]voiding a straightforward, linear approach, Wilson gives us lightning glimpses of the rapidly changing Megan” (Billington 2015). Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio’s On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God presents dementia in a dynamic and postdramatic way. The performance is presented in three imagistic sequences, opening with hyperrealism and becoming progressively abstract.
As noted, this research examines the use of puppetry, dance and physical theatre, and projection and sound technologies in the dramaturgies of selected performances. It should be noted that often the forms and technologies used in performance dramaturgies are incidental. For instance, performances that utilise puppets in their dramaturgy tend to come from companies whose work is grounded in puppetry. Likewise, dance theatre performances have emerged from dance theatre companies. Nevertheless, the inferences of such dramaturgies have significant implications for the representation and positioning of the person with dementia.
Radio Plays and Sound-Based Works
The catalogue contains several sound-based performances and radio plays: Autobiographer, Also a Mirror (2011) and ‘A’: The Christmas Party (2008). Also a Mirror (2011) is a scripted/verbatim hybrid, consisting of interview data woven into a play by Sean Riley. This Australian work, too, has been both a radio play and a staged work. Its structure is a multi- stranded narrative comprising conversations in the present and recollections of the past. The
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 82 style of the performance is mostly mimetic with elements of abstract representation, and the flexile stage space complements this style. Autobiographer (2011) is Melanie Wilson’s sound- based work that features four female voices that represent one woman at different times of her life. In this way, it has resonance with Samuel Beckett’s That Time (1976). The 70-minute show has an immersive quality, as the audience seating is nonconventional. Despite its text- driven nature, the piece deviates from traditional drama in that it is both without place and time in a fixed sense. While the listed performances are language-driven, the expected cohesion of traditional drama may still be disrupted. In the case of Autobiographer, the language sits amid an abstract soundscape.
Music
Music often features in live performance, and used sometimes used as dramaturgically- significant signage in several identified works. There are two different works entitled Alzheimer’s the Musical; one is from the USA (2015) and the other Australia (2007). Maureen Sherlock’s comedy cabaret, Alzheimer’s The Musical: A Night to Remember (2007), encourages its audience to laugh about ageing and dementia, rather than mourn them. Todd Cardin’s interpretation of AD as subject matter, Alzheimer’s: The Musical (2015), examines the juxtaposition of a weakening mind with a strong body. Howard Timms’ one-man show, In Tune with Dementia involves music but is not described as a musical. In the work, Timms plays both himself and his mother and the performance depicts his time spent with his mother as her dementia advanced. The Lion’s Face (2010) is an opera by the Mahogany Opera Group. The work juxtaposes singing and speaking in order to demarcate the person with dementia in the performance; the whole cast sings except for the man with dementia. In this way, a lack of fluency is implied though the character with dementia is not silenced.
Music also plays a key role in mime, dance and physical theatre performances, for example: It’s Dark Outside (2012, mime), Finding Joy (2014, mime), André y Dorine (2010, mime), Fever Sleep (2005, dance), Forgetting Natasha (2010, dance), Sundowner (2011, dance theatre) Dottie (2005, dance theatre), 1 Beach Road (2011, physical theatre), and RUFF (2013, quasi-cabaret).
Sundowner uses music to stage both retrograde amnesia as well as nostalgia. Kate and David Denborough’s dance theatre work centres on Peggy, who is experiencing the effects of her early-onset dementia. The narrative is told, in part, through the eyes of three different generations: Peggy, her children, and a grandson. Sundowner rejects direct mimesis as
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 83 movement matches language as a storytelling device. Robin Marcotte’s Dottie is also a dance theatre piece and was inspired by his grandmother’s dementia. Dottie is a one-man show in which the title character expresses only a tenuous connection to present but a strong relationship with the past. The show makes use of spoken language, movement, costume, mirrors, masks, projection, and original music. As the production goes on, Dottie’s sections of speech become shorter and more fragmentary, and movement (dance and aerial work) fills in the gaps left by the retreating speech. Although the performance is about Dottie’s experience, projected video features other characters who talk about Dottie and her dementia, indicating a dislocation between Dottie’s past and present. These videos intercut the glimpses into Dottie’s abstract reality. This element positions Dottie as one unaware of her dementia, despite everyone else’s knowledge of it. Moreover, as Dottie’s representation on stage becomes decreasingly verbal, those around her retain the authority of language. The analysed works demonstrate that demarcation can be referenced in speech, but also embodied in costume, physicality, and puppetry.
Puppetry and Masks
A number of identified works employ mask and puppetry. Masks are used in Finding Joy (2014), André y Dorine (2010), Dottie, and It’s Dark Outside (2012). Puppetry features in It’s Dark Outside (2012), Perish the Thought (2012), Dark Matter (2013), D-Generation (2013), Grandma Remember Me? (2013), Angeleta and Etelvina (2014), Risking Happiness (2015), State of Grace (2015), and This is Us (2018).
It’s Dark Outside (2012) was created by Australian company The Last Great Hunt. The work uses no spoken language and features both masks and puppetry, as well as shadow work and projection. A rich soundscape complements this visual dramaturgy. The plot is in the style of a surreal adventure story, complicated by memory loss. It’s Dark Outside has storybook elements; in addition to the puppets, cartoon props, animation and shadow work is utilised. These elements teamed with the puppetry create something akin to a dreamscape or staged graphic novel or cartoon. The performance is discussed in Chapter 7. Sandglass Theater’s D- Generation: An Exaltation of Larks (2013) also features in Chapter 7. As noted, it is a work of verbatim theatre based on TimeSlips. Significantly, in D- Generation only those with dementia are represented as puppets. The co-presence with the live actors playing characters without dementia is pertinent to this research.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 84 Key puppetry scholar Kenneth Gross suggests that puppets are suited to particular characters and stories: The curious law is that the liveliness of a puppet onstage, in movement and voice, must incorporate something of the puppet’s lack of life, or its belonging to a different kind of life. The very stories that the puppets are invited to tell, or the characters they imitate, must be fitted to their puppet-ness and yet transfigure it. (2011, 69).
That puppets may belong to a “different kind of life” resonates with the perceived inscrutability or otherness of dementia. Eileen Blumenthal also reflects on the particularity of the puppet subject: Puppetry is, inherently, the most transcendent mode of performance. After all, the transitions between life and non-life–birth and death–are the most sacred moments of human experience. Puppets, inanimate objects endowed with vital force, live at that border. And, along with their first cousins, effigies and masks, they often play major social and religious roles in the passage between life and death. (1997, 18)
The liminal quality of the puppet is significant. Blumenthal’s more explicit positioning of puppets at the border between life and death echoes descriptions of dementia as “social death” or “living death” as identified in the above review of the literature. Bearing in mind these references to a state straddling life and death, the use of the puppet in theatre about dementia takes on additional significance. Further, the use of “created actors” (to borrow from Blumenthal 1997) alongside human actors represents a patent demarcation between the live and those perceived to be at its edge.
When used to represent characters with dementia, puppetry has the capacity to demarcate them from others in the story in several ways. In addition to their object-turned-subject status, a puppet’s speech is inherently disembodied, if they are voiced at all (Gross 2011), and they are sometimes shrunken facsimiles of the human being. Gross (2011, 39) notes that “the puppet theater is a theater of miniatures. Things on the puppet stage are most often smaller than life, shrunken or reduced doubles of a human world”. When in co-presence with live actors, the created actor is diminished by comparison. Co-presence occurs when the human performers are not just puppeteers, but engaged in the diegesis.
Paul Piris (2014) considers puppets to be ontologically ambiguous; they appear to “share the same existence as subject with the puppeteer but nonetheless [remain objects]” (Piris 2014, 38). When a live actor interacts with the puppet subject, not just as a puppeteer, their “[c]o- presence stresses this ontological ambiguity by confronting the puppet with a human protagonist” (Piris 2014, 30). This is because their presence has significance within the
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 85 performance diegesis. This dramaturgical relationship is remarkable “because it establishes a relation of self to Other between the two beings that are ontologically different: one is a subject (in other words, a being endowed with consciousness) and the other one an object (in other words, a thing)” (Piris 2014, 30). Co-presence is significant in the dramaturgies of D- Generation and It’s Dark Outside, as discussed in Chapter 7. Piris’ theory on co-presence between puppets and live actors is also pertinent to the Reckless Kettle works, Risking Happiness (2015) and State of Grace (2015). In these works, the diegetic presence of both live and created actors represents a different kind of relationship than exists between two puppets or two actors, particularly in relation to a care dynamic.
Reckless Kettle Works: State of Grace and Risking Happiness
Reckless Kettle is a puppetry theatre company based in the UK, and the creators of State of Grace and Risking Happiness (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twg81Q6DM_o and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvwwEPDA7Yg, respectively). The former is about dementia specifically and the latter is about caring for an aged parent more generally. Both are set in a domestic space and feature a father-daughter relationship demonstrating the experience – and frustration – of the adult-child carer. In both performances the character with dementia is depicted as puppet and live actors play characters without dementia. The man in State of Grace is bedridden (as pictured), although, there is a movement sequence in which the puppeteers liberate him as he is elevated and swept through the air.
Figure 8: The father and daughter in State of Grace (photo unattributed, Reckless Kettle)
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 86 Because the live actor does not double as puppeteer, the evoked co-presence is deepened. This is because the puppet appears autonomous from the performer with whom they interact. There are of course puppeteers on stage, but their presence is not dramaturgically significant. Additional demarcation occurs as the puppets are voiceless for most the performance; the live actors perform one-sided conversations. It is implied in these conversations that the person with dementia is speaking, yet the audience are witness to the puppet’s movement and behaviour only. These works demonstrate the precariousness of using puppetry in works that stage dementia. A dramaturgy in which both puppets and live actors are present efficiently delineates those with dementia and those without.
Despite the potential for puppets to carry negative connotations of lifelessness, puppetry may be intended to merely signal the otherness of dementia. Perhaps to some performance makers, the puppet’s “belonging to a different kind of life” does not represent a lesser life or a state close to death, but instead signals the inscrutability of the experience of dementia. Nonetheless, the form evokes a dehumanised representation. While the form is precarious, puppetry at least disrupts dramatic realism, which may be liberating for the subject with dementia and potentially challenge dominant tragedised dementia narrative.
5.2.7 Reframing
Many of the works identified in this research – particularly those produced in recent years, and those developed in collaboration with a government or research body – seek to re-narrativise dementia. For example, Cracked: New Light on Dementia “casts a critical light on society’s one-dimensional view of dementia as an unmitigated tragedy” (Collective Disruption 2017, 67). The tragic dementia narrative that emphasises a loss of self is sometimes reframed in performances intended for education, works that embrace humour, and works that include people with dementia in their development and/or staging.
Most research-based projects seek to (re)educate people about dementia. Some are specifically staged for audiences of family and friends of people with dementia; the objective being to dissolve the taboo around the condition by reflecting their experiences back to them. By contrast, Inside Out of Mind, based on the field notes of care workers, was purposed for audiences of care workers. This is dissimilar to other performances with an educational intent, which are typically aimed at familial carers. However, like the other works, Inside Out sought to reflect the experiences of dementia care back to the workers in order to engage them in ways that traditional research outputs could not. Theatre as an educational tool seeks to inform people
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 87 about dementia, but also to challenge preconceptions about the condition and those who live with it.
An essential aim for many performance makers is to show the dark and light of the disease, and many use light humour as comic relief. In an interview, the RedCape Theatre representatives discussed the importance of humour: “the humour is so important. There's a humour. It's not all dark. There are moments of, you know, the moments of humour are few and far between but when they're there, you get a glimpse of the person and who they were. So you know, it's … helps so much” (Friend in Friend and Dyson 2017, 2). Many performances employ humour and light- heartedness. The musicals are key illustrations of this. However, Also a Mirror (2011), An Evening with Dementia (2009), Cracked: New Light on Dementia (2014), Finding Joy (2014), and In Tune with Dementia (2013) also include humour in the telling of their dementia narratives. Kate Denborough, director of Sundowner, recognised that “it was very easy to slide into the darkness,” but was determined that the performance would resist a narrative of tragedy (quoted in Hawker 2012).
The typical dementia narrative can be reframed by the involvement of people with dementia in the development and/or staging of a performance, for example, Split Britches’ RUFF, a one- woman show starring Peggy Shaw. Shaw had a stroke several years ago, and now lives with a form of dementia. Despite the usual expectations of people with dementia, Shaw continues to perform and, in RUFF, actually performs her dementia. In a way, her dementia is an irruption of the real in the work, a postdramatic aspect of performance. Produced more recently, This Is Us is a “performance platform showcasing new work by artists living with dementia” (West Yorkshire Playhouse 2017a, 5). It comprises a number of short performances featuring “poetry, drama, puppetry, music and song” (West Yorkshire Playhouse 2017a, 5). Showing in the same festival, the triple bill Three presents three “stories of life and flights of the imagination by rarely heard voices, co-written by people living with dementia and professional writers” (West Yorkshire Playhouse 2017a, 6). Both showcases are based on facilitated devising processes, which is dissimilar from Shaw’s process. For Shaw in particular, the performance is not for her own therapy or psycho-intervention but a performance that draws on her experience of dementia. RUFF is discussed in Chapter 8. These works – RUFF in particular – are significant for their lack of the usual applied focus and positioning instead of the person with dementia as performer and/or creative contributor.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 88 5.3 Conclusion This review of the current landscape of dementia theatre demonstrates emerging trends in the area of development, staging aesthetic or dramaturgy and the framing and positioning of dementia. Common instigation and development paradigms include personal experience and research. Research may be personal, medical or ethnographic. Following this, some works manifest as verbatim and verbatim-hybrid plays. By contrast, some avoid a clinical narrative of dementia. Settings are a factor in how dementia is positioned. The tendency is to set performances in a domestic home or nursing home. Some works stage a care dynamic between the person with dementia and either professional or familial carers. Familial relationships are the most significant in dementia narratives, particularly parent-child relationships. As such, the generational discourse has emerged as a common theme. In particular, mothers with dementia are frequently represented onstage. This discourse is emphasised in works where the adult- child becomes an informal carer. The generational discourse is one way that people with dementia are demarcated from those without. Performance forms can also evoke demarcation. Puppetry especially can make this delineation. Other forms and technologies of interest are mime, dance and physical theatre, and music, sound, and projection technologies. These elements can disrupt mimesis, stage interruptions of the consensus of reality and, when layered, suggest the coexistence of alternate experiences of reality. Finally, the endings of works – and the correlation to catharsis and the happily-ever-after – is a significant aspect of the analyses to follow.
Analysed Performances – Notes on Selection
Of the trends and divergences related to development, style and representation, the following are deemed essential to the analysis: spoken language, research and verbatim development, music and sound, dance and physical theatre, puppetry, representation of the societal view, and domestic and care home settings, as well as deviations from these places. The following table outlines the importance of each of the works selected for analysis.
Notable aspects of the performance for Selected performances analysis Autobiographer Language- and sound-based, Abstract staging, Placeless Really Old, Like Forty Five Mainstage, Societal perspective Chapter 6 6 Chapter Inside Out of Mind Research-based, Care setting
7 Sundowner Dance theatre, Domestic setting ter Chap 1 Beach Road Physical theatre, Overarching metaphor
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 89 D-Generation: An Exaltation of Research-based, Puppetry, Care setting Larks It’s Dark Outside Mime, Puppetry, Memory Point(s): The Beauty of Research-based, Disrupts chronology, Remembering Promenade performance RUFF Performed by a person with dementia, Disrupts chronology Chapter 8 8 Chapter On the Concept of the Face, Disrupts chronology, Postdramatic Regarding the Son of God
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 90 6. “We’re All in Our Own Little World”
6.1 Introduction This chapter analyses Autobiographer; Really Old, Like Forty Five; and Inside Out of Mind, with particular focus on the staging of alternate experiences of reality, inner worlds and different dementia discourses. Here, dementia discourses include personal, familial, clinical, pharmacological, societal and political narratives/perspectives. Inner worlds refers to the internal experiences of characters with dementia. As discussed in the literature review, people with dementia are sometimes thought of – or represented – as brain dead (Behuniak 2011), empty shells (Innes 2009), and having lost their mind (Johnstone 2013). However, Mills states that “[t]heoretical arguments suggest that dementia sufferers have a rich and powerful emotional life” (Mills 1998, 25). This resonates with Shabahangi’s previously noted observation that: “People with dementia are not present in the way our consensus of reality expects them to be, but they are there in their own way” (quoted in Nicholson 2011, 59). These observations give the sense that people with dementia can have alternate experiences of reality. Several analysed works layer theatrical forms and technologies to stage these alternate experiences. In this chapter, this concept is most strongly represented in Inside Out. By contrast, Autobiographer is set inside one character’s inner world. Really Old is the most traditionally dramatic play selected for analysis, but it is pertinent because of its presentation of familial and clinical perspectives concurrently with societal and pharmacological narratives. All three works featured in this chapter contain clinical markers that signpost dementia. Clinical language is an essential marker for performance analyses in this study. As discussed in the contextual review, both the use of, and lack of concern for, clinical discourse is significant. Inside Out was founded on research, into the experiences of professional dementia carers in particular. This underpinning produces a strong clinical discourse in the play’s language and setting. Clinical signposts tend to signal amnesia. Additional clinical linguistic features predominantly represent aphasia. Signs of aphasia include: anomia, the inability to recall the names of everyday objects; paraphasia, the unintentional replacement of a word or syllable that obscures the speaker’s meaning; circumlocutory discourse, describing an item’s use or appearance in lieu of its name; and perseveration, a phrase used repetitiously and without context. These markers can demarcate the characters with dementia from those without.
The language of Inside Out, and Really Old in particular, reflects – and responds to – the prevailing societal narrative of dementia. As discussed, medical descriptions do influence the
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 91 Western cultural view of dementia, and the cultural view tends to parallel the overarching clinical discourse of loss and decline. The direct address of the cultural view is not unique among identified performances, but the predominant perspectives on dementia represented are the clinical and the familial. A generational discourse is present in two plays analysed in this chapter: Really Old features the adult-child relationship as well as grandchild experience, and Autobiographer makes references to the Motherline in its language. In addition to language, the discussed performances engage noteworthy sound and physical and visual features in their dramaturgies. These aspects of the dramaturgies evoke symbols and metaphors of dementia and dementia experiences.
Both Really Old and Inside Out are arranged chronologically, though the latter demonstrates disruptions to its linearity by way of interrupting the consensus of reality. In Autobiographer, linearity and chronology are made redundant. The endings of dementia narratives are pertinent to this study. In each of the three works analysed in this chapter, the endings are affirmative and do not render the character with dementia as self-less (as the literature review shows is often assumed) and do not erase the character either (as seen in some performances analysed in Chapters 7 and 8).
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 92 6.2 Autobiographer Melanie Wilson’s Autobiographer (2011) is a sound- and language-based work that contains very little movement (see video footage available at https://vimeo.com/29684361). I personally experienced the work as a written text, undertaking an analysis of the script. I also drew on the photos online (embedded in this discussion) and the video snippets available on Wilson’s website. Lastly, I interviewed Wilson who explained in more detail the physical arrangement of performers and audience in the space. In Autobiographer, the prevalence of spoken text represents a reclaiming of language, memorial, and identity where other works may use speech to indicate the linguistic decline characteristic of dementia. The work is nonlinear and contains no naturalistic staging, so the experience of the play is one of a non-reality – it is without place and without time. Relieved of such contexts, the language is permitted to transcend clinical characteristics and freely express the story. The physical staging parallels this in its immersive quality, collapsing a dramatic sense of place and circumstance, and with it cohesive characterisation and an expectation of linearity. Crucial elements of the physical staging that are discussed below include placelessness, the positioning of the audience, the performers’ movement within the space, and the interaction between the lighting design and the spoken language. Autobiographer may be described as staging a kind of inner world, and yet the character to whom it belongs is multiplied and layered. It is her inner world on which the audience intrudes and not the other way around. Where other works may stage interrupted realities – memories that intrude on the present, and position the person with dementia as an anachronism – Wilson’s play offers an inverse experience of viewing. The subject at the centre of the work, Flora, is multiplied; five versions of herself at different ages exist simultaneously. This plurality facilitates fragmented storytelling and layered histories. The language is not structured around conversations, but instead fragments of Flora’s history arranged in trickles and streams – that is, sometimes as paragraphs and other times in short lines of few words. The script comprises five parts, each employing different linguistic structures. Despite indications of memory loss, the function of the language in Autobiographer is not purely to signpost, discuss or lament Flora’s dementia. Nevertheless, some clinical emblems are present. Significantly, there are no mention of clichés in the way of stereotyped descriptions of, or allusions to the symptoms of, dementia. The lack of medicalisation and social positioning in Autobiographer facilitates a re-humanisation of Flora.
Flora is presented in five different forms. The script denotes that Floras 1 through 5 are – respectively – a girl in her late teenage years, a woman in her mid-30s, a woman in her early
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 93 50s, a woman in her late 70s, and a girl aged around eight. Additionally, Flora is sometimes featured in a voiceover (FLORA v/o), “representing the internal voice” (Wilson 2012, 15). These Floras interact in a way that is not typically dramatic. For example, while they do not have dialogue with one another, they do finish each other’s sentences, fill in the gaps of memories, and sometimes contradict one another. As a demonstration of the relationship, in Part One, the transitions between Floras slide, indicating they are all one person existing simultaneously, despite the use of multiple actors onstage. As such, the plurality of Flora is established early in the work. These moments are embedded in larger passages of speech that suggest that the ages of the actors onstage are not so much associated with time, but with connections to different memories and states of mind. Other performances in the catalogue use younger versions of characters to stage flashbacks or intruding memories, but Flora’s selves exist concurrently. When Flora 1 says “I feel like I’m 18,” she is a girl in her late teens. Similarly: (Wilson 2012, 18-19):
FLORA 1: [preceding monologue …] Because sometimes you’ll ask…
FLORA 2: … And I really think you’ll mean it. You’ll say, ‘How are you felling?’ And I’ll think…I am a 76-year-old woman, but inside I feel like I’m 33. [Proceeds with a memory monologue…] These statements and transitions reiterate the plurality of Flora and allude to retrograde amnesia. As discussed in the literature review, retrograde memory loss affects memories that are already ‘recorded’ before AD becomes apparent and works backwards (Osimani and Freedman 1991). Consequently, dementia can result in difficulty to grasp place and chronological time, and that time can become blurred across bygone years and the present (Robinson 2009). In this way, throughout the performance, age remains in flux. This blurring makes key events in Flora’s life atemporal. For instance, when the versions of Flora in her mid- 30s and in her late-70s discuss her children (Wilson 2012, 22):
FLORA 4: My children have orbited me like planets…
FLORA 2: like shadows around noon.
FLORA 4: They’re behind me.
FLORA 2: They’re still to come. Flora 4 describes her children as being in the past and Flora 2, her future. Their exchange suggests a blurring across the past and present, as though these experiences exist in parallel.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 94 This pluralised manifestation of Flora in the work collapses chronology and, therefore, bars any expectation of linearity.
Figure 9: Four versions of Flora in Autobiographer (photo by Monika Chmielarz) Autobiographer invites the notion of narrative identity (autobiographical memory as constitutive of identity) but challenges its adherence to chronology. Even the title of the play poses a challenge to the idea that people with dementia lose their self as a result of losing memories. The work’s opening monologue contemplates the idea of “narrative identity” (Mills 1998), that memory constitutes identity. The first line of the play destabilises this notion of accumulative memory (stories getting steadily larger) and dismisses the idea that linearity is key to selfhood (Wilson 2012, 17):
FLORA 2: it’s never been my impression from life that things hang together. It’s never been apparent to me, from living, that stories get steadily larger. But rather…that filaments of attachment thread between the most disparate of things…of people…events…words. I’ve always found that quite… inspiring… reassuring somehow. Ingenious. And yet now, I get into it, and the things…people…events…words rise up and get me by the nose and all I can do is follow until they stop.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 95 Here, Flora 2 speaks abstractly about memory loss and memories that intrude on the present, though not in terms of deficit. She talks instead of filaments of thread connecting disparate thoughts. She expresses an embrace of this incongruity. Threads, patterns, and patchwork form a motif throughout the play, used to describe the construction of selfhood. Her description of language leading her, as opposed to her leading language, speaks to losing control over linguistic expression, yet the playful description of the words “getting her by the nose” does not lament this loss of control. This concept informs the work’s progression. Flora follows threads – words, sounds, memories, and ideas – from one to the next. This progression, while disallowing linearity in the form of chronology, contains its own kind of logic. As the audience experiences it, we are in Flora’s internal world, and it is she that leads us through it. Thus, Flora is positioned as an active subject in the work, not a passive victim of dementia and loss of selfhood.
Speaking on Autobiographer’s logic of progression, overall, the spoken text does become increasingly fragmented throughout the course of the play. In this way, the linguistic structure of the work – as opposed to the narrative, as in other works – makes allusions to the disintegration that results from dementia. It is worth noting that the work is described as a “poem for performance” (Wilson 2012, 5). As such, fragments, attached by often imperceptible filaments, replace cohesive dialogue. In an interview, Wilson noted Samuel Beckett as a reference, citing his “economy of language” as a feature she worked to emulate (Wilson 2017). The Beckettian influence is evident in the looping of sections and even the movement from streams of language to more fragmented sequences. However, Beckett’s monologic works tend to be more monomaniac, where Wilson’s text does not necessarily express an agitated mind in its verbalisations. There are, however, other correlations between Autobiographer and several Beckett plays 13 : a single, yet pluralised, subject is represented; only pronouns are used, isolating the subject from other times, places, people; plot is not a priority, as language only makes oblique reference to extradiegetic events; the performance is both timeless and placeless; language is structured in ebbs and flows, moving between language as a stream-of- consciousness and language as fragments; and no clear solutions are provided, only new questions opened, and catharsis is irrelevant. Most significantly, like a number of Beckett plays in which memory and memorial are significant themes, Autobiographer is constructed out of recollections.
13 Variously: Krapp’s Last Tape (1958), Not I (1972), Eh Joe (1965), That Time (1975), Footfalls (1975), A Piece of Monologue (1979), Ohio Impromptu (1981).
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 96 Memories and the brain’s memory functions can be categorised in various ways. Two designations are episodic and semantic. Episodic memory refers to “the ability to remember episodes that happened in the individual’s life” (Saxton and Boller 2006, 44). By contrast, semantic memory “encompasses the encyclopaedic knowledge of the world and the meaning of words and concepts” (Sartori, Miozzo, and Job 1994, 104). Wilson’s play features both. Throughout Part One, Flora uses the phrase and derivatives of “Here’s one I know” to introduce episodic memories. Yet, in one instance Flora 2 employs the motif to lead into a semantic recollection: “Between 30 and 35 degrees latitude, north and south, lie the Horse Latitudes, a subtropical region with little rain and variable winds mixed with calm […this recollection continues]. Geography A Level. It comes to me now…” (Wilson 2012, 19). Flora 4 takes up this sentence with “….very clearly just what I wanted to tell you” but instead continues with an episodic, autobiographical memory (Wilson 2012, 19). These recollections appear to be attached by one of the imperceptible filaments of thread.
The focus on episodic memories outweighs the few demonstrations of semantic memory. These episodic recollections that Flora presents are mostly described in sensory terms. The memories are expressed in relation to the environment: hot/cold, the field, the gate, the grey sky, the cold wind, the snow, the earth, the trees, and the front seat of the car. These passages interact with the physical performance space in a paradoxical way. The environmental descriptors contrast the placeless setting of the performance. Yet, they also supplant specific place names or relational labels like “our house” or “our car”. And this heightens the placeless quality and timelessness of the work. In the place of temporal descriptions like years or ages, Flora often signposts her memories by introducing them using phrases like: “Here’s one I know” (Wilson 2012, 19), “I’m talking to you now before I forget. Here’s one…” (Wilson 2012, 18), “It comes to me now, very clearly, just what I wanted to tell you” (Wilson 2012, 21 and 27) “I know this one” (Wilson 2012, 19 and 30), and “I have this story…a collection of things…” (Wilson 2012, 29). These phrases signal the beginning of a thread/memory, but also give the sense that Flora herself is encountering them, as opposed to recalling them.
Movement between remembering and forgetting, the familiar and unfamiliar, is embodied in instances of direct audience address. The physical environment of the theatre is significant to these moments, and is described below. Linguistically, these interactions are usually structured around a question about the time of year or a word that Flora is grasping for. Wilson scripts each instance to allow for either a response or unwillingness from the audient. In the case of the latter, the actor says “Surely it doesn’t matter, someone will know” (Wilson 2012).
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 97 However, towards the end of the play, Flora’s responses become more agitated. Other encounters with the audience throughout the work include a clinical exercise, such as counting backwards from 20 or spelling WORLD backwards. These are common tests for testing cognition and cognitive decline that are used in the preliminary stages of diagnosing dementia. Two common examples of standardised tests are the MMSE and RUDAS; these measures determine a person’s cognitive decline. Other times, Flora tells the audience member something about herself, for example, describing her experience living in London; though, mostly she discusses her children, particularly her daughter. Flora also begins to ask audients different kinds of questions: tangible ones, “what season is it?” (Wilson 2012, 31) and “Where do you live?” (Wilson 2012, 52), abstract ones, “What is the weather in your head?” (Wilson 2012, 53), and some that acknowledge her memory loss, “Have we been here before?” (Wilson 2012, 53). Responses to tangible questions make their way into Flora’s description of herself, as she borrows forgotten details from these strangers with whom she’s generated familiarity (Wilson 2012, 52):
FLORA 4: Where do you live? (Audience answer: ‘I live in X’) I live in X I have a daughter she’s very…. What is it? You know…she’s…what is it? (Audience answer: X.) X, my daughter’s very X Here, Flora’s memory loss is evident in her need to fill gaps in her self-description. Flora’s proximity to, and direct address of, the audience in these instances both establishes an intimacy and stages a dichotomy of the un/familiar by collecting details and taking them on herself. In these moments, the audient must interact with a stranger and face being asked questions to which they may not know the answer. In this way, the direct address in Autobiographer could be seen to simulate for the audience the experience of a person with dementia. The intimate setting of the work balances its placelessness. This intimacy with the audience juxtaposing the use of anonymous labels in the language advances the un/familiar dichotomy.
Only pronouns and relational titles (father, mother, children, and daughter) are used in the script. However, while Flora is isolated from time, place, and other characters, the play contains a generational discourse and evidence of the particularity of the mother-daughter connection posited by Lowinsky (2000), Blackford (1998), Mary Valentich and Catherine Foote (1998).
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 98 To requote Blackford (1998, 155): “children are shown to most often identify with a same-sex adult” because of the “strong influence that parents have on children” and as a result of mothers tending to be the more nurturing parent. Further, women – in particular mothers and grandmother – are part of the Motherline (Lowinsky 2000). In this vein, while Flora mentions children in general, throughout the play she demonstrates a specific focus on her daughter. Congruently, her mother is also discussed.
A ‘pattern’ motif is used to express Flora’s relationships with both her mother and her daughter. The pattern motif emerges most clearly in Part Two when Flora describes her mother’s influence on her (Wilson 2012, 25-26):
FLORA 4: I am a dress pattern.
FLORA 3: I am the dress pattern of a mother. […]
FLORA 1: The pattern of the dress my mother made.
FLORA 4: She gave me the pieces.
FLORA 1: She put them together for me.
FLORA 2: I picked them apart and made myself differently. The oldest Flora (4) opens the sequence, declaring that she is a pattern. Flora 3 adds that she is the pattern of a mother, conjuring the notion of the Motherline. The teenage Flora (1) reflects her mother’s influence, and the following lines assert Flora’s own process of making herself, as she describes picking herself apart to reconstruct her own identity. The process of re/creating her identity is continued with the mention of processes of sewing, unpicking, and patching (Wilson 2012, 26), which communicate building, undoing, and amalgamating, respectively. This sentiment echoes the opening monologue about filaments attaching disparate things as opposed to “things hanging together” (Wilson 2012, 17). This reiterates the non-linear construction of Flora within the performance. It posits that if selfhood is constitutive, it is not necessarily congruous or chronologically-organised. Processes pertaining to Flora’s pattern later become more specifically related to her age, as Floras 1, 2, and 4 describe themselves (Wilson 2012, 26):
FLORA 1: I’ve only just put myself together.
FLORA 2: The pattern of me is fraying.
FLORA 4: My pattern is fading, deranging, ageing.
FLORA 3: My girl, my small girl is missing,
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 99 FLORA 2: the pattern of me rearranged and when I looked again…
FLORA 3: …there was a space where she stood. As she describes, the teenage Flora has recently created herself, while the mid-30’s Flora is beginning to unravel. The older Flora considers herself to be “fading, deranging [and] ageing,” echoing Western constructions of ageing. Meanwhile, Flora’s daughter intrudes on the passage with Flora’s 3 line, and Flora 2 follows this, expressing that her fraying pattern is remedied by the presence of her child, reinforcing the generational discourse. In the above passage, the lines begin in present tense – the Floras discuss different behaviours of the pattern as if they are occurring simultaneously – and then shift into past tense as Flora 2 reflects on her daughter as catalyst for irrevocable change.
Wilson plays with tense throughout the play. In one instance, Flora 1 recalls a memory in present tense before shifting unexpectedly to the past tense. It is as though she is experiencing the memory and then becomes aware that it is an encounter from the past. Flora in her late 70s then recalls what seems to be the same event, solely in present tense. In a later part, the Flora in her late teens describes her time living in London in the past tense, although elsewhere in the script, Flora describes this in the present tense. In this way, the versions of Flora are fluid and none are bound to certain periods of Flora’s life. The play with tense within passages of the script sometimes convey Flora’s memory loss. This is demonstrated in the following exchange between Floras about her marriage (Wilson 2012, 37-38):
FLORA 1: I don’t want to get married.
FLORA 2: But then…I’m not so sure now…
FLORA 3: Is that because I did?
FLORA 4: And then forgot?
FLORA 1: That’s how it seems to me
FLORA 2: You got it wrong?
FLORA 1: I know nothing. I know nothing that’s the point
FLORA 3: it’s like I know nothing
FLORA 4: I see you…little storm inside me
FLORA 1: fight back. Fight back
FLORA 4: I have this pattern to keep hold of. This interchange between Floras is almost an interaction with herself, reminiscent of Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape (1958). At first the unknowing appears to be associated with the age of each
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 100 Flora, but is then revealed to be confusion resulting from retrograde amnesia. Flora recognises this and acknowledges her dementia, describing it as a storm, a parallel with Lear’s perception of his dementia in King Lear, as discussed in the Contextual Review. Flora expresses that she needs to fight this storm, in order to hold onto her pattern. In this segment, Flora confesses her fear of unravelling, of forgetting herself.
Following this revelation, the structure of the text becomes increasingly fragmented. With this, the coherence of Flora’s recollections breaks down. Brief phrases make reference to preceding recollections fleetingly but no clear logic is apparent from line to line. In spite of this increased fragmentation and more frequent instances of forgetting, Wilson closes her work with each Flora delivering the affirmation, “I am still here” (Wilson 2012, 56). This ending positions Flora not as disappearing, but pluralised and fluidly moving between these states. She is a teenager, a middle-aged woman and an ageing woman – all at once, even if she does forget some of the stitches and patches.
The physical performance space facilitates Flora’s plurality as well as the un/familiar dichotomy. Autobiographer is staged in a performance space where the audience surrounds, and is at level with, the performers. In an interview, Wilson (2017) describes the performance space as an ovoid with several points of entry that separate the audience into banks. During the performance, the actors move between being merely witnessed by and interacting directly with the audience. This physical arrangement evokes a dichotomy of the familiar and the unfamiliar. In her plurality and the distortion of tense, the character of Flora is mercurial. By extension, relationships are nimbly projected onto members of the audience. That is, in the physical arrangement of the performance, intimacy can be quickly established between performer and audient. The audience’s placement on the fringe of the performance is, for the most part, not intrusive, and representative of a community. However, towards the end of the play, Flora begins to behave as through interrogated, growing weary of questions; the communal atmosphere of the space collapses somewhat. Regardless of these shifts, there is no fourth wall in Autobiographer to be broken. Additionally, despite Flora’s isolation from any other characters, she both multiplied and witnessed. Overall, the performance space is communal in its positioning of the audience. With its lack of set and props, the space eludes the sense of a concrete place. The aesthetic frees the performance of verisimilitude, allowing multiple Floras – and their recollections – to exist concurrently. Just as the performance is without place, it is similarly unmoored from time, despite oblique references to place and time in the spoken text.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 101 Figure 10: Autobiographer (Photo by Monika Chmielarz) The aforementioned instances of direct audience address include asking for a word or detail that Flora is missing, as well as basic clinical tests for cognition. The embodiment of these moments in the space enhances their effect. To interact with the audience, the performer sometimes sits beside the person they are addressing, which increases the familiarity of the encounter. As such, these instances play with a dichotomy of the familiar and the unfamiliar as the divide between character and audient is breached. Speaking on the work, Wilson cites the shifts between Flora’s more intimate addresses and those times when the audience can simply “sit and listen” (Wilson 2017), describing these shifts as the texture of the performance. The plural Flora and the audience move in and out of focus from one another.
This texture is embodied in the lighting design. Wilson describes the interchanging of near darkness and severe brightness in the lighting design, inducing experiences of “safety and exposure”, respectively (Wilson 2017). In an interview Wilson explains the lighting in Autobiographer as follows: It was composed of loads and loads of different little bulbs and filaments. So it was sort of like being in your own network around the stage which responded and pulsed and which was more or less illuminated compared to the fluency or the coherence of the characters. (Wilson 2017)
If the lighting is correlative to Flora’s fluency of language and recollection, then the network of bulbs embodies the firing of synapses in the brain. This correspondence is noteworthy, particularly considering several occurrences where the lights flash violently and are accompanied by “deafening” sound (Wilson 2012, 44). One such sequence includes the only
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 102 appearance of Flora 5, a girl aged around eight. She silently approaches each of the others and briefly touches them as if to comfort (Wilson 2012, 44). This version of Flora is without a voice and has remained unrepresented in the recollections throughout the play. The other Floras do not talk to the girl and she herself does not speak. Her appearance may be in reference to the deterioration of language and advancing retrograde amnesia. Because retrograde amnesia operates on “a temporal gradient” (Osimani and Freedman 1991, 24), older memories may be more lucid than those of more recent events. This gradient can result in the person with dementia believing themselves to be younger than they are, experiencing reality as a younger self.
Following this departure from the established performance aesthetic, Part Four of Wilson’s script – in its entirety – equally contains no scripted dialogue and is instead taken over soundscape, lighting design, and a clinically-informed movement sequence. As the lights change, (Wilson 2012, 50): There is an overwhelming auditory environment of real world sounds, like a shopping centre, supermarket or public place. Augmented by fragments of other sounds. Familiar sounds becoming alien. The performers are engaged in duets of repetitive, restless movement […] Hand to chest Finger to gum Hand to face The space in front Wait […] This scene ends in an abrupt ‘switch off’ of both light and sound. The described soundscape14 injects a sense of place into the performance, yet the estrangement of these sounds transposes the familiar to the unfamiliar. The distortion of the everyday auditory language speaks to an experience of disorientation in familiar places. So, again in this work, a sense of place is teased, yet disrupted, making it impossible to grasp a concrete notion of place. To reiterate, the lighting here diverges from the previous exposition of Flora’s fluency, and is here representative of Flora’s “befuddled, crisis state” (Wilson 2012, 50). The movement sequence complements this deviation. For one, this sequence is frantic and “rooted in gesture” (Wilson 2012, 50), demonstrating a subversion of everyday movement. The almost chronic
14 Several audio recordings are available online at https://soundcloud.com/melanie-j-wilson/autobiographer- introduction, https://soundcloud.com/melanie-j-wilson/autobiographer-breakdown and https://soundcloud.com/melanie-j-wilson/autobiographer-interlude-part.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 103 nature of the repetition turns the routine absurd, makes strange of the familiar. Secondly, the physical language described resonates with a doctor’s examination, as described in the MMSE and RUDAS. It is a common, simple test for cognitive decline to ask a subject to point to different parts of the body and/or face in order to gauge their understanding of the language and their visuospatial orientation. In this way, an embodied clinical discourse intrudes upon Flora’s reclamation of memorial.
Another physical expression of a clinical discourse that features in Autobiographer is the “mirror sign,” a recognised demonstration of dementia. The sign “is a form of delusional misidentification in which patients believe that their own reflected image in a mirror is another person” (Brown and Hillam 2004, 51); their reaction maybe to attempt a conversation with their reflection or to yell out, thinking there is an intruder in their home. As scripted in Part Three: “Floras turn in and catch sight of each other as hallucinations. They halt abruptly and after a while perform a mirrored gesture together, as if checking the existence of the others” (Wilson 2012, 47). The mirror sign occurs as part of the progression of retrograde memory loss at a point when the person may believe themselves to be younger than they are, as described above. This clinical detail is pertinent considering Flora’s plurality. Flora’s multiple selves appear to be living simultaneously at different points on the “temporal gradient” or at least moving fluidly along it. The brief appearance of Flora 5 may suggest another proliferation is imminent. The demonstration of the mirror sign and the implication it carries of hallucination signals a lack of awareness of her own plurality.
Autobiographer precludes linearity and a recognisable chronology. It is similarly without concrete place. To stage Autobiographer in a naturalistic set – designating spatial and temporal contexts – would render Flora unmoored from time and place; the play would be about her disorientation. As it is, Wilson’s choices for the work’s dramaturgy allow Flora’s plurality to go unchallenged and similarly permit the language to be a vessel for Flora’s fragmented recollections, and even allow these fragments to act as texture and rhythm in the performance. Instead of Flora being positioned as trapped in her world, detached from a consensus of reality, the audience are invited into an alternate experience of reality. Flora’s mercurial inner world is the diegesis, albeit an abstract one.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 104 6.3 Really Old, Like Forty Five Tamsin Oglesby’s Really Old, Like Forty Five (2010) is a more traditionally dramatic work than any other under analysis in this thesis. It was first staged by London’s National Theatre, directed by Anna Mackmin. I initially encountered the play in its scripted form and later viewed a video recording of the work at the National Theatre’s archival office. Thus, the discussion draws on textual analysis and the analysis of production elements beyond the written text. Really Old comprises a linear narrative with traditionally dramatic characters. Nevertheless, its dystopian series of events disrupts its realism, creating a diegesis in which contentious views about ageing, dementia and the greater good may be pondered. Oglesby’s play could be described as “speculative fiction,” depending from whose definition you draw. While the work is not science fiction, Robert Anson Heinlein (who is largely credited with coining the term) explains in “On the Writing of Speculative Fiction” that the work is: the story of people dealing with contemporary science or technology. We do not ordinarily mean this sort of story when we say “science fiction”; what we do mean is the speculative story, the story embodying the notion “just suppose- -” or “What would happen if--.” In the speculative science fiction story accepted science and established fiefs are extrapolated to produce a new situation, a new framework for human action. (Heinlein 1991, 9)
As such, the work draws from existing attitudes about the ageing population and people with dementia, as well as emerging technologies in the care sector, and exaggerates certain details to achieve a dark satire; and the people in the story are forced to navigate the resulting situations. Really Old is a pertinent play to address in this study for its direct confrontation of the Western cultural positioning of people with dementia. In the play, the public and political view of the elderly (in this case, anyone who is retired) and people with dementia is pushed to the point of absurdity, guided by satirically callous speeches and legislation. The story centres on a family and the work of several government employees. The family consists of Lyn, who develops dementia during the play, her sister Alice, brother Robbie, daughter Cathy, grand- nephew Dylan, and an unofficially adopted granddaughter, Millie. The three characters involved in government and policy include Monroe (the boss), Amanda, and Mike. Finally, there is a robot nurse called Mimi. Through these characters, both familial and political discourses are established. Therefore, the layering of worlds in Really Old is about the intersection of the societal, political, pharmacological, familial, and personal narratives of dementia.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 105 The linguistic scape of Really Old reflects these layers in the inclusion of a range of perspectives of dementia. Clinical features are embedded, as well as familial perspectives, both of which feature in many works that stage dementia narratives. More exceptionally, the play handles societal and socio-political perspectives. The following analysis addresses the clinical language contained in the play, as well as the familial and societal perspectives on dementia. The pharmacological discourse (which is, of course, associated with the clinical, especially in the iatrogenic results described in the play) is also worthy of attention, as it is an uncommon angle. Both Oglesby’s script and the 2010 Anna Mackmin-directed National Theatre production of Really Old offer significant physical and visual features that are critical to the construction of dementia and its ripples into domestic, public, and political contexts. In addition to the language, the dramaturgical elements to be discussed here are: the settings in which the scenes take place, the demarcation between the domestic and political settings (employed in Mackmin’s production), Mimi the robot’s appearance, and uses of medical imagery.
The first ‘layer’ of dementia established in the play is the clinical narrative of Lyn’s cognitive decline; the progression of her condition is signposted in her language throughout the play. Lyn’s early memory loss is first marked by anomia – word-finding difficulty (Cohen and Eisdorfer 2001) – with an instance of circumlocutory discourse when Lyn describes almonds as “You know, with the eyes. Nuts. Shaped like eyes, you know, those little eye-shaped ones that taste a bit like like like almonds” (Oglesby 2010, 9). Circumlocutory discourse is a compensatory measure for memory loss; the term refers to talking about an object instead of naming it (Harding and Palfrey 1997). Later in the same opening scene, Lyn’s memory loss is revealed to be more significant than anomia, when she exhibits anterograde amnesia, an impaired capacity to create new memories. It is indicated when Lyn suggests they “all just sit down and relax, have a nice cup of tea and a piece of cake?” When her daughter Cathy tells her “You’ve already had both those things,” Lyn “stares at her plate, trying to fathom it.” (Oglesby 2010, 14). In a later demonstration of Lyn’s cognitive decline, she forgets the words ‘copper’ and ‘handles,’ describing a particular cupboard as “the one with the little cocky arms” (Oglesby 2010, 34). She here exhibits paraphasia, which refers to the substitution of words within a sentence, unbeknownst to the speaker (Brown and Hillam 2004). Her use of the words ‘cocky’ and ‘arms’ are examples of phonemic and semantic paraphasia, respectively. The former is attributed to substitutions that are related by sound, and semantic paraphasias occur when the word said is associated to the meaning of the intended word (Brown and Hillam 2004, 22). Markers of Lyn’s dementia continue, worsening throughout the play. Soon after an
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 106 argument with Cathy, Lyn asks if they have had a disagreement (Oglesby 2010, 75); their argument only ended because Lyn got up to leave to “meet Diana by the canal,” a character unmentioned elsewhere in the play.
Lyn’s dementia is also evidenced in conversations that occur between other characters. Several scenes feature exchanges between Lyn’s family members who speak about her decline and how she should be cared for. One discussion between Lyn’s sister Alice and Dylan, Alice’s grandson, alludes to Lyn’s backward-moving retrograde amnesia. Dylan considers that Lyn seems younger, while Alice’s comment speaks to a common Western cultural perception of people with dementia (Oglesby 2010, 89):
DYLAN: Do you know, it’s weird, but Aunty Lyn doesn’t swear so much any more. And she remembers stuff like she’s there.
ALICE: What’s the point of being there if she’s not here? What’s the point of that? Earlier in the play, in a conversation between Alice and Cathy, Alice similarly cites several odd behaviours that Lyn has developed. However, Cathy, at this stage in denial about her mother’s condition, responds to it all with “It’s an act” and “Friendliness doesn’t denote Alzheimer’s” (Oglesby 2010, 43). She rationalises her reluctance to believe that Lyn is experiencing cognitive decline, citing her mother’s intelligence and achievements (Oglesby 2010, 43):
CATHY: Look. This is a woman with a degree in genetic engineering. She’s written for the New Scientist. She reads newspapers, novels, she’s given lectures. She’s been on University Challenge. She can’t have Alzheimer’s. Not now. Not yet. She’s too…young […] Cathy is unable to reconcile the two ideas of her mother as an intelligent, successful woman and a woman with dementia. Her language does not necessarily demarcate two versions of Lyn – a significant trend explored in this thesis – but her inability to conceive the coincidence of a high-functioning mind and AD aligns with the impulse to demarcate between the person before and the person since dementia.
As the clinical account of dementia progresses, so does a pharmacological discourse, which is driven by a political narrative. This interwoven discourse becomes absurd in its inhumaneness. An analysis of Really Old necessitates noting Johnstone’s (2013) observations on the Alzheimerisation of the euthanasia debate and Cooley’s (2007) provocation that people with
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 107 dementia should commit a “moral” suicide. Cooley’s (2007) view is positioned as a promotion for the greater good, arguing that people with dementia are a burden. Johnstone (2013) considers the arguments both for and against euthanasia for people with dementia, also citing beliefs about burden as well as beliefs about the value of lives of people with dementia. These notions are explored in Oglesby’s play. The playwright herself (Oglesby 2017) notes Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” (1729) as a stimulus for her character, Monroe. Swift’s satirical article proposes that, in order to ease the burden on the country of impoverished families in Ireland, a number of children should be sold as a delicacy (Swift 1996). This way, their families earn additional income and save the money they would spend on raising their children from 12 months onwards (Swift 1996). Oglesby’s own take on civic duty is parallel with Swift’s proposal for dealing with a growing population. The 280-year interval between the two texts can speak for the shift in the demographic in question – from the poor to the elderly, but the focus on burden and social benefit, as well as the satirical and absurd extent of the plans, are comparable.
The resemblance to Swift’s proposal is most apparent in the second scene of the play, where Monroe delivers a speech about a new plan to manage the ageing population. From the opening paragraph, Monroe’s language projects a gamut of negative feelings about the elderly onto the general population. Some may resonate, but the opening of his speech is mostly comical because of its exaggerated ideas spoken in earnest. Monroe cites the “epidemic” AD, explaining that while many diseases now have cures, society is “haunted, eluded, by those of a neurodegenerative nature” (Oglesby 2010, 17). His plan is to put over-sixties to work, to become unofficial adoptive grandparents of under-sixteens whose parents work or are separated, in order to “diffuse both these demographic timebombs” (Oglesby 2010, 17). Monroe’s use of language is significant. While comical, it often does not deviate too far from the subtext of many a speech, article, or news clip. The term ‘epidemic’ is in common usage in public discourse about dementia, and ‘timebomb’ speaks to the language of inevitability and catastrophe often used, particularly by way of natural disaster analogies. Further, use of the word “deceased” in place of “diseased” is a cleverly asserted Freudian slip. In this context, the slip is funny, but it does reflect views of dementia as “the death that leaves the body behind” (Downs, Small and Froggatt 2006, 194) and people with dementia as zombies (Behuniak 2011). Notably, though, the audience is encouraged to laugh at the views expressed in Monroe’s speech, and at his ultra-conservative agenda, which is presented with complete sincerity despite its extremeness.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 108 Aside from Monroe’s use of language in this scene, his choice of scientific anecdotes frequently undermine his ideas. His reference to chimpanzees that use cannibalistic means to regulate their population is quickly set aside, not only on ethical grounds, but also because “people are, as I understand it, of dubious nutritional value once past the age of child rearing” (Oglesby 2010, 17). So, in his attempt to shine a rose coloured light on his strategy through a comparison to cannibalism, he is only given away a harsher incentive, to cull the population. Instead of cannibalism, those who cannot or do not wish to work as a grandparent are encouraged to take a place in The Ark. The Ark is an experimental medical treatment facility posing as a hospital, whose name suggests a reckoning of biblical proportions. The images of flood that the name evokes resonates with the common – if not oxymoronic – analogy of the tsunami that has been attributed to the crisis that dementia poses to society (Zeilig 2014a). For those who wish neither to grandparent nor subject themselves to medical trials, there is a third option, the “increasingly popular” Home Death (Oglesby 2010, 18). To begin his closing remarks, Monroe explains that the aim is to “return to the elderly a sense of purpose. For without purpose there can be no dignity and without dignity we are barely human” (Oglesby 2010, 18). The language here dehumanises people with dementia and presents a reductive view of older people. Notably, the word ‘dignity’ is a frequent staple of public reporting on and discussions about dementia. The prevailing view is that for someone with dementia, dignity is a near impossibility. Overall, Monroe’s views and language expressed in this speech both reflect and parody the dominant Western cultural view of people with dementia. Positioning this speech in the second scene of
Figure 11: The family home in Really Old, Like Forty Five (photo by Robbie Jack)
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 109 the play clearly lays down the societal and political discourse – rarely approached in other dementia performances – that features throughout the performance.
Before Lyn’s dementia becomes conspicuous, she joins the grandparenting scheme and begins to settle into and enjoy the role. However, when she begins to show unmistakable signs of dementia, the family know she has to go to The Ark, despite their willingness and desire to keep her at home. Following this development, the audience is then witness to the pharmacological narrative. This narrative takes root in the clandestine conversations between Monroe, Amanda and Mike, but its outcomes are spatially removed from the political decision- making. Conversely, the pharmacological measures and effects interweave with the experiences of the core family in the play. In this way, the pharmacological layer plays out in two settings: the offices of the government workers and within The Ark. Conversations had and decisions made in the former affect the happenings and people who exist in the latter. A meeting between the three policy-makers describes the early stages of testing the new drugs. Results show that in first three months of the Trials, many patients on Ryanol show an extraordinary improvement in their memory, but soon die after suffering paralysis. Other side effects of the drug include headaches, low blood pressure, incontinence, and loss of balance (Oglesby 2010, 39). Concurrently, Lazaran is found to be barely more effective than the placebo. It is revealed that, actually, the placebo is producing the most positive results, due in part to the diet the patients are on and the increased amount of time spent in doctors’ appointments. Amanda supports palliative care as much as curative measures, but Monroe disagrees. In a later scene, the trio discuss the program that offers free brain scans to the elderly. Monroe maintains that they “need to reach old people” (Oglesby 2010, 53), but Mike counters, saying that AD is detectable much earlier and so everyone should be scanned. This conversation is a turning point, where the focus turns from getting older people with developed dementia into treatment (testing) and towards anyone who will one day represent a burden within this regime. In the next scene between the three legislators, it is disclosed that Monroe’s own scan shows a faint, early indication of AD. Although his dementia is latent and asymptomatic, Amanda notes that he will have to go into the Ark (Oglesby 2010, 66).
AMANDA: At least you’ll be getting the best treatment.
MONROE: What do you mean?
AMANDA: Well. You’d be able to go to the Ark obviously.
MONROE: I’m not going anywhere
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 110 In this scene, Monroe’s power is diminished as he is forced to face his own policy. Previously, Monroe has been able to remain detached from the effects of his scheme and those it affects. Only when he himself is discovered to have undeveloped AD do the practices of the scheme concern him; he refuses to test the deadly Ryanol.
Monroe is next seen in the Ark, now a firsthand witness to the absurdity of the Trials. For example, throughout the course of the play Lyn’s sister, Alice, has a leg amputated after a fall in her home and later a finger taken for research. Afterwards, she is seen with various intravenous tubes that are conducting tests to treat obesity, though she is not obese. Monroe’s presence at the Ark is similarly absurd. While he enters without any clinical sign of dementia, he develops a kind of dementia as a result of his medication. As he discovers in an early meeting with Amanda and Mike, the results of Lazaran trials show that “the dose required to ameliorate the side effects is lethal” (Oglesby 2010, 69) that is, after it induces hallucinations of parrots. Monroe is last seen in the Ark, following an imaginary parrot. His cognitive decline parallels the deterioration of the overall scheme and its participants. Because the quality palliative care in The Ark is producing a bottleneck, Ryanol is pitched as a ‘quality of life’ pill: a treatment that is both pleasant and deadly. During a visit to sisters Lyn and Alice at the Ark, the emptiness of the facility unsettles Robbie. He reports that he saw “no-one. Nothing. Just empty beds” on the ward (Oglesby 2010, 87), and heard nothing but the sound of an incinerator coming from the morgue at the end of the hall. These developments within the play are demonstrative of the breakdown of the policy into something resembling a eugenicist scheme. These revelations also cast doom over the older characters and residents of The Ark.
While Monroe’s imminent death is alluded to in his hallucinatory final appearance, Robbie’s death is referenced more directly. Intent on staying out of the grandparenting scheme and The Ark, Robbie has continued to work as an actor. Throughout the play, comments are made about his youthful looks, clothing, and girlfriends. However, in a scene late in the play, Robbie is exposed to have been wearing a mask. When the mask is pulled off, he looks twenty years older. After this, Robbie does not appear again, but the following scene featuring the family takes place after his funeral. The adults explain to teenage Dylan why Robbie elected to take a euthanasia pill after being exposed as an 85-years-old (Oglesby 2010, 106):
CATHY: They stopped his treatment
DYLAN: What treatment?
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 111 ALICE: He had internal trouble. And once they found out his real age they took away his pills.
DYLAN: Why?
CATHY: No longer cost effective. The progression of Robbie’s story suggests that he had been wearing both a literal and figurative mask. His arc and Alice’s – neither of whom have dementia – demonstrate the fundamental ageism in the diegesis of the play. Furthermore, Robbie’s death and the implied death of Monroe emphasise the absurdity of the governmental scheme in the play.
Really Old differs from Autobiographer in that it takes place in concrete places. As the language in Oglesby’s play traverses different layers of dementia, the physical staging of the 2010 National Theatre production equally reflects this layering. The audience witnesses the family home, several public spaces, a site of power, and lastly a treatment facility, The Ark. In this way, Really Old traverses from public spaces and a domestic space, in which the familial scenes take place, to a raised platform upon which policy decisions are made, and finally to The Ark, where the pharmacological narrative is seen embodied. As the story goes on, public and domestic spaces feature less and scenes are more frequently staged in The Ark. This tapering of public spaces – and the waning of the domestic that follows – corresponds to a typical dementia narrative of decline, where institutionalisation is assumed to be inevitable. Additionally, as the performance follows Monroe’s journey, even the governmental setting is seen increasingly less. By the end of the work, all scenes take place within the walls of The Ark, seeing dementia become increasingly medicalised and cut off from public and even domestic settings.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 112 What is designated to take place in the “Government Office” in the playtext is, in the National Theatre staging, a site that eludes a precise location (Figure 12). Instead, this site is given an almost celestial authority as it is raised above stage height, while all domestic, public, and clinical scenes take place at stage level. Aside from the ostensible benefit of swift scene transitions, this visual demarcation positions the policymakers – Monroe, Amanda, and Mike – as having greater power than those below. Furthermore, they are detached from the everyday personal and familial experiences of dementia. It is at this level that Monroe delivers his remarkable speech and announces the strategy for dealing with “demographics timebombs”. He, along with Amanda and Mike, is responsible for the grandparenting scheme, the Trials in the Ark, the initiative that encourages brain scans for all, and the pharmacological narrative that results in the ‘quality of life pill’. Their suspension above the stage lends the trio the quality of puppeteers, determining the fates of those below. They are imbued with divine power. However, in the second act, Monroe’s diagnosis of latent AD precipitates his fall to Earth. Mimi’s angelic appearance amplifies the symbolism of the policymakers’ elevation and Monroe’s descent.
Figure 12: The government office in Really Old, Like Forty Five (photo by Robbie Jack) Despite being a robot, the anthropomorphic Mimi is clothed and made-up in clinical white, and endowed with wings and an otherworldly physicality. Noel Sharkey and Amanda Sharkey report on the potential use of robots in dementia care: Rapid advances in service robotics together with dramatic shifts in population demographics have led to the notion that technology may be the answer to our eldercare problems. Robots are being developed for feeding, washing, lifting,
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 113 carrying and mobilising the elderly as well as monitoring their health. They are also being proposed as a substitute for companionship. (2012, 282)
In light of such developments in aged care, elements of Oglesby’s story have their basis in reality, or the reality of a near future. This is an aspect of the narrative that reflects the “speculative fiction” genre. To emphasise her robot form, in the 2010 National Theatre production Mimi is embodied with absurdly exaggerated mechanised movement. Congruently, Mimi’s behaviour is sometimes odd. She is programed to mirror the person for whom she is caring, in speech and in mood, to perform synthesised empathy. Mimi’s speech could be described as echolalia, ironically a linguistic trait characteristic of dementia. Echolalia is the “automatic and compulsive repetition of words by the patient in the absence of the understanding of their meaning” (Brain quoted in Guendouzi and Müller 2006, 169). Her voice is pre-recorded and electronic sound effects accompany her movement, further saturating her nonhuman presence. Visually, Mimi is actually given a divine mien. She wears white wings, which complement her white makeup, wig, and costume. Moreover, her aforementioned “celestial” origin within the play also speaks to this interpretation. Mimi is positioned as a deus ex machina, an ancient stage technique entailing the “sudden and often unexpected appearance of a divine figure on the theatre stage, unravelling the otherwise insoluble predicaments of the humans, thus bringing the performance-narrative to a closure” (Rokem 2017, 781). The Latin term translates literally to “god from the machine” (Rokem 2017, 781) and refers to “ancient stagecraft in which an actor playing a deity would be physically lowered by a crane-like mechanism onto the stage” (Rokem 2017, 781). Mimi’s form and her descent from the raised platform support this interpretation. However, she represents a failed deus ex machina, as the predicaments of the diegesis cannot be solved. Freddie Rokem (2017) describes how Aristotle criticised the use of a divine intervention in drama, when a deity, exterior to the narrative, suddenly appeared to resolve the complication of the story. In his view, “within the action there must be nothing irrational. If the irrational cannot be excluded, it should be outside the scope of the tragedy” (Aristotle quoted in Rokem 2017, 781). In this way, narratives of dementia make for complicated subject matter, because dementia precludes catharsis in its inability to be unravelled. Nevertheless, Mimi is a comfort to Lyn. Despite Lyn’s fondness for Mimi, her family – Cathy in particular – is baffled by the connection between the two.
The delegation of robots to aged care juxtaposes Monroe’s statement about the adoptive grandparent program in his opening speech, that there is “no better substitute for childcare than
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 114 Figure 13: Mimi and Monroe in The Ark, in Really Old, Like Forty Five (photo by Robbie Jack) the individual” (Oglesby 2010, 18). This detail lends itself strongly to the generational discourse that features throughout the play. This discourse includes language that favours the younger generation over the older. It is first established with the announcement of the grandparenting scheme and continues to appear in several exchanges between characters. In a conversation with Alice and Millie, Lyn reflects on Millie’s potential as a young person (Oglesby 2010, 25):
LYN: “[…]. She is the future. Her imagination will shape what comes next. What she thinks is important. It doesn’t matter what I think. I’m old. What I think isn’t important. It won’t shape anything it will just float about a bit and if it lands, form a thin unwanted coat, like dust.” While Millie is deemed to be “the future,” Lyn’s self-description of becoming dust aligns with attitudes of ageism and demonstrates the pervasiveness of these views that older people will use such descriptions themselves. Paradoxically, people with dementia can experience infantilisation, as discussed in the literature review (Marson and Powell 2014; Andrew 2006). So, in addition to this delineation between the worthiness of the old and the young, Alice makes a different kind of demarcating comment in reference to Lyn’s dementia (Oglesby 2010, 34- 35):
ALICE: She hasn’t always been like this you know.
MILLIE: Like what?
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 115 ALICE: Like a child.
MILLIE: She’s cool. Alice’s remark both demarcates between Lyn pre-dementia and with dementia, and dialogically infantilises her behaviour. As Lyn’s dementia progresses, her relationships with her siblings and her daughter change. Meanwhile, her relationships with Millie and Dylan are enhanced, to the extent that Dylan teaches his great-aunt how to play a favourite video game of his. When Cathy tells Dylan “You’re not here. You’re always in your own little world,” he replies that “We’re all in our own little world” (Oglesby 2010, 45). This, amidst a conversation about Lyn’s dementia, destabilises the demarcation of Lyn from those without dementia. In this same scene, though, Cathy also observes that her mother, Lyn, is becoming childlike when she considers the possibility of taking on her care (Oglesby 2010, 45):
CATHY: […] I know what you’re all thinking. But I can’t. You know what she’s like. She’s not domesticated. […].I’m sorry, I’m not a child any more – she never even wanted to be a mother and I certainly don’t want I can’t be a mother not now, god, not to her not like this, I just, it’s not that I don’t care, it’s just, it’s not that I don’t love her, it’s just I’m too young to die I’d rather kill myself.
Cathy’s expression that Lyn is “not domesticated” echoes Alice’s description of Lyn as childlike – while Millie just thinks she’s “cool”. The adults’ comments paint Lyn as unwieldy and unmanageable, but the teenager finds her relatable. This is demonstrative of Lyn becoming a younger version of herself, potentially in the sense of retrograde amnesia. In her anxiety about the parent-child role reversal, Cathy equates being a carer to a kind of death, taking on the notion of social death for herself, where it usually attributed to the person with dementia (Kontos 2004; Downs, Small and Froggatt 2006). Cathy reiterates this thinking later in the play, saying “How could I possibly look after a child? I can’t even look after my own mother, can I?” (Oglesby 2010, 99). As with other performances identified in the catalogue, the generational discourse in Really Old overlaps with a theme of mothers and motherhood. Cathy’s monologue evokes Fuchs’ identification of the ‘Older Daughter’ as carer plotline, but her personal choices subvert this apparent expectation. Additionally, in a later scene, Cathy makes a more direct reference to the Motherline (Oglesby 2010, 59):
CATHY: We can’t leave you alone, Mum. That’s the point.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 116 LYN: Yes you can. We’re all alone. We’re born alone and we die alone. Beat.
CATHY: No. We’re not.
LYN: Yes we are and that’s fine by me.
CATHY: We’re born attached. We’re born attached to our mothers. As per the Motherline, these ‘lines’ of sharing experience suggest a vital link between mothers and daughters in particular, a thread of attachment across generations, rooted in language. In this exchange, Lyn resists the notion of intergenerational attachment, but Cathy makes reference to the physical attachment of child to mother at birth. To reiterate Gustafson’s observation (2005a, 3), no “paternal equivalent in everyday language similarly connects men to the care of their children [as women]”. Millie is witness to this conversation and bursts into tears; it is later revealed that she is pregnant. Her pregnancy extends the motherhood discourse, though her position in Lyn’s family contests the notion of a strictly biological Motherline. Millie’s pregnancy and the birth of her child pointedly coincide with the advancement of Lyn’s dementia, as well as Alice’s amputations in The Ark and Robbie’s physician-assisted suicide. As such, the emergence of a new generation dovetails with the winding down of the older generation. This parallel is visually made manifest in a projection of medical imagery. When Monroe’s latent AD is found on a scan, the brain scan is projected behind him, Amanda, and Mike (Oglesby 2010, 66 and 71): A magnified projection of two brains. One is ‘normal’ the other, MONROE’S, shows up some abnormalities. (The two hemispheres merge imperceptibly during the scene, and are transformed into the image of a foetus.) […, then by the end of the scene] Projection: A scan of the foetus. MILLIE, pregnant. As demonstrated in the literature review, brain scans are one of the common types of images associated with dementia, and AD more specifically. These images, as well as artistic renderings are frequent staples of television news reports and online journalism. The inclusion of this image ties in well with the societal and pharmaceutical discourses, demonstrating the medicalisation of dementia within the Western cultural perspective. In this instance, the dissolving of this emblem into a foetal scan includes this common symbol, but also contributes to a generational discourse that juxtaposes the potential of the young with the perceived lacking of people with dementia.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 117 The alternate reality or “speculated” future conjured in Really Old, Like Forty Five lays a foundation for an absurd reflection of the social and political positioning of people with dementia in Western society. Both the language and imagery demonstrate clinical markers and enfold societal, political, and pharmacological discourses. The signposting of Lyn’s dementia begins subtly, and progresses linearly according to the clinical advancement of AD. Overall, the play unfolds linearly, chronologically. The events of the play become increasingly dystopian (even though the performance ends with hope for the remaining family members), moving further from present reality. The pharmacological narrative represents a particular departure from the present-day paradigm: robot nurses, limbs amputated in the name of medical research, euthanasia pitched as ‘quality of life,’ avian hallucinations, and an older citizen wearing a mask in an attempt to bypass this system. In line with her role as a kind of failed deus ex machina, failing to solve the predicaments of the diegesis, Mimi is destroyed in the final scene of the play. Cathy chases her around the room before “killing” the robot in frustration. In a way, it is Cathy reclaiming her role as daughter, and this event resists the dystopian reality emerging in the play. Throughout the performance, the setting becomes increasingly clinical, coming to centre on the Ark, away from public and domestic places and even away from the policymakers’ place of dwelling. This arrangement of settings in the play corresponds to a clinical dementia narrative where decline is associated with institutionalisation. In these places, each group represented is in some way insulated, in their own world: the vaulted governmental space and the cosy family setting are both isolated from the public, societal environment.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 118 6.4 Inside Out Of Mind Inside Out of Mind (2013) is a play by Nottingham-based playwright and director, Tanya Myers, and produced by Meeting Ground Theatre Company. My analysis is based on both the written script and a video recording of the play. The performance is a research-based work that was scripted from 600,000 words of ethnographic field notes. The ethnographers were posted in dementia care wards and observed both the residents and the work of the healthcare assistants (HCAs). The project was intended to raise awareness and as an educational tool for healthcare assistants who work with people with dementia. As discussed, the performance was not envisioned for an audience of regular theatregoers, but instead aimed specifically towards aged- care workers. As such, the play is set in a dementia care ward. The ethnographic source material produces a strong clinical discourse in the performance, both in its language and set. Additionally, the performance layers multiple experiences of reality using music, sound effects, lighting, and movement. To reiterate Shabahangi: “People with dementia are not present in the way our consensus of reality expects them to be, but they are there in their own way” (quoted in Nicholson 2011, 59). In this way, Inside Out reveals the inner worlds being experienced by characters with dementia at parallel with the business of the ward. Overall, the dramaturgy presented is rich in language and sound, but complemented by a heavily visualised presentation. Meeting Ground describe the work’s style as “medical magical realism” (Meeting Ground Theatre Company 2013), which aptly summarises the layering of alternate realities over clinical naturalism. Significant elements of Inside Out to be discussed in this analysis include: the clinical discourse, experiences of healthcare assistants, the progression of time, the use of split scene to portray the busyness of the ward, the use of projection, sound effects and music, and the emergent metaphors.
The characters in Inside Out include an ethnographic researcher called Youth, seven patients with dementia, and 10 staff, including a doctor who appears only for a short time. The patients vary slightly in age and in their type of dementia. The central resident, Mr P (Proust), is silent for most of the performance and is present on stage in most scenes. Others include Gertie, Muriel, Nancy, George, and Anna. Anna’s visiting husband, Tom, also appears in several scenes and represents the spousal point of view. The staff are a mixture of HCAs and registered general nurses (RGNs).
The HCAs and RGNs frequently use clinical terms throughout, pertaining to symptoms, behaviour, and medication. In one instance, RGN Grace describes Mr P’s “post frame behaviour” and discusses the provision of olanzapine and diazepam (Myers 2017, 19).
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 119 Additionally, there are references to “person centred care,” an approach influenced by Kitwood’s work on valuing the personhood of people with dementia (see Kitwood 1997), and “life storybooks”. A life storybook, or alternatively life book or life-story, is explained in the introduction to the script as a “personal history book to help staff reference patients past & interest” (Myers 2017, 3). The books are related to person-centred care because they are designed to educate or remind the care staff about the likes, dislikes, and hobbies of the person with dementia and essentially inform their care. The staff also make colloquial references to behaviours associated with dementia. HCA Keith remarks that Magda, a patient, is “Up with the owl! Down with the lark!” (Myers 2017, 21). This refers to diurnal rhythm disturbances, or day-night reversal in lay terms (Molloy and Lubinski 1991; Logsdon, Teri and McCurry 2006). Lastly, some clinical markers are evident in the language and behaviour of the residents on the ward. For example, Gertie demonstrates repetitive verbal behaviours, namely, echolalia. (Myers 2017, 40):
RGN PATRICIA: Oh Gertie. What a mess.
GERTIE: What a mess
RGN PATRICIA: Come on - Now let’s get you up and sorted. She places mirror in Gertie’s locker
GERTIE: What a mess! What a mess. Echolalia is the meaningless repetition of another person’s spoken words (Guendouzi and Müller 2006). Gertie’s first repetition of Patricia’s phrase is not immediately conspicuous as a clinical sign, but in her next line, the repetition is particularly out of place and, therefore, flags her dementia. Gertie exhibits this mirroring behaviour in her language throughout the play. Not only does the language of the performance contribute a clinical discourse, but the setting and action on stage complement this discourse.
The staff’s perpetual action about the stage occupies the ward. They routinely use hand sanitiser, intermittently don plastic aprons and gloves, carry medical charts, dispense medication from a hatch upstage, wheel the residents around in their chairs, and serve tea and medication from a trolley. The physical set is designed to transform to indicate different rooms in the ward, for example, common areas, resident rooms, and a staff office (see photos and video available at http://www.meetinggroundtheatrecompany.co.uk/inside-out-of-mind-2015 for reference). The lockers that constitute the room at stage left can become a bedroom when a bed is pulled out from the wall. The whiteboard at stage right can become a window with
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 120 projection or become a backlit office window, through which scenes between staff take place in silhouette. These transitions and silhouetted scenes maintain the busyness of the ward, as does the action of the staff and residents. The transformation of the stage throughout the work also speaks to the transitory nature of the care setting. Christine Milligan’s recognition of the transient connections made in institutionalised care is worth restating: Within contemporary Dementia Care Units, residents often pass through a series of wings (or wards) as their condition deteriorates over time. Given the highly individualized experience of dementia, relationships formed with both staff and other residents within a wing can be relatively short-lived. (Milligan 2003, 466). As such, institutional settings construct ‘home’ in a particular way. They both private and public, both home and not home.
Figure 14: The set of Inside Out of Mind (photo by Alan Fletcher, cropped) The place in which a performance is set is significant. It is noted above that theatre about dementia tends to be set in the family home or an institutional care setting. In contrast, though, Autobiographer is placeless and Really Old traverses several settings, one of which is a care facility. It is worth repeating Blunt and Dowling (2006) who write about home and the unhomeliness of care facilities. They assert that in long-term care institutions “[h]ome becomes much more public, a space entered and sometimes controlled by health professionals, as they care for the residents’ needs every day” (Blunt and Dowling 2006, 100). These settings “are both homely and unhomely [and] riven with feelings of belonging and attachment, alienation and detachment” (Blunt and Dowling 2006, 100). These places are relatively anonymous and can be meaningless to those who live in them (Augé cited in Milligan 2003, 466) and the transience of their occupancy compounds this notion of anonymity. I suggest that an institutional care setting is a place caught between the domestic and the public. Domestic
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 121 activities take place there, but privacy is attenuated. In this way, the place takes on a communal quality.
The behaviour and routines of the care staff in the play establish a sense of community on the ward. The ward is often a very playful place, with practical joking and impromptu singing and dancing. Echoing Milligan’s (2003, 466) comments on the transience of care institutions, RGN Grace at one time describes the ward community as “one big transient dysfunctional family!” (Myers 2017, 33). The joking and dancing complement the regular commotion that happens on the ward. During a visit from Dr Dido, he remarks: “My, it’s Bedlam in here isn’t it! […] One can’t hear oneself think!” (Myers 2017, 55), making reference to the chaos of the ward but also alluding to London’s Bethlem Royal Hospital, home to the mentally ill from the 15th century. In such instances, sound effects and voiceover add to the liveliness of the stage action. Intermittently, the unseen Magda is heard yelling from offstage in Greek. Often an alarm triggers her shouts and the coinciding sound produces an experience of anarchy. When chaos does occur on the ward, the staff calls for tea to be made. In this way, tea is established as a communal coping mechanism as it is served intermittently throughout the show, often following an alarm or an incident on the ward. On two occasions, RGN Patricia announces “Tea’s what we need” (Myers 2017, 24 and 46). These moments acknowledge the notion of caregiver burden noted in the Literature Review. Yet, the familial experience is recognised as being distinct from the work done on the ward. Patricia tells Youth, the ethnographer, about a colleague who is currently “‘home caring’ her own mother […]. Hands up to her. It’s one thing wiping someone’s backside in here, but your own mother. Ooh, I don’t think so, do you?” (Myers 2017, 23). This comment suggests that the RGNs and HCAs compartmentalise the work they do and that caring for someone on the ward is different from caring for a family member. This brief exchange is also an example of the frank conversations that the staff have about dementia, caring, and death.
Inside Out affords the audience witness to the staff’s experiences of dementia, care and death that are presented unambiguously in the play. RGN Grace describes to the audience in a moment of direct address: I tink what does dis place look likes to an outsider, to a visitor, […] you’ve got people crawling on the floor, and you’ve got someone squatting in the corner doing a wee, you’ve got somebody trying to bash somebody with dis or dat and someone is exposing themselves … I know those things aren’t all happening at once, but perhaps they will get to see some of dose tings and they must be…horrified […] It’s normal to me. You see. Cos
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 122 we’s institutionalized. We have to switch off. We’d go mad, if we dint. (Myers 2017, 33) Grace considers aloud the everyday occurrence of taboo behaviours and their normalcy for the care staff. Her expression that the staff are “institutionalised” and at risk of “going mad” likens the carers to perceptions of the cared for.
A different kind of direct address is employed later in the performance when the performers can break character to speak to the audience: “each actor can choose whether or not they wish to deliver a short personal experience or share facts drawn from current dementia- research or nothing at all” (Myers 2017, 63). This scene reflects the research-based origins of the script and appeals to the intended audience of care workers. Despite this irruption of the real, the ward stays busy behind each actor as they step forward; the layering of alternate realities is maintained. The sound of a heart rate monitor accompanies this sequence, after which the “heartbeat monitor changes to one constant beep” (Myers 2017, 64), signifying a death on the ward. Keith, Grace, and Youth are present to carry out a post-death routine. Keith is visibly upset by the death and communicates this when he informs Youth of the event: (upset) Nancy’s passed on ... or whatever other euphemism you want to hit on; (he kicks the bucket) Hah, that’s a good one! Kicked the bucket! (Struggles to put on blue plastic gloves) We’re all so bloody timid aren’t we? Paddling in ‘palliative’ care ... They call it ‘pathway to the end’ ... Like its primulas and dahlias! She was never going to go anywhere else was she? (Myers 2017, 64- 65) Like Grace’s monologue above, Keith cuts through the taboo and expresses his distaste for the euphemistic language pertaining to care, the aversion to talk frankly about the experiences therein. Later in the scene, Keith also tells Youth “You know what they call this place? […] The ward with no name!” (Myers 2017, 65). The sidestepping speaks to the impulse to allegorise dementia and dementia. Youth asks Keith “How do you cope with...?” to which he replies, “We don’t ‘do’ coping here!” (Myers 2017, 65). The earlier compartmentalisation and ‘coping’ with tea and dancing have dissolved. Grace deals with the death in her own way, with a routine. She opens the window to “let the spirits go out” (Myers 2017, 67) and talks to the deceased and tells them everything she does, washing their body and combing their hair. Even in death, Grace’s actions seek to humanise her patients. This scene not only reflects the ethnographic material and the experiences of the intended audience, but also grants access to lay audience members to witness a normally private routine. In no other work analysed in this study are the experiences of healthcare workers in such sharp focus, and in no other analysed work is death staged so unambiguously.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 123 As noted, long-term care institutions are spaces “sometimes controlled by health professionals, as they care for the residents’ needs” (Blunt and Dowling 2006, 100). This suggests that the residents of care facilities have very little agency and are at risk of being infantilised. The staff in Inside Out do not use a “patronizing type of speech” as Marson and Powell (2014, 144) advise against. Nevertheless, a resident on the ward, Gertie, carries a doll with her at all times during the performance. As noted, the use of dolls in dementia care is a point of contention in the literature on infantilisation (Andrew 2006). In the play, Keith makes a comment that contests infantilisation:
(whispered) they’re not children ... they’ve had lives. These guys fought wars, brought up kids, worked, and contributed all their lives. They deserve the best don’t they? Everyone’s someone’s gran or granddad? Aren’t they? (Myers 2017, 68)
With this statement, Keith challenges the infantilisation of people with dementia and ennobles them by describing the lives they have led. He imbues these events with value that transcends their dementia. He also alludes to a generational discourse, placing worth on raising children and grandchildren. In other works, a generational discourse may be a device for demarcation (typically juxtaposing old and young). The physical absence of children and grandchildren from the stage is a notable aspect of this work.
Demarcation can 1) position people with dementia at odds with those without, or 2) delineate between the person before and since dementia. Within the diegesis, the residents and care staff are visually differentiated from each other with costume; the latter group wears uniforms. However, Inside Out has a noteworthy aspect to its staging that offsets this separation. The Meeting Ground productions in 2013 and 2015 featured many actors in more than one role: the script suggests a doubling system where actors play both a resident of the ward and a carer. This metatheatrical element destabilises the demarcation between resident and carer and the power dynamic between carers and residents. In some instances, the dialogue alludes to demarcation, both between the groups, but also in relation to the individual with dementia. Some lines in the play also resist these types of delineation. When Tom visits the ward to see his wife, his conversations with staff include instances of the second type of demarcation. Describing his wife, Tom says “Anna loves ... loved history” (Myers 2017, 15), making a delineation between her former self and current self, before and since dementia. However, later in this scene, Tom corrects HCA Brenda (Myers 2017, 16):
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 124 HCA BRENDA: You can tell she’s been a lovely lady.
TOM: Is. Is a lovely lady. Tom offers Anna a chair She sits gracefully.
HCA BRENDA: Yes. Of course. Is. Is a lovely lady.
Even though Anna’s love of history is expressed as being in the past, her husband maintains at least that she is still “lovely”. Tom’s character is vessel for the spousal perspective, which experiences a shift when Anna does not recognise him and later when she develops a romance with George, another resident.
While Tom’s experience demonstrates a familial (or, more specifically, a spousal) perspective, HCA Keith demonstrates an interpretation of a societal and political discourse, from within the care system (Myers 2017, 66):
HCA KEITH: don’t you just hate all this shitty politician crap about patients being clients? They haven’t ‘chosen’ to come here, have they? […] We don’t know where else to put ’em. Families can’t cope. There’s no strategy. What would the likes of her ‘do’ without the likes of us ‘do-ing’? Eh? The bum wipers, the Cinderella Service! We just get so much shit in this job – not so cute arse end of the Health Service! […]
Again, Keith’s frustration with the euphemistic language is clear. Additionally, he reflects on the unpreparedness of the health service to deliver care to the ageing population effectively. The actual need for long-term strategies illustrated in Inside Out contrasts with the overzealous strategising imagined in Really Old. However, in contrast to the layering of dementia discourses in Really Old, Inside Out instead layers different experiences of reality within an institutionalised care setting.
Inside Out of Mind is notable for the strong clinical discourse demonstrated through both its language and visual dramaturgy. Various theatre technologies are superimposed over the naturalistic action of the work to produce layered experiences of reality. Layering also occurs within the clinical action of the performance. The flexible elements of the set mean that action
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 125 can take place in a bedroom and the common area simultaneously. Split scenes are also created using the projection of silhouettes and voiceover during staff meetings in the office while the action of the ward continues onstage. These split scenes and offstage dialogue are a way to maintain a layered dramaturgy. This layering evokes the liveliness of ward, resourcefully utilises the extensive field notes that Myers was given, and lays a dramaturgical foundation for the residents’ alternate experiences of reality. These alternate experiences of reality stage reminiscence at parallel with present reality. Inside Out stages the interruption of the consensus of reality with projection, sound, and action. The most striking element that disrupts the realism of the performance is a digital projection that is coordinated with the wallpaper and appears in blue and green (Figure 15). The projected Figure 15: Mr P in the light of the digital projection in Inside Out of Mind (photo by Alan Fletcher) pattern evokes images of trees and branches as well as neurological circuitry. This parallels the popular imagery of trees and leaves in images analogising dementia. As demonstraed in the second literature review, pictures of silhouetted human heads as trees shedding leaves are common illustrative interpretations of dementia. The synaptic imagery also contributes to the clinical layer of the work.
Inside Out, for the most part, follows a day-in-the-life structure, but actually advances episodically by days, weeks, and months, while the chronological progression of a 24-hour day remains intact. The date projected onto the whiteboard and the illuminated digital clock denote this structure. However, in one scene, time is distorted, indicated by “slow motion” action and the sound effect of clock strikes that repeat slowly to render time “indeterminate” (Myers 2017, 57). In this scene, Mr P moves in real time, demonstrating that his experience of reality is being staged in this moment. In this sequence, he is positioned as an anachronism, existing out of time.
Mr P’s role in the performance is significant. He is one of the few characters whose actor does not double with another character. He is rarely absent from the stage. Mr P is silent for the entirety of the show, bar the opening 20 minutes and briefly at the end. If not for the opening
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 126 sequence, it may be presumed that he has experienced brain death to too great a degree (shed too many leaves) and is an empty vessel, the “living dead”. The playwright describes the opening scene as the most abstract (Myers in Myers and Schneider 2017); it establishes Mr P’s inner world. It is only in the following scene, when a nurse describes him as “our silent soul” (Myers 2017, 16) that the audience learns that what they witnessed was not a consensus of reality, but Mr P’s own world. For the performance, the actor playing Mr P is equipped with a headset microphone so that his breathing and humming may always be heard among the other action of the play. His presence is deliberately marked. Additionally, with the knowledge of his rich inner world, the audience is less likely to disregard his presence onstage as mindless wandering. In the opening, Mr P is heard speaking English with French phrases (Myers 2017, 7):
Mr P: A Liberté! Here we are men assembled. (Whispered) Never lose sight of the person. No emotional displays. No irrational thinking. […] These lines are delivered through voiceover. So it is unclear to the audience where or when Mr P is. His remarks are connected to a different time. As the staff later discuss, Mr P was part of La Résistance, during which his fiancée was killed. The war is a recurrent memory of Mr P’s that intrudes on the action of the ward on several occasions. His perceptible connection to another time exhibits retrograde amnesia. His past military experience surfaces again later in the performance as he walks silently with an umbrella: Mr. P rises; white face, umbrella on shoulder, Primed for military patrol. Mr P marches downstage unsteadily. Youth moves George’s Bed - This action triggers a noise. As Youth turns to face him. In reflex- Mr. P aims umbrella at her as gun. Youth freezes. Sound: Loud crash of Thunder: Lightening. (Myers 2017, 45) He projects his own reality onto the consensus of reality and the umbrella becomes a weapon. This example also demonstrates how others – in this case Youth – are cast in the layered reality. Despite his amnesia and appearance of existing out of time and place, Mr P’s language in this opening section also makes references to his dementia that demonstrate self-awareness. He makes mention of “a neuron-to-neuron nightmare” (Myers 2017, 7) and says “They’re after my brain. Attention! Amyloid – beta 42” (Myers 2017, 10). Mr P’s understanding of amyloid- beta, a protein associated with AD, can be attributed to his past career as a neurologist. A rich soundscape supplements the voiceover.
Sound is used throughout Inside Out to accommodate alternate experiences of reality. The opening soundscape, in particular, establishes a foundation for these layered realities:
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 127 Sound score fills theatre from all directions: Subliminal crackles of fire, young woman sings a repeated refrain from Childhood Song ‘Allouette’, nightingale song, occasional refrains from Tchaikovsky – Swan Lake, Anna’s song – ‘It’s alright with me’: Mixed with whisperings, fluttering of wings, a squeaky wheel – finally but not least, notes hummed by Mr P. (the Allouette motif) He hums same notes throughout the play. (Myers 2017, 6). The mix of sounds, particularly those that are not incidental to the ward, evokes a non- naturalistic environment. The performance features a detailed and perpetual soundscape throughout. In addition to Mr P’s ceaseless breathing and humming, there are both incidental, everyday sounds (for example, clock chimes and alarms) and added sounds (for example, samples of music, birdsong and fluttering wings). The sounds of wings and birdsong are part of a broader flight metaphor that develops as the work goes on, as discussed below. The use of sound in the opening of the performance also introduces several motifs that feature throughout the work: Alouette, Swan Lake and Cole Porter’s It’s Alright with Me. Each motif is associated to a particular character with dementia – Mr P, Muriel, and Anna, respectively – and is connected to a specific memory for each of them. Another resident, George, is reminded of I’ll be Seeing You (Fain and Kahal 1938). The memory is prompted by the taste of a biscuit (Myers 2017, 62): George chooses his favourite biscuit, takes a bite. All is calm. George looks up. Taste takes effect. Memory.
GEORGE: Well I never. Ginger creams. We hear his Music: “I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places” In the linear and chronological structure, Mr P and the other residents risk being positioned as anachronistic. However, the dramaturgy accommodates their recollections affording them credence.
The audience members are invited to witness the layered experiences of reality from the moment they enter the theatre. The script instructs that the audience should enter the auditorium in a non-typical way, ideally via the stage. The nurses accompany this action by “attending to the audience and characters on stage” (Myers 2017, 6) as though they were patients or residents of the ward. This action – similar to the actors’ doubling in the performance – destabilises the demarcation between people with and without dementia. It also immerses them in a non- naturalistic dramaturgy before they even take their seat. The following opening scenes facilitate several alternate experiences that layer over the consensus of reality. Muriel is seen dancing Swan Lake wearing a swan half-mask. Gertie, too, is present and “equally preoccupied” (Myers
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 128 2017, 6). However, Mr P is the focus. His voiceover continues during this time as the business of stage begins to enact the routine of the ward: the nurses sanitise their hands, carry medical charts and a new patient arrives. Laid over this visual landscape, his voiceover becomes increasingly separate from the action. Additionally, the brief snatches of Swan Lake and other samples continue to disrupt the consensus of reality. Mr P is eventually seen for the first time in 1940’s suit, carrying a pillowcase and covered in feathers.
The sight of the feathers is one of the first demonstrations of the flight metaphor that features throughout the work. Both sound and imagery embody this metaphor. The auditory manifestations include: the sound of flapping, Swan Lake, Alouette (alouette being the French word for lark), and towards the end of the work the sound of bird wings that transforms into Ella Fitzgerald’s Skylark. The theme is displayed visually by the birds on the wallpaper of the ward and the image of branches in the digital projection. Additionally, in the abstract opening scenes, Anna is reading her Life Storybook when the following takes place (Myers 2017, 9):
A draught catches pages of Anna’s book. […] Muriel and Gertie books flutter in their hands. The women rise, bravely facing the raging storm. Sound: Bird cries out in fierce complaint. Swan Lake refrain soars. Anna’s book lifts into the air, pages fluttering. Muriel exits dancing, book flutters like a fan. […] Behind a hospital screen; a book hovers like a butterfly, just beyond Mr P’s reach; he catches it; gently strokes the pages, holds it close to his heart. Flicker of recollection. Sound; storm calms Then, when a member of staff collapses a hospital screen on the stage, the projected forest disappears, and the flapping stops abruptly. Mr. P’s interaction with the projection on the wall is significant. The script denotes that he has a “special patch” (Myers 2017) where a bird appears on both the wallpaper and in the digital projection. Sometimes the “illuminated bird flickers faintly” (Myers 2017, 36). Later in the performance more birds have become visible on the wall but “one bird [is] brighter than [the]
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 129 others – perched in Mr P’s special patch of wallpaper” (Myers 2017, 57). The flight metaphor suggests a need to escape, to be free and/or independent.
The flight metaphor develops a clearer correspondence to freedom during the play. When Keith finds Mr P in the corridor, supposedly on his way out of the ward, Keith intercepts him, saying “Flown the coop have we matie?” (Myers 2017, 31). ‘To fly the coop’ was once used most commonly as slang meaning to escape prison or jail. His turn of phrase compares the ward to prison, though perhaps unwittingly. Towards the end of the performance, Mr P does leave the ward. As he does, there is the sound of bird flight and the projected birds, bar one, take off across wallpaper. However, eventually Mr P returns of his own volition with a bouquet of flowers that he offers to Youth. His return resists the idea that the ward is a place from which to escape, implying that the flight metaphor instead represents a level of independence. In this event, the central connotation of the play is reiterated: the residents’ speech and behaviour – while it may appear incongruous – is compatible with their sense of reality, their inner world.
Figure 16: Anna flapping a book like a bird in Inside Out of Mind (photo by Alan Fletcher) Throughout, Inside Out stages a clinical environment and narrative, but effectively layers alternate points of view over the consensus of reality. Its focus on the experiences of professional care workers is divergent from the strong tendency to stage family-centric dementia narratives. The stage set as a hospital ward aligns with this point of view and the events of the play complement this setting with busy action throughout. Additionally, the
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 130 candid perspectives of healthcare workers are given credence, including their thoughts on the residents and on the healthcare system. The dialogue also lends the play a more esoteric clinical discourse than other identified works. Despite this clinical setting, metaphors do emerge; birdsong, flight, and trees are seen and heard throughout. The pervasive soundscape accommodates these symbols, as well as the residents’ alternate experiences of reality. As opposed to showing the characters with dementia as living out of time and place, dramaturgical references to their inner worlds continually punctuate the consensus of reality.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 131 6.5 Discussion The key findings emerging from the three works analysed in this chapter are related to the clinical discourse of dementia, signposting or demarcating dementia, layered perspectives or experiences of reality, the generational discourse, the use of sound to evoke and disrupt place, symbolism, linearity, and endings.
A clinical discourse of dementia is always part of a broader narrative, and not the main focus of the work. It tends to function as a way to signpost dementia with easily recognisable markers of cognitive decline. Unusually, Inside Out of Mind is founded on a clinical discourse, both in terms of its source material and in performance. However, alternate experiences of reality are layered over this foundation. The play features both clinical markers, that signpost dementia in the residents of the ward, and clinical descriptions used by the nurses and healthcare assistants. Despite this saturation, the clinical narrative of dementia is not the focus of the performance. Other experiences of reality intrude upon this consensus of reality, achieved dramaturgically with lighting, sound and movement. Clinical markers are also decentralised in Really Old, Like Forty Five. While aphasic features punctuate Lyn’s speech, they merely signpost the progress of her dementia among the other layers of the broader narrative. Really Old and Inside Out both integrate clinical language of dementia. Additionally, Inside Out also integrates clinical language about dementia, while Really Old stages a pharmacological narrative. While the specific clinical markers present in these two performances do not feature in Autobiographer, Wilson’s work does demonstrate memory loss in its structure based around forgetting and nonlinear shifts. Flora’s dementia is more strongly signposted by the questions she asks of the audience, the gaps in her autobiography. The lack of recognisably dementia-affected speech is attributed to the situation of the performance in Flora’s inner world.
It is critical to examine the construction of the diegesis in performances about dementia. The staging of Flora’s inner world, free from a naturalistic reality means that Flora’s reality – albeit pluralised and layered – is the undisputed consensus of reality. Inside Out is composed of a naturalistic consensus of reality, but the dramaturgy also facilitates alternate experiences that may not align with this consensus. By employing a number of theatre tools and technologies, alternate experiences including live reminiscence are presented at level with the naturalistic action of the ward. Typically, it is usually a person with dementia who is portrayed as living in their own world, but in Really Old, a conversation between Cathy and Dylan attributes this behaviour differently: she tells him he is always in his own world and he replies that “We’re all in our own little world”. Dramaturgically, Really Old does not deviate from a consensus of
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 132 reality, but weaves together various perspectives of dementia including the societal and governmental. These broader dementia narratives are less common among performances of dementia, which tend to focus on the personal and familial. The societal outlook is established early on with Monroe’s references to the burden of the ageing population and rising rates of dementia. The events of the play continue to emphasise the notion of social contribution. This kind of exterior point of view is absent from the internal world of Autobiographer. By contrast, Inside Out contains reflections on the public perception of people with dementia. Both Grace and Keith describe the impression that people outside may have of those with the condition, including shock and infantilisation.
Characters with dementia are demarcated from those without. This is achieved in various ways throughout the selected works in the study. In the simplest instances, affectations of language and behaviour mark a person’s dementia. Other times demarcation is realised using performance modes, as discussed in Chapter 7. In Inside Out, costumes also distinguish between the staff and residents. Yet the suggestion in the script that the actors take on more than one role subtly undercuts this distinction. However, some dialogue delineates a person before and since their dementia. In this case, it is Anna who is referred to as both separate from and the same as her pre-dementia self. In Autobiographer Flora has all the agency, no one else present to dialogically demarcate her. Even if the different ages represent points of demarcation, their co-presence onstage destabilises the notion of having lost a former self. The different ages of Flora refer to significant life events in different ways: children behind and in front of her. However, the concurrent existence of her selves and the fluidity of their dialogue with one another smooths the lines of demarcation and instead promotes a plurality of self and does not erase any of the constituent pieces. Really Old demarcates Lyn in her affected language. Additionally, her sister refers to her recent behaviour as childlike, making a distinction from her pre-dementia self. More broadly, older citizens sent to the Ark are segregated from the rest of society. The play features additional spatial demarcation: those in charge of the policy and in some control over the pharmacological narrative yet are above the rest of the stage and exist outside of public space, the domestic environment and the Ark. That is, until Monroe makes his descent into the facility. Mimi also crosses this threshold.
The events that unfold in Really Old are strongly connected to a generational discourse. The theme is instigated early on in the play with the announcement of the grandparenting scheme. Older people are charged with the responsibility of contributing to this younger generation and the rejection of this work leads people to the Ark. In this speculated future, the limited options
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 133 offered to older people speak to a broader attitude of ageism founded on Western industrialism (as noted in the Literature Review). A comparison is made between the old and the young in several instances: visually, when the scan of an Alzheimer’s-affected brain develops into an ultrasound image of a foetus, and dialogically, when Lyn compares herself to dust and designates Millie as the future. These examples juxtapose the potentiality of youth with the deterioration of advancing age, demonstrating that the generational discourse may act as a vehicle for demarcation.
The generational discourse can be found in most performances about dementia, often linked to caring, legacy, and demarcation. This would indicate that dementia narratives do not often happen in isolation from other people, but that most often these others are family members, showing how dementia appears to be anchored to the domestic space, if not an institutional care environment. While in Autobiographer Flora does exist in isolation from familial others, some of her recollections and questions are preoccupied with her family and her daughter in particular. She expresses a more profound connection to the Motherline than other performances under analysis. Cathy represents a subversion of the Older Daughter “standard dementia plot” that Fuchs (2017a) has observed; she makes reference to the assumed role of the daughter as carer, but resists the idea. Inside Out’s institutional care setting does not see any adult children or grandchildren in the course of the play, an absence that is unusual in the staging of dementia narratives.
As noted in the contextual review, settings are pertinent to this study. Place is a determinant of the kind of stories that are staged, the relationships they feature and the discourses that emerge. Really Old stages different discourses of dementia in its different settings: the familial perspective is staged in the family home and in the Ark, the governmental and pharmacological discussions take place on the raised platform, and the pharmacological narrative plays out in the Ark. The increasingly frequent use of the Ark setting embodies the increasing medicalisation of dementia as it progresses. In the other two works analysed in this chapter, sound is used to evoke and disrupt place. Inside Out has a perpetual and layered soundscape. The work includes sound effects that are native to the setting of the ward and others that exist beyond it, such as the birdsong and snatches of music. The music used – unlike the ambient tracks in Autobiographer – is tied to nostalgia. For example, Muriel’s Swan Lake, George’s I’ll Be Seeing You and Mr P’s Allouette each evoke memories for their respective resident. These motifs allude to other places beyond the ward in which the reminiscing character may briefly exist simultaneously. Autobiographer is placeless in both dramaturgy and diegesis, unanchored
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 134 to any particular setting. The soundscape does sometime allude to certain places, but its mixing of samples disallows any certainty of place. As sound-based theatre, it uses recorded voice, sound effects and music to accompany Flora’s speech and provide a consistency underneath Flora’s plurality.
In Autobiographer, a chronological arrangement is foregone in order to depict Flora at different times in her life, sometimes decades apart. Despite oblique references to times and events, there is no linear arrangement. Flora’s history is picked apart and restitched, making linearity and chronology redundant. The timeless and placeless setting of the work accommodates this structure. Contrastingly, Inside Out is based around a chronologically linear structure – even if episodic in nature – which may have positioned the residents of the ward as anachronistic. Yet, their experiences of reality layered over the spatial and temporal setting position their recollections dramaturgically at level with this diegesis. In this way, their experience of reality interrupts the temporal logic of the work and subverts the notion of a person with dementia as absent. This shows that even works arranged linearly can accommodate alternate experiences of reality. Really Old is more traditionally dramatic in its treatment of time: the events of the play progress chronologically.
While it is the most traditionally dramatic of the selected works, Really Old contains a number of symbols and metaphors. The Ark is allusive of biblical catastrophe and divine intervention. More specifically, the parable of Noah and the flood correlates with the tsunami analogy used to describe dementia as a global natural disaster. The robotic carer Mimi – while representing technology that is currently in development – may provoke notions of institutionalised care as an automated and inhuman solution. Yet, her angelic appearance and arrival to the Ark from above implies a deus ex machina (god from the machine). Even Monroe’s brain scan has symbolic significance. Although the image has literal meaning, this imagery of the brain is a common emblem of dementia in the Western cultural construction; it speaks to roots in the medical narrative of dementia and a symbol of decline. Moreover, as the brain scan becomes an ultrasound image of a foetus, the generational discourse is visually symbolised. A direct comparison is drawn between the two images, one that threatens decline and evokes the moribund, and another that represents a beginning and the potential of new life.
The symbolism is Autobiographer is less pointed. The lighting throughout corresponds to Flora’s fluency and flickers like synapses in the brain. It reiterates the idea that the performance is set in her inner world. A metaphor that emerges in the language of the play is the Motherline.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 135 Flora talks about the pattern her mother gave her, which she herself restitched and presumably hoped to hand onto her own daughter. This symbolic language relates to the particularity of the mother-daughter relationship (Blackford 1998; Valentich and Foote 1998; Lowinsky 2000) and is, in a way, associated with older daughter “standard dementia plot” (Fuchs 2017a).
Inside Out features birds, flight, trees, leaves and feathers as an interconnected system of motifs throughout the performance. These motifs are present in the nostalgic music (Swan Lake and Alouette), sound samples of wings and birdsong, and references to flying the coop. Most conspicuously, the digital projection highlights the wallpaper and brings the tree imagery to life, populating the design with birds. The arboreal pattern relates to common imagery reflected in pictures that metaphorically represent dementia, specifically the tree-losing-leaves theme. The flight motif has connotations of freedom or greater independence for the residents.
Each of the plays discussed in this chapter end without tragedising the dementia narrative and without erasing or shifting focus from the character with dementia. Despite the fragmentation that leads towards its conclusion, Autobiographer ends on Flora’s affirmation, as each of her layered selves asserts their existence and significance. Inside Out finishes centralised on Mr P’s experience of reality. In this way, Mr P’s perspective bookends the performance and reminds the audience of his inner world that is experienced concurrently with the action of the ward. This comes after he has returned to the ward with flowers; he has gained freedom but the performance resists characterising the ward as a place of captivity. Similarly, Really Old does not conclude in a mournful way. The play, of course, does not solve the dementia, and its generational discourse is reiterated but, again, the person with dementia is still central to the narrative. While there is emphasis on the new baby, which has appeared as if in replacement of Robbie, the focus is not shifted away from the person with dementia in order to facilitate a resolution for the family members who remain (as observed in several works discussed in Chapter 7).
6.6 Conclusion The above chapter examined Autobiographer, Really Old, Like Forty Five and Inside Out of Mind, with a focus on the staging of layered perspectives of dementia and alternate experiences of realities. These alternate experiences may be presented as inner worlds as in Mr P in Inside Out or the complete diegesis of Autobiographer. The analysis of Really Old emphasises its inclusion of different dementia discourses. With regards to the reading guide laid out in the contextual review, the previous chapter assayed the generational discourse, representations of
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 136 place, the consensus of reality, linearity, sound-based work, and music to communicate nostalgia. Theatre’s ability to layer media (including speech and the physical body) in a live context without them automatically assuming one single consensus of reality – in the way that film may – affords multiple experiences of reality, serving to preserve selfhood. However, the reoccurrence of the generational discourse – and its echoes of the constructions of dementia in other artefacts of Western culture – should be noted, as should the places of home and institutional care as assumed sites of dementia stories. However, several works featured in this thesis join Autobiographer in resisting this positioning of the condition in a particular setting; and I posit that theatre can realise placelessness better than a medium like film, eluding expectations for realism and spatial context. While visual dramaturgy is pertinent to these works, this chapter primarily investigated language and dialogue in the performances and the familial, clinical and societal perspectives represented therein. Other works selected for analysis may represent a greater departure from spoken drama and instead, or in accompaniment, feature mime, physical or dance theatre and puppetry forms, as well as shadow and projection technologies, as seen in the following chapter.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 137 7. Active and Passive Embodiment
7.1 Introduction This chapter discusses selected works, primarily in relation to the embodiment – both active and passive – of characters with dementia, clinical dementia emblems, and aspects of dementia narratives including relationships. Embodiment here refers to the form in which characters with dementia are presented, particularly in relation to characters without dementia. This may be passive, as when puppets perform in the co-presence of live actors, or more active, using movement or dance. The works in focus are: Sundowner (2011), 1 Beach Road (2011), D- Generation: An Exaltation of Larks (2013), and It’s Dark Outside (2012). In comparison to the works in Chapter 6, these works feature a more visually and physically driven dramaturgy. Both Sundowner, 1 Beach Road and D-Generation combine physical performance forms with spoken language. Whereas It’s Dark Outside contains no speech and instead comprises a comprehensive soundscape that complements the rich visual scape.
As discussed in the contextual review, language is a significant aspect of performance because of its association with power. It is a particularly pertinent aspect for analysis in the case of dementia narratives where speech may demonstrate decline through clinical markers. In the performances examined here, embodied elements may produce meaning alongside, or in lieu of, spoken language. The visual and physical features of the performances – as they demonstrate embodiment – that are discussed include: the setting of the work (place); the construction of day and night; the presentational form of the characters with dementia and their movement, particularly in relation to characters without dementia; the representation of memories; and the construction of endings of performances. Additionally, clinical signposts of dementia are sometimes embodied – in contrast to the largely linguistic indications described in Chapter 6.
The setting of dementia performance is important as it creates the foundation for the positioning of dementia. As discussed in the contextual review, settings can be domestic, public, or placeless. As established in this study, family homes and nursing homes are common locations for staging dementia, reflecting the social anxiety that families can experience. The family home, in particular, represents the familiar and private, familial ripple of dementia, as the management of dementia is often consigned to immediate family. A generational discourse is present in both Sundowner and It’s Dark Outside. However, 1 Beach Road and D-Generation
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 138 resist the trend; the latter is set in a care home and adult children and the like are absent. Nursing homes – also referred to as care facilities, homes, and institutions – are on the limen between the domestic and the public. They are private in relation to the outside world, but also public because of the daily interaction among residents and between residents and care staff. With regards to this chapter, 1 Beach Road blurs a domestic interior with an outside environment, Sundowner is set at home, and D-Generation takes place in a long-term care facility. Yet, It’s Dark Outside presents a departure from a recognisable domestic space, instead taking place outside. Setting is also critical for the marking of night, day, or a space without time. As discussed in the literature review, dementia of the Alzheimer’s type, in particular, generally affect visuospatial and perceptual cognition (de Rover et al. 2008). As it manifests, people with dementia begin to struggle to grasp place and chronological time (Robinson 2009). Time, more specifically, becomes blurred across bygone years and the present (Robinson 2009, 160). This aspect of the dementia pathology is reflected in works set in a perpetual night – It’s Dark Outside and Sundowner. In several performances here, clinical emblems are used to signal dementia and its characteristic decline. These signs include linguistic demonstrations and exhibitions of memory loss, as well as the more theatrical staging of memories intruding on the consensus of reality.
In addition to clinical signposting, the theatrical form the characters with dementia take is significant. As discussed in the contextual review, dance theatre, physical theatre, masked performance, and puppetry are presentational forms of interest in this study for representing subjects and experiences of dementia. As such, this chapter considers dance and physicality in Sundowner and 1 Beach Road, puppetry in D-Generation and It’s Dark Outside, and the use of projection, shadow, and silhouette in all four productions. As demonstrated below, these performance technologies have a role to play in the active and passive embodiment of characters with dementia and the condition itself. Puppets – or, to use Blumenthal’s (1997) term, ‘created actors’ – used to represent people with dementia can be problematic because of their inherent object status. I argue that it is the co-presence of the puppet and puppeteer (Piris 2014) that demarcates the person with dementia from those without, as it results in a physically manifest positioning of the person with dementia as a passive subject. By contrast, the dance theatre work Sundowner affords the active embodiment of all characters, as well as the embodiment of memories that interrupt a consensus of reality.
Some performances represent memories through flashbacks and non-linear storytelling. In Sundowner and It’s Dark Outside, recollections instead intrude on the present, existing
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 139 concurrently with the consensus of reality. This can position the person with dementia as an anachronism, or finding greater comfort in their past than their present. Memories staged tangibly – that is, using actors or effects, as opposed to alluding to a memory being experienced by a character – are made part of the diegesis and, therefore, affirm the experience of the person with dementia.
Lastly, the manner in which performances end is pertinent to the positioning of characters with dementia and the construction of dementia narratives. As discussed in the contextual review, cathartic endings can be a problematic convention for these stories, as they position the condition as inherently at odds with a resolved ending. It is, therefore, imperative to analyse how endings are constructed in the performances. Sometimes, the person with dementia is indicated as fading away or being undone, exiting the diegesis in an ambiguous way. Endings are examined in the discussions of Sundowner, 1 Beach Road, and It’s Dark Outside.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 140 7.2 Sundowner Sundowner is a dance theatre work by Australian company KAGE, conceived and directed by Kate Denborough and conceived and written by David Denborough. For my analysis, I had access to a video recording of the work. It features personal reflections on a critical point of the central character’s dementia, embedding clinical affectations in the language of the performance. Although no one in the performance is given a name – only familial titles, like “Gran” and “Mum” – several reviews, media releases, and an education resource pack name the central character Peggy (Upton 2012). Peggy is experiencing early-onset AD. She is a widow and lives alone. The performance is staged in a domestic environment (Julie Renton’s set design is showcased in a video available at www.kage.com.au/sundowner/). The woman at the centre of the work is visited by her daughter, son, son-in-law, and grandson. Realistic language and acting are juxtaposed with the physicality of the visual dramaturgy and heighten the danced action. As a dance theatre work, Sundowner features both embodied and disembodied representation. In particular, this discussion of Sundowner examines the domestic space presented in the performance, clinical signposting, the use of multiple performance forms and technologies that evoke layered realities or an interrupted reality, the generational discourse that emphasises a shift in the parent-child relationship, and the embodiment of ephemerality, particularly in the staging of memory.
In Sundowner the sense of time is difficult to determine. The work appears to stage the unfolding of one single night, because no effect of natural light is seen onstage until the end of the performance. However, this night is stretched and manipulated, as the comings and goings of her children create the impression of days and nights passing. Moreover, despite the darkened quality of the stage – sometimes lit mostly by a desk lamp – the reason for her children’s visits correspond to daytime, for example, to take her to an appointment. The nocturnal aesthetic provides a striking contrast to a group dance number to Get Out and Get under the Moon (Shay, Tobias, and Jerome, 1928), which is brightly lit in shades of pink. Further, for the concluding image of the performance, the back of the stage is opened up to reveal a sunny backyard; the stage becomes flushed with daylight. Overall, with the use of lighting and mixed narrative cues as to the time of day, Sundowner embodies certain clinical features of AD.
The title of the work itself has clinical significance. A phenomenon known variously as sundowning, sundowning syndrome, and sundowner’s syndrome “causes a person’s dementia symptoms to worsen as the sun begins to set or as the night hours commence” (Robinson 2009,
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 141 153). Robinson adds that, while the syndrome is “most commonly associated with the symptoms of confusion and irritation, it is by no means limited to those two expressions and instead reflects the diversity of each person’s Alzheimer's process” (Robinson 2009, 153). This clinical feature frames the performance. The action of the work does not seem limited to this time of day, but the stage appears to represent endless night. This perpetual night evokes further clinical interpretation: the woman at the centre of the work appears to be experiencing diurnal rhythm disturbances – or, day-night reversal (Molloy and Lubinski 1991, 6; Logsdon, Teri, and McCurry 2006, 180). The emergence of day-night reversal in, and the frame of sundowner’s syndrome around, the performance facilitate the woman’s affected moods and behaviours.
Other clinical markers are embedded in the performance, both linguistic and embodied. At one time, Peggy attempts to write a letter, but struggles to begin. Instead, she decides to voice record her thoughts and her aphasic speech reveals memory loss and impaired linguistic capacity. This monologue not only demonstrates aphasia (language of dementia), but also includes references to her dementia. Peggy describes being unable to “tell what is the past and what is the present” and “unable to tell what is familiar and what is foreign”. Overall, the language in this fractured monologue speaks to both clinical and cultural understandings of dementia, in its content and clinical affectation. There is, however, a juxtaposing through-line: at several points, Peggy sits down with a crossword and answers the clues with ease.
Embodied clinical signs in Sundowner include anterograde amnesia, slipping in and out of present time, and the mirror sign. Anterograde amnesia is demonstrated when Peggy adds extra sugar to her tea, having forgotten the first two teaspoons. She also exhibits apraxia (problems with executing a motor task). She puts on a pair of lace-up shoes, but hesitates and leaves the laces undone. She then crosses to her desk for a pair of scissors and cuts the laces off. Most significantly, Peggy shows the “mirror sign’”. Brown and Hillam (2004, 51) describe this sign as a “delusional misidentification in which patients believe that their own reflected image in a mirror is another person”. Their explanation (Brown and Hillam 2004) that the person with dementia may strike up a conversation with their own reflection is present in Sundowner. Peggy has a fluent conversation with the person in the mirror, even imagining that they are responding to her questions. As well being a clinical emblem, this interaction with the mirror plays with the dichotomy of the un/familiar: she is talking to herself, but not recognising herself, yet comfortable conversing with this reflected stranger in her home. A similar interaction takes place between Peggy and her television, which is broadcasting the ABC’s The Book Club, hosted by Jennifer Byrne. She answers Jennifer’s questions as though she herself is on the
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 142 show. On the whole, Sundowner contains many clinical markers, both linguistic and embodied, in addition to the overarching reference to sundowner’s syndrome.
As dementia involves “ruptures that threaten the continuity and familiarity of assumptions that enable us all to live day-to-day” (Mitchell, Dupuis, and Jonas-Simpson 2011, 23), there can be a blurring of the familiar and unfamiliar. This dichotomy is underlined when staged in a familiar place. Sundowner is set in a domestic space. The entire performance takes place in a section of the woman’s home, including a front door, a desk, a settee, a television, and a curtained back window. The desk is an important site; it is surrounded by books, newspapers, and Peggy’s writing materials. At times, it becomes a refuge as she crawls underneath it from behind and emerges facing the audience (Figure 17). This domestic setting – a popular choice for staging dementia, as discussed – is a foundation for a motif of un/familiar as well as a generational discourse.
Figure 17: Peggy in front of her desk in Sundowner (photo by Jeff Busby) The opening voiceover from Peggy’s grandson – taken from an extract in Sue Lawson and Caroline Magerl’s “My Gran’s Different” (2003) – establishes a generational discourse. The audience hears the boy’s voice: Hello, you’re about to meet my gran. I’m sure you’ll like her. She’s funny and she’s kind. We have fun together. When she remembers who I am. See, my
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 143 gran’s different. It’s a bit hard to understand at first. But my mum explained it to me. There’s just some things we need to do differently with gran. Like, please don’t ask her any questions, ‘cause questions make her confused. […] And if Gran starts repeating things over, and over again, don’t tell her she’s doing this. She won’t understand and she’ll get sad. […] Sometimes it’s like Gran’s living out of time, like imaginary world. Like when I’m in imaginary world, like when I’m Ben10, my mum sometimes joins in. This is what we have to do with Gran, too. […] But there are things she loves. Gran was a writer. She always loved books and theatre and music. […] In this extract, Gran is described as being different from other grandparents, the central concept of the source text. It is quickly established that her experience of reality is different from that of others. Crucially, neither dementia nor AD are named, though the description indicates dementia. The statements “when she remembers who I am” and “Gran starts repeating things over, and over again” suggest memory loss; retrograde amnesia in the first instance and anterograde in the latter. The account of his Gran “living out of time, like imaginary world” depicts her as an anachronism and disconnected from the perceived present time and place. However, the comparison to the speaker’s own imaginary world somewhat normalises these episodes of disconnection. As well as establishing Peggy’s dementia, the voiceover introduces a generational discourse. The generational discourse is sometimes used in performances to demarcate between the older people with dementia and younger people without it. As discussed, characters with dementia can be delineated from their past selves. In this introductory description, the boy reflects that his Gran was a writer and loved theatre and music. Despite this separation, her continuing love of books, theatre, and music is demonstrated throughout the performance. Lastly, the recognition of the woman’s “living out of time” establishes the distortion of time that occurs throughout the work.
While this disembodied voice establishes the generational discourse, it is most strongly represented in the embodied relationship between Peggy and her children. During an episode of distress, Peggy’s grown-up daughter enters the room and attempts to calm her mother down. The older woman retreats under the desk, despite the daughter’s repetitions of “Mum, it’s me”. Eventually, she is able to pull her mother into an embrace on the floor. When they stand, the daughter begins to cry. Peggy’s demeanour changes to comfort her; it is as if the last few minutes have not happened, and she is in the role of the mother again. Here, her anterograde amnesia, as well as her mood lability, is evident. Her daughter helps her put her cardigan on the right way. In this way, the passing back and forth of the role of the dependent is characteristic of the exchanges between mother and child. When her adult daughter exits to
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 144 make tea, Peggy is left alone on the settee with her crossword. Then, the son and daughter enter – as children – from a section of the wall upstage from the couch. The adult performers wear children’s pyjamas and act as young siblings playing on the floor and couch. They bring their mother into the game, tickling her sides. Peggy briefly interacts with these memories before they disappear into the wall again. The room is as it was before. This is one example where Peggy’s experience of reality disrupts the consensus of reality. Peggy looks around the empty space before she puts her hands over her eyes and counts: “17, 18, 19, 20. Coming. Ready or not.” When she cannot find them she returns to the settee, her mood now despondent.
Then, her daughter appears again as a child from the wall and curls up in Peggy’s lap on the couch. Peggy strokes her daughter’s hair. A similar action is repeated inversely later in the work. After Peggy breaks the saucer from her tea set – by pretending it is a ‘flying saucer’ – she lies in her daughter’s lap to have her hair stroked. Child-parent role reversals can occur in families experiencing dementia (Zimmermann 2013; Jarvik 2007; Rau 1991). In Sundowner, the generational discourse features the woman with dementia as both parent to the young versions of her children and also in a kind of reversed role. The performance contains one reference to infantilisation. When the grown daughter goes to take the bottle of scotch from in front of her mother on the writing desk, saying, “You know, you shouldn’t be drinking this, Mum,” Peggy is quick to tell her, “Don’t treat me like a child”. This moment may be interpreted as contradicting the exchanges of the role of carer. Additionally, the moment may be seen as Peggy’s defiant assertion of her rights as an adult.
The appearance, and swift disappearance, of the woman’s young children are examples of embodied memories in Sundowner. A more elaborate embodied memory occurs earlier in the performance. Peggy is settling into the settee with her crossword, considering her last answer, “Putting on the Ritz”. The opening of Get Out and Get Under the Moon overtakes the opera music that has played in the background of the performance thus far. Five older women in black, sparkling, floor-length dresses walk in, clapping in time with the music. When this door at stage right opens, a pink light shines into the room from the outside. The dancers begin a tap routine and the pink lighting comes up on the stage. Peggy sits up and faces centre stage, and watches the dancers fondly. The 1928 standard is upbeat, and about having a night out. Soon, three other dancers (performers who later become the daughter, son, and son-in-law) enter wearing a floor-length sparkly red dress and tuxedos and top hats. The troupe continues to perform as Peggy looks on; she sways a little, in time with the music. The opera can still be heard at times, though faintly, underneath the dance tune. The simultaneity of the two pieces
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 145 of music evokes layered realities: that of Peggy’s present, listening to opera, and that of her memory of a performance that is intruding on the present. The three younger dancers then bring Peggy into the routine: the men perform lifts with her (Figure 18). She has stepped into the memory, become more than a spectator. As the number comes to an end, the five ladies in black exit, dancing, followed by the woman in red and one of the men in tuxedos. The second man is still dancing with Peggy, and spins her out to land back on the settee. As the last of the dancers exits and shuts the door, Get Out and Get Under the Moon stops abruptly and the lighting quickly changes from the bright pink to the previous homely aesthetic. The room now looks as it did before the dance number, but a smile remains on Peggy’s face as she looks around the room, as if imagining it to be more than it is.
Figure 18: “Get Out and Get Under the Moon” in Sundowner (photo by Jeff Busby) The intrusion of memories upon the stage could be considered an interruption of reality, or one reality layered over another. The joyous mood of the Get Out and Get Under the Moon number leans towards the latter, particularly with the opera music still present in the scene – albeit faintly. Moreover, her grandson’s acknowledgement of theatre and music as two of Peggy’s loves sets this recollection up to be a happy one. And this rosy aspect of dementia is literally given a rose tint (as pictured, Figure 18). These encroaching, fleeting memories are both
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 146 embodied and ephemeral. In this way, theatre performance, in its liveness and inherent impermanence, can be utilised to communicate well the ephemerality of memory.
Sundowner makes further use of dance to abstractly represent elements of the story and its characters. In an episode of panic, Peggy has crawled under her desk. She then moves to the middle of the stage and lies on the floor and performs a movement as though being slowly washed around by waves (Figure 19). The soundscape of simple piano and slow strings complements this movement. The light over her turns a harsh bright white. Two men appear behind the back curtain and perform a movement sequence with the physicality of stacking, of weighing on one another and picking one another up; a dance of dependency and interdependency. The music continues, but the scene behind the curtain goes off. Peggy is curled up into the foetal position on the floor. The five older ladies in their black sparkly attire enter and gently help the woman to her feet. They slowly dance around her and Peggy watches them and attempts to follow their movement. They circle around her, still in a dance, moving closer. They slowly exit to be replaced by the three grown children (one in-law). Peggy performs with each one in paired movement that involves lifting and leaning; Peggy is the dependant in each pairing. When the three grown children leave the stage, Peggy is briefly left
Figure 19: Sundowner (photo by Jeff Busby)
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 147 in the spotlight. When the light changes and the music fades out, she is alone and the room hasn’t changed. This scene stages the theme of dependency, particularly on her grown children. The transition again demonstrates the transience of Peggy’s interactions and the mercurial nature of her experience of reality.
The final part of the performance begins with a letter left for Peggy’s children. Both grown children enter and sit on the settee with the found letter and read silently. Peggy recites the letter from her desk. The audience has heard passages of the text before, but this time it is read fluently, as the children may imagine it spoken:
My dear ones, it’s the strangest thing, no longer being able to tell what is the past and what is the present. It seems that events that took place only minutes ago are now being erased. While memories I have been able to hold at bay for decades suddenly come rushing towards me. No doubt it is only going to get worse. At times now I am unable to tell what is familiar and what is foreign. And that is why I’m writing to you today. When it comes to pass, that I can no longer hold the memory of who I used to use, will you hold it for me? […] P.s when you are with child, please cherish the memories you make together. That child of yours will live with those memories for a lifetime. […]
Peggy’s letter expresses her experience of past and present blurring. She also shares her experience of the un/familiar dichotomy. An additional binary is evoked: she describes her memories in terms of both erasure and inundation, “rushing towards” her. Following these acknowledgements of her dementia, the letter extends the generational discourse by referring to her children’s children and their shared memories. She also asks her children to hold onto her own memory. This request undercuts the notion of her erasure.
The children hug and leave the room through the back wall at stage left, as the younger manifestations of their characters have previously done. As they leave, It Wasn’t Night or Day (Kelly and Washington 2011) begins to play. The song begins with the lyric: “It wasn’t night or day/I know it’s strange to say but you were not a stranger”, a reference to both diurnal rhythm disturbances and memory loss. As the song continues, Peggy takes off her dress and from her desk removes a red box containing a sparkly black dress. As she puts it on, the five older women return to the stage in their matching black dresses. The initial undressing is an action of undoing, but the re-dressing is symbolic of a new phase of Peggy’s life. Taken together, the actions embody a demarcation within her dementia, as opposed to a delineation between a pre- dementia and “demented” self. Once her dress is fastened, her hair is pulled up, and earrings
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 148 and lipstick are put on, a small boy has entered with an atlas and a plate of biscuits. She walks with him upstage as the back wall of the stage opens out to an outdoor scene: a small backyard with a green lawn and a wicker chair. She sits in the chair and the boy sits on the ground in front of her. They each have a biscuit, and the boy’s voiceover resumes, bookending the opening scene. While this ending emphasises a generational discourse – as can be typical of dementia narratives, it does not shift the focus from the protagonist with dementia. Despite the progression of Peggy’s dementia, daylight now shines onto the stage where it has not before. The ending signals a new beginning, or a new phase of life, as opposed to a tapering off.
The ending of Sundowner is crucial to the positioning of dementia and the central character. Her completion of the letter to her children and, more markedly, her donning of the black, sparkly dress – to match the older ladies around her – is an acceptance of her dementia. Significantly, her submission is not tragedised. When her grandson enters, the back of the set opens up magically like a storybook to reveal the sunny exterior that contrasts greatly with the indoor setting that has anchored the performance until now. The closing of the work speaks to Naylor and Clare’s (2008) clinical study into a person’s sense of identity over the course of dementia. They explain that while a “[s]ense of identity is thought to be closely related to autobiographical memory […,] [r]educed awareness may serve a protective function against the threats to self posed by the onset and progression of dementia” (Naylor and Clare 2008, 590). In a study of 30 participants with common forms of dementia they discovered a stronger sense of identity in those with lower awareness and poorer autobiographical recall for mid-life events (Naylor and Clare 2008). This is attributed to a reduced “degree to which sense of identity is challenged by perceived changes in ability and functioning” (Naylor and Clare 2008, 604). Before this shift occurs in people with dementia, their ailing cognition perpetually contests their sense of identity and, by extension, selfhood. The reflection of this theory in Sundowner alleviates the subject matter from a narrative of tragedy.
Sundowner makes use of several performance forms. Namely, the naturalistic setting, language, and acting intersect with physical theatre and dance. This intersection produces both clinical markers to signpost the central character’s dementia, as well as abstractly embodied representations of the relationships between the characters. The performance mediums onstage also serve to conjure memories that layer past realities with the present. Several times, the woman’s young children appear as if from nowhere, using a hidden door in one of the stage walls. They disappear just as seamlessly. The woman’s memories are represented as ephemeral in this way, as she slips between her present and past realities. The relationships in the
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 149 performance also evoke a generational discourse, a common thread among most works in this study. The ending of Sundowner is crucial to the positioning of dementia and the central character. The woman sheds her house dress and dons a black, sparkly dress, a physically manifested surrender to her dementia. Significantly, her submission is not tragedised. In ending this way, Sundowner is an outlier of the works identified in this study, as the demarcation is not between her pre-dementia and ‘demented’ selves, but instead a demarcation within the dementia that embraces the advancement of the condition.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 150 7.3 1 Beach Road Similar to Sundowner, 1 Beach Road is a physical theatre performance. Devised by RedCape Theatre based in the UK, the work was written by Solveig Holum, directed by Sabina Netherclift, and assistant directed by Cassie Friend, a founding member of RedCape Theatre. I personally encountered the work in both script form and as a video recording. The work has an abstract set design and presents both actively and passively embodied characters. The following analysis discusses the embodiment of the central relationship as well as clinical markers and the overarching analogy. Amongst its predominantly visual and physical dramaturgy, 1 Beach Road features language that both speaks to the central metaphor and signposts dementia with clinical markers. Overall, the work revolves around a central theme: erosion. The couple, Jane and Victoria, face the threat of their home falling into the sea. The narrative allegorises Jane’s dementia in this way as the story moves between the stress regarding the fate of their home and the anxiety about Jane’s decline. It is worth noting that 1 Beach Road centres on a woman whose DAT is early-onset, which is known to advance more quickly, making the erosion analogy more genuine (less hyperbolic). Finally, with the ambiguous exit of the character with dementia, this work also demonstrates how endings of performances about dementia can be problematic.
A motif of jovial seaside nostalgia both complements and juxtaposes the erosion theme. The motif is visually presented in three Esther Williams-inspired routines. These scenes take place at the opening of the performance, and about a third and two-thirds of the way through the performance. The sequences become progressively distorted: the first is performed in bright orange outfits (Figure 20); in the second, the women dance behind a clothesline on which the costumes hang; and in the final iteration they are wearing their own clothing and use the routine to cause chaos to the vast wooden set.
On the development of the performance, Friend reflects that “[w]e very much had a place and […] a setting for the show and a world. Which is a big part of RedCape’s work is the world” (Friend in Friend and Dyson 2017). The world, the embodied diegesis, in 1 Beach Road is constructed mostly of wood and sand. The sizable wooden structure creates a flexible environment: it is a café, a home, a spot on a coastal walk, and a boardwalk. This world features Victoria and Jane alone as live actors. Any other characters are transient and represented through object theatre or voiceover. The embodied world represents both the world that is the couple’s home as well as their life together. When their home begins its descent towards the
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 151 sea, Jane’s dementia parallels the erosion. 1 Beach Road’s narrative depends on the environment to be rich so that its attrition is impactful.
Figure 20: Seaside nostalgia in 1 Beach Road (photo unattributed, RedCape Theatre) In addition to the adaptable wooden set, the stage is covered in sand and littered with clothing and other household objects. During the performance, the status of these objects moves between mess and order, in parallel with Jane’s condition. Additionally, everything is sand- coloured, including their clothing, entrenching Jane and Victoria in the setting of the erosion, and positioning them in danger of being figuratively swept or washed away. Sand infiltrates the entire set; it is poured out of shoes, teapots, and teacups. Despite being swept around the set during the performance, the sand on the stage cannot be swept away, much like the Alzheimer’s-affected brain’s inability to clear the build-up of proteins. This build-up forms obstructing plaques along with tangles that cause nerve cells to collapse (de Rover et al. 2008; Robinson 2009). While the physical aesthetic of the work makes reference to dementia, it also embodies ephemerality and detritus. Notions of the ephemeral are relevant to the theme of memory loss, while detritus serves the natural disaster analogy. Throughout the work, certain props are slipped through the cracks in the wooden structure while others are swept underneath. Empty clothing draped over chairs or hung on the clothesline embodies the guests at the Bed and Breakfast; they, too, seamlessly appear and disappear. In this way, the objects – in their
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 152 interaction with the broader set design and the pervasive sand – represent both ephemerality and detritus.
1 Beach Road makes use of metaphor and visual symbols throughout. Scale is used in 1 Beach Road to draw the audience further into the story and to oversee the erosion. Twice during the work Jane sits alone with a small pile of sand, building cliffs. In the first instance, she walks her fingers along the cliff before ‘bulldozing’ it off the set. This small and simple movement sequence echoes the impetus of the work, the bird’s eye view of the coastal erosion, but also brings the erosion into the domestic space. In this way, the erosion ceases to be exterior. Another feature of note in this moment is Jane’s solitariness; it depicts her private struggle, perhaps not with the condition as yet, but indeed her consideration of her imminent decline. This presents a demarcation of Jane’s private perspective from her shared domestic experience of dementia with Victoria.
Along with sequences that present an embodiment of Jane and Victoria’s relationship, the language between them is also significant, particularly in its process of regression over the course of the performance. Language, and its significance in Jane and Victoria’s relationship, is introduced in the third scene when the two play a word association game. This kind of interaction is continued throughout the following scene. The language in these opening scenes is very concise; short lines that sometimes lean towards the women finishing one another’s thoughts. Jane’s cognitive impairment is first exhibited in a monologue delivered as she leads a tour group (empty clothing on the clothesline) on a coastal walk. During this speech, Jane has a moment of nominal aphasia, forgetting word ‘tide’. This first sign of her dementia is made particularly discernible amidst the longest and most fluid stream of verbal communication in the play. At first she fumbles for the word, repeating herself, but then takes a long pause, before attempting circumlocutory discourse “the…water, the high – the low…(shouting) TIDE,” she eventually locates the word (Holum 2016, 25). Another clinical signpost is presented in the next dialogue scene. This time, Jane is struggling to make out the word ‘partial’ as she reads a letter, demonstrating alexia.
After these occurrences of Jane’s fragmenting cognition, she makes several visits to a disembodied doctor represented by voiceover. Jane first goes to the doctor’s alone, and at the following doctor’s visit Victoria is with her and witnesses her difficulty in answering the questions (Figure 21). An interrogatory bright light accompanies the disembodied voice, which systematically asks: what sort of building is this; what floor are we on; what season is it; can
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 153 Figure 21: Doctor’s visit in 1 Beach Road (photo unattributed, RedCape Theatre) you remember the words: tree, house, ball; what day is it today; what time is it; what is 92 minus seven, and minus seven again, and so on; what does this picture show; what is world spelled backwards; and what are the three words I asked you to remember? Lastly, the doctor requests that Jane repeat a sequence of basic physical gestures. In the first instance, Jane answers the questions quite confidently, faltering only at 71 – 7, and (mis)spelling WORLD backwards as DLRWO. These questions correspond with the standardised tests identified above. This type of examination is likely familiar to anyone who has visited a doctor about AD and acts as a clear indication of Jane’s condition without the words “dementia” or “Alzheimer’s” ever being uttered in the play. Jane’s responses during the second and third visits reveal her accelerating decline. Several times in between these scenes, Jane struggles with agnosia, the inability to name basic, everyday objects (Howes 2007, 346), which occurs in the later stages of AD (Osimani and Freedman 1991, 28). An arguably more familiar emblem is that of the brain scan; one is projected behind the two women at the end of the final doctor’s visit. It is a visualised diagnosis. This type of image has foundations in the medical construction of dementia, yet is persistently associated with dementia in the Western cultural understanding of the condition.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 154 Following this, Jane displays autobiographical memory loss, further shifting her relationship with Victoria. Jane admits, “I can’t remember when we met” (Holum 2016, 38). Yet, Victoria is resilient, beginning to take on the role of carer. She reads from a pamphlet, citing tips for managing Jane’s dementia. The suggestions preserve the clinical discourse in the wake of the doctor’s visits. Victoria reads (Holum 2016, 39-40):
VICTORIA: You may lose control of your movement…You may start to feel the cold more acutely. Oh, you need to wear a lot of layers.
JANE: Like an old person. Isn’t it what old people get? I’m 41, Vic. […]. Jane’s line speaks to the predominant image of a person with AD, and the consequent underrepresentation of those with early-onset dementias15.
As is typical of early-onset DAT, Jane’s progression is quick and Victoria struggles to maintain her relationship with Jane as both lover and carer. Victoria’s experience of dementia is communicated in her dialogue, which becomes increasingly frustrated. Moreover, her diminishing conversation with Jane indicates that the relationship is shifting. As the play approaches the end, Victoria speaks aloud to Jane, though the latter is offstage, accentuating the increasing lacunae in her life. Later, in a moment of frustration, Victoria tells Jane directly: “You’ve already gone Jane. You’re not here anymore” (Holum 2016, 48). Analogies of dementia experiences, including the battle metaphor, frequently used to describe the caregiver experience (Innes 2009, 24) and the natural disaster allegory (Zeilig 2014a), sit comfortably at parallel to the central erosion theme. Yet, the correlation between the eroding coastline and the ‘falling away’ of Jane’s cognition – each a threat hanging over the couple’s home – is never expressed explicitly. However, in an earlier scene in which the pair discuss the fate of their (physical) home, their exchange makes allusion to a diagnosis of early-onset AD. As they watch out a window that overlooks the demolition of nearby bungalows, Victoria observes the ‘managed retreat’ (Holum 2016, 27):
15 In an interview with the researcher, the two performers – one of whom co-directed the production – admitted their own unawareness of early-onset AD prior to undertaking the research for the play.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 155 VICTORIA: But they said we would have fifty years
JANE: It’s what they call a ‘Managed Retreat’
VICTORIA: But they said fifty years Jane!
JANE: Well, they’ve changed their mind; decided to spend their money on towns up the coast with more attractions. Anyway, it’s safer to pull them down than let them fall off the cliff onto the beach.
VICTORIA: Well, it’s a mess. Victoria despairs at the notion of their time cut short by the erosion. In this conversation, the coastal erosion as an analogy for dementia is implied in language. The dementia is also embodied in the physical nature of the performance.
Both Jane’s dementia and the changes to her relationship with Victoria are embodied on stage. Jane’s quality of movement becomes increasingly slow and her feet begin to drag. In an interview, the two actors explain that Jane’s movement was intended to reflect the effect of medication (Friend and Dyson 2017). Jane and Victoria’s relationship begins to show changes during a repeated night-time sequence. As the women change into pyjamas and go to bed, a video of Jane in the orange swimming costume is projected behind them above the bed. In the video, Jane walks a tightrope, back and forth. On stage, Jane rises from the bed to turn on a light, before climbing into bed again. Victoria then rises to turn off the light and lies down again. Both slip off the bed – a tilted part of the wooden set structure – and then return to the bed to begin the night-time routine again, starting with donning pyjamas. During the second iteration of the sequence, both women appear in the projected video, both walking the tightrope. As the sequence is repeated, Jane does up her buttons with increasing difficulty; by the third round, Victoria has to assist her. The sequence comes to an end when Jane leaves the bed to go out into the night. The sound of howling wind begins to overcome the music that has accompanied the scene. Realising Jane has disappeared, Victoria goes to the window and yells her name over the wind. The final image of the scene is Jane, having reached the edge of the structure, hanging from a ledge (Figure 22). The allusion to the edge of a cliff reiterates the central erosion analogy and shows Jane at risk of being washed away. The projected video of the tightrope also visually suggests edge-ness. Jane begins the walk alone and then Victoria
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 156 joins the precarious walk – a shared struggle. The mimed night-time routine demonstrates both restlessness and the passage of time, exhibiting the couple’s shared experience.
Figure 22: Jane hangs from a cliff in 1 Beach Road (photo unattributed, RedCape Theatre) The ending of the performance and Jane’s departure is similarly physical. In the previous scene, it is revealed that Jane has forgotten Victoria, which signals a significant advancement of her dementia. The actor playing Jane removes her clothing and drapes it over a chair as if she were sitting there. Now, Jane is embodied as the guests to the Bed and Breakfast have been, as ephemera. The actor leaves the stage in her orange swimming costume. Victoria lays her head where Jane’s lap would be before she packs the clothes into a suitcase. This may signify that Jane is simply moving into long-term care, but this is not confirmed. The performance finishes with Victoria sitting on the wooden set as Jane is seen in her orange swimming costume behind a transparent screen, performing an aerial movement that emulates swimming. This ending is especially significant considering that early dialogue disclosed that she cannot swim. In this way, the swimming conflicts with the image of the suitcase. It is, therefore, unclear as to whether this ending marks the advancement of Jane’s dementia or her death. Jane’s exit is signalled in two parts: first by the undressing motif and then her swimming down into the
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 157 depths of the sea. The ambiguity is accentuated in light of Victoria’s earlier dialogue that characterises Jane as absent. On the whole, the closing of the work demonstrates the apparent perplexity of ending a performance about dementia and resolving the central character arc in particular.
As a physical theatre performance, 1 Beach Road comprises several key examples of embodiment. To complement the overarching metaphor of erosion, sand dominates the stage. Equally, various props and costumes become detritus on the stage and wooden set structure. Yet, objects and even people – portrayed by empty clothing – also embody ephemera. The physical nature of the work also indicates clinical markers of Jane’s dementia – although language demonstrates her decline more explicitly. The central relationship between the two women is also represented using physical and visual theatre forms, and a motif of precariousness emerges. Finally, the ending involves an undressing, which is part of a trend that is apparent in several analysed performances in the study. The undressing is part of an ending that does not deliver an explicit outcome in relation to the withdrawal of the subject with dementia.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 158 7.4 D-Generation: An Exaltation of Larks D-Generation: An Exaltation of Larks is the creation of Sandglass Theater (USA), whose performances are based in puppetry. My analysis is based on a one-time, live viewing of the work. Later I also referred to the photos included below to aid in my analysis. Like Inside Out of Mind, D-Generation is staged in residential care, in contrast to Sundowner and 1 Beach Road which are based in the domestic space. The performance has a largely visual dramaturgy, though its script was devised using verbatim stories from a series of visits to nursing homes. Anne Basting, creator of the TimeSlips method, commissioned Sandglass Theater to produce the work. Basting had previously developed stories collected using the method into the eponymous Time Slips, first staged in 2000. Members of Sandglass Theater were initially presented with transcripts from the TimeSlips sessions, but felt they needed to undertake the research process themselves. During their visits, they collected a number of stories prompted by stimulus images, two of which made it onto stage.
Figure 23: The collection of TimeSlips data re-enacted in D-Generation (photo by Joe Mazza)
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 159 Figure 24: A TimeSlips story is performed in D-Generation (photo by Joe Mazza) As stated, the performance is set in a care facility, a setting that is both domestic in its function as a home, yet public in its housing of various residents and its openness to staff. This site of intersection can facilitate themes of un/familiarity, privacy, care, and familial experiences of dementia. However, in D-Generation, the familial experience is relegated to voiceover, accentuating the relationship between resident and carer, or in this case, facilitators of the TimeSlips sessions. At times, the meta-theatricality of the work transcends the location. The stories are playfully presented using two-dimensional puppetry in a small window at the back of the stage. As such, the performance and its puppetry play out on two theatrical levels. Both the stories collected using the TimeSlips method and the collection of the data itself (the group discussions that developed the stories), are staged through different theatrical forms. The TimeSlips sessions are staged using live and “created” actors (Figure 23). The first story authored by the group is staged using two-dimensional puppetry in a window at the back of the stage (Figure 24) and the second story plays out in a projected animation.
The secondary use of puppetry (to tell the first devised story) is positioned in its own storyworld. While this is contextualised, this secondary diegesis abandons linearity and cohesion to interrupt a consensus of reality. This first story is based on a picture of a man and woman in a cityscape. The second stimulus image is of a man and a ladder. In the animation, the man climbs up the ladder and into the clouds. Using different performance forms to stage the stories, compared to the interactions in the care facility, embraces their non-linear and non- naturalistic nature. Sandglass Theater is focussed on joy in their endeavour, and yet the work
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 160 remains conscious of the frustrations and ‘tragedies’ of dementia. Additionally, while family members are physically absent from the stage, their perspectives are not completely absent. Projection and voiceover are used intermittently to voice these experiences. However, essentially, this perspective is made secondary to the experiences and outcomes of the TimeSlips method.
In addition to the layering of story collection and story presentation, there are moments in which the live actors break the fourth wall and deliver a sort monologue, directly addressing the audience. These speeches express the point of view of a carer or visitor to the home and report on the experience of collecting the stories. This chapter discusses performances with informal familial carers, but this performance instead features facilitators in interaction with the characters with dementia. These instances of direct address are performed further forward (closer to the audience) than the rest of the action in the work, enhancing the meta-theatricality of the act. The perspectives presented in these addresses are significant and do shed light on experiences that have been taboo. Yet, these moments of direct address embody a layer of reality from which the residents appear to be excluded or incapable of joining. The act of stepping forward, in front of the space in which their interactions with dementia have taken place, while still in character, physically exempts them from this diegesis and gives them an additional power over the narrative. Their ability to assume the role of homodiegetic narrator, albeit briefly, affords them influence over the audience’s interpretation of the performance and their place in it. It is worth noting that these reflections express some of the humour and joy of the TimeSlips process. These short monologues may also give greater clarity to the interactions between the live and created characters.
Figure 25: D-Generation (photo by Joe Mazza)
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 161 In D-Generation, the live actors play carers and facilitators of the TimeSlips method, while also manipulating and voicing the puppets who represent the residents of the long-term care facility. A puppet’s voice is always disembodied, or “alien” (Gross 2011, 66). Accordingly, the puppeteers physically and verbally animate the puppet characters, whose object status is heightened in co-presence with their operator. Notably, it is stated in marketing material that “the play focusses on five inhabitants of a care-facility (the puppets) and their caregivers (the puppeteers)” (Internationale Figurentheater Festival 2017). This description of the work illuminates a further distinction between the two groups: the carers essentially manoeuvre the residents who consequently have little agency. However, the puppeteers do enable the puppets to perform in ways that live actors cannot. In one scene, a character’s recollection of dancing is embodied on stage as the puppeteers lift her to perform a dance through the air (Figure 26). As Blumenthal (1997, 16) notes, “human actors remain inherently limited. They come in a paltry range of sizes and shapes”. In this way, ‘created actors’ are less bound than live actors and have the capacity to transcend humanness.
Figure 26: A puppet dances in D-Generation (photo by Joe Mazza) The use of puppetry in co-presence with live actors can be problematic, in terms of echoing prevailing Western cultural attitudes. The direct address enhances the demarcation between those with dementia and those without, which the use of puppetry has already established. Piris
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 162 (2014) describes the “ontological ambiguity” of puppets as they are embodied as subjects, but remain objects (Piris 2014, 38). He discusses the co-presence between a puppet and puppeteer that is evoked when the latter has dramaturgical significance, that is, when the puppeteer is a subject in the performance as well. This “[c]o-presence stresses this ontological ambiguity by confronting the puppet with a human protagonist” (Piris 2014, 30). The reduced scale of the characters with dementia emphasises the demarcation, but also has the capacity to infantilise the characters with dementia. The infantilisation is heightened when the puppets are passed to audience members in the front row to view their collated stories (embodied in the second storyworld). When the puppets are passed to audience members in the front row, the characters become spectators; for a time, they are no longer part of the action on stage, but continue to be a performative element of the work. A collectively devised story of the group is being staged for them. The moment when the puppeteers pass the puppets to the audience members is another instance of breaking the fourth wall and the transition from ‘created actor’ to spectator anthropomorphises the puppets. The action of handing over the puppets is carried out carefully, sharing with the audience the nurturing relationship between live and ‘created’ actor. Nonetheless, the act of handing a character to an audient also embodies infantilisation. Because of the downscaled size of the puppets, they sit in the laps of the audience members and become more like children or dolls. As previously noted, the infantilisation of older people with dementia is a concern in institutionalised care, and studies demonstrate that the residents of long-term care dislike this treatment (Marson and Powell 2014; Andrew 2006). In light of infantilisation in residential care and the issues therein, the diminutive stature of the puppets and the way they are handled undermine the characters, despite the efforts by the creators towards giving people with dementia a voice. With this same action, the audience members also become complicit in the co-presence that stresses the puppet’s ontological ambiguity. They no longer merely see them as subjects within a closed diegesis, but actually come into contact with them as objects. The above discussion demonstrates that the use of puppetry to portray characters with dementia is precarious in light of the dehumanisation and infantilisation of people with dementia – as discussed in the literature review. In particular, evoking a co-presence between puppet and puppeteer emphasises the ontological ambiguity of the puppet by demarcating it in its object status from live actors. However, D-Generation is part of the research-based and verbatim theatre trend identified in this research, and actively endeavours to give voice to people with dementia. Moreover, the performance embraces the nonlinear and fragmented nature of the collected stories, especially as they are staged using two-dimensional puppetry and animation
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 163 in an additional internal storyworld. The focus on original stories from actual people with dementia and the de-emphasising of the experiences of family members are unusual features among the catalogue of performances. Typically, performances that stage dementia include a clear generational discourse that can privilege familial experiences over that of the person with dementia. Overall though, despite genuine efforts on the part of the performance makers, representing characters with dementia through puppetry inadvertently echoes negative constructions of dementia and people with dementia in Western culture.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 164 7.5 It’s Dark Outside It’s Dark Outside is an Australian work by The Last Great Hunt. For the below analysis, I had access to a video recording of the work, which makes use of puppetry and other visual forms. The work omits spoken language completely, bypassing dialectical denotation and the inherent power dynamic therein. To reiterate Gross’ comment, the voice of a puppet is inevitably disembodied: “Its voice is always alien, never its own” (Gross 2011, 66). Mimed puppetry performance precludes this aspect of disembodiment. The presentation modes include: live performers, masks, puppetry, shadow theatre (using both puppetry and the silhouettes of live performers), and video projection; as well as music and liberal sound effects that accrue a perpetual soundscape. In this way, the work contains visual and auditory ‘languages’ but lacks linguistic denotation. These theatre technologies are layered; shadow work is paired with projection, projection with live action, puppetry with lit objects, and so on. An original soundtrack underlays the entire show. The work’s technologies are so well integrated that at times it is difficult to distinguish shadow work from pre-recorded projected content. Similarly, the live action on the stage – including puppetry – engages with the content on the screen. Overall, the performance technologies create a comprehensive environment, creating effective scaffolding for a non-realistic diegesis.
The story is a unique one in the landscape of dementia performance: an old man goes outside, gets lost, and is wrapped up in an old western-style adventure. The pervasive use of projection and shadow puppetry is apt for this narrative. Penny Francis suggests that shadow play is a form befitting mythical tales, noting that “[s]hadows can evoke the ineffable: dreams, memories, horrors, ghosts, even abstract forms, more difficult to express in any other more concrete medium” (2012, 62). Further, Francis’ (2012, 62) estimation that shadow puppetry is “especially suited to poetry and metaphor” corroborates Zeilig’s (2015, 15) recognition that the inscrutable nature of dementia results in the frequent use of metaphor to describe the condition. As such, the dramaturgy of It’s Dark Outside lends the performance a sense of fantasy. The adventure narrative re-contextualises the experience of dementia – namely the associated memory loss and disorientation. In this way, similarities can be drawn to Healey’s Elizabeth is Missing (2014), a novel about a woman’s dementia, reframed by a mystery narrative. The various forms that overthrow the logocentric tradition of drama also privilege those experiences that cannot be expressed verbally. Instead, the audience is engaged by a rich visual dramaturgy and less likely to problematise the unorthodox adventure.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 165 The scenes move between the old man, who is losing memories along his journey out into the night, and the antagonist, a man with a large butterfly net who is consistently seen in silhouette (Figure 27). We first see the old man in his kitchen at home. As such, the outdoor adventure setting replaces an initial domestic setting. The night-time aesthetic indicates that the man is experiencing diurnal rhtyhm disturbances and/or Sundowner’s syndrome. In this way, the performance presents a simiarity to Sundowner. Incidentally, the dark set is appropriate for the use of projection, shadow puppetry, and lit objects throughout the work. The old man in It’s Dark Outside is portrayed variously by a masked actor, a smaller puppet, an even smaller shadow puppet, and in projection. Despite the precariousness of outsourcing the representation of a character with dementia to object theatre, the encompassing environment of It’s Dark Outside liberates the character from demarcation. In relation to Piris’ theory on the co-presence between a puppet and puppeteer, no live actor is present to emphasise the ontological ambiguity of the created actor. An actor in a mask plays the man whenever he is faced with a live actor; when a puppet represents the man with dementia, his puppeteer’s presence is not dramaturgically significant. Additionally, the puppet version of the man is actually used to enable the character to do things that would be impossible for a live actor, demonstrating Blumenthal’s (2017) observation of a human actor’s inherent limitation. This way, the journey of the old man can be animated beyond a human actor’s capability, privileging his experience
Figure 27: The bounty hunter in It’s Dark Outside (photo by Richard Jefferson)
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 166 of reality. In this work, the use of puppetry transcends humanness instead of acting as its antithesis.
The show begins with music that would be at home in an old western, and is complemented by the samples of gunshots, galloping hooves and a horse whinny. This opening to the old western soundscape contextualises the visual aesthetic of the performance that follows. The antagonist is shown in silhouette, as a cowboy, set against the façade of a saloon in front of a sunset. However, the next scene is a domestic one. Opening the performance with the adventure reality is crucial. Even though the man and his condition are established in a domestic space, a foundation has been laid for the alternate experience of reality. In this way, the interruption of realism and layering of realities is facilitated in a similar way to Inside Out of Mind. In this space, a live actor in a mask adopts a stereotypically aged physicality to represent the protagonist. The man has a cup of tea (Figure 28), but when he sets the cup back down, a performer in black emerges from behind the table and moves the cup along the table slightly, away from the man. The man reaches for the mug, but when it is not where he left it, he turns swiftly, accusingly towards the cup. The music picks up as the sequence continues: the cup moves, the table moves, the chair movies, the mug is replaced by object after miscellaneous object. The man becomes frustrated and knocks the last object off the table; he goes behind the
Figure 28: The man at home in It’s Dark Outside (photo by Richard Jefferson)
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 167 table to pick up the broken mug. This sequence is a non-naturalistic embodiment of anterograde amnesia, as well as an indication of difficulty with completing everyday tasks independently as Mischa de Rover and colleagues explain (2008).
The projection enables the transition from this domestic space to an outdoor scene; the silhouette of the cowboy looms into view. The aged man goes walking into the night – now depicted in projection that incorporates shadow puppetry. He passes houses and street lamps foregrounded against an indigo sky and a full moon. In the next scene of the protagonist’s journey, the street lamps he passes gradually turn into gnarled trees, smoothly transitioning from a local (and likely familiar) urban environment to a wild and uninhabited landscape. Staging a dementia narrative in an outdoor setting is significant, both for its rarity and the implications of an inside/outside dichotomy. As Gaston Bachelard notes:
Outside and inside form a dialectic of division, the obvious geometry of which blinds us as soon as we bring it into play in the metaphorical domains. It has the sharpness of the dialectics of yes and no, which decides everything. Unless one is careful, it is made into a basis of images that govern all thoughts of positive and negative. (1994, 211).
If the concepts of ‘home’ (as discussed) and the ‘inside’ are related to notions of safety and familiarity, then ‘outside’ conveys sentiments of risk and the unfamiliar. In this work, the adventure themes at play reframe these connotations. In any case, It’s Dark Outside is an anomaly among the catalogue of identified performances that are typically staged in places of home, both domestic and care. Not only is the man outside and alone, he is also apparently being hunted.
The antagonist figure is next seen in silhouette, yet larger than life, 20 times the size of the protagonist was as depicted in shadow puppetry. Projection and shadow work facilitate this character’s characterisation as an unseen monster. It reflects the Western cultural rhetoric that describes dementia as ‘millennium demon’ or ‘slow-moving tsunami’. Moreover, the antagonist carries a wanted poster featuring the old man. In It’s Dark Outside, memories are embodied on stage as small white clouds (Figure 29). They rise up from behind the man and escape. Most times, the man physically interacts with the clouds. After each loss of a memory, the cowboy antagonist is then seen with an extra cloud lit up in his butterfly net (Figure 27). So, both memories and the entity acquiring the lost memories are analogised; the former as clouds and dementia as an antagonistic figure in pursuit. Personified in this way, dementia is embodied and imbued with intent. This reflects the discourse that dementia sneaks up on people
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 168 and steals their memories, as reflected in the Kinetic illustration (Figure 2). This positioning of dementia as antagonist typically renders the person with dementia as passive and disregards their status as subject. However, in It’s Dark Outside the old man is positioned as an active protagonist, resisting the usual corollary of the antagonist analogy.
Sequences of light-heartedness present manifestations of happy memories. At one time, the soundscape changes and Peggy Lee’s I Love Being Here with You begins, first blurredly but soon becoming clear. The old man – as puppet – begins a simple tap dance and his cane is transformed from walking aid to theatrical prop. During this musical interlude, a puppeteer emerges from behind the tent and shows a cloud floating out of the man’s head and onto the ground. He steps onto the cloud and it takes him into the air as he continues to dance. A smaller cloud breaks off and tries to escape. For a while he is able to keep the small cloud close, dancing to hold it underfoot. When the cloud manages to escape further, he jumps to catch it, but the bigger cloud flies away, unanchored. He quickly takes off after the cloud offstage and the old western music returns. The Figure 29: The loss of small white clouds in It’s Dark Outside (photo by Richard Jefferson) music accompanies the silhouetted antagonist in a hunt for lost clouds. A montage of the old man travelling through a desert landscape replaces this sequence. When the man returns to the stage, he is in masked human form again, chasing a cloud. These transitions between masked actor and ‘created’ actor facilitate the agility of the narrative within the show’s dramaturgical framing. The old man eventually catches up to his lost cloud which is swiftly transformed into a dog made of cloud. The puppeteers give life to the cloud and convincingly embody it as a dog. After a delighted greeting from the dog, the man produces a cloud ball and the two play out a game of fetch. In
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 169 this sequence, the embodied memories are given greater meaning and their loss greater significance.
However, not all memories embodied onstage are positive. Memories of war and wartime nostalgia is a theme in several analysed works, reflecting the particular generation currently considered to be the most dementia-prone demographic. Still, the battle analogy is also a common expression of the caregiver experience, as well as dementia experiences in general. In contemporary dementia performance, either construal is significant to the staging of the condition. The war theme in It’s Dark Outside manifests in one sequence: air-raid sirens are heard, and the projection develops into silhouettes of trenches and barbed wire. The projection takes on a green colour and soldiers in silhouette. On the stage, the man holds his cane as a rifle – another transformation of his walking aid to accompany a memory. The projected image zooms out to a wider view, and the cowboy is seen giant – now with more clouds in his net – and is scooping up soldiers. This scene shows the man’s dementia interrupting a memory and deconstructing it from the inside.
Figure 30: The man flies through the air in It’s Dark Outside (photo by Richard Jefferson) The most significant memory represented in the performance establishes a generational discourse, which later becomes the focal point of the larger story. During one scene, the old man – as live actor – sleeps in his tent. Illuminated Zs float up from his head as a music-box lullaby plays. The puppet rendering of the man appears and catches one of the Zs and it carries him up into the stars, flying (Figure 30). When he lands on a darkened platform, a new cloud
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 170 drifts out; he seizes it and cradles it like a newborn, rocking and then holding it to his chest. The cloud escapes his arms, and he snatches it back, twice. The cloud almost pulls him over the edge of the platform. Then he is flying with it through the skyscape again. He puts up a greater fight for this memory than he has for those prior, imbuing it with particular significance. He returns to his tent, holding the cloud. The cloud is once again taken from him, and he takes off into the night, in pursuit. He catches the cloud and holds it close. He plays peekaboo with the cloud in his lap before they exit flying together. Like the dog cloud, this cloud as an embodied memory becomes a specific recollection of a child. If the child is assumed to be his, as opposed to a grandchild, then it is a distant memory. The erasure of this and the wartime memory demonstrates retrograde amnesia. This sequence is also significant for its use of the puppet form. The man’s floating up into the sky, carried by sleep, and flying through the night sky is an example of the rejection of verisimilitude in order to depict an alternate experience of reality. As a result, his rendering as puppet does not dehumanise the man, but instead liberates him to beyond a naturalistic representation of the human subject. The absence of spoken language reinforces this liberation.
The generational discourse becomes central to the performance in its closing scenes. Both the older man and the antagonist appear in silhouette. The latter holds up the wanted poster and the two circle one another, evoking the old western theme. The cowboy gestures for the old man to approach but the latter shakes his head. The old man then raises his cane and the cowboy holds up an arm in defence. The music changes to mark a change in their relation to one another. The projected image zooms in to inside the older man’s head, where there is one big cloud. The cloud reveals a family home from the outside. Within this scene, clouds float to the ground and become the old man and his son. The son runs around with a butterfly net. Then, everything in the projected scene is erased bar the boy with his net. The projection zooms out and then focus is shifted to the stage where the two now stand in person; it is first time the younger man is seen embodied on stage. They recreate the poses from the last sequence: the old man with a raised cane and the cowboy cowering. Still cowering, the cowboy takes off his hat to reveal his face, A moment of mutual recognition takes place, but it appears that the older man does not quite understand their relationship. It is made clear in their physical interaction that they are the father and son from the projected memory. They make to leave together, but the man with dementia stops as a cloud emerges from his head and he drops his cane to the floor. The son chases the drifting cloud and attempts to return it to the man, but the latter drops it on the ground. The son bends to pick it up and puts it beneath the old man’s hat. He takes more clouds
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 171 from his net and tries to get his father to hold them, but the old man has gone limp and they all fall to the floor. This is the beginning of the older man’s erasure. The son stops and then removes his father’s hat and places it on the stage. He repeats this with his glasses and shoes. He takes his father’s jacket and takes more time with this item, hugging it to himself. He removes the mask from the performer who – now in all black – exits in the dark.
This sequence communicates a lot in its purely visual dramaturgy. First, the antagonist of dementia is revealed to actually be the man’s son who has been trying to find him in the night, not stealing but collecting his lost memories. This subversion of the narrativisation of dementia as a looming monster is significant in light of the Western cultural construction of the condition. The revelation quells the positioning of dementia as active aggressor and the person with dementia as passive victim. And where the younger man had previously been shown only as a larger-than-life figure in silhouette, when his true relationship to the older man is revealed he is a live actor, portrayed as ontologically equal to his father. Secondly, the undressing of the old man is an embodiment of unbecoming. In several performances, notably, variations of undressing are used to dramaturgically represent the unravelling of the subject with dementia. In this way, the ending is problematic. Despite the liberation of the man with dementia in his puppet form and the lack of co-presence, as well as the subversion of the dementia-as- antagonist narrative at the end of the work, the unravelling of a now passive protagonist reinforces a loss-of-self premise. Finally, the focus of the performance shifts to the son and away from the character with dementia.
The son carries the items and some clouds offstage. Meanwhile, the smaller puppet version of the man with dementia enters with his cane and pokes at some of the clouds on the stage floor. He then ascends through the space, as if using invisible stairs. It is unclear whether this is representative of death or merely a tipping point into a more advanced stage of dementia, though the former would seem more likely considering the act of ascension. After the old man exits, the experience of the son more deliberately becomes the focus of the work. To centre on the generational discourse, the projection shows the cowboy returning home carrying his father’s items and the net which contains some remaining clouds. His own son runs out to greet him; after an embrace, the young boy runs back inside. The cowboy stands and the clouds drift up and out of the net, as he watches them ascend. This third act of undoing for the subject with dementia (after the undressing and the ascension) erases the last trace of the man with dementia. This ending firmly passes the focus to the son and extends the generational discourse. It can be assumed that the son retains the memory of his father, and even passes on those memories onto
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 172 his own son. Yet, the symbolic letting go of the old man’s cloud memories to float up and out of view indicates a complete erosion of the man who had been the central character of the performance. The ending also shifts the setting of the work from the adventurous outside to a domestic place as the son arrives at the exterior of his house. Although we do not see inside, it is noteworthy that the performance’s conclusion should express a generational discourse and arrive at a family home.
In It’s Dark Outside, puppetry – and the complementing visual dramaturgy – is utilised to evoke an unreal storyworld and reinforce the adventure narrative. The main puppet character is the quester. This arrangement of the narrative puts the older man’s experience of reality at the centre. Omitting speech allows the story to unfold unencumbered by spoken language that is characterised by decline. The character with dementia is liberated from their communicative difficulty and instead endowed with physicality to express themselves. The lack of co-presence between puppet and puppeteer – where the latter has dramaturgical significance that stresses the “ontological ambiguity” of the puppet subject – makes the use of the theatrical form in It’s Dark Outside different from the presentation in D-Generation. And yet, the ending that sees the man with dementia disassembled and shifts to the intergenerational experience displaces the man with dementia as the central protagonist. As this study explores, the endings of performances about dementia can be problematic, because of the impulse to provide catharsis and the incompatibility of this convention with dementia narratives.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 173 7.6 Discussion The most significant findings that emerge from the four works analysed above are related to place, the visual/physical embodiment of memories, metaphors for dementia, demarcation, the use of puppetry, the generational discourse, clinical markers, and performance endings.
Place is significant for its facilitation of key dementia-related themes, such as domesticity and both familial and professional care, as well as the generational discourse. Sundowner is set in Peggy’s home and features familial relationships. For the duration of the performance at least, Peggy is isolated from the outside, public world. Despite the broader setting of the erosion analogy, the coastline, Jane and Victoria are similarly insulated. Even the guests at their bed and breakfast are disembodied, focussing on their spousal relationship; and, as the erosion worsens – in correspondence to Jane’s dementia – the guests becomes completely absent, leaving the two women alone. D-Generation’s care home setting focusses on the relationships between the residents and the TimeSlips facilitators, and downgrades the usually foregrounded familial or spousal experience. The care home setting leans away from the insulation of the family home and instead generates a small community of residents. These three represent the two most common settings: domestic and care homes. The retreat from these settings in It’s Dark Outside make the work an anomaly in this respect. The absence of an onstage familial relationship for most of the work aligns with this outdoor environment. And when the central father-son relationship is revealed towards the end, a domestic setting is represented in projection and becomes the location for the rest of the narrative. This example reiterates the family home as a site for familial relationships and the generational discourse. Both Sundowner and It’s Dark Outside feature outside environments as well as domestic sites, but with inversed representation. After a long period inside, Peggy walks into the daylight with her grandson. However, the man in It’s Dark Outside is erased and, in a sense, replaced by his grandson as the work comes to centre on the setting of a family home after the majority of the work has taken place outside.
Alongside place, the visual and physical performance-scapes engage forms that are significant to their depiction of different characters and story elements. Three of the works discussed here – Sundowner, D-Generation, and It’s Dark Outside – use different theatrical modes to embody memories. Small white clouds are used in It’s Dark Outside, past realities interrupt the present in Sundowner in dance numbers and the transitory appearance of characters, and a puppet subject is enabled to rise out of her chair and dance through the air in D-Generation. Past events are not staged in 1 Beach Road. Instead a general seaside nostalgia is evoked in the
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 174 synchronised swimming even though it is not connected to Jane or Victoria’s past. Notably, music and dance as modes for nostalgia is a motif in a number of performances. The seaside motif is related to the coastal erosion that parallels Jane’s dementia.
Erosion is the overarching metaphor in 1 Beach Road, drawing an analogy between the crumbling coast and Jane’s cognitive decline. The use of a natural disaster metaphor, more broadly, echoes popular rhetoric of the rise of dementia as an inevitable catastrophe. In keeping with the coastline setting, the sand that pervades the stage is representative of the build-up of proteins in the brain that is characteristic of AD. In the visual dramaturgy, the wooden set piece and the clothing are pale coloured, tying Jane and Victoria, their home, and their belongings to this detritus. It’s Dark Outside also analogises dementia. Before the shadowy figure is revealed to be the protagonist’s son, he is presented as a larger-than-life adversary on the hunt for the man and his memories. In opposition, the man is an adventurer on the run, fighting to retain his memories. Typically, people with dementia are portrayed as passive victims to the disease.
A key finding of the works in this chapter is related to two types of demarcation. The first type is the demarcation of people with dementia from those without. The second type is demarcating different versions of one person within their dementia. Demarcation occurs throughout the selected performances in the study. Of the works explored here, D-Generation is the most potent example. The dramaturgical separation of people with dementia from those without using puppets in co-presence with live actors manifestly embodies the former as passive subjects. This segregation is emphasised when the live actors step forward to address the audience directly with their take on the experience. This work demonstrates the precariousness of using puppets to represent characters with dementia. By contrast, It’s Dark Outside makes use of both puppets and live actors but does not evoke co-presence between the two. Instead, the puppets liberate the character from human limitation and evoke a storybook aesthetic to accompany the adventure narrative. Additionally, by relinquishing spoken language, the performance evades any demarcation that dementia-affected speech may produce.
There is, however, a point of demarcation when the central character is unravelled and exits the stage, his fate ambiguous. From then, the performance is concerned with the experience of his son. 1 Beach Road similarly sees an unravelling of its central character that uses clothing. The removal of clothing marks Jane’s exit before she is seen swimming down into the sea. This descent is in contrast to the old man’s ascent in It’s Dark Outside, and yet the two both use an undressing motif and end by shifting focus to the character without dementia. In this way, the endings of dementia narratives can be problematic. If a conventional resolution that induces
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 175 catharsis is the goal, then dementia experiences are not conducive to this kind of storytelling. The discord between the theatrical convention and the narratives staged in the performances is evident in several works in this study. However, there are exceptions. Sundowner also features an undressing toward its end, and a demarcation. The woman’s letter to her children and her donning of a new dress signals this demarcation. So, while there is an undressing, it is not an unbecoming, because she rebuilds herself anew. This marks a significant point in her dementia, but the surrender is celebrated as she walks out into the son with her grandson. In contrast to It’s Dark Outside, the woman is included in the final intergenerational image of the performance.
An additional juxtaposition between the two relates to the adult-children’s holding of memories. In her letter to her children Peggy asks: “When it comes to pass, that I can no longer hold the memory of who I used to use, will you hold it for me?” When the older man in It’s Dark Outside is unravelled and can physically no longer hold his cloud memories, his son takes them in his arms. Then the significance of the butterfly net becomes about collecting the escaping memories. Yet, in the end, the younger man lets the clouds float away. Even if not in actuality, symbolically, he relinquishes his father’s memories.
The frequently occurring generational discourse is not represented in 1 Beach Road and largely absent from D-Generation and familial relationships are manifest only as disembodied voiceover. Like Inside Out, this absence from D-Generation can be attributed to its institutional care setting. However, there are details in the dramaturgy that lend themselves to infantilisation; the downscaled puppets in co-presence with their live co-actors are rendered childlike particularly when seated in the laps of audience members. Infantilisation can also be tied to the generational discourse, as in Sundowner. Peggy’s daughter attempts to take her scotch and advises her not to drink it. However, Peggy quickly responds: “Don’t treat me like a child”. Even though Peggy resists the infantilisation in this instance, it demonstrates the potential for parental-child role-reversals (and a person’s difficulty with activities of daily living) to result in infantilisation.
Some dramaturgical choices may serve to reinforce the prevailing Western cultural positioning of the people with dementia. Infantilisation, belonging to a different kind of life or diminished life, confinement to the domestic home or care home, and death as merely the physical counterpart to a social death that has already occurred, each have foundations in the Western cultural construction of the condition and those living with it. Additionally, the inclusion of clinical markers in performances signpost dementia in a recognisable way. 1 Beach Road
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 176 mostly uses linguistic affectations in this manner, embedding nominal aphasia, alexia, and agnosia in Jane’s speech. Additionally, the doctor’s visits and the standardised tests are clear signposts and, over three scenes of this type, Jane’s responses to the unchanging questions benchmark her decline. The projected brain scan – common imagery associated with AD – accompanies these scenes. It’s Dark Outside uses elements of its nonverbal dramaturgy to signpost the man’s dementia in abstract ways. Early on, the moving cup indicates anterograde amnesia as well as some difficulty in managing the activities of daily living. Throughout, the white clouds embody memories and the man’s loss of them, a non-representational staging of retrograde amnesia. Sundowner’s central concept of sundowning is a clinical marker in and of itself. Additionally, Peggy experiences intruding memories, confusion, and mood lability and exhibits the mirror sign. While D-Generation draws on the non-linear collective storytelling of people with dementia, there are few notable clinical markers, despite the institutional setting.
7.7 Conclusion In this chapter, four works were examined primarily in relation to their presentation of active and passive embodiment. Sundowner, 1 Beach Road, D-Generation, and It’s Dark Outside were selected for their visual and physical dramaturgies, though the first three also incorporate dialogue significant to their analysis. Puppetry – as established in the contextual review – is a form emerging as a trend in the territory of theatre about dementia and one worthy of academic attention. The active embodiment of the puppet in It’s Dark Outside compared with the passive embodiment of the puppet in D-Generation is demonstrative of the precariousness of the created actor. In relation to the reading guide outlined in the contextual review, the discussion of these four works address the generational discourse, performance settings, including the outside, the consensus of reality and forms including dance and physical theatre, mime, puppetry, masks and projection, as well as music for accompaniment, atmosphere, and nostalgia. Puppetry has been shown to facilitate either active or passive embodiment of characters with dementia. Theatre distinguishes itself from other art forms by its liveness, the physical presence of bodies onstage, and its audience. Oddly, puppetry – the use of created actors – subverts this; but this conceptualisation of performance supports the impact of co- presence between live and created actors. The relationships that take place around dementia can also be represented with the physicality of human bodies, particularly illustrations of role- reversal and dependency. The generational discourse, then, can be represented in language, as discussed in Chapter 6, but also visually. Visual elements also contribute to the evocation of
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 177 place. In these works, settings are largely as expected, though representations of the outside are less common. Taken together, D-Generation and Inside Out of Mind suggest that family members are largely absent in institutional places. Instead, these settings instead stage care relationships that are limited to interactions pertaining to care. The institutional setting may bypass the generational discourse. In works where the generational discourse is strong, there is risk of a focal shift to family members in order to counterbalance a symbolic erasure of the character with dementia. Physical and visual elements are often employed to carry symbolism, particularly in lieu of spoken reference to taboo subjects. Two works in particular – 1 Beach Road and It’s Dark Outside – present dementia abstractly in the form of analogies that frame the entire performance. Physical and visual dramaturgies naturally lend themselves to symbolism. Chapter 8 investigates post-dramatic works that also stage metaphors.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 178 8. Post‐dramatic Dementia
8.1 Introduction The works analysed in this chapter represent a marked departure from traditional theatre conventions. All three resist cohesive, linear storytelling. Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio’s On the Concept comprises three images that begin hyperrealistically and becomes increasingly imagistic and abstract. Memory Points is an immersive, promenade performance that takes small audience groups on a tour through a theatre building – backstage and all – and via installations of collected memories. RUFF is exceptional for its reframing of dementia: as discussed above the performer Peggy Shaw herself suffered a stroke and now lives with a form of dementia. The work is a kind of non-narrative and tangentially-arranged cabaret. All three performances demonstrate in some way timelessness, placelessness, and elements that in some way establish an experiential audience reception. Memory Points can be easily described as experiential because of its immersive and promenade composition. RUFF uses Peggy Shaw’s performance style to develop an intimacy with the audience: there is no fourth wall. On the Concept makes use of overwhelming sound and lighting design to as well as smell to confront the audience. In all three, the typical adherence to chronology becomes irrelevant and the usual domestic space is absent or transcended.
All three demonstrate a departure from expected typical representations of dementia and, therefore, offer new possibilities for representing people with dementia and dementia experiences. They exhibit alternatives to the relationships that are usually present in theatre about dementia. However, On the Concept does centre on a familial relationship. Instead of the tendency towards mothers and daughters, the piece stages a father-son relationship with a care dynamic. RUFF, too, engenders a cared dynamic, though not one that is typical in the identified performances.
Metaphor is also present in all three, and the use of symbolism accompanies the lack of explicit meaning-making. Symbols and metaphor appear in lieu of the kind of emblematic clinical markers seen in the works discussed above. To reiterate Zeilig’s (2015, 15) remark: “we turn to metaphor when attempting to explain difficult concepts”. As such, the symbols depicted represent elements of dementia experiences: the ephemeral quality of memory, the frustration of the caregiver experience, and the experience of the condition itself. In particular, RUFF and Memory Points evoke experiences of a dichotomy of the un/familiar.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 179 8.2 Memory Point(s): The Beauty of Remembering Memory Points is a work of promenade theatre by Platform 4 in England. Designed to be performed in and around a theatre venue, the piece was staged in five different locations from 2012 to 2015. The locations included Poole, Winchester, Eastleigh, and London. With each iteration, the path was altered to suit the site. Each time, audience numbers were kept to small groups of about five people. As such, the performance makers from Platform 4 purposed the work for intimacy and engagement. Because of its promenade and installation style, I was not able to base my analysis on a script or video recording. Instead, I had a book compiled by Platform 4 which includes numerous images and pieces of writing that relate to the development of the work. In addition, I interviewed Artistic Director Catherine Church who provided descriptions of the components of Memory Points. Lastly, I consulted online content (http://www.platform4.org/memorypoint.htm and https://soundcloud.com/platform4). The creators worked with several community groups to collect stories and workshop ideas for the performance. There is, therefore, an emphasis on real people and their stories. It was decided that the work should be about celebrating the lives of the participants and the performance would be “generally a positive experience,” that it would have “a melancholy but not a depression element to it” (Church 2017).
Memory Points is considered important to this research for its immersive and promenade dramaturgy. Moreover, with a complex, layered, and largely tangible amalgamation of multimedia details, its representation of dementia is not prescriptive. Church (2017) states that she “wanted to get away from the idea of plot and narrative and actors.” Reviewer Lyn Gardner (2013) corroborates this, saying that the work offers “fragments and snatches, rather than a tidy narrative.” As such, chronology and linearity are made redundant and catharsis is not an aspiration for the ending of the performance. Actually, Memory Points is intentionally episodic, fractured, and open to interpretation (Church 2017). Reviews of the work describe the experience as “sometimes full of clarity, sometimes fuzzy” (Gardner 2013) and “disorientating” (Lewis 2013). To contrast this disorientation, the tactile and intimate interaction with memories of real life people and families who have experienced dementia anchor the work. However, these interactions are often fleeting, comprising a framed photograph, an item of clothing, or a snapshot of a family holiday encapsulated in a micro installation. The “pockets of installation” (Church 2017) – while making tangible the intangible (memories) – resonate with the ephemerality of memory. In addition to themes of ephemerality, the in/tangible, and nonlinearity, Memory Points is about the un/familiar and remembering and
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 180 forgetting. The un/familiar dichotomy is facilitated first in the small audience group that engenders closeness with strangers, and secondly in the invitation extended to audiences to explore and interact with the memories and memorabilia of real people. The final dichotomy of remembering and forgetting is the theme at the centre of the work and evoked in the archiving and beautification of memories in a fractured and decontextualised manner.
The experience of the performance is visual and tactile with sound also playing a significant role. While language does feature, the storytelling does not rely on the spoken word. Beginning in the foyer of the venue – which is decorated as an ornate living room, the audience is taken on a journey staged as a heightened backstage tour “around, behind, in, around, outside, inside the corners of theatres” (Church 2017). Platform 4 was originally “interested in the idea of archiving memory and how memory gets archived” (Church 2017). Thus, collected memories embodied in pockets of installation punctuate the tour. The installations take form as arrangements of framed photos, projected short film, and miniature memory dioramas. Thus, the dramaturgy of Memory Points makes tangible the intangible. Nevertheless, in the nature of live performance, interactions with the archived stories are fleeting. Additionally, audiences encounter live musicians and dancers; and these interactions are similarly ephemeral. The musicians are situated around the building, sometimes in unexpected places: at the top of the fly tower and underneath the stage. Attendees are also more actively engaged in the performance: towards the end of the tour they are encouraged to put on costumes and accessories, drink tea and eat cake, pose for a group photo, and dance. To accompany this promenade format, audience members are given headphones that deliver a recorded soundtrack throughout their passage. Two performers, who act as theatrical museum curators, facilitate the tour (Church 2017). Layering often occurs between the recorded audio, live music, instructions from the guide, and the visual details throughout the work. In this way, Memory Points is a sensory experience that presents memories as a layered and multimedia archive to accommodate its fragmented content.
As stated, the installations were drawn from a lengthy research process for which the key creatives spent a lot of time with people who had experience with dementia. Their stories manifest in photos and passages, and at times are interpreted conceptually as collages, micro installations and as a short film in one instance. Church (2017) explains how the show took on new details over the course of its run: “we usually did some outreach work in each place.” In one instance, “we made flowers with them and we used the flowers eventually on the stage. And we hung them off the parasols on stage. And they had memories attached to them […] on
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 181 little cards. And we toured that with us” (Church 2017). This example demonstrates the abstract nature of the archiving, as well as the focus on remembering as much as forgetting.
The aesthetic of the performance was designed to connect the memories thematically, and to reflect the beauty of memory, its ethereality. As an example, the use of colour in the design of the work moves between exaggerated brightness and faded browns and greys. As Gardner (2013) notes, “[o]n occasion, it’s gaudy with colour and at other times faded and sepia-toned” (see Figure 31 and Figure 32 for an example of this contrast). These opposing themes each contribute to the performance an otherworldliness and resonate with Church’s (2017) comments on capturing memory: “in your memory things become too beautiful and too perfect. And you can't quite grasp them”. A general 1950s theme was embedded in the costumes and music, though the collected memories were mostly from the 1960s through to the 1980s. The desire to tap into the nostalgia of the 1950s and to feature the tea dresses of the time, as well as the buildings themselves, influenced the work’s aesthetic. Church (2017) explains that the earlier aesthetic was applied for a “whimsical” and “lost feel”. Regardless, the overall visual Figure 31: “Gaudy with colour” – costumes and projection in Memory atmosphere affords the work an Points (photography attributed to Tom Houser, Gerald White and Su ephemeral quality. The lost feel that Houser) Church cites connects to the central subject of dementia. Commemorating stories that are conspicuously from the past innately alludes to anterograde and early retrograde amnesia. The variety of eras referenced in Memory Points means that nothing is anachronistic because the archival (re)contextualisation of the details makes time irrelevant. Further, the audience
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 182 members, as voyagers through this archive, are not simply witness to those caught out of time, they themselves are positioned as existing out of time. To reiterate Church’s (2017) description, the performance has “a lost feel. Time lost.” So, in addition to the beautification of memory – saturated in colour and connected by a thread of nostalgia – the fragmentation and temporal displacement characteristic of dementia is evoked in the work.
The immersive performance facilitates an experience that is “more shared than communicated” (Lehmann 2006, 85). The contents of the work invites audiences to engage both with the personal recollections of strangers and with collective memory. It should be noted that the focus of the work’s development and the resulting performance was not to be limited to experiences and stories of dementia, but personal histories more broadly. In this way, the work is a celebration of the lives of those whose stories feature in Memory Points, as much as it is a lamentation of memories that are lost or at risk of being lost. Further, a common motif connects many of these stories, which evokes shared experiences. The common thread that emerged in development was the seaside, as many research participants were from Southampton, a port city. Church (2017) reflects that “[m]any of our participants […] had worked at the docks or they’d worked on boats or ships.” As a result, the performance takes on an atmosphere of a “slight seaside melancholic [nostalgia]” (Church 2017). This motif of the sea connects the pockets of installation throughout the performance (Figure 32), which the 1950s attire and theming complements. The soundtrack, too, features the sea throughout the performance, so that this motif of shared, community experience echoes on through the work. Several installations reference family holidays to the sea. Several performance locations would have drawn audience members from a similar port or seaside background with experiences of holidays to the sea. So, it is possible that the memories, though collected from strangers, would have a familiarity to them.
The un/familiar dichotomy is also at play as the audience is taken through both public and backstage (private) parts of the building. Even as sites for performance, theatre buildings go largely unseen by audiences. Memory Points disrupts this relationship and makes use of the building as a whole to stage a metaphor for the mind. As Church (2017) explains, “the promenade idea and the going around the backstage area is […] a very obvious analogy with the brain and the mind. […] Different bits of your mind are different rooms in the building.” Gardner (2013) supports this, saying: “The theatre – long corridors, foyers, dusty dead-ends, unexpected nooks, empty stages, dressing rooms and lighting boxes – becomes a metaphor for the mind.” In this way, the pockets of installation become are sites of memory throughout the
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 183 brain. Following the analogy, some parts of the brain are foggy and others brightly lucid, and music permeates throughout. If dementia has affected this metaphorical brain, then the restrained use of the spoken word as a mode of meaning-making is compatible. Instead, the piece facilitates experiences with the visual, auditory, and physical, allowing meaning to transcend prescription and alternatively be completed by each individual audient.
Figure 32: Seaside nostalgia in Memory Points (photography attributed to Tom Houser, Gerald White and Su Houser) On their tour of the building/mind, the small audience group is first greeted in the foyer by a character whose exact role is left undefined; the audience may infer his behaviour to be that of a butler, the curator of a museum, or a tour guide (Church 2017). This performer has a female partner. Her role, too, is unknown, as is their relationship, which is deliberately left ambiguous. In an interview, Church explains that “there was an interaction between the two of them. So it looked like they were friends or lovers or they could be brother and sister. They could be a butler and a housemaid […] there’s a whole lot of different things that they could be imagined to be” (Church 2017). Performers conduct the tour, lending its archived stories a sense of ceremony; this treatment heightens their beatification. During development, the guides were
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 184 originally more like curators, but needed to be more theatrical to engage the attendees. In their more performative form, the two do speak, but because they have to communicate over the headphones, they also have an acquired gestural language. This aspect of the performance parallels the decline of speech faculties in people with dementia. As people with dementia lose their linguistic expression, they may begin to use compensatory physical cues, for example, “pantomime, gestures, facial expressions, body postures, and exaggerations in paralinguistic features” (Orange 1991, 178). The reduced spoken word overall assists in keeping the work open to interpretation. The pair of guides are intended to function “like a kind of beautiful memory” (Church 2017) and audients can, again, project their own memories or imagined stories onto them.
That the audience could “project their own stories onto those two characters” (Church 2017) demonstrates the intention of Memory Points to encourage its participants to actively engage with the content. The work contains further – and more embodied – examples of this positioning of its audients to engage. The performance begins to draw to a close as the small group of audients are invited into in a dressing room to don costumes. They receive a five- minute call, as though they were actors, familiar with this environment that was previously to them a private area of a public building. They are then taken onstage where a collection of theatrical accessories – feather boas and hats – awaits. They have a group photo taken and tea and cake are served on the stage. The band plays and the audience is encouraged to dance. By this stage, the creators of Memory Points hope that the group has formed a bond over the course of the performance (Church 2017). This final section is about their own memory making. While this ‘story’ is experienced immediately, they remain in the bright, gaudy and anachronistic attire and setting of the archived memories, as if they had been absorbed into the work and the shared history it proffers. Finally, the lights go down and a solo dancer performs a piece inspired by stories of families’ experiences of dementia. This final performed element reiterates the central theme of the performance: dementia and, in particular, remembering and forgetting. The audience leaves the space, waving to the performers, as the dancer continues. When the groups leaves the auditorium, they are sometimes led out of the building; as it was at Southbank:
they would go out into the darkness of the full-on night-time night on the river Thames. And people coming past them and they're shouting. […] They were coming out of a fire exit all dressed up and then having to walk around and back to the foyer. Which in itself is quite exposing and disorientating. (Church 2017)
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In addition to the un/familiar dichotomy evoked in the closeness between individual audients, Memory Points invites an intimacy with subjects of the archived stories. In her review, Gardner (2013) reflects that “I have never met any of the couples from Southampton and Eastleigh’s Connections Club and Singing for Brain groups, whose lives, stories and memories are incorporated into the piece, but I feel that I know them as a result of this show.” One example of a shared story is a short film created by Gerald White for the performance. The photomontage film is about a married couple, Gordon and his wife Doreen who was living with dementia at the time of the performance’s development. White composed the film from “a lot of archival photographs of their life together and their children and grandchildren” (Church 2017). A focal point like Doreen and Gordon’s film reiterates the idea that real people’s experiences have informed the installations. Church (2017) describes the immersive experience of the performance: “they would be in this incredibly protected environment of intimacy and revelation and beautiful moments. Sharing these people’s family histories. And celebrating their lives in a way”. The quilted effect of the collected stories creates multiple sites of potential connection for each individual audient, while precluding a closed interpretation of the material. As such, each individual ‘completes’ the stories presented. As Paul Lewis (2013) reports, “the audience encounter images and sounds that create and trigger memories”. Church reflects on the: overlap between real people that we worked with and the imaginary characters that we had involved with the piece. […] And it almost gave it a life of its own because people were trying to make these connections between seeing a story of somebody's real memory about their real family and it was sort of overlapped with a fictional idea. (2017)
Moreover, the variety of interactions with the stories – auditory and visual, sensory and tangible – engenders a relationship to them and, also, relates to different areas of the brain and the way we cognitively experience and store memories.
The performance incorporates both passive and active interactions with the installations. The former includes listening to the recordings delivered through the headphones, looking at photographs, and watching the short film about Gordon and Doreen. Yet, the promenade nature of the work heightens even these aspects to embodied activities. Active engagement with the material involves the audients dressing up, drinking tea, and dancing – as discussed – and opening up micro installations. About halfway through the tour, the group is led to an installation of lockers. They are invited to collect a key and each open an individual locker
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 186 containing a micro installation inspired by a memory (Figure 33). With this action, they are afforded witness to an otherwise private recollection. The use of the key heightens the act of revelation. As with much of the performance, the dioramas are more “more presence than representation, more shared than communicated experience” (Lehmann 2006, 85). They are also bright, colourful, and ornate, demonstrative of the beautification of memories in their archived state.
Another micro site is the dollhouse embedded in a seaside installation (Figure 32). This “pocket” includes a dolls’ house set amongst stones and made more whimsical with a string of lights arching over the roof. The house has an accompanying film; another photomontage creation by White. Both the physical house and the house in the accompanying film open up to reveal smiling family photos from members of the community groups whose stories informed the work. The scaled-down nature of the house gives a sense of experiencing the story fragments from a bird’s eye view. This detail resonates with Jane’s private moments in 1 Beach Road, where she creates and erodes a tiny cliff of sand with her hands. In Memory Points, the
Figure 33: The lockers in Memory Points (photography attributed to Tom Houser, Gerald White and Su Houser) audience is both witness to, and disconnected from, the contents of the seaside house.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 187 The performance presents memory in its inherent ephemerality as well as in its archived form. Concrete testimonies of memory are manifest in the photos installed throughout the work (particularly those in frames, especially protected from bending or being lost). The film, too, documents Gordon and Doreen’s story. Another example of the tangible is the vintage clothing and hats that the audience don to pose for their own photo. Despite the resistance against their temporality with the physical embodiment of the story fragments, the performance, in its liveness, yields to the ephemerality of memory. Nevertheless, the staging of these memories celebrates the stories; their inclusion in the work makes them exceptional. The community aspect of theatre (and live arts) spectatorship is exploited to pass the stories on to a new family of strangers.
Memory Points is distinct among the catalogue of performances in this study for its immersive, promenade composition. In addition, Platform 4’s performance abandons linearity and chronology, offers alternatives to the common relationships staged in dementia narratives, and substitutes emblematic clinical markers for abstract symbols of remembering and forgetting within a broader metaphor for the mind. The work offers themes of remembering and forgetting, fragmentation, the in/tangible, and the un/familiar. Audiences are invited to witness the archived stories of others and to interact with the fellow audients in their small groups. The voyage through public and backstage spaces of the theatre building heightens the un/familiar dichotomy. While evoking this dichotomy, the piece disrupts the usual demarcation between people with dementia and people without, first by focussing on memories above memory loss and, secondly, by drawing audiences into the experience of fragmentation and “time lost”. This is realised most strongly when the attendees dress up and have their own photos taken and their own memories created. In this section, the audience is drawn into the brightly coloured and anachronistic aesthetic of the performance, temporarily sharing in the experience of existing out of time. The dramaturgy of Memory Points can be characterised by Lehmann’s (2006, 85) explanation of post-dramatic performance as “more presence than representation, more shared than communicated experience, [and] more process than product”. The performance and its components sit at an intersection of manifestation, fragmentation and ephemerality. The memories presented are made manifest in physical embodiments: photos and recordings make the stories concrete. Yet, only snapshots (both literally and figuratively) of lives are glimpsed; the fragments present in the work do not represent a cohesive or linear narrative. Lastly, the promenade style of the piece – not to mention theatre’s inherent liveness – and the transient nature of the audients’ relationship with one another, mean that the interaction with the stories
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 188 is relatively brief. The process of developing Memory Points drew stories, photos, and items of clothing from real people. These collected memories were stitched into one fragmented performance, though the memories lent to the production were not necessarily about dementia. The composition of the work is almost a communal version of what Flora talks about in Autobiographer: that instead of “stories get[ting] steadily larger” in a linear way, “filaments thread between the most disparate of things” (Wilson 2012, 17). Church describes the connection between the structure of Memory Points and the experience of people with dementia: “Their past, prese,nt, future is jumbled up into one place” and recollections may be “flashes of things” (Church 2017). Transcending the dramatic conventions of linearity, cohesion, language and character, Memory Points’ post-dramatic composition facilitates fragmentation without alienating audiences from the collected memories with which they interact tactilely.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 189 8.3 RUFF Split Britches’ RUFF (USA) premiered in 2013, after actor Peggy Shaw’s stroke in 2011. Shaw is writer and performer and fellow Split Britches founder Lois Weaver is credited as co-writer and director (Split Britches 2015). My analysis is based on a number of critic reviews of the performance, as well as a scholarly source in Kim Solga’s article in Performance Research. Using photographs as prompts, I also drew information from the Split Britches website, online video clips of interviews with Shaw and Weaver, and online clips from the work itself. The performance is a one-woman show, though it features video projections of a band and involves Weaver in its meta-theatricality. In this way, RUFF is part monologue and part cabaret. The ischemic infarction (Isherwood 2013) in Shaw’s brain stem (Edge 2014) has affected her memory; she now requires the script to be displayed on the autocue. In RUFF, the three monitors in full view expose this affectation. As such, the work is both a performance about and of Shaw’s dementia. In an interview with Lauren Mayberry (2013) Shaw herself describes this aspect of the work: “It’s a new show about filling the empty spaces left in my demented brain after my stroke” (Shaw quoted in Mayberry 2013). RUFF is about “what she has lost, and what has still been left to her” (Pringle 2016). In this way, the work contains elements of demarcation: pre- and post-stroke. Even the title refers to the ‘three-stroke ruff,’ a basic drum beat for beginners, suggesting an arduous starting-over, but also a new beginning. Nonetheless, Shaw’s performance is noteworthy for its subversion of typical dementia narratives. Clinical indicators of memory loss are made performative, the event of the stroke is reflected on comically, and, as reviewers have reported, instead of being made tragic, the performance is unsentimental (Isherwood 2013; Solga 2014, 137).
Reportage on RUFF is significant: first, for the assessment of the piece within a broader narrative of Shaw’s self-performance following on from her previous work, and, second, for the demarcation of Shaw the performer (pre- and post-stroke) by reviewers familiar with her work. Split Britches’ extensive body of work makes its founders recognisable figures in the USA’s avant-garde sector. This performance sits among other age-related works from the company: Lost Lounge (2009), Unexploded Ordnances (UXO) (2016), and Weaver’s performance as her long-time alter-ego, What Tammy Needs to Know about Getting Old and Having Sex (2008). In a BBC Radio 4 interview, Shaw states that all of her performances “are about all the changes I’ve been through, I was a lesbian then a butch lesbian, then a mother then a grandmother then a grandmother to a mixed race grandson, then I had a lesbian old age and then I had a stroke” (Shaw quoted in Moore 2017, 79). Shaw’s own ‘character arc,’
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 190 documented by her performances over decades, is considered a continuous subversion of (conventional binary) femininity on stage. And many consider that Shaw’s – and Weaver’s – appearance onstage, as both female and queer, is inherently radical. In this context, RUFF is seen as an evolution of Shaw’s perspective, now that of an “old woman” (Moore 2017), despite being only a sexagenarian. Performing post-stroke is considered a natural progression of her intersectional feminist work and her radical status. As Bridie Moore (2017, 90) describes, Shaw’s “multifaceted, non-linear, postdramatic performances have the potential, especially when taken together, to offer new ways of understanding and discussing the phenomenon of ageing femininity”. As such, RUFF is a challenge to the prevailing narrative of dementia as a condition that diminishes or erases those it affects. Further, the concept of care and dependency is presented in a unique way. Shaw’s performance aids are exposed. Screens on stage act as prompt for the script and Weaver sits in the audience to provide direction where necessary. In this way, the work presents Shaw’s dementia without mourning her cognitive affectations, instead making them performative.
Figure 34: Peggy Shaw in RUFF (photo by Alexei Taylor) While RUFF is sometimes described as a monologue, this characterisation does not take into account Weaver’s role in the performance, Shaw’s channelling of her internal others, or the appearance of her band on the screen behind her. As Matthew Delbridge and Lee McGowan (2015, 3) explain: “The work is a tribute to those who have kept her company, a lament for the absence of those she’s lost and an examination of the holes left in her mind by the stroke.” RUFF is composed of the spoken word and music and is non-linear and placeless. The lack of
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 191 a defined storyworld evokes comparisons to stand-up comedy or an intimate music concert. This intimacy accommodates the delivery of the actor’s memories and experiences, which are accompanied by songs, a tongue-in-cheek public service announcement, and the embodiment of other characters. Shaw conducts the show through direct address, and for the majority of her performance uses a microphone on a stand (Figure 34). The performance does not so much ‘break the fourth wall’ as it never establishes one. Thus, a power dynamic is established from the beginning that does not simply position the audience as witnesses to Shaw’s decline, where she herself may be made an object on stage; it instead precludes such an imbalance. The ease with which Shaw approaches and addresses the audience communicates her extensive experience and enduring comfort on the stage. The exposure of her aids, the three monitors, also demonstrates comfort, particularly as she wheels them around the stage and adjusts their height to suit her purposes. She manoeuvres them, showing that she controls them and not the other way around. Complementing these screens, a wide sheet of green screen creates the back wall and rolls down onto the stage, anchoring Shaw to the projections that feature throughout the performance.
The integration of the back screen into the stage space smooths out the fragmentary nature of the work, as it ties together the live sequences and projected material that may otherwise feel incongruous. Benjamin Gillespie (2013, 577) describes RUFF as an “intermingling of popular genres with stories, songs, videos, and various other texts that are loosely connected through thematic riffs on the alienating experience of having a stroke.” His description indicates not only the mixture of genres and nonlinearly structured sequences, but also the stroke as the governing theme. The cabaret format complements the lack of a linear, ‘well-made’ narrative. Eva Yaa Asantewaa (2013) considers the structure of RUFF as racing “by in a stream of consciousness and digressions”. Solga (2014, 136) reflects that the work is constructed out of “awkward shifts”. However, these shifts are not entirely incongruous; the pieces are connected, if tangentially. The potential awkwardness, though, can be attributed to Shaw’s turning to the monitors for prompts, or consulting Weaver – sitting in the audience – as to whether she is standing in the right place onstage. Charles Isherwood (2013) recognises that the mercurial nature of Shaw’s performance reflects her inner world: “There are dark spots in her mind now, blanks in her memory, and the leapfrogging in her show reflects the disorienting experience she’s come through” (Isherwood 2013). Another reviewer corroborates this, calling the work a “virtual tour of Peggy’s post stroke brain” (tooleyh 2013). On this tour, the performance traverses anecdotes, songs, jokes, and pop culture references. Some anecdotes are easily
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 192 associated with the subject of the show, such as when Shaw recalls her mother claiming that black pepper could cause brain damage, something she once assumed was a myth but now considers in light of her stroke (Gillespie 2013). Other shared experiences have a seemingly intangible connection, for example, the time Shaw attempted to cook a turkey for Thanksgiving while on acid (tooleyh 2013). The featured songs, likewise, demonstrate both manifest and tenuous correlations with the subject of dementia. The numbers in the show include Jacques Brel’s Jacky, Shirley Ellis’s The Name Game, If I Only Had a Brain from the Wizard of Oz, and Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man on which she is accompanied by her backing band (Delbridge and McGowan 2015; Isherwood 2013; Gillespie 2013; Macdonald 2016).
In addition to the songs and anecdotes, Shaw’s cabaret features other characters that are channelled either in her own characterisation or mediated through the green screen. In a BBC Radio 4 interview, Shaw explains her channelling of other characters in the work:
After my stroke I was able to define that I wasn’t an original person, that I had a combination of a lot of people living inside of me that I wanted to talk about and thank for all their help. Like Leonard Cohen, and Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor, Malcolm X, Otis Redding. (quoted in Moore 2017, 88).
She evokes several of these, what I will call, internal others, in the performance space. In one instance, she performs a version of Marlon Brando’s “Horror” monologue from the film Apocalypse Now (1979) while she eats an orange. The monologue makes metatheatrical references to her actions onstage, which highlight the staged construct and undercut any sentimentality in the speech.
I’m Marlon Brando. Talking as if I have such incredibly important things to say. […] And slowly peeling and spitting out an orange, really proving how good I am at method acting. And what I’m gonna say is a slow monologue. A monologue about horror. I’m proving that I have learned what horror is. [Bites into orange.] It’s impossible [Spits out a piece of orange] for words to describe to someone who does not know what horror is. [Another bite, another spit.] Horror. Horror has a face. And you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not they are truly enemies to be feared. [Lights goes down to black.] Truly enemies. (Split Britches 2014)
This sequence is comical in some ways, for example, in its meta-theatricality – her spoken references to her onstage actions – and her quasi-parody of Brando’s Horror monologue. Yet, as she speaks about horror, the underlying dementia narrative weakens the potential for parody. In this context, dementia and Shaw’s stroke are constructed as (potential) enemies, and this
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 193 horror is given “a face,” and, therefore, personified and made an antagonist.
RUFF contains other metaphors for the brain, stroke, and dementia. Several articles note a symbolic theme related to water (Gillespie 2013; Delbridge and McGowan 2015). The analogy of the aquarium is first evoked in the explanation of the stroke itself: “I was minding my own business, and an icicle of death hit the ocean floor of my brain” (quoted in Schatell 2014). An additional metaphor of the brain emergent in RUFF is a malfunctioning computer. This second theme that aligns Shaw’s brain with a digital device is also introduced with a description of her stroke: “After spending forty-five years on the stage with lights in my eyes, trying to figure out what a woman is, let alone a lesbian, my brain finally crashed” (quoted in Gillespie 2013, 577). She also explains that “there was just no more room for new thoughts in my brain. It had reached capacity” (quoted in Schatell 2014). The words “crash” and “capacity” are phrases easily associated with malfunctioning or ageing electronic devices. This motif is reinforced visually with the presence of the three monitors that fill in the “empty spaces left in” Shaw’s brain and the green screen that incorporates her into the performance technology.
The screen at the back of the stage is referred to as the “green screen of [Shaw’s] mind” (quoted in Schatell 2014). The performance space is not large, suiting the solo cabaret style invoked, and the strip of paper that constitutes the green screen is almost its width. Delbridge16 and McGowan (2015, 1) note that the “environment replicates a chroma-key ‘studio’”: what would more commonly be referred to as green screen. The paper is rolled out, beginning at the top of the back of the stage and rolling down to the floor. The green paper is a screen behind Shaw, but also seamlessly (literally) connects the performance space to the back wall onto which recorded video is projected. So, Shaw becomes drawn into the green screen; it is not merely a projected entity – nor are her memories and the pieces of her brain displayed there – separate from the performer live on stage. Delbridge and McGowan (2015, 1) view that this technology represents a “challenge to the language of theatre” because it “alludes to the nature of the reconstructed, recomposited, manipulated and controlled.” They note further that “the green canvas becomes a place for memories to be reconstructed, for messages to be manipulated and for modes of production to be revealed” (Delbridge and McGowan 2015, 3). Gillespie (2013, 577) recognises a vulnerability that the screens evoke, in that they display “Shaw’s fragmented psyche, which could short-circuit at random,” alluding to the metaphor of the brain as a dysfunctional electronic device. RUFF also reveals a greater vulnerability with the inclusion
16 Matt Delbridge is credited as the set and media designer for RUFF.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 194 of the three monitors. Having these prompts in full view of the audience reveals the staged construct of the work – as Delbridge and McGowan (2015, 1) note – despite the irruption of the real in the work. While the three monitors are Shaw’s aid, she is able to manipulate them, wheeling them around the performance space and adjusting their height as needed. Moreover, the screens are sometimes turned towards the audience; they then become a performative element, not simply a support. Additional tension occurs when Shaw’s delivery does not completely match the scripted text. These instances contribute to the “frame of potential failure” and actually make it performative.
The green screen behind Shaw is a conduit for mediated content. It is used only to project pre- recorded material and is not “used for live compositing – it is a signpost” (Delbridge and McGowan 2015, 4). It signals the act of live recall (Delbridge and McGowan 2015). Projections include a motion capture performance of Shaw dancing (Figure 35), her backing band, and video footage of Shaw as a 13-year-old. Although the footage of the band is pre-recorded, Shaw interacts with the musicians as though they are live with her onstage. She introduces them one by one and they each play a riff on their respective instruments. Members of the band are significant collaborators from Shaw’s previous performances (The Feminist Spectator 2014). Their appearance in the work – particularly in projected video form – casts them as living apparitions in Shaw’s life and career. Their digital manifestation makes them a part of Shaw’s mind, members of her group of internal others. One reviewer, familiar with the actor’s work, stated that they “missed seeing Shaw interact with live musicians,” but concedes that “there’s something compelling about the ghostly, disembodied, filmed appearance of the band in RUFF that nicely underlines Shaw’s themes” (The Feminist Spectator 2014). Alternatively, Delbridge and McGowan (2015, 8) suggest that “Shaw’s performance preserves the ‘liveness’ of the band”. The combination of live and mediated channelling of others, gives the evoked memories an ephemeral Figure 35: Shaw in front of her pre-recorded motion-captured self in RUFF (photo by Michael quality. It is unclear to the audience if the vignettes Conti)
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 195 are Shaw’s past, present or imagination. The stroke as the performance’s through-line facilitates this ambiguity.
RUFF performs dementia on two levels. The work is about Shaw’s stroke and her life since, but is also of dementia in its meta-theatricality and the use of technological aids. Moore (2017) views Shaw’s performance as one of both fragility and resilience, as she accepts assistance to accommodate her cognitive decline in order to continue performing. Gillespie (2013, 576) adds that, performing post-stroke, Shaw faces a “double bind […]: not only has she lost her ability to fully recall her own past experiences, but she is also unable to memorize lines”. As such, the recollection of her own memories is a more performative act, as she has had to relearn some of her own experiences, as if adopting the character of herself. The presence of the three monitors onstage, scrolling the text from the script, exhibits Shaw’s difficulty with remembering lines. Gillespie (2013, 577) considers that this “deliberately establish[es] the performance frame of potential failure”. Shaw reflects a self-awareness of this frame, reminding the audience how embarrassing it is for an actor to forget their lines (Solga 2014). Shaw’s forgetfulness presents as irruptions of the real. The “irruption of the real” is one of Lehmann’s (2006) identified traits in the postdramatic palette. It describes the unsettling of the staged illusion. Traditional dramatic theatre, grounded in mimesis, rarely uses conventions that upset the boundaries of the diegesis; while the fourth wall may be broken with scripted elements like asides, these disruptions do not weaken the closed autonomous reality of the drama. In contrast, postdramatic theatre may wilfully stress the boundaries of its diegesis, blurring its relationship with the ‘real’ and putting the audience in a position to question whether an action is staged or real. Spectators, therefore, react to events onstage not just as fiction, but as reality (Lehmann 2006, 104). In cases of actors forgetting lines, a long pause in a dramatic monologue may be inferred as an aesthetic pause for effect. In RUFF, though, a long pause may make the audience uncomfortable, thinking that Shaw has lost her train of thought. Other irruptions also occur within the “frame of potential failure,” Shaw sits when she needs a break from standing, takes drinks of water from a bottle she has given to an audience member to hold, and warns the audience that she may cough a lot during the show, another ordinarily embarrassing occurrence for someone onstage. However, some instances of ‘failure’ are planned performative moments. After a discussion with Weaver, Solga reveals: That moment when Shaw pretends to have forgotten to reclaim her shoe, and asks the shoe-holder to come up on stage and place it for her? That moment is a ruse. The part where Shaw forgets her place? Those moments are real, but they
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 196 are also routine; they don’t signal burden, but normalcy. (2014, 137)
As such, Shaw and Weaver have deliberately staged moments that blur the line between the performance and the ‘real’. So, it is unclear how much of the performance of dementia is an irruption of the real and how much is purely performative. As such, RUFF deliberately leans into some of the expectations of people with dementia, though it allows no time to mourn these changes. Equally, Isherwood (2013) notes that Shaw’s “delivery maintains its deadpan edge even when she’s lamenting the loss of cherished memories”. In RUFF, both levels of dementia being exhibited – the character’s and the actor’s, to put it one way – are made performative and resist the expected dementia narrative of tragedy and chronic decline.
RUFF is a challenge to common dementia narratives as well as the binary of un/successful ageing (Rowe and Kahn 1997). In this work, Shaw’s intersectional feminism is extended. Moore asserts that Shaw’s “disruptive gender-play” is part of this subversion, stating that her identity “complicates the figure of the “old woman” in performance” (Moore 2017, 73). Further, Moore references Shaw’s claim that she “keep[s] young by passing” and that “her sexuality and butch self-presentation as an opportunity to escape the reductive trap of ageing femininity” (Moore 2017, 81). In light of the skew towards women with dementia in the performance catalogue, this evasion is significant. While other female characters that are also in isolation onstage – for example, Flora in Autobiographer – the absence of and lack of focus on children or grandchildren makes RUFF exceptional among dementia performances.
The absence of children and grandchildren onstage precludes the typical generational discourse; and the lack of a spousal relationship further disrupts the common care narrative, though it is not completely absent. The work does establish a kind of care dynamic, but Shaw initiates and controls it. Weaver’s role in the performance is as both director and prompt. However, instead of remaining side-stage and out of sight, she sits among the audience. Like the monitors, she too is exposed. While the monitors assist Shaw with the spoken text, Weaver consults on Shaw’s placement and movement on stage. As Solga (2014, 137) describes, “when Shaw could not remember where she was meant to be on the stage at any given moment, she called out and up, ‘Lois, am I supposed to be here now?’ Weaver replied without missing a beat, ‘Yes. You’re fine.’” This exposure of Weaver and the baring of Shaw’s assistance tools constructs a different kind of care narrative, and one in which Shaw is not passive despite her dementia. Members of the audience, too, are engaged in this relationship of support. When Shaw first enters the stage at the beginning of the show, she is carrying an orange, a shoe (she
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 197 is wearing the other), and a bottle of water. She speaks about the embarrassing incidence of actors forgetting lines, and warns the audience that this will happen to her during RUFF. She approaches a member of the audience and asks “Will you hold my orange please?” She approaches a second and third audient to offload her shoe and water in the same manner. Her direct address immediately establishes the intimacy of the performance and lays the foundation for sharing her personal experiences. The action of addressing specific audience members and passing them objects draws them further into the performance.
The need for support mechanisms as well as Shaw’s intermittent sitting down and drinking made some audience members, who were familiar with Shaw’s work, acutely aware of her cognitive affectations (Solga 2014; Moore 2017). Solga (2014, 137) even reports feeling uncomfortable with the show’s sense “of utter precariousness”. She explains:
she began speaking in a voice that felt immediately wrong to me: it was quite formal, studied tone, almost as though she was struggling to remember her lines. […] I realized then, painfully, that this new Shaw was for real: she was indeed a changed performer, an older, physically weaker woman, and the change was steps from me, on stage, struggling to hang in there. (Solga 2014, 136)
Moore (2017, 88) also dialogically demarcates this new post-stroke Shaw from the performer who delivered previous work “her reliance on autocue and her occasional interruptions of the show […] make explicit the fragility which the stroke has produced”. Because the work inevitably falls into this broader narrative of an oeuvre and into Shaw’s decades-long character arc, the reportage on RUFF is significant to its analysis. Where demarcation occurs in other performances of dementia – between people with dementia and those without, and between the person before and since dementia – a meta-theatrical demarcation is evoked in review literature: between Shaw pre- and post-stroke. Solga (2014, 136) does acknowledge, though, that “something else was going on, too: that she was making the show out of these strange, awkward shifts and changes”. The work’s structure facilitates the incongruous movement from sequence to sequence, and the mixture of anecdotes, songs, and impersonations frees the performance from the expectation of linearity. The spoken text of RUFF plays into a pre-post- stroke demarcation as well, describing the stroke in terms of “crashing” and other language of catastrophe. Unlike other performances that stage dementia of the Alzheimer’s type, or similarly chronic conditions of deterioration, the stroke-related dementia in RUFF involves a catalytic event as opposed to a gradient decline. As such, the motif of demarcation is more apposite to RUFF than other works. In addition to the use of water- and electronic-based
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 198 metaphors, Shaw describes her stroke through a comical anecdote: “I went into the hospital as a woman who gets mistaken as a man, and I guess I came out as a straight white guy, ‘cause half my brain was missing. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t, uh, I could only do one thing at a time” (Barbican Centre 2016). She tells the story of her stroke and the catalyst for demarcation with her signature wit and, again, destabilises the predominant tragic dementia narrative.
Figure 36: Shaw in front of a projected video in RUFF (photo by Alexei Taylor) While comically reflecting on her experience of having a stroke, Shaw muses over potential causes for the event. These elements of RUFF subvert the typical clinical discourse of dementia narratives. She attributes her stroke to arrogance, coffee consumption, smoking, and even potential divine damnation for dressing like a man; additionally, her mother’s advice about black pepper takes on new significance. The three main reasons she toys with are: the death of a close friend, Ellen Stewart, and a dream she had that Stewart was trying to take Shaw with her; the many performances over the years looking into stage lights; and coming across the old footage of herself as a teenager, wearing a dress (tooleyh 2013; Gillespie 2013; Jaffe 2014). In Shaw’s words: my sixty-seven-year-old self saw my thirteen-year-old self wearing a green dress […and] suddenly I was exhausted from still trying to hold my brain in my head and my head on my neck […]. My old brain met my young brain and that one look shattered my insides all at once. (quoted in Moore 2017, 87) The offending footage is shown twice during the performance, projected on the green screen (Figure 36). Shaw never explains exactly why this video of her attending her sister’s wedding,
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 199 in a dress, would trigger the stroke. Instead, she offers an abstract image of her brain threatening to fall out of her head, at risk of shattering. The efforts to explain the stroke speak to the demarcation between the pre- and post-stroke self and a need to explain this change. This has some parallel with the compulsion to name and explain dementia in Western culture, as discussed in the literature review. As Harding and Palfrey note, “[s]ociety needs dementia to be medicalised, as if it is classified as a disease it holds out the prospect of a cure for ageing and for death” (Harding and Palfrey’s emphasis 1997, 139). In RUFF the recurring theme of attempting to rationalise the stroke somewhat echoes the medicalised Western view. Notably, though, any clinical discourse that would emerge is subverted, filtered through Shaw’s humour.
The subversion of clinical discourse is best demonstrated in Shaw’s parody of a public service announcement. The segment begins with Shaw’s band behind her; together they perform a rock-and-roll version of the Hokey Pokey. She then hushes her band, addressing them as though they were live onstage, and introduces her public service announcement. The band remain ‘onstage’ during the announcement and sound effects accent certain moments throughout the announcement. Shaw attributes the F.A.S.T. acronym to government bodies, activating a societal discourse within the work. She encourages the audience to test themselves using the acronym as she goes along. She explains that the acronym stands for face, arms, speech, and time, and has the audience smile, hold out their arms, and say “I was born on a pirate ship” while holding their tongues (which results in “I was born on a pile of shit”) (Split Britches 2014). All the while, the rock music continues. Referencing the widely recognised F.A.S.T. acronym evokes a public discourse about stroke (and, indirectly, dementia). However, Shaw’s humour and the rock-and-roll style parody the announcement and subvert the serious subject matter. The interactive number engages the audience and her projected band is treated as though they were live. After another run of the song, substituting face, arm, speech, and time for the usual hands and feet, Shaw calls for a time out. The band comically collapses ‘onstage’ and one member even has a drink. They remain in sight a little longer, emphasising their presence in the work, despite being absent from the physical stage. Their collapse echoes Shaw’s own need to intermittently rest and casts them as follow representatives of “ageing femininity” (Moore 2017, 90). In Moore’s view: “Her continued presence on stage challenges the normalised decline narrative, which speaks of burden and excess; instead Shaw presents an ‘old woman’ who counters the figure popularly staged as dependent, obsolete or obscene” (Moore 2017, 90). Shaw’s presence onstage is, as it has been considered previously, radical. This rebellion, once
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 200 attributed to her gender and sexuality, is now extended further to her age and cognitive function. The immediacy of the subject with dementia performing themselves – not an imitation or re-enactment – distinguishes RUFF from the vast majority of performances about dementia. While characters with dementia are typically channelled by others, Shaw presents herself and she conjures up others in her cabaret. The apparently spontaneous structure of RUFF presents and embraces the nonlinear and amnesiac quality of Shaw’s cognition. The work stages a juxtaposition of losing control and being in control of the performance. This juxtaposition sits comfortably with another: Shaw is presenting her dementia in real time, staging an irruption of the real, yet, the performance is scripted, and directed, rehearsed, at times pre-recorded, and managed in real time by Weaver, the monitors, and Shaw herself. The typical generational discourse is absent and the clinical discourse is subverted. Further, Shaw’s physical isolation onstage prohibits the demarcation characteristic of many dementia narratives. However, a demarcation is made between Shaw’s pre- and post-stroke self. She makes the distinction in her use of metaphors and references to the stroke as the catalytic event. Review literature on RUFF makes a similar distinction; Shaw the public character is delineated from her past self. Significantly, though, many reviews and articles concede that much of Shaw’s charisma and humour remains intact. While RUFF uses metaphors to describe Shaw’s stroke and dementia, and makes reference to demarcation, it does reconstitute the typical care dynamic and disregards other common traits of dementia narratives: the generational discourse, erasure, and relegation to home settings or places of care.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 201 8.4 On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God Director Romeo Castellucci, with his company Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, worked in collaboration with Giacomo Strada to create the hour-long show, On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God (2010). My analysis of the work is primarily based on descriptions provided in critic reviews and video clips of the performance; images also served as prompts for discussion. In combination, these sources sufficiently outline the imagistic structure of the work. While the work is in Italian, the relationship between the characters can be interpreted without a detailed translation; though, the language is secondary to the visual, auditory, and olfactory experience of the performance. The performance leans into the anguish of dementia experiences and layers the everyday with the allegorical and the spiritual. On the Concept contains religious overtones: the face of Christ oversees the work. Constructed in three scenes, the piece is a performative triptych. In the work, dementia is not directly referenced but is presented in themes of old age and senility; impaired language; burden, dependency and caregiving; family dynamics and role-reversal; dignity; humanity and existential anxiety; and age-related illness as a catalyst for these sorts of concerns. On the Concept can be described as hyperrealism that turns to religious iconography. In this way, the iconographic dramaturgy of the work diverges from the likes of Autobiographer, in that it demotes spoken language. The performance demotes denotative language, so that the spoken word contributes minimally to the overall experience of the work. Its ‘language’ – its mode of communication – is a largely visual one. In this way, the work is a decidedly postdramatic composition. Significantly, the lessening of language reflects dementia pathology and echoes the social and familial implications of this reduction in its staged analogy of spiritual struggle.
During the first part of the performance, the front of the stage is set up as an apartment and the back half of the stage acts as a kind of non-space, or at least a non-place space. The domestic space, as established, is a common setting for dementia narratives. A huge portrait of Christ dominates the non-space. The staging is realistic, yet the portrait of Christ undercuts the naturalism of the foregrounded set, particularly when the subjects address the portrait towards the end of the opening part, traversing into the non-space. The story is set in what is assumed to be the son’s home, representing further themes of caregiving, burden, and, implicitly, institutionalisation. However, the themes become more metaphysical as the work breaks away from story and location. The concept of place is discarded completely after the opening sequence, and the staged events become more image than scene.
On the Concept comprises three sequences. They are, briefly, a son and father dealing with the
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 202 latter’s incontinence, followed by a group of boys throwing stones at the portrait of Jesus Christ, and in the final image the portrait ‘performs’ by way of multimedia elements. Hence, it opens with a clinical representation of senility within the context of a father-son relationship, but with its second and third sequences, turns towards a visual and sensory language.
The first sequence opens the show in a realistic style, with naturalistic action and set. The set is a spotless white apartment, which Andrea Pocosgnich (2010) interprets as a “premonition of an imminent […] hospitalization”. The stage design includes a clinically white floor and furniture – that is, until the father turns around to reveal a brown stain on the back of his white robe. The visual contrast of faecal matter against the pure white set evokes the juxtaposition between the father’s situation and the purity of the home, signifying unflattering ageing as a disruption to lifestyle. Martin Paul Eve (2011) reports that the smell of faeces is simulated during this part of the performance so that the audience is immersed in the hyperrealist action on the stage. Cohen and Eisdorfer (2001) note that bowel incontinence can be a symptom of advanced dementia, so the confronting scenario also contributes clinical signage. When the elderly father “loses control of his bowels” (Eve 2011), the son, who was on his way out, has to clean his father up. The physical event of the incontinence anchors the interaction between father and son. The staged relationship is limited to this scene, where the son is carer and the father is a burden. Further, both appear to be entrenched in this situation: the father in his state of deterioration and the son in his role as family member-become-carer. The performance leans into this notion of being trapped without relief, first by stretching out this sequence and later by alluding to the deprivation of a deus ex machina. The action of the performers at this point
Figure 37: Role-reversal in On the Concept (photo by Christophe Raynaud de Lage)
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 203 of the performance is largely mimetic. After the first clean-up, the son must repeat the action twice more. The father continues to have diarrhoea then continues to make a mess. The cyclic scene, accompanied by the acrid smell, lifts the performance out of a conventionally representative style.
The son’s response to this series of events evolves from understanding to frustration. The repetition of this sequence, coupled with the son’s weakening patience, evokes a sense of the chronic deterioration associated with dementia, particularly age-related sub-types. Furthermore, as a staged action, the event appears to happen in real time. Yet, this sequence could be representative of an extended passage of time, for instance, over months. The language is sparse even in this beginning. Significantly, though, the father’s repetitive utterances could be described suggest perseveration. Cohen and Eisdorfer (2001, 190) describe perseveration as “the repetition of a particular response […] despite the absence or cessation of a stimulus”. The surtitles inform the audience that the old man is repeating “I’m sorry” (Brantley 2013). While his exclamation is expected under the circumstances of this first scene, his repetition of it begins to create a loop, which both infuriates and evokes pity from the son. The incantatory quality of the father’s repeated apologies not only lends itself to clinical perseveration, as noted, but also acts a dramaturgical device that lifts the work out of hyperrealism and into the postdramatic. Just as a needle skipping over a scratched record interrupts the linearity of a song, the spoken repetition here interrupts the established reality of the performance. At the end of the first sequence, the son approaches the portrait to kiss its lips saying “Jesu, Jesu,” distorting the previously realistic drama by subverting the demarcation between domestic place and non- space. The religious image, which was an appendage, has now been accorded dramaturgical significance in the performance. The son appeals to the portrait as though praying for a deus ex machina to unravel “the otherwise insoluble predicaments of the humans” (Rokem 2017, 781). The apparently unattainable deus ex machina in On the Concept emphasises the problematic nature of the dementia subject matter; the son’s anguish is heightened and the lack of resolution at the end of the performance is foreshadowed.
In the younger man’s appeal to the Son, the generational discourse of the work is extended into religious belief. The son is becoming carer, the father becoming child and Christ is becoming a vessel at which to direct anger and confusion. The generational discourse intersecting with religious faith is further demonstrated in the remaining two sequences of the work, presented abstractly in the second image as the sons throw grenades at the Son.
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Figure 38: The boys throw grenades in On the Concept (photo by Klaus Lefebvre)
Figure 39: The father walks among the grenades in On the Concept (photo by Klaus Lefebvre)
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 205 In this second image, the performance becomes more postdramatic in its abandonment of characterisation and story. The father sits on the white bed, at one side of the stage. Again, the performers directly address the portrait of Jesus that still observes the stage, as if to follow on from the son’s final action in the previous sequence. Gradually, young boys enter – without introduction – to throw grenades at the portrait of Jesus (for reference, a short video is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzldOzVho6w). Young boys continue to populate the stage and discarded grenades litter the space. During this time, the sound design operates in tandem with the abstract imagery to create an overwhelming environment. Scott Gibbons’ sound design includes screeches, booms, and crashes that are distorted and echoed. With this quality of echo and distortion, this soundscape becomes increasingly dense, the nonrepresentational action in the scene inhibits explicit meaning-making and offers no relief from this sensory inundation. Neither the imagery nor the auditory scape lends itself to a recognisable source; they are decidedly abstract. Yet, the sound and image do evoke a battle analogy, a common metaphor used to describe the caregiving experience (Innes 2009). The grenades then appear as detritus on the stage. The overwhelming nature of the soundscape in the performance creates an experiential claustrophobia as it intensifies during this sequence. The lighting goes down on the continued action. Again, the scene has developed a rhythm of repetition and an image of inundation, yet is not resolved. The simplicity of the action in this sequence, composed of the overwhelming dramaturgy plays with the density of signs (Lehmann 2006, 89-90) to evoke a dichotomy of reduction and inundation. The accumulation of grenades on stage become detritus, which further contributes to the presentation of inundation. The father then walks among this detritus.
The caregiver “battle” filtered through a religious lens is a through-line of the work. The piece, though, would not be accurately described as a religious performance, as much as a meditation on humanity under our supposedly inherited image of divinity. This is contemplated most simply in the final sequence of the performance where the figure of Christ vacillates between shepherd and non-shepherd. In this final 15 minutes of the performance, the portrait alone ‘performs’ (Figure 40). In this final image sequence of the work, the portrait is subjected to creative lighting and projection while the stage space remains dark. The face is warped as tearing is simulated and what is assumed to be excrement seeps from the eyes. Thus, the portrait becomes a character in itself. It gains further dramaturgical significance: the words “you are not my shepherd” are projected, but the word “not” fades in and out. Eventually, the words
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 206 fade out completely and the light comes up on the stage to reveal a spill of faeces on the white floor. The concluding image is of waste, despite the overseeing face of Christ, which has now deformed from its initial appearance. The incontinence and faeces symbolise a threat to dignity, and human life as waste, yet Christ’s image historically represents eternal life and divine design. Between these incompatible images is a comment on the indignity and waste of human life despite the Christian paradigm that “God created mankind in his own image” (Genesis 1:27). The fluctuating declaration the debased portrait presents emphasises the lack of resolution. Just as the previous two scenes in the triptych have gone unresolved, this final part ends the performance without facilitating resolution or catharsis. Figure 40: The portrait performs in On the Concept (photo by Christophe Raynaud de Lage) As opposed to the usual focus on story, personhood, and dignity in many dementia narratives, On the Concept intentionally problematises the condition. The suggestion of a failed deus ex machina complements the provocative imagery and lack of resolution. The religious portrait that overlooks the stage drapes a spiritual discourse over the work and extends the central father-son relationship. In dementia narratives set in domestic spaces, the characters are usually isolated from the outside world. In On the Concept, the two men are isolated even from other familial subjects, as Pocosgnich (2010) notes. Their seeming remoteness – particularly in the vast, largely bare stage – accentuates the confronting nature of the work. Furthermore, the domestic environment dissolves as the performance moves from hyperrealism to abstract, non-verbal, and non- representational. Despite the lack of a traditionally dramatic story, the anguish of the caregiver experience acts as a through-line. The work leans into the imagery of the “battle”. Significantly,
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 207 the father’s point of view is not explicitly communicated. Neither his past experiences, staged as reminiscence, nor his present experience of reality is given weight in the performance. With regards to prevailing constructions of dementia, On the Concept presents the battle metaphor that Innes (2009) describes. In its postdramatic composition, it forgoes character development and plays out in a non-cohesive aesthetic. This lack of development in exchange for catastrophic imagery does not necessarily erase the character with dementia in the way that other works have done, though it does deny catharsis altogether.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 208 8.5 Discussion The key findings emerging from the three works analysed in this chapter pertain to the presentation of reminiscence, demarcation, the absence or subversion of the usual clinical discourse, settings and placelessness, the un/familiar dichotomy, the generational discourse, symbolism, linearity, and performance endings.
In Chapter 7, several works presented memories intruding on the diegesis. The performances in this chapter show reminiscence in a different way. Firstly, On the Concept contains no reminiscence on the past, which obstructs the representation of demarcation in terms of before and after dementia. Conversely, Memory Points is almost completely composed of collected and curated memory fragments. Only the guides through the installation, the music, the live dance performance, and the audience’s interactions with costume, food, and dance are not founded on specific recollections. The memories presented as installations are not positioned in relation to the present-day experiences of the participants, impeding the demarcation of then and now, those with dementia and those without. RUFF is also largely based on reminiscence, as well as cultural references, some of which have had a formative influence on Shaw. Aspects of Shaw’s past are channelled during the performance; some are recalled and some performed. Her fragments are not genuine, live recall, but prompted by the monitors, which subverts the irruption of the real.
RUFF is distinctive among the analysed performances in this study for its staging of post- stroke dementia. The stroke acts a clear line of demarcation between the subject before and since dementia, a catalyst for dementia. For the most part in this research, dementia refers to a process of chronic deterioration where no one event is responsible. The demarcation of pre- and post-stroke Shaw is apparent in some of her descriptions of her brain at the time of the stroke and in the aftermath. Additionally, some review literature describes Shaw in terms of “new” and “old,” marking a turning point in the performer’s career and work. On the Concept does not demonstrate demarcation between the father before and the father since dementia/senility. Demarcation, is however, presented in the appearance of the faeces in relation to the white apartment. This imagery, and the action between the father and son, stage the notion the burden. Yet, in the final sequence, Christ, too, seeps faeces, his face is torn and defaced, and his role as shepherd challenged. Memory Points contains no discernible instances of demarcation. Its principal focus on memories, as opposed to the amnesia characteristic of dementia, distinguishes the work from most performances about dementia which typically contain at least one of the two types of demarcation.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 209 By leaning away from staging experiences specific to dementia, Memory Points avoids the clinical discourse. The work contains no discernible clinical references – either linguistic or visual. Even the analogy of the brain as the ins and outs of a building is not conveyed clinically. The disorientation and fragmentation engendered in the work have associations to clinical symptomology and layperson understandings, but are not manifestly clinical markers. RUFF contains a parodied public service announcement that establishes a public-facing version of a clinical discourse, but the acronym F.A.S.T. is filtered through Shaw’s humour. Further, Shaw’s description of her stroke and of the physical and cognitive effects on her brain are discussed through metaphor. Hence, the pieces of a clinical narrative are consistently subverted through Shaw’s performance of them. On the Concept opens on a scene set in a clinically white room that visually foreshadows a hospital setting. Additionally, the visual and olfactory presence of faeces presents the father’s bowel incontinence, a potential consequence of late- stage dementia. Notably, there are no emblematic clinical signs of dementia; memory loss and linguistic deficits are common reference points in dementia performances. On the Concept stages a more general senility, but the perseveration in the first section is a subtle reference to dementia symptomology.
Settings tend to influence the types of relationships and dementia narratives performed. On the Concept opens in a domestic space, but then becomes placeless. The central relationship is familial and is established in the home, and the change to placelessness facilitates a broader religious theme. While Memory Points does not stage a single cohesive diegesis, place is significant. All iterations of the work have taken place in a theatre building specifically even though the stage is only used in one part of the journey. The tour takes the audience through private spaces of a public building, developing the analogy of the building as the brain and the un/familiar dichotomy. Place is also evoked in the memory installations, particularly the seaside. RUFF does not establish place, its cabaret composition making it redundant. Each of the three works subverts the sense of place in some way. RUFF disregards both a self-contained diegesis and a setting. Memory Points takes place in a theatre space, but makes the whole building performative. Even when the stage is used, it is the audience who occupy it, without spectators of their own. The purpose of a stage during a performance is thus annulled. On the Concept first establishes its diegesis in a hyperrealist scene that takes place in a domestic setting, but the son appears to step out of the diegesis to approach the portrait, dissolving the boundaries of the domestic setting.
On the concept also breaches the boundary of the performance space by the simulating the
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 210 smell of faeces to draw the audience into the experience of the work. Yet, this immersive detail could as easily alienate the spectators. Overwhelming soundscape accompanies the shift into iconography to confront the audience with a dramaturgy lacking recognisable signs of explicit meaning. By contrast, both RUFF and Memory Points contain interactions between performer/s and audiences that potentially forge a community among their respective audients. Memory Points takes the small audience groups (often comprising strangers) on a disorienting tour through the collected memories of strangers. It is a process of being lost and discovering archives, eliciting an experience of the un/familiar. RUFF also performs the un/familiar. Firstly, Shaw is recalling her own memories, but require prompting by the monitors, undercutting their familiarity to Shaw herself. Further, audiences that are familiar with Shaw as a performer may feel estranged by witnessing the effects of Shaw’s post-stroke dementia. Shaw does, however, initiate a relationship with her audience in the first moments of the performance.
As noted, the relationships most frequently staged in dementia narratives are familial and care- related. RUFF is a solo performance and Shaw’s evoked others are not strictly familial. And while communal relationships and even a care dynamic are established in the work, the generational discourse that is typical of dementia narratives is absent. Similarly, the Memory Points installations contain many family memories but the generational discourse is not necessarily a theme. The generational discourse is represented in On the Concept, but without some of the typical characterisation and story development. Notably, the work deviates from the tendency towards mothers with dementia and daughters as informal carers. Actually, the structure if the performance extends the father-son theme by visually referencing sons and the Son. The performance also stages themes like shifting familial roles, the caregiver battle, and an experience of being overwhelmed, and does so using calamitous imagery.
On the Concept contains a number of visual metaphors: the father’s brown faecal stain set against the son’s pristine white apartment, the religious portrait that oversees the performance and is then itself stained, and the vision of young boys throwing grenades at the portrait. Sound, too, plays a role. The heavy soundscape that accompanies the second image evokes the battle metaphor and the sound to accompany the portraits digital destruction emulates tearing and screeching. The imagery in this work is deliberately provocative, contesting the endeavour to reconstitute the view of dementia as catastrophic and melancholy, as a number of performance makers have striven to do. The overarching analogy in Memory Points is the fragmented tour as a tour of the mind, including experiences of disorientation, fragmentation, and feeling lost.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 211 Yet, the performance still encourages a more positive outlook about dementia, celebrating memories instead of lamenting the condition. This metaphor is more implied than explicitly performed, in contrast to On the Concept, which is essentially composed of symbols. Like Memory Points, RUFF is structured around fragments that are suggestive of somewhat disordered cognition. It also references metaphors for the brain, and extends this kind of language to the stroke – the catalytic event. However, again, the condition is neither lamented nor catastrophised to the extent of Castellucci’s piece.
Each of the three performances renders chronology and linearity redundant. RUFF progresses from beginning to end by way of tangentially associated images, songs and monologues – often mixing media to further disrupt the cohesion of someone effortlessly performing recall. Memory Points resists narrative chronology in its promenade format that takes audiences through a kind of archive. Its composition of collected and collective stories further denies chronology as well as a singular, linear narrative. On the Concept begins in a hyperrealistic style, establishing a central relationship typical of a dementia narrative, but dissolves into an abstract and imagistic dramaturgy that forgoes spoken language, character development, and representational movement. These disruptions of linearity would suggest a preclusion of catharsis, though RUFF and Memory Points do end affirmatively. RUFF ends on a note of hope, but because Shaw is never maudlin and maintains her deadpan delivery; it is an unsentimental close to the work. The notion of a cathartic transformation from sorrow to pleasure is most applicable to Memory Points. The work is built on (and staged through) collective experience and ends with dressing up, dancing and being photographed – a memory- making finale. On the Concept completely denies catharsis. The performance begins with a cataclysm, but makes no attempt to resolve it, instead breaking down into its catastrophised imagery.
8.6 Conclusion This final analysis chapter discussed Memory Points, RUFF and On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God. All three “operate beyond drama” (Lehmann 2006, 27), each representing a departure from typical portrayals of dementia onstage. Where some performances come up against the seemingly problematic nature of dementia narratives, On the Concept deliberately catastrophises the subject matter. Memory Points is not solely concerned with experiences related to dementia. RUFF shows an artist with dementia not
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 212 confined to therapeutic applications of drama, and instead initiating and performing in a professional work. Regarding the reading guide established in the contextual review, this chapter has addressed the generational discourse, as well as different constructions of a care dynamic, subversions of place, the significant commentary made in reportage, and performance forms including music and sound, but, more pertinently, visual and experiential dramaturgies that differently engage an audience. If traditional drama is governed by cohesive characters and linearity and gives authority over to spoken language, this model can be problematic for representing the experiences of people living with dementia. In such a context the person with dementia is most likely an anachronism, disconnected and potentially presented as lacking selfhood. Despite gestures towards care dynamics and place, these three postdramatic works subvert or abandon the typical home and care settings and present different constitutions of care relationships. Considering these three works, postdramatic performance has the capacity to, at least, tell different stories about dementia.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 213 9. Discussion
The literature review identified a number of elements that constitute the Western cultural positioning of people with dementia: memory loss is interpreted as self-loss; the impairment of verbal communication further diminishes the person as well as their relationships; cognitive decline affects a person’s social worth and their capacity for self-maintenance; and, overall, neurological deterioration corresponds to a ‘living death’. Common descriptions of people with dementia dehumanise or dialectically rob them of selfhood. Both dehumanising medical discourses and clinical presentations affecting language and memory, in particular, are too readily associated with a loss or absence of selfhood. Media and arts often echo these constructions of dementia. Images are typically dictated by reduction and loss, novels tend to describe a journey, and films depictions can reveal ethical issues. Theatre has multimedia as its disposal to represent dementia narratives in a variety of ways. More exceptionally, performance is live and these meanings and stories are shared with audiences in real time and space. The contextual review identifies representative modes emerging in the theatrical sector, including: research-based productions, language- and sound-based works, puppetry and mask theatre, and dance and physical theatre. Emerging key themes relate to the generational discourse, wives, mothers, and grandmothers, and domestic and care homes as the two dominant settings. These initial findings are explored in Chapters 6 to 8. These chapters further found clinical markers, demarcation, symbolism and metaphor, the nature of reminiscence and endings to be worthy of discussion. Significantly, each of these motifs can be related back to selfhood, by way of either erasure or affirmation.
For example, the analyses found that characters with dementia are usually delineated in some way. This thesis has discussed two categories of demarcation. One is the demarcation between people with dementia and those without the condition. The second is the delineation between a new ‘demented’ version of the self and the past, ‘intact’ version. With regards to the former categorisation, the person with dementia is rendered ‘other’ and potentially dehumanised. In the latter instance, dementia is positioned as a condition to rupture the self. Where the character in question was previously intelligent and high-functioning, they are now described as less than their pre-dementia selves, a differentiation which also implies a reduction of identity or selfhood. Demarcation can be dialectical, visual, or physical.
In addition to delineation from those without dementia, a character with the condition is at risk of being positioned as cut off from reality itself. Where a consensus of reality is strictly adhered
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 214 to onstage, the diegesis does not allow for alternate perceptions of this reality, as may be experienced by those with advancing dementia. Thus, a key finding in this thesis is related to the consensus of reality; namely, how this may be disrupted or how alternate experiences of reality are staged using layered theatre technologies. If, as Shabahangi (quoted in Nicholson 2011) suggests, people with dementia are present in their own way though they may not share in our consensus of reality, then these alternate experiences are important components of the stories we tell about dementia. The reviewed literature demonstrates that that dementia is seen to rob people of language, memory, social interaction, and eventually selfhood. However, Shabahangi’s notion challenges this logic. If a person’s perceived absence is construed as lacking selfhood, then the clinical presentations of dementia can devalue a person. However, if we better understand that different experiences of reality can occur, this sustains the perceived selfhood of a person with dementia. Further, Shabahangi’s (quoted in Nicholson 2011, 59) observation that people with dementia may exhibit “behaviours [that] are typically non-linear,” correlates with Basting’s view that the ‘Once upon a time…’ pattern of storytelling that requires a ‘happily ever after’ and a linear progression from one to the other does not facilitate all stories and storytelling. This paradigm gives grounds for Todd’s (2010) wondering if dementia as subject matter is “innately anti-theatrical”. It may, therefore, be necessary to look to alternative approaches to storytelling in order to do justice to people with dementia.
Dementia narratives can be structured chronologically or defy dramatic structure, though some layer experiences of reality within the diegesis which may reach back into the past and bring it into the present storyworld. While these live recollections often indicate retrograde amnesia, they are afforded dramaturgical credence. Disrupting the consensus of reality shows the person with dementia in alignment with the diegesis, as opposed to being positioned as incongruous with reality. Several performances use different theatrical tools to embody memories. These instances can layer storyworlds and disrupt the consensus of reality to privilege an alternate experience. Some staged recollections are part of memory themes, often with a nostalgic connotation. As opposed to non-chronological structures (represented by several examples in the contextual review), several works are arranged chronologically though they layer alternate experiences of the present reality, disrupting linearity in that way. A character with dementia can appear on one level to be dislocated, but the layering of performance forms shows that they are merely connected to reality in a different way. Alternatively, linearity may be intact while the passage of time is manipulated to show a progression of the story as well as the advancement of dementia. Stage time can also be manipulated to position the audience to
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 215 question whether time is moving forward by weeks and months or minutes and hours. Differently again, when a performance is atemporal (non-dramatic in its nonlinearity or fragmentation), a consensus of reality can be rejected outright. In works that are placeless – a quality that goes hand-in-hand with timelessness – the subject at the centre of the performance is relieved of temporal and spatial contexts, normative constructs that may disqualify the person with dementia from being connected to ‘reality’.
The following discussion is organised under three headings and nine subheadings. These sections represent the most significant motifs that have emerged in this thesis. The first three relate to narrative and theatrical layering: the clinical, the linguistic and the visual. Following this, three major motifs, Place, Relationships, and Ending and Erasure, are discussed. Lastly, the chapter considers three crucial theatrical forms: Sound, Physicality, and Puppetry. Each of these areas is in some way significant to the disruption of a consensus of reality, de/humanisation and selfhood.
9.1 Three Layers
9.1.1 Clinical Layer
The analyses show that clinical markers are present in most works about dementia, though esoteric demonstrations of pathology are a rarity. The dementia pathology is broad and varied, but, judging by public rhetoric (as discussed in the literature reviews), only a few common presentations are widely known by laypeople, namely those related to memory. In this manner, instead of depictions of complex dementia pathologies, widely recognisable clinical signs of dementia are embedded in language. Sometimes the medical construction of dementia is represented by images of brain death and decline. Such images reproduce visual facsimiles of emotive notions like brain death and perpetuate their power. Thus, by replicating key cultural conduits of meaning, there is a risk of dehumanising individuals with dementia. Memory loss is a major diagnostic criterion for common dementias like AD and vascular dementia and, in a similar way, has become a cultural touchstone for understandings of the broader condition. Demonstrating this, the analysed performances, for the most part, focus their clinical discourse around memory loss. Very few recognised clinical signposts are not related to amnesia. Linguistically, markers of aphasia are the most common, that is, the difficulty to remember everyday words. The performances that make use of these signs tend to establish the affected
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 216 character as an intellectual or a lexophile. In this way, the loss of certain words, even intermittently, lays the grounds for demarcation.
However, it is the loss of episodic memories and forgetting loved ones that lends dementia to tragic narrativisation. As the literature reviews have revealed, memory loss has particular significance for notions of identity and selfhood. Specifically, episodic or autobiographical memories are considered the most devastating losses. The notion of narrative identity, in particular, promotes this perception. Media depictions primarily lean on this aspect of the condition to produce arresting stories that run “down dependable furrows of sentiment” (Salter 2007, 7), that is, fit within a frame of tragedy. The analysed performances did not show as strong a tendency towards staging the tragedy of long-term, episodic memory loss. So, despite suggestions in the literature and what cultural studies show to be an assumed trait of dementia, few analysed performances stage the loss of self that results from autobiographical memory loss. Performances do, however, often present the signposted changes resulting from dementia as the catalyst for shifts in (familial) relationships. These changes can have implications for a person’s perceived selfhood by extension. Moreover, clinical presentations can be shown to at least challenge the selfhood of the person with dementia. This challenge may manifest in the difficulty to complete everyday tasks, making the home a place of daily struggle, or in language impairment in someone whose interests rely on linguistic dexterity.
Most often, clinical markers manifest in language, though some visual and physical markers appear as well. For example, anterograde amnesia is often signposted visually, in either a mimetic or abstract manner. Instances of anterograde amnesia that take place in the home contribute to a sense of unfamiliarity in one’s own home. The reduced capacity for activities of daily living (that short-term memory loss may advance) also indicates a loss of control within the home space, ordinarily considered a place of comfort.
If clinical presentations were to dominate an illustration of a person with dementia, filtered through Western cultural ideals, this narrativisation would potentially convey them as losing or lacking selfhood. In this way, the resistance of medicalisation is important, as many suggest (McColgan 2004; Innes 2009; Douthit and Dannefer 2007; Kalbermatten 2009). The chief arguments against medicalisation relate to its dehumanisation of individuals with the condition. In addition to representations of common clinical presentations onstage, the medical narrative can be depicted in performance through doctor’s visits and associated testing. However, the doctors themselves may be disembodied, demonstrating an awareness on the part of theatre practitioners of the discourses of medicalisation. If theatre rises to an expectation of mimesis,
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 217 then clinical presentations would be essential. However, turning to other means of depicting dementia, particularly using various performance tools, makes room for humanising discourses alongside clinical signposts of dementia.
Beyond basic linguistic markers and nods to the diagnostic narrative of dementia, sundowner’s syndrome is illustrated in several works. The syndrome tends to be associated with confusion and agitation, but can also augment other signs of dementia that have less negative connotations (Robinson 2009). Sundowner’s syndrome can go hand-in-hand with diurnal rhythm disturbances, or day-night reversal. The relative popularity of sundowner’s syndrome and day- night reversal as a clinical feature in performances may be explained by their fundamental strangeness. Diurnal – opposite to nocturnal – is a normative human state, so its disturbance suggests something non-human, even animalistic. Adding the complication of sundowning that augments the symptoms of dementia at this time of day produces something both strange and unpredictable. The construction of dementia as unknown or ‘other’ risks dehumanising those who experience it. It is, therefore, critical to fairly represent Robinson’s more balanced definition of sundowner’s syndrome that may include amplification of any dementia symptoms.
In the performances, dementia is signposted in a number of ways. The condition may be presented in both linguistic and physical clinical markers, in metaphor or visual emblems, or in self-identification.
9.1.2 Linguistic Layer Performances include some instances of characters with dementia referencing their own condition, but only up to a certain point in the progression of their condition. Other times, the discussion of their dementia is something that they are excluded from. Self-references to dementia speak of unfamiliarity and confusion, but may also echo popular understandings of dementia, for example, attributing the condition exclusively to old people. The condition is mostly alluded to in relation to changes in lifestyle and relationships, though metaphorical descriptions feature in some performances.
Theatre, with a variety of presentational tools at its disposal, can feature symbolism in sound technology, lighting, physical objects, overall performance structure, and in spoken metaphors. These metaphors may be visited throughout a work or constitute an overarching analogic narrative. In the case of the latter, dementia is variously analogised as a catastrophe, natural disaster, battle, or antagonist. Both battle and natural disaster metaphors have resonance in the
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 218 Western cultural construction of dementia. The battle typically refers to the caregiving experience and natural disaster analogies describe the threat of dementia to society. It is noteworthy that neither illustrates the direct experience of dementia, though the symbols may be employed as such in performances. And, just as these evoked analogies are without resolution, dementia too goes unresolved. To restate Zeilig’s (2015, 15) observation, “we turn to metaphor when attempting to explain difficult concepts”. The use of metaphor, then, to narrativise dementia, reiterates its ‘otherness’.
It is, therefore, also significant that the word ‘dementia’ or explicit reference to AD and other diagnoses rarely feature in performances about the condition. Even when represented visually, the staged analogies compensate for omissions from the language. In the absence of direct reference to dementia or related conditions, the plays provide other descriptions that ‘diagnose’ the person with dementia. These omissions may advance the taboo and stigma around dementia. Alternatively, they may also undercut medicalisation by focusing on the changes to the person, their relationships, and their lifestyle, essentially staging a social diagnosis in lieu of a medical one. However, as shown in the literature reviews, the social construction of dementia can be equally dehumanising. Generally, few direct references are made to dementia’s societal narrative. Typically, dementia is a more insulated, private experience and the discourses of dementia reflect this. This is another way that characters with dementia are constructed to be disengaged from the outside world.
Spoken language can be a vehicle for demarcation that is usually wielded by those without dementia. As Jordan (2010, 184) recognises, “[l]anguage, particularly narrated language, is fundamentally linked to power, obedience, transgression, […] identity formation […]”. As discussed, the linguistic difficulty associated with dementia can amplify this power imbalance. It is important to consider the implications of this inherent power for positioning characters with dementia when others refer to their absence. These implications are amplified when the person with dementia is showing a deterioration of speech. When a dialectical delineation is made by a character without dementia, a power dynamic may be initiated if the subject with dementia is demonstrating communication difficulty. These separations are often binary in nature and do not acknowledge the nuances of dementia pathology and its nonlinear progression. For example, the rate of decline varies with every individual case of dementia and can also fluctuate. Descriptions of people with dementia reflect commonly held views that they become different people with the onset of the condition and echo the perceived disjuncture between cognitive decline and intelligence. The notions of both the change- and loss-of-self
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 219 are reported in the literature on dementia. In short, discussing a person in terms of “before” and “since” their dementia can position that person as lacking selfhood. In the instance of the other category, when a character with dementia is differentiated from those without the condition, there can be an implication of being reduced by dementia.
In contrast, the power of self-identification, particularly when delivered in direct address to the audience, preserves the authority of the character with dementia over their representation. The corollary is that direct address used by characters without dementia, can create an imbalance between themselves and the characters with dementia. Especially when direct address is used to push the boundaries of the diegesis, it asserts power over a performance.
In relation to the power of spoken word in theatre, mime and mutism are noteworthy. A muted character may surrender this power, but a mimed work can redress the balance. As such, performances that weaken the authority of language have the capacity to more fairly represent people with dementia.
9.1.3 Visual Layer The visual aspects of performances can also establish or reinforce demarcation, though typically between people with and those without dementia. Demarcation can be achieved through costume and behaviour, and even embodied in different performance forms to represent the human being. Performance forms are significant for their depiction of different characters and story elements. Multiple forms – particularly when used simultaneously – can disrupt realism, create imaginative storyworlds, balance linguistic deficit with physicality, embody memories or evoke nostalgia, abstractly represent subjects and their relationships to one another, and also potentially dehumanise subjects with dementia by rendering them “other”. Physical and visual performance modes, in particular, can effectively embody memories, deemphasise language, and represent relationships in abstract ways.
Comparing different visual scapes created by physical sets onstage, a detailed visual scape can create meaning on its own, even facilitating mimed performance, but a barer performance space generally requires language to produce meaning. Additionally, a naturalistic set design lends itself to realism. However, this construction of reality can be disrupted by other visual layers of dance, lighting, and physicality. In contrast, a sparse set – that is, typically one without contextual objects – lends itself to placelessness.
Lighting is a theatrical staple and is sometimes used to express symbols in a work. In naturalistic performance settings, lighting is mostly perfunctory; unless, as in the case of Inside
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 220 Out’s digital projection, a lighting feature is laid over the top of this reality. Lighting can also represent sentiments of nostalgia in its colouring, or disruptions of fluency and the experience of being overwhelmed by its rhythm or brightness. Stage lighting can also accommodate intimacy between performer/s and audience and signpost the time of day (which may carry clinical implications, as discussed). In the more imaginative realm, lighting technologies can facilitate projection and shadow work. The latter form is closely associated with mythology and metaphor (Francis 2012). Yet, even projected images can carry symbolic power. Such imagery when projected over a performance space can literally position a diagnosis over the story. As discussed in the literature review, medical dementia can be efficiently and affectively denoted in imagery. Using ‘dementia’ and ‘Alzheimer’s’ as search terms in Google Images, pictures of brain scans and other medical representations are frequently featured among the results. In this way, the brain scan has become emblematic of the brain death associated with dementia. In the specific case of Really Old, the icon is placed in direct contrast to a similarly medicalised image of a foetus as it merges into the latter, pointing to a generational discourse. The results of the Google Image search also includes abstract imagery, some of which falls into the category of human heads drawn as trees shedding leaves. Inside Out presents an integration of tree imagery and neuro-circuitry. This example makes concrete the connection made between brains and trees in a number of stock images.
Represented by performers in the performance space, visual indications of the dementia pathology include physical affectations and behaviour that exhibits memory loss and other cognitive decline. However, mimetic action is limited to presentations of dementia that are distinguishable from regular behaviour. Moreover, performances that take place over a short time frame cannot demonstrate the condition’s clinical progression. So, while repeated actions can be employed to signal anterograde amnesia, to visually demonstrate retrograde amnesia requires postdramatic staging. In order to tell new stories about dementia, particularly in aid of understanding the condition, broader uses of the performance spectrum that “operate beyond drama” (Lehmann 2006, 27) are important to consider.
9.2 Three Motifs
9.2.1 Place
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 221 A significant motif that has emerged from the analyses in this thesis is the representation of place, its relation to dementia pathology, and the influence it has over the stories told. The two main settings are the family home and institutional care, though several analysed works demonstrate a departure from these sites. Performance settings and the construction of place influence the positioning of dementia and characters with dementia and can also stipulate the type of dementia narrative told. Home settings may give rise to themes relating to caregiving, the generational discourse, parent-child role reversal, and the un/familiar. Professional care settings similarly facilitate care dynamics and the un/familiar, but can lack the presence of family. Either way, the tendency towards these sites demonstrates the insulated nature of dementia narratives.
The family home is a place assumed to be private, familiar, and safe. In cases of dementia, the isolation from public settings is reflective of the condition’s social taboo. In the performances analysed, social relationships so rarely feature. RUFF makes itself an exception by establishing Shaw’s long-time friendships with her band members. The dearth of friendships and other social roles held by characters with dementia suggest it is a family experience more than a community one. The home space accommodates this threshold.
The depiction of home, and the person with dementia’s relation to it, can illustrate the advancement of their dementia. A clinical presentation such as agnosia (the inability to recall the names of basic, everyday objects) is accentuated in a familiar setting where objects should be easily recognised. Within the domestic space, a person’s disconnections from their present reality are laid bare. Overall, when dementia (inducing the unfamiliar) is set in a familiar space, it produces a dichotic sensation of the un/familiar. This is a motif that features variously across the analysed performances. The domestic space, as a site of the un/familiar, can both highlight the person with dementia’s unfamiliarity and equally act as a place of familiarity and security. A similar ambivalence has been attributed to nursing homes. This is a thread that dementia pulls between the two sites. Nicholson (2011, 57) notes that people with dementia may experience feelings of safety and fear in residential care, going to live in a new “home” that is occupied by other strangers. Nicholson herself uses quotation marks around home, as if signalling the unhomeliness of these settings that can lack privacy and familiarity. Blunt and Dowling (2006, 100) additionally ascribe dichotomies of un/homeliness and belonging/alienation to these spaces.
Because familiarity, home and independent living are concepts pertinent to dementia and its social framing, the construction of place – and home in particular – is worthy of analysis and
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 222 discussion. The home is a site of potential family tensions and staging of the un/familiar. As a site of care, home is endowed with both positive and negative sentiment (Blunt and Dowling 2006). Home can be quickly transformed into a place of care (a site of dementia) with one event. Incidents and behaviours like those that HCA Grace describes in Inside Out – crawling on the floor, weeing in a corner, physical violence – taking place in the home could alter the connotations of that space. These acts tend to be associated with institutional care, presumably because of their place in the progression of dementia, but also because they represent the unhomely. When such an incident takes place in On the Concept, the home space is transformed into a site of care. Blunt and Dowling (2006, 100) note that when home becomes hospice, it is “coded as both good and bad” and imbued with “unresolved family tensions”. More generally, role reversals, anterograde amnesia, making things unfamiliar, and even intruding memories that are not native to the home, also stage the home space as a site of dementia. Parent-child role reversals are also transformative. Blunt and Dowling (2006, 115) suggest that “it is rare for children to be given any agency in the running” of the family household. This custom is subject to destabilisation with the onset of a parent’s dementia. In home spaces, the generational discourse is likely to emerge, staging not only the experience of the person with dementia, but the effect of the condition on their children and sometimes grandchildren as well.
Settings influence the kind of stories told and the types of relationships staged. In the analysed performances, while the home is a place conducive to family relationships, institutional care is the domain of professional carers. Crucially, both are ultimately sites of care in dementia narratives, though the progression of dementia and level of assistance may vary. Within the scope of the performances analysed in this thesis, the two set in a care facility scarcely feature the generational discourse, which is otherwise a staple of most performances about dementia. Spousal relationships are similarly rare in this setting. This absence is especially noteworthy considering Cohen-Mansfield, Golander, and Arnheim’s (2000, 381) comment that, with the advancement of dementia, family-related roles have the best retention. In a similar vein, those works that feature a vague erasure towards their end also flag the end of the relationship between the person with dementia and their loved one, suggesting that moving into professional care discontinues these relationships. This resonates strongly with the loss-of-self notion; if family roles are the most well-maintained, is the loss-of-self notion reasoning for a family’s complete absence from a care space? This absenteeism is likely to be uncommon in real-life cases of dementia, but then, there is a question of why this is a feature of dementia’s narrativisation. Despite this apparent lack of family and familiarity (it is no coincidence that
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 223 the words are etymologically related), the displacement and unhomeliness associated with institutionalised care are resisted in both performances set in such locations. The sense of community fostered in Inside Out and the collective storytelling activity in D-Generation both see the care dynamic transformed into something less perfunctory. Yet, in Inside Out specifically, the potential for ‘unhomely’ happenings, namely death, is not omitted from the story or the staging. Situating these private events in an insulated space like a nursing home shields the community within from public view, but also exposes them in a semi-public environment. This is the dichotic outcome of this paradoxical setting.
If ‘home’ and ‘inside’ are related to concepts of safety and familiarity, then ‘outside’ conveys sentiments of risk and the unfamiliar, a dichotomy that Bachelard (1994, 211) flags. But, as seen in It’s Dark Outside and Sundowner, and alluded to Inside Out of Mind, the outside can have different connotations when in juxtaposition to indoor places that have become sites of dementia. These three works present the outdoors, respectively, as a place of adventure, release, and independence. This inverted dichotomy emphasises the tenuous familiarity of the home and the unhomeliness of institutional care.
Contrary to the aforementioned settings, placelessness can relieve the subject with dementia of social expectations, their relationship with which may be tenuous. However, it should not be overlooked that placelessness – or a turn from place to a lack thereof – has the capacity to problematise dementia in its detachment from other people and familiar contexts. That is, placelessness could be utilised to represent a person with dementia’s disconnection from reality. As an art form, theatre is more successful than most at achieving placelessness, as well as spatial fluidity or abstract settings, such as inside a character’s mind. Paradoxically, placelessness can operate alongside an augmented sense of place. Postdramatic works that evoke placelessness, or an experience of being unmoored from place, can also include elements for an immersive experience, using physical contact, audience interaction, or smell. In this way, the audience may perceive a diegesis that is without fixed place while simultaneously experiencing the physical performance space in a heightened way. Performance has a unique capacity for inducing the sensation of being simultaneously disconnected and grounded, which is a notable aspect for staging dementia.
9.2.2 Relationships
The analysed performances stage a number of different relationships between characters, as well as between the performer/s and their audience. Many of the diegetical relationships are
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 224 familial and many are related to care, with some representing a crossover of these roles. The key relationship themes in the analysed works are the generational discourse, the particularity of female characters with dementia, and care dynamics.
Family relationships occur most frequently in performances about dementia, followed by professional care relationships. Further, social roles outside of resident communities in institutional care do not feature in the discussed works. Like narrative tendencies related to place, this apparent detachment from the outside world demonstrates the insulation of dementia narratives. Some performances about dementia depict the individual in isolation, but more often the familial context is a substantial component of the story. Dementia can be treated as quite a private condition, because of taboo and potentially because of behavioural and psychological symptomology as explored in the first literature review. Therefore, people with dementia who remain in their home may be sequestered to that space and accompanied by family members acting as carers, even if informally. Dementia is, therefore, often established as a public or “social death,” to borrow from Kontos (2004, 829). Meanwhile, familial roles are the most well-maintained (Cohen-Mansfield, Golander, and Arnheim 2000). However, the rhetoric also positions family members as experiencing the death of a loved one before they are dead (Downs, Small and Froggatt 2006; Zarit and Gaugler 2006). These factors contribute to the focus on familial experiences, especially the grief and burden on children whose parents have dementia and who are seemingly unable to draw support from a social community.
The generational discourse is a theme widely occurring across the selected performances and the broader catalogue of works. This discourse is related to the family experience of dementia, but places particular emphasis on the children of the person with the condition. This is connected to themes of critically shifting family relationships, role reversal, and burden. The discourse sometimes emerges from comparisons between old (and “demented”) and young. Thus, the generational discourse can serve as a means of demarcation. As discussed in the first literature review, dementia is conceptually bound to ageing in the West (Innes 2009), and ageism in Western culture has been influenced by the Age of Reason (Robinson 2009), industrialism (Helman 2007), and biological reductionism (McColgan 2004). These paradigms devalue any person whose productivity may be impaired. Hence, dementia further stigmatises age and vice versa. Although the societal discourse is less commonly staged, these cultural influences are evident in some references to dementia onstage. There are comments made that subscribe to the notion that dementia is an old person’s disease. Similarly, there are examples of dialogue that expresses an inability to reconcile the idea of an intellectual person with
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 225 dementia. These instances advance perceptions of dementia as a condition afflicting old people who are already widely considered to be disconnected from social interaction and are valued less than younger generations. In addition to parent-child relationships, grandchildren appear as characters in several performances.
The prevalence of the generational discourse reflects the unfathomability of dementia. The direct experience of dementia presents a conceptual challenge for theatre practitioners. The experience of those around the person with dementia is potentially easier to address with language and traditionally dramatic narrative structures that require a resolution of the story’s key obstacles. The generational discourse appears to be an attempt to humanise the condition. When the character with the condition has difficulty expressing themselves and communicating with others, the experiences of family members provide a way into the dementia narrative. Some performances demonstrate the endeavour to retain the selfhood of the character with dementia, but overemphasise the familial experience. The result is the humanisation or normalisation of the familial dementia narrative, while the individual themselves is subject to discourses of burden and “living death”.
While the broader catalogue of performances shows spousal relationships to be significant, the works selected for analysis demonstrate a stronger leaning towards parent-child relationships. Of the group, only 1 Beach Road and Inside Out feature the partner of the person with dementia as an onstage character. This is curious considering the overall focus on family-related roles and relationships. As such, the generational discourse emerges particularly strongly. This propensity suggests that the impact on adult children is especially compelling for storytelling. The generational discourse plays out this impact of dementia on younger generations, but it can also be about having someone to pass memories on to. This family structure relates to Fuchs’ (2017a) theory of a standard dementia plot: “Older Daughter (why is it always a daughter) is sacrificing her life to caregiving”. As to Fuchs’ observation that it is frequently a daughter who takes on the role of caring, the tendency appears to echo historical and cultural constructions of women as natural born carers. This positioning of women also influences dementia narratives where it is a mother with the condition.
While an increased risk for women’s dementia has been demonstrated, Binod Nepal, Laurie Brown, and Geetha Ranmuthugala (2008) point to their greater life expectancy as the leading factor for this prevalence. Therefore, this gendering of the condition is mostly a social phenomenon. The catalogue shows a skew towards women with dementia. Additionally, the popularity of the generational discourse means that many are mothers and some are
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 226 grandmothers. These roles are imbued with expectations of care and nurturing of the younger generations. I acknowledge the binary treatment of gender in this discussion. Nevertheless, literature reflects the centuries-old positioning of women as the bearers of children and as primary carers (Stavrianos 2015; Connell 2009; Clatterbaugh 1990; Gustafson 2005a). Mothers are not only biologically bound to their children through pregnancy, but assumed to have a greater emotional attachment than fathers do. Correlatively, the historical image of the mother is endowed with a particular nurturing tenderness. It may be that dementia is seen to compromise this figure of the mother. Specifically, in situations where a parent-child role- reversal occurs, the mother is no longer fulfilling her ‘duty’ as carer and instead becoming more dependent on the child. Thus, it is crucial to investigate representations of mothers – and parents generally – with dementia in the performances.
Because the mother figure is one closely associated with the care for children, the figure is typically grounded in a domestic setting. Similarly, care relationships related to dementia tend to be located in the domestic space when the care is carried out by a family member, even informally. However, institutional settings can also be sites for caring, though they usually stage care dynamics between people with dementia and professional carers. In this manner, as represented by the analysed performances, institutional care settings most often lack family relationships. The family home, then, is the key site for staging “unresolved family tensions” (Blunt and Dowling 2006, 100).
Fuchs’ (2017a; 2017b) article on the older-daughter-as-carer trend in dementia narratives alludes to the family home as a prime location for this particular plotline. Considering the general tendency towards women with dementia (more strongly represented in the performance catalogue), this inclination that Fuchs observes would appear to be connected to the particularity of same-sex parent-child relationships. However, despite Fuchs’ theory, the selection of performances show a more balanced gender representation among carers. Nonetheless, the motherline is evoked in a few works. Even Cathy in Really Old, whose relationship with her mother Lyn is strained, insists that “We’re born attached to our mothers.” Bearing in mind the catalogue as a whole (Appendix B), Fuchs’ observation is certainly worthy of further examination.
The stress related to caring is usually recognised as belonging to family members. Very few identified performances address the experiences of professional carers, though these characters may be seen onstage. Again, family relationships are in sharper focus than other social roles. A number of performance tools can communicate changes in familial relationships that are
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 227 influenced by pathology. Shifting relationships between spouses or, more frequently, between parent and child are often showcased visually. This may be shown through incongruous behaviours. Additionally, the interactions between the person with dementia and their family member may become less verbal. In performance, this reduction of language can be compensated with greater physicalisation. In this way, theatre offers opportunities to demonstrate relationships beyond spoken communication, which is potentially critical for the representation of people with dementia. The relational changes presented physically include role reversal (strongly associated with the generational discourse) and other signposts of the broader care dynamic and dependency instigated by the condition.
Memory loss also affects relationships. However, when works take place over only a short period, they do not show the decline of long-term memory as a result retrograde amnesia. Instead, they display anterograde amnesia which has different implications for relationships. Where retrograde amnesia is more closely associated with remembering loved ones, anterograde amnesia is more closely related to activities of daily living. Where the relationship between characters is one of care, even informally, anterograde amnesia has greater implications for dependency. It is noteworthy, though, that the memory loss typically connected to dementia in popular understandings – which constructs dementia as stealing away cherished episodic and autobiographical memories – is not always the focus of drama. The day- to-day, or slice-of-life, depiction of dementia may do more to affirm selfhood because it represents the person as they are at a certain stage in their life without presenting advancing deterioration as narrative.
Care dynamics are mostly governed by those without dementia, though they can be a relationship that is established by the person with dementia. The latter arrangement is exemplified in RUFF. In the work, Shaw has a prearranged assistance dynamic with Weaver and her digital aids, but also projects a care dynamic onto the audience. This web of support is completely exposed. As shown in several works, postdramatic performance has the capacity to reconstitute care narratives. Another group of performances show that care communities can be fostered among audiences. This positioning also rewrites the typical care narrative while drawing on the physical immediacy of live theatre.
9.2.3 Endings and Erasure
The performance analyses have shown that the endings of dementia narratives can reveal the insoluble nature of the condition. Some works end with the fate of the person with dementia
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 228 left ambiguous, while others are more affirmative. In particular, the endeavour for catharsis can risk erasing the person with dementia, by shifting the focus to the generational narrative. Some works make allusions to a failed deus ex machina and very few address death directly.
Some of the chief issues that emerge in the performance endings can be traced back to the desire for catharsis, or a resolved ending. The “ideal” of the happily ever after (Basting 2003, 25) is difficult to apply to dementia narratives. The common type, AD, has no cure. Therefore, the subject matter resists a resolved conclusion and by its nature, chronic deterioration denies catharsis in the traditionally dramatic sense. Yet, the impulse to resolve the experience is evident in some works. This can be identified by the common inclusion of a generational discourse – which can facilitate a refocussing at the core of the performance that deemphasises the experience of the person with dementia. Zarit and Gaugler (2006) note that feelings of relief can be attached to the death of a family member with dementia. They describe this as “the end of a long journey for the family” (Zarit and Gaugler 2006, 191) and something for which the family is prepared. As such, the only way the obstacle of dementia can be “overcome” is for death to occur. That is, to facilitate dramatic catharsis, the experiences of those around the person with dementia are sometimes presented as the final image of the work. The resulting erasure of the character with dementia makes for an ending that is problematic for the representation of people with dementia.
In performances about dementia, death is most often only insinuated. When it occurs, death is often signalled with visual metaphors. Again, Zeilig’s (2015) explanation that metaphors are typically used for concepts that are difficult to explain in literal terms is pertinent. Dementia’s inexplicability and the taboo associated with both the condition and death itself amalgamate to produce an altogether difficult narrative subject to resolve or even represent without calling on metaphor and euphemism. Some works attempt a resolution by having their subject with dementia leave the stage as though fading or being erased. Death is suggested, though its lack of confirmation in concrete imagery could indicate that the subject has merely reached a critical point in their fading away. Finally, catharsis in encouraged with an image of the child or companion now positioned at the centre of the narrative. The action of fading away dehumanises the later stages of dementia by showing it as a process of death, as opposed to a stage of later life. Additionally, the smooth transition to death or erasure suggests that this is a second death. Staging this erasure validates descriptions of dementia as a “social death” (Kontos 2004) or “living death” (Innes 2009; Behuniak 2011). The corollary of these labels is that individuals with dementia are considered dead.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 229 These, then, are harmful analogies for describing dementia and those experiencing it. Other metaphors characterised by catastrophe can be implemented throughout a performance and these tend to be followed through in the ending of the work. In the instance of 1 Beach Road’s erosion metaphor, the house is described as being precariously close to falling into the sea. Meanwhile, Jane’s dementia also progresses to a point where she too is eroded and metaphorically destined for the water. The antagonistic narrativisation of dementia in It’s Dark Outside is actually unravelled when the true identity of the bounty hunter figure is revealed. However, the image of dementia as a looming enemy continues to resonate even after this disclosure, considering the man has been ‘robbed’ of all his clouds. And, the expression of dementia and dementia care as domestic catastrophe in On the Concept shatters all sense of place, time, and character. These examples demonstrate that, while they may be used informally in journalistic media and the like, when they are embedded in a narrative, overarching analogies of dementia have implications for the character with dementia when they are upheld to the end of the work.
In the vein of metaphor, ascension and descent achieved with theatrical tools may be used to symbolically point to a transition to death without confirming this conclusion. Before this, though, undressing may be used to disembody the character. Of the ten works analysed, three included an undressing motif, demonstrating an unexpected representative trend. The undressing is a way to dramaturgically erase the character by means of very basic stagecraft. The de-identified performer then exits the stage. As an alternative to erasure, this technique could represent a disembodiment, that is, the clothes left onstage signify what is left of the character. Following this vague departure/disembodiment, several works further erase the person with dementia by showing an action of letting go on the part of the remaining loved one. By contrast, Sundowner, which also features an undressing toward its end, instead employs the motif for a point of demarcation. Although her letter to her children resonates as a farewell, Peggy’s donning of the black dress signals a transition, not into death, but rather a new phase of her life. Despite the manifest demarcation that occurs at this point, the re-dressing and walking out into the sunlight symbolically celebrates her transformation. The ending is not about her unbecoming, because she rebuilds herself anew. Peggy also remains in the final intergenerational image of the performance.
As much as the motifs of undressing, ascension, and descent, and the shift to the generational discourse can be problematic for the portrayal of characters with dementia, there are inversions or subversions of these presentations that can give rise to themes of affirmation. Some
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 230 performances end with a declaration of selfhood by the central character with dementia. This can be achieved through resisting imagistic or dialectic erasure, that is, by omitting visual or linguistic expressions of erasure. Additionally, works may end with a focus on generational discourse, but keep their characters with dementia onstage, in the diegesis. The person with dementia is still part of the family portrait, so for now, life goes on in spite of dementia. There is no death, but also no vague exit signalled using theatrical tools.
9.3 Three Forms Live theatre is distinct for its capacity to facilitate multimedia – similarly to film – but also for its liveness. Multimedia in theatre naturally resists the blending of media because each component retains its essence in live performance. Traditionally, dramatic theatre has worked to create an “effect of the real” (Danan 2014, 4) for which the visual, physical, and auditory elements are intended to work in tandem to constitute the likeness of a world, a fictive cosmos. The audience members are aware of the boundaries between body, voice, costume, lighting, projection, and set design, but also recognise all these elements as blended parts of the storyworld. Where postdramatic theatre operates beyond drama, this imperative to blend media into a cohesive storyworld may be disregarded. Instead, different performance tools can either emphasise certain themes or be positioned against one another in a dramaturgy that interrupts a consensus of reality by staging alternate perspectives and experiences.
9.3.1 Sound
Sound is significant as it encompasses both live and recorded content and can either complement or juxtapose the visual and linguistic elements at play in a performance. The selected performances’ sound designs variously feature voiceover, music, and sound effects. Music is often used to accompany movement, mime, and dance, and can be tied to nostalgia. Sound effects can heighten the environment presented on stage, but also evoke place that is not represented physically onstage. Sound effects and soundscapes can also evoke an experience of being overwhelmed and may be accompanied by repetitive movement and equally overwhelming lighting design.
A number of the works analysed employ perpetual sound design throughout which effectively creates atmosphere, whether or not the physical set of the stage indicates place. In the context of dementia narratives, perpetual sound can produce experiences of warmth or being
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 231 overwhelmed. Used throughout a performance, sound design may unbalance the traditional authority of spoken language discussed above. For this reason, speech delivered as voice recording is noteworthy. When voice is recorded, that is, mediated, this process heightens the multimedia nature of performance, as the content could easily be produced live. So, recorded voice indicates a deliberate choice to reproduce speech verbatim or disembody a character. In the example of Memory Points, voice recordings were contributed by participants with dementia in response to the building tour, in which case their experiences were more effective when reproduced verbatim.
Overall, sound can evoke place and facilitate alternate experiences of the present reality. It is also a different way to denote an experience of reality, as opposed to relying on the visual; it asks more of an audience to suspend their disbelief and believe in what is heard as well as what is seen. Alternatively, music can accompany visual cues in representing a different experience or an intruding memory. When sound accompanies remembrance, it is not merely the act of remembering that is staged, but the memory itself; the audience hears what the character hears. In this way, music brings memories – potential experiences of reality – into the present diegesis, instead of relegating them to delusion. Music has especially powerful nostalgic properties, because it encompasses subject matter as well as a potentially significant historical context. It is an effective theatrical tool that can immediately evoke atmosphere by way of its rhythm, tone, and lyric. Music and dance are used in a number of performances to re/affirm selfhood. Although this affirmation is often a celebration of a ‘past’ version of the self and therefore linked to episodic, long-term memory, it humanises the character with dementia. In relation to other narrative elements, where language and the capacity to carry out activities of daily living are impaired, music and dance are shown to be maintained, reaffirming identity or selfhood. Music can be used to quickly mark a shift in mood. The beat and the tone of a song immediately communicate a feeling of a scene. It signals how what is happening onstage should be interpreted, that is, as something funny, light-hearted, or tragic. It is an effective tool for narrativisation.
By contrast, sound may be used as a sensory device to overwhelm the spectator. The sense of being overwhelmed is usually likened to care experiences, but can also be about the person with dementia feeling overwhelmed. Therefore, the use of sound for the purpose of overwhelming can reflect, in a non-mimetic manner, the frustration associated with both living with dementia and caring for someone with dementia. When sound design is used to overwhelm within an already rich soundscape, this layers loud noises over commonplace sounds,
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 232 grounding the sense of catastrophe in an experience of the everyday. Notably, this sensory atmosphere can be accompanied by lighting and physicality
The reduction of language in these sections of works can also be inferred to parallel the lessening of language that comes with the advancement of dementia. With reduced speech, physicality may be employed to compensate.
9.3.2 Physicality
It is important to consider the body as a site of meaning because of the immediacy with which it is experienced in live performance. It is a signifier that is most often unmediated. The presence of the performer is, therefore, felt by the audience, an engagement which may have the capacity to weaken themes of erasure and absence attributed to people with dementia. Additionally, the body in performance is a medium that extricates itself from non-mimetic representation. Approaches to physicality that are critical to this discussion include: movement in lieu of language, dance theatre, physical theatre, and movement that alludes to metaphorical themes. As discussed, physical performance modes can embody memories, de-hierarchise language and represent relationships in abstract ways. Physicality and visual dramaturgy can also represent the character/s with dementia in critical ways, for example, in the use of puppets. While the physicalised elements of some performances are inherent to their creators’ practice, physicalisation can nevertheless embody significant narrative aspects.
This study has analysed a dance theatre work, a piece of physical theatre, several puppetry works, and a promenade performance. Each mode of performance has implications for the narratives it presents, as well as for the selfhood of characters with dementia. Dance is perhaps the most adaptable, as it can feature even in works that are not pieces of dance theatre. Similar to music, it can be a vehicle for nostalgia. Dance sequences tend to serve as an injection of light-heartedness and are often strongly linked to memory. In this way, they can represent an intrusion on the consensus of reality, representing live recollection. When staged in this way, the recollections are experienced at level with other theatrical elements constituting the diegesis and, therefore, embodied as occurring in the present.
This differs from mimetic drama which would merely show the person with dementia in the midst of remembrance, that is, as disconnected from the present, or even absent. When memories are physically embodied, the audience not only sees the person with dementia remember but also witnesses their experience and receives this as reality, part of the diegetic present. Theatre’s particular ontology of liveness resists the inference of a flashback. Giving
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 233 credence to this recollection live on stage in close proximity to the audience shows the person with dementia not as an anachronism, disconnected from the present, but as experiencing something that is alternate perhaps to a consensus of reality but at parallel nonetheless.
Other experiences of dementia that occur outside of memory are also physicalised onstage. Performers’ bodies are employed to represent relationship changes, particularly in terms of the dynamics of dependency. Additionally, repetitive movement sequences can connote routine, frenzy, and anterograde amnesia. Even though these physicalisations of dementia may reiterate existing views about the condition, the immediacy of the body, at least, resists erasure and passivity. Discourse and imagery that render the individual with dementia passive have been reported in the literature and are damaging for their allusion to non-responsiveness and cognitive absence.
Lastly, the physical engagement of the audience is noteworthy. Live performance inherently draws on the co-bodily presence of performers and spectators in shared time and space. When immersive elements are engaged, this physical immediacy is heightened. In this context, when a performer’s direct address of the audience involves close contact, as in RUFF and Autobiographer, the spectators are made to feel the presence of the character with dementia. This encounter undercuts common discourses of absence and erasure. Immersive techniques can, therefore, humanise people with dementia. Further, immersive environments can heighten the co-bodily presence among members of the audience. In Memory Points and the opening of Inside Out, audiences are positioned to experience a fluctuating un/familiarity. This experience commonly attributed to dementia is, thus, shared instead of merely communicated, a trait of the postdramatic (Lehmann 2006, 85).
Just as story elements represented by physicality heightens their active embodiment, puppetry can passively embody the represented character.
9.3.3 Puppetry
The discussions of puppetry theatre works demonstrate that using created actors to represent people with dementia is potentially problematic. Co-presence between live actors and the ontologically ambiguous puppet figure is a significant factor, as is the positioning of the subject in the diegesis. The ontology of the puppet is crucial to consider. To return to Gross’ theory, the “stories that the puppets are invited to tell, or the characters they imitate, must be fitted to their puppet-ness” (Gross 2011, 69). The number of puppetry works identified in the contextual review indicates that dementia narratives and characters with dementia are in some way
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 234 conducive to this form. Gross (2011, 69) also notes “the puppet’s lack of life, or its belonging to a different kind of life”. In light of descriptions of people with dementia characterised by loss, this correlation may foster dehumanising representations. Additionally, Blumenthal’s (1997, 18) view that puppets “live at [the border between life and non-life]” resonates with descriptions of dementia as “the death that leaves the body behind” and people with dementia as the “living dead”. These potential inferences make the puppet a precarious dramaturgical choice, risking dehumanisation. At any rate, using puppets to portray characters with dementia is an expression of dementia’s unfathomability. It suggests that dementia has a quality that cannot be captured by live, human actors and calls for a created actor to interpret it.
In this vein, Blumenthal (1997, 16) describes the versatility of the puppet, or created actor, compared to human actors, who are limited to “a paltry range of sizes and shapes”. Therefore the use of created actors does provide the opportunity to tell stories non-mimetically. In particular, object theatre can evoke a fantastical environment, precluding realism. As such, in some works, puppets are part of a broader theatrical environment similarly embodied by objects, projection, and shadow. This is critical to the positioning of the puppet subject. If the puppet’s surroundings are equally “created” or composed of objects, the puppet appears native to this environment. Similarly, the puppet appears at level with the diegesis when it is scaled to equal ratio. Most often, puppets are scaled down, appearing shrunken, or, in Gross’s words, as “reduced doubles of a human world” (2011, 39). This, again, has potential implications for de/humanisation if the puppet’s environment is to a different scale. In addition to their warped scale, puppets are inherently voiceless: their speech cannot be their own, and they are otherwise silent. Whether silent or lent a voice (that is still disembodied), the puppet is empty of language, even if not diegetically. So, the complete exclusion of spoken word from a performance relieves the character of communicative difficulty. In performances of dementia, mime can act as an equaliser. Puppetry does not inherently dehumanise or even segregate characters. However, considering the puppet’s object status, scale, and voicelessness, the representation of the diegesis it inhabits should accommodate these qualities, or risk emphasising its inanimate nature. This environment includes the other subjects with whom the puppet interacts.
When a live actor appears dramaturgically at level with a puppet – that is, not merely as puppeteer – the puppet’s object status is emphasised in comparison to the human actor. Just as Blumenthal (1997, 18) explains puppets as “inanimate objects endowed with vital force,” Piris (2014) notes that puppets have an ontological ambiguity. When this figure is confronted by a character represented by a human performer, the dramaturgical relationship is remarkable
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 235 because it exists between “two beings that are ontologically different: one is a subject (in other words, a being endowed with consciousness) and the other one an object (in other words, a thing)” (Piris 2014, 30). Piris’ observations about the puppet’s object status corroborate Gross’s and Blumenthal’s explanations of the form. There is consensus that the puppet’s object ontology lends itself to performance. When downsized in ratio to its surroundings, the scale of the puppet highlights this ontology, as does its disembodied voice, a quality inherent to the puppet.
Employing puppetry to represent people with dementia – particularly when live actors are playing characters without dementia – would suggest an acknowledgement of the ‘otherness’ of dementia, an inexplicability that necessitates distinction from other characters. In this way, co-presence is a manifestation of demarcation. When co-presence is in play, the person with dementia is automatically demarcated from those without dementia. This demarcation can lend itself to dehumanisation, particularly as it manifests in object theatre, and has the potential for infantilisation as well. The loss-of-self perceived to be intrinsic to dementia is embodied in this differentiation. This visual signification of the characters with dementia also serves to distance the audience from them as subjects and mythologises the condition. There are a number of analogies commonly attributed to dementia experiences, but those that inscribe an otherness on the individual with the condition are especially harmful.
The diegetical co-presence of live and created actors represents a different kind of relationship than exists between two puppets or two actors. In the context of a care environment, this delineation takes on additional significance. A power dynamic is already in play, but when the puppet subject is brought to life through the manipulation of a puppeteer, they are visualised as lacking agency, even if not in a diegetic sense. Again, the passive embodiment of characters with dementia has repercussions for the perception of their selfhood. A degree of segregation is unavoidable; the care staff and residents of a dementia ward have very different purposes in spaces of institutional care. And, unlike familial care dynamics, their relationship is limited to interactions pertaining to care. Even when the interactions between staff and residents are friendly or even social, their separation from one another is manifest. Familial care dynamics have their own complexities and fluctuations, but a pair will essentially remain parent and child, for example. To use a puppet that is the size of a small child or doll in ratio to its human co-actor/s, especially in a professional care context, brings to mind the particular issue of infantilisation in these settings (Andrew 2006; Marson and Powell 2014). On the notion of scale, the way a puppet is handled when it is smaller could lend the form even more strongly
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 236 to infantilisation and dehumanisation as it emphasises their object status, or at least their ontological ambiguity.
Belonging to a different kind of life may not be interpreted by all to mean existing at the border between life and death as Blumenthal suggests of the puppet. Certainly, the puppet may be used to signal something about dementia’s otherness. The puppet may also possess a faculty to more fully explore the spectrum of humanness. Nonetheless, the implications of the puppet can reinforce negative stereotypes of people with dementia. It remains a precarious form for representing characters with dementia without demarcation, infantilisation, and dehumanisation.
9.4 Conclusion Overall, live theatre has the tools to tell new kinds of stories about dementia, and people with dementia, that do not merely echo the prevailing Western cultural constructions. There are, however, some emerging tendencies that can be traced back to dominant themes of narrativisation. Still, for every emerging tendency in performances about dementia, there are examples of deviations and even resistance. The prevailing construction of dementia in Western culture has been shaped by the notion that memory loss equates to self-loss, at least in social and familial contexts. Moreover, there is an attitude – perhaps a subconscious one – of discard; that the “demented” are lacking social worth. Selfhood has high currency in discussions of dementia. The loss-of-self is a pervasive notion as identified in the literature reviews. In relation to the discussed performances, selfhood is tied to medicalisation, demarcation, dehumanising imagery, assisted suicide and other politicised issues, the vague death, and focal shifts away from the subject with dementia. Some dramaturgical choices implemented in performances may inadvertently serve to reinforce the construction of people with dementia as having reduced/lost selfhood. Yet, dramaturgical and narrative elements can equally subvert these constructions. The loss-of-self is particularly resisted in staged disruptions of the consensus of reality that afford witness to alternate experience of reality. Very few contemporary performances appear to consciously dehumanise subjects with dementia or even intentionally problematise the condition. Nonetheless, the analyses show that intention and presentation can be in conflict. A work may be intended as a platform for the voices and stories of people with dementia, but, in practice, the use of theatrical tools, the story
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 237 development, and the overall dramaturgy may operate as devices for demarcation or even dehumanisation.
The demarcation between people with dementia and those without – as well as delineation between the subject before dementia and with dementia – feature frequently in the contemporary dementia performance catalogue. This marking of difference can carry implications of reduced personhood and – particularly in the case of old/young dichotomy – reduced worth (especially social worth). Denoting difference in a person pre- and since dementia can also suggest a lessened selfhood. A common mode of demarcation is the use of clinical markers of dementia. The medicalisation of dementia is widely considered an issue by many for the binary constructions of health, the negative attributions to ageing, and dehumanisation. Despite the debate over medicalisation, the clinical narratives in the analysed performances tend to be simplified for a layman’s understanding and decentralised, that is, used purely for signposting. When expressed in the physical form of puppetry, demarcation (communicated through co-presence) risks conveying dehumanisation. Yet, the puppet subject unencumbered by co-presence can evoke fantasy and alternate experiences of reality.
The insoluble nature of most dementias is reflected in the endings of some performances and the vague exits by the character/s with dementia. In particular, the focal shift away from the person with dementia demonstrates the impulse to resolve the narrative. These endings – perhaps inadvertently – erase the central character, reflecting the loss-of-self notion. The generational discourse is sometimes a factor in this shift. The number of people currently affected by dementia as family members and friends evinces the importance of the familial experience. However, as has been shown, this focus can inadvertently brush aside the experience of the person with dementia.
Selfhood is most well-preserved in characters with dementia when their experience of reality is afforded witness. Staging only a consensus of reality can present the character/s as demarcated, anachronistic, and potentially absent. Works that make use of the breadth of theatrical meaning-making to layer realities privilege the experiences of characters with dementia and show them to be responsive and present and their selfhood sustained. Especially in its immediate, live context, theatre has the tools to realise more diverse representations of people with dementia.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 238 10. Conclusion
Dementia statistics are consistently reported to be rising. Moreover, McColgan (2004, 169) observes that: “Despite a definitive research focus on finding the social meaning of dementia developed over the last decade, lack of understanding and negative popular representations of dementia persist”. The representation of dementia in drama has received little scholarly attention in the area of performance outputs, that is, the existing research is primarily concerned with applied arts. This thesis sought to investigate contemporary theatre about dementia and provide a reading guide for interpreting the representation of dementia onstage. The scope of the research necessitated a concentration on the Western cultural construction of dementia. This construction is influenced by a medical narrative, particularly one of Alzheimer’s disease, the condition most commonly associated with dementia. The first literature review briefly outlined clinical presentations of dementia of the Alzheimer’s type. The literature of cultural and social studies reveals that the deficit models found in medical literature influences negative social perceptions of dementia, which are reflected in descriptions of dementia and people with dementia. As identified in the review, crucial terms attributed to people with dementia include: the living dead, empty shells, costly, high maintenance, and burdensome (Behuniak 2011; Mitchell, Dupuis, and Jonas-Simpson 2011). Additionally, carers are sometimes called the “hidden patients” or “hidden victims”, emphasising the burden of care and reinforcing negative attitudes towards people with dementia. The second literature review addressed the representation of dementia in journalistic media and in images, photography, novels, and on screen. It also discussed applied theatre and other arts-based therapies currently used to manage “BPSD,” but also as a social activity for people with dementia. In this way, people with dementia are often positioned as patients, a component of the concern about the medicalisation of dementia.
Presenting dementia on the stage is not a new phenomenon, but stories that centre on the person with dementia had marginal representation prior to 2000, and a particular proliferation occurred after 2009. The contextual review outlined a number of representative modes and prevalent themes, including: research-based productions, language- and sound-based works, puppetry and mask theatre, dance and physical theatre, the generational discourse, women with dementia, and domestic and care homes as the two dominant settings. Deeper analysis of the selected works demonstrated the significance of clinical markers, demarcation, symbolism and
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 239 metaphor, the nature of reminiscence, and endings. The variety of potential theatrical technologies allows for the identified themes and motifs to be embodied in different ways.
Chapter 6: “We’re All in Our Own Little World” discussed Autobiographer, Really Old, Like Forty Five, and Inside Out of Mind. The analysis was based in language and dialogue, but also examined inner worlds and disruptions of a consensus reality. Autobiographer is entirely constructed from an inner world and Inside Out layers several individuals’ alternate experiences over its clinical foundation. Really Old does not stage alternate experiences of reality, though it does layer different perspectives of dementia. Again, different performance tools can feature collectively in a live context to effectively layer signs of meaning-making. Really Old is the only selected work to perform a societal narrative of dementia, yet it still clearly demonstrates the generational discourse. The generational discourse is disembodied in Flora’s inner world of Autobiographer and absent from Inside Out, which is unusual for dementia stories. This can be attributed to the ward setting of Inside Out. The analyses overall have shown that place has significant influence over the kind of dementia narrative told and the type of relationships featured. Theatre can evoke place in its use of a physical set, but also through dialogue, action, and other visual denotations, such as costume or projection technology. Theatre can also achieve placelessness, make place redundant, or move swiftly between represented locations. Aside from Really Old and the placeless works, dementia narratives are mostly limited to one of two places: home or the care facility.
Chapter 7: Active and Passive Embodiment examined Sundowner, 1 Beach Road, D- Generation and It’s Dark Outside. The analysis emphasised visual and physical aspects of the works, specifically the use of dance theatre (Sundowner), physical theatre (1 Beach Road) and puppetry theatre (D-Generation and It’s Dark Outside). Employing multiple performance technologies can facilitate disruptions of a consensus reality. Live performance is uniquely equipped to do this, potentially encompassing multiple forms without blending them into a cohesive, inflexible diegesis. The first three performances explored in the chapter also make use of dialogue, which significantly contributes to their meaning. Again, the generational discourse and place were discussed as crucial elements. In the cases of 1 Beach Road and It’s Dark Outside, the settings contribute to overarching analogies for dementia experiences. These metaphors have resonance with several identified in the two literature reviews, showing that theatre does sometimes reproduce common constructions of dementia.
Chapter 8: Postdramatic Dementia discussed Memory Point(s): The Beauty of Remembering, RUFF and On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God, each exhibiting postdramatic
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 240 traits that weaken the normative constructions of dramatic character, story, and narrative structure. Because postdramatic theatre operates beyond the strictures of linearity and cohesion, its use of the theatrical spectrum can produce a broader range of stories and constructions of humanity. The three works additionally subvert place in some way and make use of immersive aspects to differently engage audiences. These three works also exemplify notable exceptions to most performances of dementia. While a number of works incidentally develop problematic aspects of dementia narratives, On the Concept demonstrates a deliberate catastrophisation of the dementia subject matter. Additionally, while people with dementia are infrequently involved with the development of performance outputs, Shaw creatively and performatively leads RUFF, concurrently reframing the usual care dynamic. Memory Points also draws on contributions from people with dementia and their families, but, more exceptionally, it decentralises dementia from the recollections staged. Overall, performances that resist a wholly dramatic composition have greater potential to represent people with dementia and their experiences in ways that do not merely echo the prevailing Western cultural construction of the condition.
The core findings of this research demonstrate that, when represented in live performance, the medicalisation of dementia tends to be decentralised in favour of person-centred narratives. However, performances often make use of recognisable clinical emblems, both linguistic and visual, with a focus on memory loss. These signposts are one of a number of ways in which characters with dementia are demarcated from others around them and/or from their ‘former,’ pre-dementia selves. The generational discourse features frequently in dementia narratives, but endings can be problematic, particularly when they erase the person with dementia in order to resolve the story for a child or spouse. Puppetry is another potentially problematic performance aspect in works where the puppet appears dehumanised against its dramaturgical environment. Research-based theatre is an emerging developmental trend and, perhaps more significantly, theatre that draws on the creative input of people with dementia may become increasingly popular. Future research would be well dedicated to the impetus of performances about dementia, their funding, processes of development, the involvement of people with dementia, the resulting style, and evidence of reception and impact. Furthermore, there remain many recent performances yet to be academically examined. In particular, depictions of dementia in the mainstage sector are burgeoning, and these performances that see high attendance are typically of a traditionally dramatic composition. Considering the capability of more contemporary live performances to resist problematic constructions of people with dementia –
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 241 as this research shows, it would be valuable to assess more traditional depictions and their impact.
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Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 264 Appendix A: Visualisation of Key Discussions
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 265 Appendix B: Performance Catalogue of PWD Title Playwright/ Year Country Dementia Gender Relationships Significant information and plot Genre/s and theatre tech Other information Resources Company type, if points, themes, motifs and specified narrative developments
‘A’: The Becky Shaw 2008 England A verbatim play based on research Has had several iterations, Shaw, Becky. n.d. “A.” Christmas Party (interviews conducted in a care including a six-hour radio Accessed July 29, 2018. facility) play for four performers first http://beckyshaw.net/A Set in a care facility broadcast in 2008 by Art and Design Research SheffieldLive, a community Centre. 2013. “'A'. The A’s language is ‘demented,’ that is, radio station in Sheffield. linguistic coherence is disrupted. A Christmas Party.” Accessed speaks in rhyme, combining a small When it was performed live it July 29, 2018. number of popular songs and was done in the manner of the https://www.shu.ac.uk/resea nursery rhymes in ever-varying table read and the performers rch/specialisms/cultural- combinations. had never read the text before. communication-and- So, though it was text-driven, computing-research- Shows tragicomic nature of there is little opportunity for institute/what-we- dementia characterisation and do/projects/fine-art/a-the- affectation. christmas-party 1 Beach Road RedCape 2011 England Alzheimer’s F A couple: one Natural disaster metaphor. Physical theatre Holum, Solveig. 2016. 1 Theatre disease, develops dementia, No generational discourse. Projection Beach Road. London: Turtle early-onset the other becomes Key Arts. Music a carer Friend, Cassie and Catherine Dyson. 2017. In an interview with Morgan Batch, 16th June. 27 Abi Morgan 2011 Scotland Alzheimer’s F Inspired by the study by Dr David National Theatre of disease Snowden, “Ageing with Grace”. Scotland. 2017. “27.” Accessed July 29, 2018. The title refers to 27 nuns recruited https://www.nationaltheatres into the study. Their Mother cotland.com/production/27/? Superior, Sister Miriam’s dementia page=home_27 is advancing. Its reported themes: loneliness, ageing, science, and the Trailer: loss of our sense of self https://www.youtube.com/w atch?v=tmH3k8GwQ70 A Wedding Story Bryony Lavery 2000 England Alzheimer’s F As much about the The play is “about an incredibly Lyall-Watson, Katherine. disease husband and bright and strong doctor, Evelyn, 2011. “41: A Wedding children as it is succumbing to Alzheimer’s. It’s Story.” 365 Plays (blog), about Evelyn, the also about her husband and children May 1, 2011. woman with as they try to cope with their https://365plays.wordpress.c Alzheimer’s diminished wife/mother and get on om/2011/05/01/41-a- disease. with their own lives.” (Lyall- wedding-story/ Watson 2011) Billington, Michael. 2001. “Soho Theatre serves up a rich brew.” The Guardian, January 22. Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 266 https://www.theguardian.co m/stage/2001/jan/22/theatre. artsfeatures1 Absence Peter M. Floyd 2011 USA Alzheimer’s F Drama centres Family drama Realism that becomes “more Staged at Boston’s Floyd, Peter M. n.d. disease around family Dialogue becomes ‘demented’ fractured and expressionistic” Playwrights’ “Absence.” Accessed July tension Ensemble of six Theater, a small 29, 2018. Based on personal experience. The professional theatre http://www.petermfloyd.co playwright was wanting to m/absence/ understand his mother’s experience MacDonald, Sandy. 2014. of dementia through dramatic means. “In ‘Absence,’ a painful portrayal of dementia.” Boston Globe, February 17. https://www.bostonglobe.co m/arts/theater- art/2014/02/17/absence- painful-portrayal-dementia- and-its-collateral- damage/zSefgGRJCSGTR6 hUPSZcAM/story.html After the Crash Julia Gray 2011 Canada Acquired “This hour long play uses Commissioned by Gray, Julia. n.d. “After the brain injury multiple components of a Toronto Crash: a play about brain theatrical production, allowing Rehabilitation injury.” Accessed October imagery and movement to Institute and 23, 2018. reflect the research as well as University of https://possiblearts.ca/projec spoken text and scene work” Toronto (Gray n.d.) ts/after-the-crash-a-play- (Gray n.d.). about-brain-injury/ Also a Mirror Sean Riley 2011 Australia v Deals with changes Deals with changes in familial Informed by research Exists as both a Urban Myth Theatre relationships. radio play and a Company. 2014. “Past [Urban Myth in familial Verbatim/scripted hybrid staged version. Projects.” Accessed July 29, Theatre relationships. Institutionalisation as a theme (interview data) 2018. Company] Intergenerational Adelaide Fringe Multi-stranded narrative Largely realistic acting, with http://urbanmytheatrecompa stories Festival and then elements of abstract staging ny.blogspot.com/p/past- Vignettes, recollections became a radio play projects.html A single figure traverses the Stage space is flexible different vignettes portraying the progression of dementia. The cast is made up of Urban Myth ensemble players, 14 of them aged from 14 to 22. The work “aimed to break stereotypes given to people with memory loss” Alzheimer’s The Maureen 2007 Australia Alzheimer’s F The dialogue interspersing the Comedy cabaret Melbourne Sherlock, Maureen. n.d. International “Home.” Accessed July 29, Musical: A Night Sherlock disease songs is funny but does not deviate Ensemble of three to Remember from the naturalistic Comedy Festival 2018. There is no set, only costumes, wigs, and props.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 267 http://www.alzheimersthem usical.com/Home.html Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/w atch?v=8Noo2lkuvA8 Alzheimer’s: The Todd Cardin 2015 USA Alzheimer’s M Considers the juxtaposition of a Musical Actors International Theatre. Musical disease weakening mind with a strong body Humorous n.d. “Alzheimers: The Musical.” Accessed October Cast of five 23, 2018. http://www.actorsinternation altheatre.org/alzheimers-the- musical.html Amy's View David Hare 1997 England F Dementia is a subplot. The mother- Quentin, Ham. 2016. in-law of one of the central “REVIEW: Amy's View, characters, and grandmother to the Chesil Theatre, Winchester.” eponymous Amy. Southern Daily Echo, May 23. Evelyn has Alzheimer’s disease or https://www.dailyecho.co.uk a similar dementia, which /leisure/stage/14510440.RE progresses over the sixteen years VIEW__Amy__39_s_View that pass during the play. __Chesil_Theatre__Winches ter/
An Evening with Trevor T Smith 2009 UK M About a retired actor in a care Solo performance Brown, Peter. 2011. “An Dementia facility who does not “suffer from” The actor sits in a chair for the Evening With Dementia.” dementia, but accepts his condition performance. London Theatre, February (Warner 2010, 8). 17. The institutional setting is implied, https://www.londontheatre.c but the setting is not visually o.uk/reviews/an-evening- represented. with-dementia Smith, Trevor T. n.d. Language is intact and linear “Welcome to An Evening From the point of view of someone with Dementia.” Accessed with dementia, including comments July 29, 2018. on the way people talk to him; he http://www.aneveningwithd makes comedy of these things. ementia.co.uk/Aneveningwit hdementia/Welcome.html André y Dorine Kulunka Teatro 2010 Spain Alzheimer’s F Husband and wife, Flashbacks to the couple’s youth Mask, mime Travelled 25 Kulunka Teatro. n.d. children, a doctor countries in 4 “Espectáculos.” Accessed continents, October 23, 2018. performing more https://www.kulunkateatro.c than 500 functions, om/espectaculos continues on tour Angeleta & Around the 2014 England F Two sisters “Angeleta & Etelvina by Around Puppetry Performed as a Around the Glove. n.d. Etelvina Glove the Glove is a bitter-sweet comedy double bill with “Angeleta and Etelvina.” about two sisters who, having Dark Matter by Accessed July 29, 2018. grown old and bitter together, are Vertebra Theatre http://aroundtheglove.com/p
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 268 now struggling with dementia. It's a Cites Arts Council lays/angeleta%26etelvina.ht journey through clouded memories, England as support ml love and flatulence.” (Performing Dementia 2014) Performing Dementia. 2014. “Performing Dementia.” “[…] Angeleta's Dementia is Accessed May 23, 2018. becoming too much for Etelvina to http://performingdementia.w bear.” (Performing Dementia 2014) ixsite.com/performingdemen tia/the-project “The exploration of the brain of a character with dementia who travels through memories and hallucinations and the experience of a carer (sister) who deals on a daily basis with a person with dementia. The result is an exploration of the inner and outer reality of Dementia, which is both touching and heart- warming.” (Performing Dementia 2014) Autobiographer Melanie Wilson 2011 England F The character is Metaphor Sound-based work. Funded by Arts Wilson, Melanie. 2012. Council England Autobiographer. London: alone with herself, The motherline Voice as soundscape plus Oberon Books. but there is a sound effects and music. and a Wellcome Wip relationship Five actors play the same woman, Trust Award. Wilson, Melanie. 2017. In in engendered Flora. Placeless and timeless setting The process of an interview with Morgan 2010 between her and (A comparison can be made to Unconventional audience development was Batch, 4th June. the audience. Beckett’s That Time (1976).) setting/positioning. informed by Flora does mention research, though the (abstractly) her character is original. The language is non-linear, and the mother, father, subject shifts on a whim. Some personal children, and her experience daughter in particular. Bananas in the Suzy Dunne 2016 Australia Dementia “explores the impact of dementia Physical theatre In development in The Joan. 2015. “Bananas in the Bedside Table.” Bedside Table generally and Alzheimer’s disease on “The final work will be a 2015 at The Joan Accessed July 29. 2018. and families and the greater cross-disciplined performance Sutherland http://thejoan.com.au/press/b Alzheimer’s community” incorporating physical theatre, Performing Arts ananas-bedside-table/ disease “draws from personal experiences text, comedy, multimedia and Centre (Q Lab specifically of this devastating disease by music.” program), Blacktown Arts investigating the often humorous Music by Kurinji circumstances arising from it, Centre (Inter-Arts whilst highlighting the underlying Residency sadness that comes from slowly program), and losing a loved one” National Theatre of Parramatta. Before I Leave Patrick Jones 2016 Wales Various v “Scenes are short, it hops all over Includes singing Gardner, Lyn. 2016. “Before the place and takes wrong turns as I Leave review – joyous it tells the stories of six people drama about reality of dementia.” The Guardian, Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 269 affected by dementia” (Gardner June 1, 2016. 2016). https://www.theguardian.co The six characters with dementia m/stage/2016/jun/01/before- are all part of a community choir i-leave-review-joyous- for PLWD, inspired by the Cym drama-about-reality-of- Taf choir. dementia Blank Tiles Dylan Cole 2016 Australia Alzheimer’s M “World Scrabble Champion, Austin One-man show BWW News Desk. 2017. disease Michaels used to know over “Dylan Cole Presents Blank 200,000 words. Now Alzheimer's Tiles.” Last modified June disease is eating away at his 13, 2017. memory. And Austin is scared.” https://www.broadwayworld (BWW News Desk 2017). .com/uk- regional/article/Dylan-Cole- Presents-BLANK-TILES- 20170613 Waters, Stacey. 2016. “Review: Blank Tiles.” Pop Culture-y, September 26, 2016. http://popculture- y.com/2016/09/review- blank-tiles/ Blue Kettle Caryl Churchill 1997 England - F Mother-son Derek attempts to con four older Alber, Jan. 2016. Unnatural relationship(s) women into believing he is the son Narrative: Impossible they gave up for adoption 40 years Worlds in Fiction and ago. Meanwhile, his own mother Drama. Lincoln: University has dementia. of Nebraska Press. While dementia may appear as a subplot, there is a distinctive linguistic breakdown in the play: the words ‘blue’ and ‘kettle’ begin to disrupt the dialogue until “phonemes replace the words blue and kettle” (Alber 2016, 124). This feature of the play resonates with aphasia and paraphasia associated with dementia. Cathedral Fye and Foul 2015 England - - Dementia is a potential Brighton Fringe. 2016. interpretation. Brighton Fringe Brochure 2016. “There is a story, but we can’t https://issuu.com/brighton_f remember the details. it has a ringe/docs/brighton_2016_f figure, but its features escape us. or_issuu_v2 You’re my old lover, but I can’t remember your voice. ‘Cathedral’ is held in semidarkness and explores the disruption of memory through a collage of immersive
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 270 sound, storytelling and physical theatre” (Brighton Fringe 2016). Cockamamy Louise 2016 England Vascular F Grandmother- Based on personal experience Previewed at the Coulthard, Louise. 2018. “There's comedy as well as Coulthard dementia granddaughter Camden Fringe and relationship was then awarded tragedy in dementia – that's funding to go to why I had to write a play Edinburgh Fringe. about it.” The Independent, June 6. https://www.independent.co. uk/arts- entertainment/theatre- dance/features/dementia- play-cockamamy-louise- coulthard-grandmother- comedy-tragedy-hope- theatre-a8386676.html Coop Black Hole 2008 Australia - M “[…] about shifting “Coop is a dark, mesmerising Puppetry Black Hole Theatre. 2018. Theatre – forces between a puppet theatre piece about an old “Coop.” Accessed October directed by father and two man who thinks he’s God, and his 29, 2018. Nancy Black children” (Black two grown children searching for https://blackholetheatre.com. Hole Theatre love in all the wrong places” (Black au/project/coop/ 2018). Hole Theatre 2018). Daughter as carer motif: “His daughter looks after him, and when his son returns after a long time away, old loves and wounds re-ignite” (Black Hole Theatre 2018). Couldn't Care Plutot La Vie 2013 Scotland Alzheimer’s F Mother-daughter “Elspeth comes and goes, through Plutot la Vie. 2013. Less and Strange disease relationship windows into another world. Her “Couldn’t Care Less.” Theatre school of dance lies empty. The Accessed July 29, 2018. doctors say it’s Alzheimer’s. http://plutotlavie.org.uk/prod Elspeth and her daughter Lilly uctions/couldnt-care-less/ embark on a journey of frustration, humour and ultimately love as Lilly learns to dance with the person who is, not the mother who was” (Plutot la Vie 2013). Cracked: New Playwright and 2014 Canada v Mother-children “Cracked is an innovative research- Research team: Pia Kontos, The title is inspired Cracked: New light on Light on Dementia Director: Julia relationship based play and film that follows Sherry L. Dupuis, Gail J. by a Leonard Cohen Dementia. n.d. “Cracked: New Light on Dementia.” Gray persons with dementia and their Mitchell and Christine Jonas- lyric in Anthem: Accessed July 29, 2018. “developed by families on their unique journeys, Simpson “There is a crack in http://crackedondementia.ca/ Collective from diagnosis to their new lives in everything/That's
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 271 Disruption, an long-term care.” (Cracked: New The performance is intended how the light gets Collective Disruption. 2017. interdisciplinary light on Dementia n.d.) as an educational tool, in” “Cracked: New light on group of Set in an institution, yet some primarily for families of dementia.” ReView: An anthology of plays researchers and familial relationships are staged. people with dementia. performance committed to social justice, artists. Made in Intended to “cast a critical light on edited by Julia Gray, 67- collaboration society’s one-dimensional view of 138. Rotterdam: Sense with persons dementia as an unmitigated Publishers. tragedy” (Collective Disruption living with 2017, 67). Program: dementia and http://crackedondementia.ca/ their family wp- members.” content/uploads/2017/08/Cra Composer & cked-Programme- Music Director: Spring2017-Final.pdf Tim Machin Co-Creators: Mark Prince, David Talbot, Lindsay Anne Black, Elizabeth McDermott, Aynsley Moorhouse, Ksenia Ivanova and Alyksandra Ackerman Daisy Terry Mervin 2011 Australia - F Familial Familial experience (Davis 2011) First staged in 2011 Davis, Guy. 2011. experience. at the Woodbin “Emotional play on the sad Elements of a care facility Theatre in Geelong slide into dementia theatre The family consists discourse (Davis 2011) review with Guy Davis” of Daisy, her Daisy is represented as both her Geelong Advertiser, May 7. husband, their son ageing self and as a child. Accessed April 3, 2015. and daughter. Generational discourse. http://search.proquest.com/d Spousal ocview/865443760?accounti “While husband Jim (Bryan Eaton) relationship, and d=13380 Davis’ review loves her, he can no longer handle (2010) suggests a the burden of caring for her, so they focus on the move into a nursing home where experience of the they're surrounded by residents husband more than wrestling with age-related ailments. Daisy’s. Jim's love, patience and understanding help Daisy contend with the unpredictable nature of her condition but, sadly, it becomes clear their time together is running out. The love story between the couple provides the most moving aspect of Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 272 Daisy, with Eaton [playing the husband+] eloquently expressing his devotion to a wife and "best mate" who is slipping through his fingers.” (Davis 2011) Dark Matter Vertebra Theatre 2017 England - M Set in a care home Object animation, puppetry Performed as a Performing Dementia. 2014. “be ready to descend into the and experiments with light, double bill with “Performing Dementia.” hallucinatory mind of Alfi who shadows and video-art Angeleta & Etelvina Accessed May 23, 2018. suffers from dementia. A story (Performing Dementia 2014) by Around the http://performingdementia.w about a man at the twilight of his Glove ixsite.com/performingdemen tia/the-project life, fighting to reclaim the most Cites Arts Council important thing: himself.” England as a (Performing Dementia 2014) support “We use visual and physical storytelling to dive into the hallucinatory mind of Alfie, an elder astrophysicist who experiences dementia in the twilight of his life. Dark Matter, black holes and star constellations merge into a race against the clock to discover meaning.” () Dementia Evelina 2002 USA AIDS- M Moises’ pregnant The lead character Moises is dying An ensemble piece “receiving its world Miller, Daryl H. 2002. Fernandez related niece who has been of AIDS and hosts one last party. premiere as a Latino “'Dementia Asks Worthy dementia caring for him. Latino focus Theatre Company Questions.” LA Times, “The story unfolds against a His ex-wife. presentation at the October 5. “While Moises (Sal Lopez) lies in two-story (sic) backdrop of Los Angeles http://articles.latimes.com/2 A childhood friend. bed, hooked to an IV drip, a drag dark, brooding clouds and Theatre Center” 002/oct/05/entertainment/et- queen (Richard Coca) in a dazzling His theatre-making fluttering black birds miller5 indigo gown materializes on a collaborator and (designed by Laura Fine).” grand staircase that cuts through the best friend, and troubled sky. She may be Moises' wife. alter ego; she may be his angel of The play is performed in The drag queen. death. But one thing is certain: She English, but several songs are has come to bring people together performed in Spanish. and prompt them to face unresolved issues, before it's too late.” (Miller 2002) Dementia, or the Kornél 2013 Hungary - v Based on a true story of a mental Described as “[moving] Gessnerallee Zürich. 2014. Day of My Great Mundruczó with hospital that was closed down, its between a hyperreal world of “Dementia, or the Day of Happiness Proton Theatre patients essentially thrown out. psychiatry and a bizarre My Great Happiness.” Accessed July 29, 2018. The work “focuses on a couple of operetta” (Gessnerallee Zürich https://www.gessnerallee.ch/ dementia patients who have been 2014). en/programm/event/2759/ vegetating on the fourth floor of this clinic” (Gessnerallee Zürich Proton Theatre. 2016. 2014). “Dementia.” Accessed July 29, 2018. Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 273 Dementia is also used as a cultural https://protontheatre.hu/perf metaphor: “At the very beginning, a ormance/dementia doctor explains how through dementia ‘the brain is eaten up by nothingness – just like in Hungary: no past, no future’” (Gessnerallee Zürich 2014). D-Generation: An Sandglass 2013 USA Various v Between Long-term care facility Puppetry Sandglass Theater. n.d. “D- Exaltation of Theater carers/researchers Research-based, the Generation: An Exaltation Larks and residents. TimeSlips method, some of Larks.” Accessed July 30, 2018. Some reference to verbatim http://sandglasstheater.org/d familial -generation/ relationship
Do Not Go Gentle Patricia 2006 Australia Alzheimer’s Metaphor Croggan, Alison. 2010. “The . . . Cornelius disease, Inhabitants of a nursing home. poetry of age in an uncertain early-onset world.” The Australian, “She evokes with unsentimental August 9. compassion the confusions and https://www.theaustralian.co longings of old age or, in the case m.au/arts/the-poetry-of-age- of Bowers (Pamela Rabe), a in-an-uncertain-world/news- younger woman suffering from story/b0d874e1f171390990f premature Alzheimer's who doesn't adcf428cdd234?sv=86ab60e remember her own husband, of 878cb27938692abe589691c tragic memory loss.” (Croggan ee 2010). Neutze, Ben. 2014. “Who's “[…] uses Scott of the Antarctic’s Afraid Of Patricia ill-fated expedition as a metaphor Cornelius?” Daily Review, for five elderly people reaching the May 27. end of their lives” (Neutze 2014). https://dailyreview.com.au/ Title derived from Dylan Thomas’ whos-afraid-of-patricia- poem ‘Do not go gentle into that cornelius/6615/ good night’: “Do Not Go Gentle, a Bentley, Prue. 2010. “Do line taken from a Dylan Thomas Not Go Gentle.” ABC poem urging his father to continue online, 10 August. as a strong man in his old age is a http://www.abc.net.au/local/ perfect umbrella for this work” reviews/2010/08/10/297876 (Bentley 2010). 0.htm
Don’t Forget To Haresh Sharma 2009 Singapore Alzheimer’s F “When Madam Wong begins her Commissioned by The Necessary Stage. n.d. Remember Me with The disease retirement, all she can think of is the Alzheimer’s “Don’t Forget To Necessary Stage enjoying her golden years with rest Disease Association Remember Me.” Access and serenity, surrounded by family July 30, 2018.
and friends. However, rest turns http://www.necessary.org/in into restlessness as she starts to lose dex.php/outreach/external-
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 274 her short-term memory. Her dream Spoke to people projects/dont-forget-to- of a peaceful life soon becomes a with dementia, remember-me nightmare of remembering and carers and social forgetting.” (Accompanying the workers. published play) Don’t Leave Me Brian Daniels 2014 England Early-,onset v Inspired by two stories of early- Don't Leave Me Now. 2017. Now dementia onset dementia. “Don’t Leave Me Now by About the right to make one’s own Brian Daniels.” Accessed July 29, 2018. choices; pertaining to the Mental Capacity Act (official association to https://dontleavemenow.com / the Act, an educational piece in this way) Carole. 2014. “Reading of New Brian Daniels Play, Don’t Leave Me Now, This Friday at Heart.” North Leeds Life, October 15, 2014. http://www.northleedslifegr oup.com/2014/10/15/reading -of-new-brian-daniels-play- dont-leave-me-now-this- friday-at-heart/ Dot Colman 2015 USA F About a matriarch Move from home to assisted living Naturalistic set and mimetic Premiered at the Fuchs, Elinor. 2017. Domingo and looks at subject acting 2015 Humana “Dementia: The theater of adult children Festival of New season’s “in” disease part caregivers. American Plays 1.” The Theatre Times, January 16. ‘Older daughter’ https://thetheatretimes.com/ “standard dementia dementia-theater-seasons- plot” as recognised disease-part-1/ by Fuchs (2017). Dottie Robin Marcotte 2005 USA F Features the The work “examines how people Solo performance, multiple Inspired by the Marcotte, Robin. n.d. perspective of her suffering from dementia perceive characters maker’s “Dottie.” Accessed July 28, 2018. friend, Dutchie the world” (Marcotte n.d.) Spoken word, costume, aerial grandmother’s http://www.robinmarcotte.ne acts, dance, mirrors, masks, dementia t/dottie.html projections, and music Dream of Perfect Kevin Kautzman 2014 USA/ - F Spousal The play is about a husband and Oberon Books. 2016. Sleep England relationship. wife, whose estranged children “Dream of Perfect Sleep.” Accessed July 29, 2018. Generational return home for a holiday meal to https://www.oberonbooks.co discourse. receive the news of their mother’s dementia. m/dream-of-perfect- sleep.html Dreams of Stella Feehily 2009 England - M Various characters have different Hemming, Sarah. 2009. Violence conditions including alcoholism “Decline of a decent and dementia. woman.” Financial Times, July 22. https://www.ft.com/content/
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 275 356bfab8-760f-11de-9e59- 00144feabdc0 Echoes in the Mist David Scott with 2007 Australia - F “Maureen sits in a cafe waiting for Gathering Shadows Victorian Drama League. Javeenbah her husband to join her so they can – also by David n.d. “Echoes in the Mist by Theatre celebrate her birthday. While Scott is a prequel David Scott.” Accessed July Company waiting she meets an assortment of story to Echoes in 29, 2018. people, from Veronica, the the Mist. http://www.theatrecraft.org. ‘waitress’, to various ‘customers’. au/play_catalog/synopsis.ph Maureen's interaction with these p?playid=10790 people reveals similarities in their past, and as the play unfolds, Maureen exposes more and more of her life’s encounters. The ‘customers’ act increasingly irrational as the play progresses, intriguing Maureen and the audience. As the play continues, the audience realise they are looking at life through Maureen's eyes, a person living with dementia, and that the cafe is really a respite centre.” (Victorian Drama League n.d.) Echte Mensen Chapeau Theatre 2015 Netherla - F Mother-daughter Cultuuragenda Heuvelrug. Wensen Group nds relationship 2015. “'Echte Mensen Wensen' Door Toneelgroep [Real People Chapeau.” Accessed July Need] 29, 2018. http://cultuuragendaheuvelru g.nl/component/ohanah/echt e-mensen-wensen-door- toneelgroep- chapeau?Itemid=0 Elegy Nick Payne 2016 England Unnamed F Spousal Clapp, Susannah. 2016. neuro- relationship “Elegy review – a fine degenerative dilemma.” The Guardian, disease May 1. https://www.theguardian.co m/stage/2016/may/01/elegy- nick-payne-zoe-wanamaker- donmar-observer-review Emerge Charleen Phelps, 2016 Canada - M Father-daughter A staged reading. Have not Nanaimo Bulletin. 2016. reading by relationship yet found a theatrically staged “Play challenges TheatreOne's version. assumptions.” Nanaimo Emerging Bulletin, March 2. Voices https://www.nanaimobulleti
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 276 n.com/entertainment/play- challenges-assumptions/ End Games Movingstage 2015 England - F The elderly woman The play is about ageing, illness, Puppetry Moura, Sofia. 2015. “End and memory loss. Marionette is known only as “I can’t help comparing the Games @ The Puppet Company ‘Grandma’. The “script is built around the puppet, a lifeless object, with Theatre Barge Review.” Theatre Full Stop, Generational poetry of Finuala Dowling – Notes the almost lack of life in the September 9. discourse: “the from the Dementia Ward” (Moura characters they portray” https://theatrefullstop.wordp presence of 2015). (Moura 2015). ress.com/2015/09/09/end- children is a very games-the-puppet-theatre- powerful one as it barge-review/ symbolizes the beginning of the journey that is about to end for the elder people” (Moura 2015). Enjoy Alan Bennett 1980 England Alzheimer’s F Darkly comic family drama with a Trueman, Matt. 2014. disease complication of dementia. “Enjoy, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, review: 'needs sticking with'.” The Telegraph, May 25. https://www.telegraph.co.uk /culture/theatre/theatre- reviews/10854990/Enjoy- West-Yorkshire-Playhouse- Leeds-review-needs- sticking-with.html Father Dreams Mary Gallagher 1981 USA - M “The play is comprised of dreams, Gussow, Mel. 1981. memories and fantasies that “Theater: Tragicomic 'Father illuminate the struggles of a family Dreams'.” New York Times, dogged by the father’s growing March 28. madness” (Mary Gallagher https://www.nytimes.com/19 Playwright 2013). 81/03/28/theater/theater- tragicomic-father- dreams.html Mary Gallagher Playwright. 2013. “Synopses.” Accessed July 29, 2018. https://marygallagherplaywri ght.com/ Fever Sleep Stephen Koester 2005 USA - v “The work, which examines the Dance Iwasaki, Scott. 2006. slipping of sanity into dementia, “Passion, artistry high in was at the same time humorous and RDT works.” Deseret News, poignant. [Line break.] October 7. Exaggerated facial expressions, https://www.deseretnews.co obsessive gestures and vocal m/article/650196695/Passio outbursts are shown not only for Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 277 outrageousness, but also poignancy n-artistry-high-in-RDT- as the dancers seem to lose their works.html minds.” Finding Joy Vamos Theatre 2014 England - F Story of a woman The performance stages a Mask, mime Vamos Theatre. 2018. Company with dementia and generational theme, embodies Four performers “Finding Joy.” Accessed her grandson memories, and features “nocturnal October 23, 2018. wanderings” (Gardner 2014) https://www.vamostheatre.c indicating diurnal rhythm o.uk/shows/show/finding- disturbances. joy Gardner, Lyn. 2014. “Finding Joy – review.” The Guardian, January 28. https://www.theguardian.co m/stage/2014/jan/28/finding -joy-review Flight Michel 2012 USA Alzheimer’s F Mother-son “Were it just another weak and Jaworowski, Ken. 2012. Wallerstein disease relationship. A underwritten play, “Flight” might “Memory, in All Its carer also features. be easy to dismiss. Yet because it Elusiveness and Ability to trafficks in unearned emotions by Shock.” New York Times, exploiting the Holocaust, March 9. Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, https://www.nytimes.com/20 the story treads close to being 12/03/10/theater/reviews/flig objectionable as well as ht-by-michel-wallerstein-at- ineffective” (Jaworowski 2012). the-dr2-theater.html Flowers From Lawrence Allen 2005 Wales - F Mahoney, Elisabeth. 2011. Tunisia “Flowers from Tunisia – review.” The Guardian, May 9. https://www.theguardian.co m/stage/2011/may/08/flower s-from-tunisia-review Forget Me Not - Written and 2016 UK Alzheimer’s v Set on a dementia ward. Funded by Arts Rob Gee. n.d. Forget Me Not - Freedom to Speak Up. The Alzheimer’s performed by disease “Jim’s wife, a patient on a dementia Council England. https://www.robgee.co.uk/G Whodunnit Rob Gee ward, has died from what appears “After seeing Forget alleryEntries/Arts_and_Heal to be natural causes. Jim is a retired Me Not, th/Documents/Forget_Me_N police detective and he smells a rat. Leicestershire ot_- He’s determined to solve one last Partnership NHS _Freedom_to_Speak_Up.pdf murder. The problem is he also has Trust (LPT) dementia.” (Rob Gee n.d.). recruited Rob to deliver training based on the themes of compassion and raising concerns. The halfday training consists of a performance of the show, breakout Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 278 sessions and structured discussion.” (Rob Gee n.d.). Forgetting State of Flux 2011 England Early-onset F The artistic director’s thoughts on Dance, digital animation, and Ribchester, Lucy. 2011. Natasha dementia dementia: “‘What would happen if poetry “Forgetting Natasha tackles you didn’t have memories?’ asks dementia via dance and Heather Eddington […]. ‘You digital animation.” The List, would almost disappear, because July 28. essentially that’s what we base https://edinburghfestival.list. ourselves on – what we’ve done, co.uk/article/35949- where we’ve been.’” forgetting-natasha-tackles- dementia-via-dance-and- digital-animation/ Video: https://vimeo.com/14125953 Forgotten written by and 2006 Ireland - v About four people “living in A “collage of Kabuki dance Fishamble. n.d. “Forgotten.” starring Pat retirement homes around Ireland” and Irish storytelling” Accessed October 29, 2018. Kinevane with (Fishamble n.d.). (Fishamble n.d.) http://www.fishamble.com/f Fishamble orgotten.html Theatre Company Gathering written and 2008 Australia - M Spousal “Each member of the family reacts Victorian Drama League. Shadows directed by relationship and differently to living with Harley's n.d. “Gathering Shadows by David Scott generational dementia. Robert, the son, cannot David Scott.” Accessed July discourse come to terms with not being 29, 2018. recognized by his father, a man he http://www.theatrecraft.org. reveres but can no longer find. au/play_catalog/synopsis.ph Robert's anguish, combined with p?playid=10791 fear of possibly succumbing to the disease himself one day, manifests in a frustration that often erupts into anger. [Line break.] Olive, Harley's devoted wife, believes it is a dereliction of her spousal duty to allow others to care for her husband and she is determined to keep him at home.” (Victorian Drama League n.d.) Geordie Sinatra Fiona Evans 2012 Scotland - M Hickling, Alfred. 2012. “Geordie Sinatra – review.” The Guardian, April 23. https://www.theguardian.co m/stage/2012/apr/22/geordie -sinatra-review
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 279 Get Off At Ian Skelton 2008 England - F Dementia is a subplot, the mother The Northern Echo. 2008. Gateshead of one of the leads. “Get Off At Gateshead, Gala Theatre, Durham.” September 23. https://www.thenorthernech o.co.uk/news/3695485.Get_ Off_At_Gateshead__Gala_T heatre__Durham/ Girl From the Conor 2017 England - F Dementia is a subplot. A lead Music theatre, using the music Colyer, Martin. 2017. North Country McPherson character’s wife has dementia. of Bob Dylan “Extra: Girl from the North Country.” Five Things I Saw As Colyer (2017) describes “There’s an almost offensive use of & Heard This Week (blog) dementia as a dramatic device” October 17, 2017. https://fivethingsseenandhea rd.com/2017/10/17/extra- girl-from-the-north-country/ Martin Gracefully Ending A. J. DeLauder 2016 USA - F Mother-daughter Divorced Beth moves in with her The New Play Exchange. relationship ailing mother Margret. She realises 2018. “Gracefully Ending by that Margret is developing A.J. DeLauder.” Accessed dementia, thinking that she is November 4, 2018. seeing her late husband inside the https://newplayexchange.org house. /plays/74229/gracefully- ending Grandma Belinda Lazenby 2012 England Alzheimer’s F Relationship Told from the perspective of the A mix of puppetry, drama, Initially developed Az2B. 2016. “Grandma Remember Me? disease, between granddaughter of a woman with and storytelling. with finding from Remember Me?” Accessed early onset grandmother and AD. the Arts Council, July 29, 2018. granddaughter. Explores familial impact. FEAST and The https://az2btheatre.com/gran Works. dma-remember-me/
Educational aims. Based on the playwright’s own experiences of familial early-onset AD.
Half Life John Mighton 2005 Canada - F Set in an aged care home. Ouzounian, Richard. 2007. “Half-Life.” Variety, and Necessary A woman and man meet in their January 16. Angel Theatre 80s and fall in love, but Clara is https://variety.com/2007/legi Company developing dementia. t/reviews/half-life- 1200511140/ Holding the Man Tommy Murphy 2006 Australia AIDS- M Adapted from Tim Australian Plays. n.d. related Conigrave's memoir “Holding the Man.” dementia Accessed July 29, 2018.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 280 https://australianplays.org/sc ript/CP-1486 I’m Still Here Playwrights: 2006 Canada Alzheimer’s v The work was “informed by Research-based I’m Still Here: A research- Vrenia disease and research conducted with persons performance with based drama on living with Ivonoffski with related living with dementia during the educational dementia. n.d. Accessed Gail Mitchell, dementias early and later parts of the journey, outcomes September 8, 2018. Renate as well as with daughters whose Principal http://www.alzheimer.ca/site Krakauer, and mothers were diagnosed with Researchers: s/default/files/Files/chapters- Christine Jonas- Alzheimer’s Disease” (I’m Still Christine Jonas- on/gsc/ACT%20II%20Studi Simpson Here n.d.). Simpson and Gail o%20Im%20Still%20Here% 20Nov%202016%20PDF1.p Director: Vrenia Emphasises the ‘Motherline’ and Mitchell df Ivonoffski what Fuchs (2017a) would call the ‘older daughter’ “standard Movement dementia plot”. Director: Elizabeth Rappeport In Tune with Howard Timms 2013 England - F Mother and son About spending time with his Solo performance, Timms First performed in Timms, Howard. 2017. Dementia mother as her dementia progressed. plays both himself and his 2011 under the “Drama.” Accessed July 29, mother original title Let the 2018. Music theatre Lady Sing https://howardtimmswritesit e.com/my-writing-for-stage/ Ingatan Written and 2017 Malaysia - M Father and son “The father can only remember Puppetry and digital screen Kakiseni. 2018. “Ingatan.” directed by certain things about family and his technology Kakiseni, July, 2018. past, but nothing about his son. Fasyali Fadzly “Ingatan is an iPuppad theatre https://kakiseni.com/event/in This is an incredibly difficult (Main Theatre) – a hybrid of puppetry and gatan/ experience for the son” (Kakiseni iPad” 2018). Inside Out of Tanya Myers 2013 England Various v Between ward Long-term care setting Verbatim-scripted hybrid, Research-based Meeting Ground Theatre from ethnographic field notes (University of Company. 2013. “Inside Out Mind residents and care Intended as an educational tool for staff. taken in a LTC environment Nottingham) of Mind (2013).” Accessed care workers (primarily). February 12, 2018. Among residents. Includes mimetic language Arts Council http://www.meetinggroundt Husband and wife. and action, but with alternate funding heatrecompany.co.uk/project realities presented. s/inside-out-of-mind
“Medical magical realism” Meeting Ground Theatre (Meeting Ground Theatre Company. 2015. “Inside Out Company 2013) of Mind (2015).” Accessed Naturalistic set with February 12, 2018. technological overlay http://www.meetinggroundt heatrecompany.co.uk/inside- Pervasive soundscape out-of-mind-2015 Ensemble cast with doubling (most actors play both residents/patients and care workers/nurses).
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 281 It’s Dark Outside The Last Great 2012 Australia - M Father-son The work is “a surreal Western” Puppetry, mask, projection, Tours supported by The Last Great Hunt. n.d. Hunt (Arielle relationship (The Last Great Hunt n.d.). shadow, mime, sound effects, the Australia “It's Dark Outside.” Council for the Arts Gray, Chris Dementia as an antagonist and music Accessed July 28, 2018. Isaacs ,and Tim http://www.thelastgreathunt. Non-verbal Originally Watts) Running from dementia, being com/its-dark-outside pursued by it commissioned by Perth Theatre Video: The instance of being lost outside at Company. https://www.youtube.com/w night is repositioned by the atch?v=3_FpGjE0wWc adventure narrative Italian Funerals & John Miranda 1996 USA - F Generational Dementia as a subplot: “The multi- Guelph Mercury. 2011. Other Festive (Giovanni discourse generational saga revolves around “Drayton festival offering Occasions Mercuri John Masiello, a first-generation will bring you to tears — of Miranda) Sicilian-American teacher who grief and laughter.” Guelph recounts childhood memories as a Mercury Tribune, July 11, means of coming to terms with his 2011. mother’s encroaching dementia” (). https://www.guelphmercury. com/whatson- story/2734614-drayton- festival-offering-will-bring- you-to-tears-of-grief-and- laughter/ Jack and Jill & Claire Webster 2013 England - F A couple (Jack and Centres on Jill’s dementia Multimedia and physical Worked with a Skimstone Arts. 2015. “Jack The Red Postbox Saaremets with Jill) and their theatre performance, with research team. & Jill and The Red Skimstone Arts children original music and projection Inspired by real life Postbox.” Accessed July 29, experiences taken 2018. from 89 transcripts http://skimstone.org.uk/jack andjillandtheredpostbox/
King Lear William c1606 England - M Father-daughter Shakespeare relationships, generational discourse Kje sem ostala? Nina Šorak and 2015 Slovenia - F Mother and son Live digital video technology Slovenian Theatre Institute. [Where was I?] Urša Adamič used to capture the woman’s 2016. Slovenian theatre perspective on screen. news. http://www.slogi.si/upload/p ageFiles/File/STN/Newslette r_februar_2016.pdf Lavender Years Paul Beard 1995 England - F Mother and “A powerful drama centred around The Webmaster. 2017. “Pub children, a mother who sits day after day in theatre returns.” The generational her chair, lost in her own world, Penrhyn Bay Players, May discourse and her son and daughter-in-law, 12. who are struggling to cope. Anger https://penrhynbayplayers.w and bitterness between the couple ebs.com/apps/blog/show/44 flare as they argue over what is best 529825-pub-theatre-returns for Mum.”
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 282 Le Père [The Florian Zeller 2012 France - M About a man living Generational discourse Gardner, Lyn. 2014. “The Father] with dementia and Father five-star review – a English Transl England At-home care his relationship savagely honest study of translation by ated with his daughter ‘Older daughter’ “standard dementia.” The Guardian, Christopher to and son-in-law dementia plot” as recognised by October 23. Hampton Englis Fuchs (2017a) https://www.theguardian.co (Tricycle h in m/stage/2014/oct/23/the- Theatre (UK) in 2014 “There are strong echoes of King father-review-ustinov- 2015) Lear, both in the impending madness and the father-daughter theatre-royal-bath-florian- relationships” (Gardner 2014). zeller Andre is “descending into a second Fuchs, Elinor. 2017a. childhood where he can’t tell if he “Dementia: The theater is being nursed or bullied” season’s “in” disease part (Hitchings 2015). 1.” The Theatre Times, January 16. https://thetheatretimes.com/ dementia-theater-seasons- disease-part-1/ Hitchings, Henry. 2015. “The Father, Tricycle, review: a quietly devastating portrayal of dementia.” The Evening Standard, May 18. https://www.standard.co.uk/ go/london/theatre/the-father- tricycle-review-a-quietly- devastating-portrayal-of- dementia-10257433.html Learning The Poorboy theatre 2004 Scotland - F Promenade performance, Poorboy. 2017. “Stories.” Rules Of Chinese company integrating music, smells, Accessed July 29, 2018. Whispers clothes, and food. http://www.poorboy.co.uk/a dditional-projects/ Let The Devil Maya Contreras 2016 USA - F Mother with Dementia is a subplot. Vincentelli, Elisabeth. 2016. “FringeNYC, a Grab Bag Take The dementia “a script brimming with parent- That Calls for Intuition, Not Hindmost child tensions, [including] a mother to Mention Dumb Luck.” with dementia” (Vincentelli 2016). New York Times, August 19. https://www.nytimes.com/20 16/08/20/theater/fringenyc- a-grab-bag-that-calls-for- intuition-not-to-mention- dumb-luck.html Lost Without National Theatre 2017 England - A performance of structured Shenton, Mark. 2017. “Lost Words and Improbable improvisation by five/six actors in Without Words at National their 70s and 80s. Theatre, London – ‘a daring theatrical experiment’.” The Dementia is not a fixed feature of Stage, March 14. the work: “enacting (on the night I Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 283 saw it) a mother and daughter https://www.thestage.co.uk/r taking a road trip in a new car, eviews/2017/lost-without- [etc.], and a solitary woman drifting words-national-theatre- into dementia” (Shenton 2017). london/ Love: The Musical Gísli Örn 2008 Iceland - It is “a contemporary musical set in Musical Todd, Bella. 2010. “Are we Gardarsson a retirement home (and memorably scared of seeing dementia on opening with one Alzheimer’s stage?” The Guardian, May sufferer shuffling stage front on his 25. zimmer and urinating into a plant https://www.theguardian.co pot)” (Todd 2010) m/stage/theatreblog/2010/m ay/24/alzheimers-theatre- lions-face Vestur Port. n.d. “Love – The Musical.” Accessed October 29, 2018. http://vesturport.com/theater /love-ast/ Spencer, Charles. 2008. “Love: to the depths of indignity.” The Telegraph, June 5. https://www.telegraph.co.uk /culture/theatre/drama/35536 60/Love-to-the-depths-of- indignity.html Lovesong Frantic 2011 England The performance “presents Dance theatre Mangan, Michael. 2013. Assembly and simultaneous versions of the old “In Lovesong, the dialogue Staging Ageing: Theatre, Abi Morgan and young self […using] four scenes […] are intercut with Performance and the actors to play two characters” choreographed dance Narrative of Decline. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect. (Mangan 2013, 139) sequences” (Mangan 2013, 141). Luck Be a Lady Michael Park 2003 - M One of the two characters is an Stage Plays. n.d. “Author elderly man who lives in aged care. Michael Park.” Accessed September 3, 2018. https://www.stageplays.com/ plays-by- author/_michael_park Lucky Numbers Mike Yeaman 2008 England - F “Nana is losing control – her mind Mike Yeaman. n.d. “Lucky is slipping and she's forced to live Numbers - Winner of the with her daughter’s feckless family. People's Play Award 2008.” When her lucky numbers come up Accessed July 29, 2018. on the national lottery she decides https://www.mikeyeaman.co she wants to see some changes m/page2 made around the place before she’ll hand over the winning ticket.” (Mike Yeaman n.d.)
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 284 Maggie May Frances Poet 2018 England - F Generational “Maggie wants everything to be Music, comedy, West Yorkshire Playhouse. discourse perfect when Michael brings his 2017a. Every Third Minute West Yorkshire new girlfriend to meet the parents Brochure. Playhouse (Rehearsed for the first time, but is she also https://www.wyp.org.uk/wp- production Reading) trying to hide something? A brand content/uploads/2018/02/ET new commission full of songs, M-Brochure-final-digital.pdf laughs and pathos for and about people living well with dementia.” (West Yorkshire Playhouse 2017a, 4) Man of La Book by Dale 1964 USA M Based on Cervantes’ Don Quixote Reynolds, Judith. 2018. Mancha Wasserman, “Merely Players presents lyrics by Joe grand musical quest in ‘Man Darion, and of La Mancha’.” Durango music by Mitch Herald, May 3. https://durangoherald.com/ar Leigh ticles/221918 Marjorie Prime Jordan Harrison 2015 USA Alzheimer’s F Spousal Fuchs (2017) on the accuracy of the Pulitzer finalist Fuchs, Elinor. 2017. disease relationship, the play: “As a veteran of ten years of “Dementia: The theater generational caring for a dementia-stricken season’s “in” disease part discourse and, parent, I’ll say flatly – Marjorie 1.” The Theatre Times, more specifically, doesn’t have Alzheimer’s, that’s January 16. the ‘older daughter’ my diagnosis.” https://thetheatretimes.com/ “standard dementia dementia-theater-seasons- plot” as recognised disease-part-1/ by Fuchs (2017). Mela Hawn Xi Alfred Buttigieg Malta - F About four elderly women in a Fondazzjoni Kreattività. n.d. Manikomju? geriatric ward, one of whom has “Mela Hawn Xi dementia. Manikomju?” Accessed July [Did you think this 29, 2018. was a mad house?] https://www.kreattivita.org/e n/event/mela-hawn-xi- manikomju-5/ Memory and Playhouse Youth 2018 England - “Young people from our Playhouse West Yorkshire Playhouse. Beyond Theatre Youth Theatre will be exploring the 2017b. “Memory and fragility and importance of Beyond.” Accessed May 23, memories. Join us for a thought- 2018. provoking evening of devised https://www.wyp.org.uk/eve theatre, showcasing this unique nts/memory-and-beyond/ perspective of living well with
dementia through the eyes of the young.” (West Yorkshire Playhouse 2017b) Memory Point(s): Platform 4 2012 England Nostalgia in photos, music, and Promenade, immersive Platform 4. n.d. “Memory The Beauty of dressing up. Point(s).” Accessed July 28, Remembering 2018. http://www.platform4.org/m emorypoint.htm
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 285 Metaphor for the brain by exploring Church, Catherine 2017. In the backstage area of a theatre an interview with Morgan building. Batch, 15th June. Gardner, Lyn. 2013. “Memory point(s) – review.” The Guardian, July 3, 2013. https://www.theguardian.co m/stage/2013/jul/02/memory -points-lyn-gardner-review Mind Away Jackie Kay and 2009 Scotland F Originally published as a short Ramtuhul, Claire. 2012. “"I her son Matthew story as part of Jackie Kay’s chose...responsibly": fiction Kay Reality Reality. The story was preview.” New Statesman, produced as a performance March 15. and broadcast as part of Sky https://www.newstatesman.c Arts Theatre Live! in 2009. om/blogs/cultural- capital/2012/03/mind-away- story-kay-reality Billington, Michael. 2009. “Sky Arts Theatre Live!” The Guardian, July 9. https://www.theguardian.co m/stage/2009/jul/09/sky- arts-theatre-live
Mind Away as a short story: https://www.newstatesman.c om/fiction/2012/03/mother- 8220-doctor-mahmud Missing the Bus to Theatre 2009 Australia - Set in a nursing home Theatre Kantanka. n.d. David Jones Kantanka “Missing the Bus to David Jones.” Accessed October 23, 2018. https://www.kantanka.com.a u/shows/missing_the_bus_to _david_jones/ Moments Oldham Theatre 2014 England - A cross-generational piece, A view to change ideas about Oldham Council. 2014. Workshop different points of view dementia. “Young performers become Dementia Friends.” All performers aged eight to Accessed July 28, 2018. 25. https://www.oldham.gov.uk/ news/article/852/young_perf ormers_become_dementia_f riends Monday’s Child Brendan Murray 2011 England Alzheimer’s F Grandmother and “A bold play for young children “based on input Hickling, Alfred. 2014. and tutti frutti disease granddaughter about the effects of Alzheimer's on from neuroscientists “Monday's Child review – a productions one girl's grandmother” (Hickling at the University of dementia drama that is never 2014). Sussex and the depressing.” The Guardian, Alzheimer's April 29. Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 286 Society” (Hickling https://www.theguardian.co 2014). m/stage/2014/apr/29/monda ys-child-review-dementia- alzheimers-play-tutti-frutti
Video: https://vimeo.com/95505743 Mother and Son 2014 Australia F Mother-son [stage adaptation] relationship Mrs X Marita Wilcox 1992 Australia Alzheimer's F “Mrs X is a drama/black comedy Australian Plays. n.d. “Mrs disease about an elderly lady who has X.” Accessed July 29, 2018. Alzheimer's Disease, and the effect https://australianplays.org/sc this has on her, her family and the ript/ASC-302 community” (Australian Plays n.d). My Family: Not David Baddiel 2016 England - M Baddiel speaks about his mother’s A stand-up comedy-esque Billington, Michael. 2016. the Sitcom death and his father’s dementia. one-man show “My Family: Not the Sitcom review – David Baddiel is breathtakingly honest.” The Guardian, May 18. https://www.theguardian.co m/stage/2016/may/18/david- baddiel-my-family-not-the- sitcom-review-menier- chocolate-factory-london Negative Space Loitering with 2015 England - “The show looks at dementia from Dissolve Theatre. 2016. Intent and the perspective of family members “Negative Space.” Accessed Dissolve Theatre and carers in addition to those July 29, 2018. diagnoised with the illness, in some http://dissolvetheatre.co.uk/o cases drawing from the company's ur-shows.html own experiences. A frank yet playful exploration of the impact dementia has on people's lives, we are currently looking at future development and performance options for the show.” (Dissolve Theatre 2016) Never Too Old Alan Hopgood 2008 Australia - “A caring nurse takes an elderly Performed as a AusStage. 2008. “Never Too nursing home resident on an double bill with Old.” Accessed July 29, interesting excursion, proving you Hopgood's Wicked 2018. are never too old.” (AusStage 2008) Widows. https://www.ausstage.edu.au /pages/event/77722 Old Fools Tristan Bernays 2018 England Alzheimer’s M Spousal Marlowe, Sam. 2018. “Old disease relationship Fools review at Southwark Playhouse, London – ‘tender and affecting’.” The Stage, March 16.
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 287 https://www.thestage.co.uk/r eviews/2018/old-fools- review-southwark- playhouse-london/ Old Girls Zoe Strachan 2009 Scotland - F About two friends, one of whom McMillan, Joyce. 2009. faces an imminent move to a “The Silver Darlings, Old nursing home. Girls.” Joyce McMillan – Online (blog), September 3. https://joycemcmillan.wordp ress.com/2009/09/03/the- silver-darlings-old-girls/ On the Concept of Socìetas 2010 Italy M Father-son At-home care relationship. Abstract Renowned practitioner, but not the Face, Raffaello Sanzio relationship From hyper-naturalistic to Regarding the Son (directed by iconographic mainstage of God Romeo Religious faith as an underlying theme for metaphysical anguish A leader of the [Sul Concetto di Castellucci) avant-garde Volto nel Figlio di Dio] Our Lady of Spills Edwige Jean- 2009 Canada - F Interactions Set in an aged care home Kaplan, Jon. 2009. “Our Pierre between a Lady Of Spills: Uneven prejudiced patient match.” Now Magazine, and her Haitian May 6. nurse https://nowtoronto.com/stag e/theatre/our-lady-of-spills/ Perish the Susan Harris 2012 Australia - M Father-daughter Adult child carer relationship Puppetry, live music, Premiered at World Wagner, Luke. 2012. Thought relationship Based on actual events theatrical performance Alzheimer’s Day “Perish the Thought.” Adelaide Theatre Guide, n.d. Intended to be a voice for people http://theatreguide.com.au/c with dementia and their carers urrent_site/reviews/reviews_ detail.php?ShowID=perishth ought&ShowYear=2012 Plaques and Nicola Wilson 2015 England Alzheimer’s F Characters = Non-linear timeline, described as Royal Court Billington, Michael. 2015. Tangles , early-onset (x2) Megan, her mother, very clinical/ informative/ facts- Theatre, London “Plaques and tangles review husband, two driven Supported by the – Alzheimer’s play appeals more to head than heart.” children, doctor, Jerwood Charitable nurse Foundation The Guardian, October 22. Generational discourse, clinical https://www.theguardian.co discourse, m/stage/2015/oct/22/plaques -and-tangles-review- alzheimers-play-nicola- “a bright lexicographer” (Roe wilson 2015)
The “play’s restless ingenuity stifles its emotional impact” Roe, Hannah. 2015. “The (Billington 2015) royal court presents plaques and tangles by Nicola Wilson: Theatre review.”
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 288 Female Arts, October 26. http://www.femalearts.com/ node/2093 Prism Terry Johnson 2017 England Alzheimer’s M Based on the true story of Billington, Michael. 2017. disease cinematographer Jack Cardiff “Prism review – Robert Lindsay brings Jack Cardiff's movie memories into focus.” The Guardian, September 15. https://www.theguardian.co m/stage/2017/sep/15/prism- review-robert-lindsay-jack- cardiff-movies-terry- johnson-hampstead-theatre Proof David Auburn 2000 USA - M Father-daughter Father of the main character has Columbia University. n.d. relationship dementia “Proof, by David Auburn.” Accessed October 23, 2018. https://www.pulitzer.org/win ners/david-auburn Really Old, Like Tamsin Oglesby 2010 England Alzheimer’s F Familial Societal and political perspectives Mostly dramatic, though the Played at the Forty Five disease relationships Pharmacological narrative story has elements of dystopia Cottesloe Theatre at and absurdity (colloquial, not the National Theatre Institutionalisation theme in the sense of Esslin’s theory) (mainstage) Family narrative Risking Happiness Reckless Kettle 2015 England M Daughter as carer At-home care Puppetry Video: Hospitalisation https://www.youtube.com/w atch?v=usRBoROi8Iw RUFF Split Britches 2013 USA Post-stroke F “Performance artist Peggy Shaw Supported by: Split Britches. 2015. dementia ruminates on life before and after Wellcome Trust, “RUFF.” Accessed January the stroke she had in 2011, Arts Council 12, 2018. www.split- delivering a freewheeling England britches.com/ruff monologue with deadpan humour Split Britches. 2014. and arresting honesty” (Split “RUFF.” Vimeo video, Britches 2015). February 26, 2014. https://vimeo.com/87678948 Salt, Root and Roe Tim Price 2011 England Alzheimer’s “[…] Tim Price’s lyrical Moore, Bridie. 2014. disease examination of Alzheimer’s, Salt “Depth, Significance, and Root and Roe, in which Absence: Age-Effects in septuagenarian twin sisters drown New British Theatre.” Age themselves because one of them Culutre Humanities (1): has dementia” (Moore 2014, 167). 163-195. http://ageculturehumanities. org/WP/depth-significance- and-absence-age-effects-in- Silver Lining Sandi Toksvig 2017 England F Set in a retirement home. Gardner, Lyn. 2017. “It’s boom time for older actors Five women. but how realistic are their
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 289 “Silver Lining unwittingly roles?” The Guardian, 11 confirms, rather than subverts, March. expectations about how older https://www.theguardian.co people – particularly women – are m/stage/theatreblog/2017/m seen” (Gardner 2017). ar/10/older-actors-roles Six Acts Of Love Ioanna Anderson 2008 Ireland - F Spousal “Katherine's life has come to a Nick Hern Books. n.d. “Six relationship, standstill. Her husband, Tom, has Acts of Love.” Accessed mother-daughter left her for a younger woman and July 29, 2018. relationship, her once-glamorous mother https://www.nickhernbooks. interaction with a Dorothy is slowly losing her mind. co.uk/six-acts-of-love nurse As Dorothy's condition worsens, Katherine's stepfather and a new nurse rally to support her.” Smokefall Noah Haidle 2013 USA - F Dementia as a subplot. A kind of neo-Romantic, Jones, Chris. 2014. Spans generations, over an Williams-esque style, but “Review: 'Smokefall' at the undisclosed amount of time, and more dreamlike. Goodman Theatre.” Chicago takes place in one fixed location, The set is caught between the Tribune, September 29. but also presents a kind of realistic and the abstract http://www.chicagotribune.c dreamscape om/entertainment/theater/rev Actors play a different iews/ct-smokefall-review- character in each of the three goodman-theatre-story.html acts, disrupting naturalism Sons of York James Graham 2008 England - F Dementia is a subplot Hemming, Sarah. 2008. It is a family drama in which the “Sons of York, Finborough grandmother has dementia. Theatre, London.” Financial Times, September 10. https://www.ft.com/content/ b5469eda-7e87-11dd-b1af- 000077b07658 State of Grace Reckless Kettle 2015 England M Daughter as carer At-home care from both a family Puppetry Awarded Arts Reckless Kettle. n.d. “Shows: State of Grace.” member and a professional nurse Council Funding July 28, 2018. http://www.recklesskettle.or g/shows.html R&D video: https://vimeo.com/11483041 3 Still Alice Christine Mary 2013 USA Early-onset F In the style of realism, with Looking Glass. 2017. “Still Dunford’s Alzheimer’s the exception of an additional Alice.” Accessed July 29, adaptation of disease character, called Herself, who 2018. Lisa Genova’s is Alice’s inner voice. https://lookingglasstheatre.o novel of the rg/event/still-alice/ same name. Gardner, Lyn. 2018. “Still Alice review – dementia drama aims for the heartstrings.” The Guardian, 15 February. Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 290 https://www.theguardian.co m/stage/2018/feb/15/still- alice-review-west-yorkshire- playhouse Struck Dumb Joseph Chaikin 1988 USA M Described as “a theatrical metaphor Kohn, Martin. 2009. “Struck with Jean- for the aphasic character’s mind” Dumb.” Literature Arts Claude van About a California-based Arab Medicine Database, July 3, Itallie American who suffers a stroke 1998 (revised December 29, 2009). http://medhum.med.nyu.edu/ view/845 Sundowner Conceived and 2011 Australia Alzheimer’s F Mother and her two Uses excerpts from ‘My Grandma’s Dance theatre Produced in KAGE. n.d. “Sundowner.” directed by Kate , early-onset grown children, Different’ Spoken word collaboration with Accessed July 28, 2018. Denborough and a son-in-law. Generational discourse Alzheimer’s http://www.kage.com.au/sun Her grandson is Some mimetic acting Australia Vic Conceived and downer present at the “KAGE wishes to confront the written by David Australia Council Upton, Meg. 2012. beginning and end stigma attached to the disease and Denborough for the Arts is Sundowner: Teacher’s Notes (in the first to reveal the life affirming (KAGE) acknowledged for and Learning Experiences instance in the moments in these experiences” financial assistance for Secondary and Tertiary form of voiceover (Upton 2012, 6). Students. and at the end both Set in her home, domestic space http://www.gardenstheatre.q in person and as ut.edu.au/downloads/2013/S voiceover) undowner-Education- Pack.pdf Sundowning Nessah Muthy 2018 England - F Grandmother- “When Alyssa returns home from Kali Theatre. 2018. granddaughter prison she’s devastated to find her “Sundowning.” Accessed relationship aunt has put her beloved November 6, 2018. grandmother Betty in a care home. http://kalitheatre.co.uk/prod Determined to give Betty one last uctions/sundowning/ jolly, jingle filled holiday and recapture happy childhood Gillinson, Miriam. 2018. memories, Alyssa kidnaps Betty “Sundowning review – and the pair embark on a devastating dementia drama campervan road trip to the seaside. lingers and burns.” The But soon Betty’s dementia and Guardian, October 23. Alyssa’s troubled past catch up https://www.theguardian.co with them….” (Kali Theatre 2018). m/stage/2018/oct/23/sundow ning-review-dementia- tristan-bates-theatre-london Sunset Strip Suzie Miller 2017 Australia - M Subplot, metaphor, Dementia is a subplot Australian Plays. n.d. “Sunset Strip.” Accessed among cancer and The play is about two sisters whose October 23, 2018. drug addiction father has dementia https://australianplays.org/sc ript/CP-3391 Swags & Tails Open Clasp 2012 England - F “Meet Gloria, her past eroded “155 women Open Clasp. 2017. “Swag & during years living in dementia worked with us to Tails – 2012.” Accessed units, Mary, the care-worker getting inform Swags & October 23, 2018. it from all angles and housebound Tails, through Open http://www.openclasp.org.u Lillian, locked in her own spare Clasp’s Generation Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 291 room with only 8 bottles of Sloe XX project. The k/productions/swag-tails- Gin for company. Faced with the women involved 2012/ closure of their day centre will live and work in Ellen and Marlene unite and make a care homes, care for last stand?” loved ones, use day centres or are housebound. Using drama techniques each group created a character with their own story to tell. Swags & Tails is about the quality, or lack of quality, of care of older people and carers in our society.” The Book of Black Hole 2017 Australia - F “Part contemporary opera, Black Hole Theatre. n.d. Revelations Theatre part art installation where “The Book of Revelations.” cutting edge technology meets Accessed October 23, 2018. visual theatre, The Book of https://blackholetheatre.com. Revelations marks a new au/project/the-book-of- approach to immersive revelations/ performance” ( Black Hole Theatre n.d.).
Combines sound, visuals and performance. The Bright Sea Vanessa Rhodes 2005 New “The Bright Sea by Vanessa Playmarket. 2005. “The Zealand Rhodes (Sunday 11th September) Ninth Adam Playreadings.” Elsie returns to her childhood home Scoop, August 9. by the sea on the Kapiti Coast to be http://www.scoop.co.nz/stori cared for by her adult daughter es/CU0508/S00071.htm Helen. Meanwhile Helen’s daughter Jane arrives home from Australia with her new fiancé ten days before their wedding. The past infiltrates the present as Elsie, suffering from the onset of dementia, relives a passionate love affair from her youth. Cracks begin to show in the veneer of family life as events unravel.” (Playmarket 2005) The Carer Alan Hopgood 2004 Australia Alzheimer’s F Wife with “George Parker's wife has recently Trove entry. n.d. Accessed disease dementia. died with Alzheimer's. He took July 28, 2018. early retirement to care for her, and https://trove.nla.gov.au/versi The focus is on the is now adjusting to his new life on/12949154 husband, without her. This story celebrates George's love for his wife and his Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 292 particularly as his struggle to overcome adversity with wife has died. warmth, integrity, and an infectious sense of humour” (Trove entry n.d.)
The Empty Chair Alan Hopgood 2012 Australia - M “A family gathers to celebrate the Carers Victoria. 2012. The in collaboration first Christmas without their Empty Chair. with Molly mother, Rose, whose absence is http://www.carersvictoria.or Carlile marked by an empty chair. But how g.au/Assets/Files/The%20E absent is she? They then have to mpty%20Chair.pdf deal with the onset of dementia in their father” (Carers Victoria 2012). The Garden Spare Tyre 2015 UK Interactive, immersive, Indie. Tours to arts Spare Tyre. n.d. “The multisensory, non-verbal venues, community Garden: For People Living spaces and with Dementias.” Accessed
residential care October 23, 2018. Installation that ‘brings the homes. http://www.sparetyre.org/wh outdoors in’ ats-on/projects/the-garden- installation-for-people-with- Focuses on non-verbal dementia-and-their-carers communication Video: https://www.youtube.com/w atch?v=7XD8C4zbpl4 Video: https://www.youtube.com/w atch?v=- eP0USeXKtI&feature=yout u.be The Gravitational Beth Graham 2013 Canadian Alzheimer’s F Three children to A woman who witnessed her Pull of Bernice disease, break the news to mother’s dementia must break the Trimble familial news of her own dementia to her early-onset children who each have a 50% chance of developing the condition themselves.
Family focus A right-to-die angle Two kitchens occupy the same stage (the core of domesticity) The Height of the Florian Zeller 2018 France - M About a man with “From the outset you’re never quite Narratively related Wells, Nick. 2018. “The sure what is real and what might be to Zeller’s The Height Of The Storm Storm (the original England dementia and his French) relationship with a trick of an unreliable mind – an Father review: Jonathan Pryce and his two daughters echo of the past or an imagined Eileen Atkins make a dream Translated to and his wife, who future” (Wells 2018). team on stage.” Radio English by may or may not be Times, October 15. Christopher dead. https://www.radiotimes.com Hampton /news/2018-10-15/the-
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 293 height-of-the-storm-review- theatre-jonathan-pryce- eileen-atkins/ Billington, Michael. 2018. “The Height of the Storm review – Pryce and Atkins are magnetic.” The Guardian, October 10. https://www.theguardian.co m/stage/2018/oct/09/the- height-of-the-storm-review- jonathan-pryce-eileen- atkins-florian-zeller The Humans Stephen Karam 2014 USA - F Generational “It concerns three generations of a Fuchs, Elinor. 2017. “Last discourse family assembling over Spring, Dementia Made it to Thanksgiving dinner” (Fuchs Broadway! Part 2.” The The character with dementia as 2017). Theatre Times, February 4. something of a The grandmother, Momo, is “so far https://thetheatretimes.com/l ast-spring-dementia-made- subplot. advanced in dementia that she cannot walk or speak two broadway/ sequential sentences” (Fuchs 2017). “To most critics writing about The Humans, Momo was, you might say, a side of fries, to the ‘burger’ of the younger family members” (Fuchs 2017). The Keys are in Cindy Diver, 2014 New - Intention to show the reality of Verbatim NZ Herald. 2015. “Theatre the Margarine Susie Lawless, Zealand dementia review: The keys are in the margarine, Aotea Centre and Stuart To destigmatise dementia Young (writing Theatre.” Last modified team) and August 24, 2015. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/e Talking House ntertainment/news/article.cf Productions m?c_id=1501119&objectid= 11501686
Dementia Daily. 2015. “The Keys are in the Margarine – a verbatim play about dementia explained.” Accessed January 3, 2018. https://www.dementiadaily.o rg.au/the-keys-are-in-the- margarine-a-verbatim-play- about-dementia-explained/ The Lion’s Face Mahogany 2010 England Alzheimer’s M The man with dementia speaks Opera Developed in Mahogany Opera. n.d. “The Lion’s Face.” Accessed Opera Group; disease while everyone else sings. partnership with the music by Elena Institute of September 28, 2018. Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 294 Langer, words Set in a retirement home. Psychiatry, Kings https://www.mahoganyopera .co.uk/past-productions/the- by Glyn College London Maxwell and lion-s-face/ direction by “This project was Todd, Bella. 2010. “Are we John Fulljames scared of seeing dementia on (Aurora part of a nine-month UK-wide season of stage?” The Guardian, May Orchestra? 25. Conducted by activity about identity from the https://www.theguardian.co Nicholas m/stage/theatreblog/2010/m Collon?) Wellcome Trust” (Mahogany website) ay/24/alzheimers-theatre- lions-face Clements, Andrew. 2010. “The Lion’s Face.” The Guardian, May 26. https://www.theguardian.co m/music/2010/may/25/the- lions-face-review The Merry Dance Maggie Aitken 2015 Scotland Based on extensive NHS Lanarkshire. 2015. research “Hard-hitting play on dementia transformed to film - as sequel goes on tour.” Accessed July 28, 2018. http://www.nhslanarkshire.c o.uk/news/news/Pages/play. aspx The Migration of Emma Bramley 2016 England - Drawn from All Things Considered. n.d. Birds and All Things personal family “The Migration of Birds.” Considered experience of Accessed October 23, 2018. Theatre dementia http://www.allthingsconside redtheatre.co.uk/the- migration-of-birds-1/ The Nature of Theatre Re 2017 England - M Inspired by neurobiological Physical theatre, live music, Funded by National Theatre Re. n.d. “The Forgetting (with research, interviews with people mime Lottery through Arts Nature of Forgetting.” a living with dementia Council England. Accessed October 24, 2018. work- “Tom is 55, today. As he dresses https://www.retheatre.com/t in- for his party, tangled threads of heatre_re/The_Nature_of_F progre disappearing memories spark him orgetting.html ss into life, unravelling as a tale of West Yorkshire Playhouse. showi friendship, love and guilt. This 2017a. Every Third Minute ng in powerful, explosive and joyous Brochure. 2016) piece explores what is left when https://www.wyp.org.uk/wp- memory is gone” (West Yorkshire content/uploads/2018/02/ET Playhouse 2017a, 6). M-Brochure-final-digital.pdf The Other Place Sharr White 2011 USA - F A neurologist who starts to become Nominated for Jones, Kenneth. 2013. “The “unhinged” has other aspects of her several major Other Place, Sharr White’s life also falling apart (divorce, awards Drama of the Mystery of the Mind, Opens on Broadway; Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 295 daughter running away with an Laurie Metcalf Stars.” older man) Playbill, January 10. The type of dementia is left http://www.playbill.com/arti cle/the-other-place-sharr- deliberately vague. whites-drama-of-the- mystery-of-the-mind-opens- The dementia is slowly revealed on-broadway-laurie-metcalf- stars-com-201343
Isherwood, Charles. 2011. Past and present, fact and fiction “Confronting Illness and a blur Crumbling Life.” New York Times, March 29. https://www.nytimes.com/20 11/03/29/theater/reviews/the -other-place-by-sharr-white- review.html?mtrref=www.g oogle.com.au&gwh=6E33C F2284691E931D7991865FB 7022C&gwt=pay The Outgoing Bruce Graham 2011 USA Alzheimer’s M Rooney, David. 2012. “A Tide disease Retiree Makes Plans To Outfox a Cloudy Future.” New York Times, November 20. https://www.nytimes.com/20 12/11/22/theater/reviews/the -outgoing-tide-bruce- grahams-drama-at-59e59- theaters.html The Purple List Libby Pearson 2017 England - M Spousal “This short one-man play, is a 35-minute, one-man play West Yorkshire Playhouse. relationship, told touching, poignant, yet often funny, 2017a. Every Third Minute from the husband’s insight into the lives of two gay Brochure. point of view men as they navigate their way https://www.wyp.org.uk/wp- through the dementia care system content/uploads/2018/02/ET and the changes in their personal M-Brochure-final-digital.pdf relationship.” (West Yorkshire Luddington, Eve. 2018. Playhouse 2017a, 5) “The Purple List – Review.” “It opens on Sam and Derek’s On: Yorkshire Magazine, wedding day and goes on to explore February 27, 2018. the highs and lows of their lives as https://www.on- Derek’s dementia progresses. Told magazine.co.uk/arts/yorkshir from Sam’s point of view, [….] e-theatre/the-purple-list- changes in their personal review-west-yorkshire- relationship.” (Holden Street playhouse/ Theatres 2018) Holden Street Theatres. “A stand-alone piece of theatre that 2018. “The Purple List.” can also be used as a training tool Accessed May 23, 2018. in a range of issues regarding http://www.holdenstreetthea dementia and diversity for those tres.com/index.php/HST- Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 296 working in social care and for those Fringe-Programs/hst-feast- caring for, or involved with people festival-18/purple-list living with dementia.” (Holden Street Theatres 2018) “The structure and form are reminiscent of theatre-in- education” (Luddington 2018) The Quiet Riot Maggie Aitken 2013 Scotland Based on extensive NHS Lanarkshire. 2015. research “Hard-hitting play on dementia transformed to film - as sequel goes on tour.” Accessed July 28, 2018. http://www.nhslanarkshire.c o.uk/news/news/Pages/play. aspx The Shadow Box Michael 1977 USA Chemothera F “Agnes and her “In this compelling dramatic A drama in two acts Winner of a Tony Cristofer, Michael. 1977. Cristofer py-induced mother Felicity, triptych, three terminal cancer Award for Best Play The Shadow Box. New estranged further patients dwell in separate cottages and the Pulitzer York: Samuel French. by the latter’s on a hospital grounds. the three are Prize dementia […]” attended and visited by family and close friends: Agnes and her
mother Felicity, estranged further Mother-daughter by the latter’s dementia […]” (Accompanying the published play) The Visitors Written by Sean 2013 Australia Early-onset M Family focus, a Set in the Peel family kitchen Worked with ECH Urban Myth Theatre father’s dementia (Elderly Citizens Company. 2014. “Past Riley Generational discourse Homes) Projects.” Accessed July 29, Directed by [Not to be The events of the play unravel 2018. Glenn Hayden confused with through the eyes of the young http://urbanmytheatrecompa Visitors (2014)] Urban Myth daughter ny.blogspot.com/p/past- Theatre projects.html Company Coulter, Trista. 2013. “Urban Myth's The Visitors.” In Daily, June 3. https://indaily.com.au/arts- and- culture/2013/06/03/urban- myths-the-visitors/ The Waverly Kenneth 1999 Alzheimer’s F Generational Brantley, Ben. 2000. Gallery Lonergan disease discourse “Theater Review; a Shattered Mind, Jagged and Confused.” New York Times, March 23. https://www.nytimes.com/20 00/03/23/theater/theater-
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This Is How I Lost Lucy Avery 2008 England Alzheimer’s F Inspired by personal experience Avery, Lucy. n.d. “Plays.” My Memory disease Accessed July 28, 2018. https://lucyaverywrites.com/ plays/ This Is Us West Yorkshire 2018 England - v “A performance platform West Yorkshire Playhouse. Playhouse showcasing new work by artists 2017a. Every Third Minute living with dementia in a Brochure. supportive environment. This https://www.wyp.org.uk/wp- celebration of the creativity content/uploads/2018/02/ET encourages audience members to M-Brochure-final-digital.pdf give feedback. Short performances of poetry, drama, puppetry, music and song” (West Yorkshire Playhouse 2017a, 5). This May Hurt a Stella Feehily 2014 England A play about the NHS, it is Evans, Lloyd. 2014. “Memo Bit described as a political work. to Nick Payne: filling your “Stella Feehily’s pantomime about plays with cosmic chit-chat the NHS has two objectives First, doesn’t make you to entertain audiences with a rip- intelligent.” The Spectator, roaring piece of knockabout 24 May. comedy. Secondly, to blame https://www.spectator.co.uk/ devious politicians for trussing up 2014/05/incognito-is-not-as- the sacred bird and preparing it for clever-as-it-thinks-it-is/ sale to the highest bidder” (Evans 2014) “the bulk of the action is devoted to a hilarious satire set in a dysfunctional charnel house which calls itself a ‘hospital’. […] The service is revealed in all its squalor and confusion: fresh blood spattered across the ceiling, demented patients left to starve, visitors incorrectly informed that their relatives are dead. [Line break.] The script has no fear of causing offence. Dementia victims are mercilessly ribbed.” (Evans 2014) Three [Triple bill] West Yorkshire 2018 England - v “Three brand new short plays West Yorkshire Playhouse. Playhouse showcasing unique stories of life 2017a. Every Third Minute and flights of the imagination by Brochure. rarely heard voices, co-written by https://www.wyp.org.uk/wp-
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 298 people living with dementia and content/uploads/2018/02/ET professional writers.” (West M-Brochure-final-digital.pdf Yorkshire Playhouse 2017a, 6). I See Land Ahead by Bob Fulcher & Dominic Gately Hamari Yaadain/Our Memories by Hamari Yaadain, Memory Café & Ming Ho A Horse Called Freedom by Rosa Peterson & Barney Bardsley Time Slips Anne Basting 2000 USA - v Time Slips is a performance that Basting, Anne Davis. 2001. stages the stories produced by a ““God is a talking horse”: group of TimeSlips participants and Dementia and the features characters whose spoken performance of self.” The language becomes increasingly Drama Review 45 (3): 78- fragmented (Basting 2001). 94. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1 146913 Tomorrow Vanishing Point 2014 Scotland - M “A young man suddenly finds The setting is an abstract care Made in Scotland. n.d. himself in an alarmingly unfamiliar home. “Tomorrow, Vanishing [internati place, where everyone has his best Point.” Accessed October onal co- One mask interests at heart but he is not 23, 2018. producti allowed to leave” (Made in http://www.madeinscotlands on ] Scotland n.d.). howcase.com/shows/tomorr ow-vanishing-point Promo pack: http://www.madeinscotlands howcase.com/sites/www.ma deinscotlandshowcase.com/f iles/Tomorrowpromopack.p df Trial by Bus 1990 Canada - M “Trial By Bus - Set aboard a Staged as part of the Winnipeg Fringe. n.d. Winnipeg Transit bus that travelled Bring Your Own “Bring Your Own Venue through the city, the play took Venue program (BYOV) Performers.” audiences on a journey through the (Winnipeg Fringe Accessed July 29, 2018. court proceedings of one confused Theatre Festival) http://www.winnipegfringe.c man” om/GET- INVOLVED/INDOOR- PERFORMERS/BYOV- %28BRING-YOUR-OWN- VENUE.aspx True Rosa Laborde 2014 Canada - M A man with “Laborde's site-specific Inspired by King Nestruck, J. Kelly. 2014a. dementia and his production takes place in an Lear, as well as the “True: A Shakespearean three daughters actual café and clothes shop playwright’s own take on dementia.” The that seats just 30.” (Nestruck experience Globe and Mail, September 2014a) 5 (updated May 12, 2018).
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 299 https://www.theglobeandmai l.com/arts/theatre-and- performance/theatre- reviews/true-a- shakespearean-take-on- dementia/article20372780/ Wheeler, Brad. 2014. “A play on caring for aging parents: 'You need to take care of them, but it’s complicated'.” The Globe and Mail, August 29 (updated May 12, 2018). https://www.theglobeandmai l.com/news/toronto/rosa- laborde-true-play-on-caring- for-aging- parents/article20277346/ Tu te souviendras Francois 2014 Canada - M Has a political message about the La Licorne. n.d. “Tu Te de moi Archambault right for a person with dementia to Souviendras De Moi.” continue to have their opinions [You Will Accessed October 23, 2018. heard Remember Me] https://theatrelalicorne.com/l It “examines Quebec’s ageing ic_pieces/tu-te-souviendras- population from a philosophical de-moi/ and cultural and political angles” Nestruck, J. Kelly. 2014b. (Nestruck 2014a) “Guy Nadon leads a brilliant cast in Tu te souviendras de moi.” The Globe and Mail, February 7 (updated May 11, 2018). https://www.theglobeandmai l.com/arts/theatre-and- performance/theatre- reviews/guy-nadon-leads-a- brilliant-cast-in-tu-te- souviendras-de- moi/article16734403/ Turns - A devised and 2011 Australia - F “pays homage to the entire gamut Farrell, Karen. n.d. “Nancye Pantomime with a written by Reg of theatrical styles, including Hayes and Reg Livermore in Twist Livermore comedy, Vaudeville, Burlesque TURNS.” Focus Magazine. dance and song. The production Accessed July 29, 2018. also examines the more serious http://manninggreatlakes.foc themes of dementia and depression. usmag.com.au/nancye- At the ripe age of 95, Marjory Joy hayes-and-reg-livermore-in- (Nancye Hayes), who suffers from turns/ dementia, romanticises and relives the glorious days of her past as a great Dame of the theatre.” (Farrell n.d.)
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 300 Unraveled Jennifer 2013 USA Chemothera F Mother-daughter “Joy and her mother, George, Theatre Unbound. n.d. Blackmer py-induced relationship struggle to preserve their close-knit “Unraveled.” Accessed relationship as George’s cancer and October 23, 2018. dementia worsen. An insightful http://theatreunbound.com/? hospice nurse enters their lives and wp_theatre_prod=unraveled teaches Joy a thing or two about life, loss, and the process of letting go.” Vere (Faith) John Doyle 2013 Australia - M Vere is a physicist and about to Howard, Jane. 2013. “Vere leave on a trip to the Large Hadron (Faith) – review.” The Collider. “But disrupting these Guardian, October 21. plans is a devastating diagnosis: https://www.theguardian.co dementia. We spend time with Vere m/culture/australia-culture- in the hour following this diagnosis, blog/2013/oct/21/vere-faith- as he keeps it from his colleagues review in the physics department, two students, and the vice chancellor.” (Howard 2013) Victoria Dulcinea 1999 Canada - F The woman with About a woman with dementia in Dance theatre, using a Documentation: Langfelder dementia interacts care wheelchair http://www.dulci- a nurse. Some silhouette work langfelder.org/images/Victor ia/Outils_promo/DossierVict oriaEN.pdf Visitors Barney Norris 2014 England - F A spousal A woman’s dementia and Drama, comedy Inspired by the Brooks, Lucy. 2014. incontinence is worsening. Her playwright’s own “Visitors, Bush Theatre.” relationship husband is “struggling to cope” grandparents. Culture Whisper, November [Not to be (Brooks 2014). 24. confused with The The play is set at the couple’s https://www.culturewhisper. Visitors (2013)] farmhouse, though com/r/theatre/preview/2998 institutionalisation seems imminent. Waiting in the Noel Coward 1960 England - F One character with dementia Abbott, Merlene. 2012. Wings Set in a retirement home for “Waiting in the Wings.” actresses Stage Whispers, n.d. http://www.stagewhispers.co m.au/reviews/waiting-wings
Walk Right Up Celia McBride 2002 Canada - F A family drama. The father has had Taylor, Kate. 2002. “Theatre a stroke that left him paralysed and critic Kate Taylor looks at the mother is developing dementia. the lineup of this year's festival.” The Globe and Mail, May 18. http://v1.theglobeandmail.co m/series/theatre_2002/stratf ord/shadows.html#review
Batch The loss of small white clouds Page | 301 Walking by Apple Ian Brown 2007 Australia Parkinson’s M A retired couple travelling around Australian Plays. n.d. Tree Creek disease with Australia “face not only the daily “Walking By Apple Tree dementia challenges of being on the road – Creek.” Accessed October lost keys, fold away chairs, a 24, 2018. mobile phone and portable https://australianplays.org/sc barbeque but also the ript/PL-29 overwhelming effects of battling Cotes, Alison. 2007. dementia” (Australian Plays n.d.). “Walking by Apple Tree The wife has the only dialogue Creek.” Stage Diary, n.d. because her husband’s dementia http://stagediary.com/review has rendered him speechless (Cotes /2007/08/walking-by-apple- 2007). tree-creek/ Winter Julie Jensen 2016 USA - F Spousal “Winter tells the story of Annis, a BWW News Desk. 2016. relationship retired professor and poet, who is “Rivendell Theatre on a road she knows too well. She Ensemble Presents the is slowly losing herself to dementia World Premiere of seeks to end her life on her own WINTER by Julie Jensen.” terms at a time when she can still Broadway World, December recognize herself. Her husband and 9. she have always had a pact to go https://www.broadwayworld off together, when the time is right. .com/chicago/article/Rivend But he has his work to finish and is ell-Theatre-Ensemble- not ready.” (BWW News Desk Presents-the-World- 2016) Premiere-of-WINTER-by- Julie-Jensen-20161209 Wither Victoria 2012 Ireland Alzheimer’s Mult Mother/grandmoth About how families are affected. Drama, black comedy Namcummins. 2009. “Tabs Theatre Productions – Fradgley disease i, yet er Inspired by playwright, Victoria F Wither.” Crooked House Fradgley’s, personal experience (forum), April 23, 2012. http://www.crookedhouse.ie/ forum/forum_posts.asp?TID =3855 Yes! Because… Flloyd Kennedy 2017 Australia - F “Ride along with Dame June Thunder’s Mouth Theatre. Bloom on a journey through the n.d. “Yes! because…” seven ages of woman with sonnets, Accessed October 24, 2018. songs and stories” (Thunder’s https://thundersmouththeatre Mouth Theatre n.d.). .com/yes-because/
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