Howard Barker, the Wrestling School, and the Cult of the Author

New Theatre Quarterly http://journals.cambridge.org/NTQ Additional services for New Theatre Quarterly: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here Howard Barker, the Wrestling School, and the Cult of the Author Robert Shaughnessy New Theatre Quarterly / Volume 5 / Issue 19 / August 1989, pp 264 - 271 DOI: 10.1017/S0266464X0000333X, Published online: 15 January 2009 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0266464X0000333X How to cite this article: Robert Shaughnessy (1989). Howard Barker, the Wrestling School, and the Cult of the Author. New Theatre Quarterly, 5, pp 264-271 doi:10.1017/S0266464X0000333X Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/NTQ, IP address: 128.122.253.212 on 05 May 2015 Robert Shaughnessy Howard Barker, the Wrestling School, and the Cult of the Author Howard Barker was the last playwright to be interviewed in the original Theatre Quarterly - in TQ40 (1981) -and a subsequent interview was included in NTQ8 (1986). Yet he has also been accused of encouraging a credo of 'engagement but confusion' which serves the cult of Thatcherism which it claims to oppose: and certainly he is unique among his generation of British dramatists in having achieved both a large cult following, and a considerable body of opposition to his theoretical position. Robert Shaughnessy, who teaches in the Roehampton Institute, here analyzes not so much Barker's work as the Barker phenomenon -the process by which a self- effacing writer has been packaged into a personality, to the extent that, with the creation of The Wrestling School, he even has a theatre company devoted exclusively to the production of his work. Shaughnessy concludes that - as Barker perhaps fore- shadows in The Last Supper- it may now be necessary for the cult-figure to 'die' if the writer is to survive and flourish. THERE ARE a number of signs which indicate Royal Shakespeare Company, which featured a that a dramatist is beginning to be thought of as full production of The Possibilities and rehearsed a 'major' figure, but few could be more readings of the television film The Blow conclusive than the formation of a theatre (commissioned but not produced by the BBC), company exclusively dedicated to performing the stage play The Bite of the Night (com- his or her work. In Britain, at least, the only missioned but not performed by the Royal Court), writers to have experienced this treatment have showings of the Channel Four documentary been Gilbert and Sullivan - even Shakespeare, about Barker, Refuse to Dance, and performances in the theatrical marketplace of the 1980s, has of his poetry. to give house room to musical adaptations of best-selling horror novels. A Reaction to Neglect It is possible to point to the Comedie Franchise, with its emphasis on Moliere, the On one level, the formation of the Wrestling Berliner Ensemble's concentration on Brecht, School and this sudden proliferation and and the Moscow Art Theatre's focus on celebration of Howard Barker's work can be Chekhov as parallel instances: in each case, seen as a reaction to a history of neglect and, in though, the house dramatist is performed some instances, deliberate suppression. But there alongside and in the context of other work. In is, clearly, more to it than that. The assumption March 1988, however, a group of actors underlying both these projects is that the announced the formation of a company to be work in question constitutes a clearly defined, devoted entirely to the work of one con- strongly individual oeuvre - an assumption temporary writer: the company is The Wrestling which is inseparable from a specific sense of the School, and the writer Howard Barker. author as a unique figure, as the originator and Its first production was a play especially mediator of textual meaning and value, even as written for the company, The Last Supper, which a sort of secular oracle or visionary. opened at the Royal Court Theatre in March Given that these are the usual terms in which before going on tour. During the same month, literary and dramatic 'value' and importance are a 'festival' of Barker's work was staged at the perceived and discussed, this is in itself hardly Almeida Theatre, mainly by actors from the surprising. On another level, though, the 264 http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 05 May 2015 IP address: 128.122.253.212 emphatic promotion of Barker as an absolutely His most loyal supporters and promoters unique voice can be seen as a major redefinition have, in fact, been individual actors rather of the significance and potential theatrical than institutions — foremost among them, Ian impact of the plays themselves. In particular, it McDiarmid, who has demonstrated a con- has serious implications for their potentiality siderable involvement in and commitment to as theatrically and politically radical texts. In Barker's work throughout his career. Over the this essay I wish to suggest some of the last ten years he has taken major roles in six reasons why this state of affairs should have premiere productions, directed a rehearsed come about, and to consider some of these reading of Crimes in Hot Countries at the implications. Almeida as well as The Possibilities, and, with his That a permanent company dedicated to performances of the poem 'Don't Exaggerate' Barker would be eventually created could, (which was written for him and is, among other perhaps, have been envisaged from the pro- things, an authorial political and artistic 'state- duction history of his work. Despite its fierce ment'), even come to function as a sort of promotion by his supporters, the dominant spokesman for the author: institutions of British theatre have shown little enthusiasm for it. The National Theatre has / shall be erudite but never staged any, although it has been offered Long live the expletive most of his recent work. And the BBC has either I come not to educate you delayed or scrapped altogether the production I alone come not to educate you of most of the dozen or so commissioned I come not to educate you but to abuse you3 television plays. Barker's record with the Royal Shakespeare Company has been somewhat better: but it has The Appeal for Actors still been almost in spite of company policy rather than because of it. The first three plays In the Channel Four documentary about Barker, - That Good Between Us in 1977, The Hang of the Refuse to Dance (a title taken from another of his Gaol in 1978, and The Loud Boy's Life in 1980 - poems), which was first screened in 1986, were staged in The Warehouse, a branch of the McDiarmid was as frequently called upon to RSC notable for the extent to which it managed 'explain' the work and its concerns (mostly by to mount a programme largely independent of means of extracts from 'Don't Exaggerate') as the company's mainstream work. The remainder the author himself. For the rehearsed reading of {Crimes in Hot Countries, Downchild, and The The Bite of the Night at the Almeida, it was Castle) were presented as a Barker season at The inevitable that he should have taken the part of Pit in 1985, but even this apparent gesture of the choric figure of MacLuby - and given a confidence on the company's part came about performance that at times verged on self- primarily as a result of the pressure exerted by parody. individual actors and directors - as Barker McDiarmid is in a sense a living emblem of described them, 'young Turks pushing through Barker in performance - almost in the way that the power structure'.1 certain classical actors can be seen as the symbol The Royal Court has staged a number of and embodiment of traditional 'Shakespearean' Barker's plays: Cheek and No One Was Saved in acting. He has also attempted to explain the the Theatre Upstairs in 1970, Stripwell (1975), appeal that Barker has for actors. Partly, he and Fair Slaughter (1977); and hosted visiting suggests, it is connected with the 'humanism' productions of others from the Oxford Play- of his writing. Barker should not be 'narrowly' house, Joint Stock and, of course, The Wrestling defined in terms of the 'socialist writer': School. But even that theatre is seen by the author as merely a 'glorified landlord'- Barker's political views naturally inform his work, presumably because he is unsympathetic to a but the work is not necessarily conditioned by them. policy which he describes as an 'obsession with They are, in any case, based on perceptions about social realism'.2 human beings, rather than the belief in a dialectic. 265 http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 05 May 2015 IP address: 128.122.253.212 As he has stated, his initial impulses come from hisostentatious alliteration, the metonymy, the characters. The full-blooded and contradictory natureinversion of conventional syntax, the juxta- of these creations, the intensity of their feelings, position of 'heightened' and idiomatic speech: together with the colour and pulse of their words all these techniques generate an intense linguistic expressed through fast-moving dramatic narrative self-consciousness. are Howard Barker's identifying marks.* In one way this might appear to be an ostentatious bid for the status of 'art'-an A crucial element in this is Barker's unique use attempt to be 'poetic' which could from another of language. Using a 'calculated poetic syntax, perspective be regarded as pretentious and self- with particular cadences of its own', Barker indulgent. In this respect, the connection that creates a discourse in which 'each word is an McDiarmid makes with 'classical' texts is a action.

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