10/10/06 - English Literature - Cloud Nine

How are readers supposed to interpret a play?

Cloud Nine complex, strange, non-conforming. Rewriting theatrical conventions.
'Alternative theatre movement of 1970s.'

Drama is presented as polyphonous, complex. Authorship - requires more than one person to make it. Must be transferred from page to stage. Deliberately engages in this transfer.

Read it as literature? Embodiment, physical, audience, building. Read it as play.

Double casting, cross-gender casting. May be seen as an artifact that challenges the principles of naturalistic theatre.

Aristotle dealt with the play as theatre, rather than a 'text'. Poetry as a theatrical event. Imitation, in the form of enacting something. The principle of pleasure is inherent in theatre, even in tragedies, and the audience innately enjoy imitation. Note how a play requires the audience to be physically present.

Pity and fear are instilled in the audience because they identify themselves in the characters. The audience are 'purged' of their own emotions and adopt the emotions of the play.
Pharmaeon - the poison and the cure (Plato), cathartic (Aristotle).

Brecht: Epic theatre. Estrangement rather than identification. Emotions can form without a sense of sameness, e.g. looking at a work of art. What is 'natural' must have the force of what is startling. Works of art should also present a possibility of change.
Dramatic theatre works on identification (a childlike reaction).

Actors do not try to 'become' a character but are asked only to 'represent' them. New idea, late 19th century.

Role of Betty is played by a man so you can't identify with her. Politics of gender and colonialism.

Written 1979, year that Thatcher came to power. Analogy of how history develops Brechtian theatre.

Set around 1956. Traditional piece of theatre, but themes are contemporary. Carol Churchill works with communism while also with traditional theatre. Revivial of home grown theatre in 1970s. Subsidies for theatre from London. Socialist, popular theatre and continental.

Local performing theatre with continental. Brechtian aesthetics. Music as an estrangement technique. Soliloquy character will start to sing, so as audience are about to identify with him, the music gives a different effect of alienation.

Why is Betty played by a man? Why does it change in Act 2? What impact on gender politics? The man is a wife, and is said to be everything a wife should be. Parallels with imperialism, gender, etc.

Joshua played by black actor. There was no black cast in 1979. Is this more problematic than cross-gendering? Why?

Lin identifies the problem of sex and politics. Act 2 especially deals with this.

Is there a political reception? Is it naturalist? How does it engage with the audience?

Significant feminist literature. Oppressions/politics of gender tied into historical context.

Carol Martin. Theory reader. Wrote plays on contemporary issues. Soft cops. One about schizophrenia.

Historicity of workings of gender alongside politics - hence cross-gendering.