Friday Five: Edward Albee on Theatre

5 Great Quotes by Edward Albee on Theatre and Playwriting:

1. “I’m not sure that it’s the responsibility of a writer to give answers, especially to questions that have no answers... I don’t think that it’s the responsibility of the playwright to present a dilemma and then give its solution, because if he does that, and if he is at all concerned with how things are and how people are now, almost inevitably he is going to present a less puissant dilemma.”
2. “You notate a play like a piece of music. By the use of punctuation, emphasis, underling, you indicate the way a line is to be spoken. Two or three people in conversation are like two or three instruments answering each other. The structure of drama is similar to musical structure. When you have a dramatist who writes as precisely as Chekov or Beckett, you can actually conduct the play – you know there is a silence here, a phrase there...”
3. “I am absolutely opposed to that conception of the theatre defined as a great collective experience live in common with the public, by a thousand spectators who react on each other by the warmth of their bodies, and inept comments like that. The ideal production of a play would be to have all the actors in a room with an INVISIBLE spectator whom the actors would not be able to see.”
4. “A playwright – unless he is writing escapist romances (an honourable occupation, of course) – has two obligations: first to make some statement about the condition of ‘man’ (as it is put) and, second, to make some statement about the nature of the art form with which he is working... a playwright must try to alter the forms within which his precursors have had to work.”
5. “The function of the theatre as a form of art is to tell us who we are: that is its first value; and the health of the theatre depends on the degree of self-knowledge we wish to have.”

Friday Five: Animal Tales

Recently I re-read The Silver Brumby by Elyne Mitchell. I loved this book as a child with its wild stallions and blissful backdrop. I was hooked from the opening sentence.

"Once there was a dark stormy spring, when deep down in their holes, the wombats knew not to come out, when the possums stayed quiet in their hollow limbs, when the great, black flying phalangers that live in the mountain forests never stirred."

Although I had no comprehension of this landscape, I loved the book and vowed one day to go to the Snowy Mountains. Having now been, I have a whole new appreciation for this evocative set of books.

It reminded me of how much I enjoyed animal stories as a child, and still do as an adult, even though they are often terribly sad. Him Outdoors and I went to see the National Theatre production of War Horse and as I shed a tear and looked to him apologetically (expecting a comment along the lines of, ‘what’s up now, you daft apeth’) only to find him snivelling and snuffling himself.

So here is a list of favourite animal stories. Of course, there are some omissions. When I read Goodnight Mr Tom, the old man’s dog made a strong impression on me, but when I looked up a synopsis, there was no mention of the dog at all, so I probably can’t classify that as an ‘animal story’. The same goes for Roald Dahl’s The Witches although (SPOILER ALERT), when the boy gets turned into a mouse and knows he will only have a short lifespan, he is content because he doesn’t want to out-live his grandmother, and because, “it doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like so long as somebody loves you.”

Everybody knows that Animal Farm has very little to do with animals, and Winnie the Pooh doesn’t count because the animals are stuffed toys. Please feel free to add yours.

5 Favourite Books about Animals:

1. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame: I grew up with Ratty and Mole and Badger and Mr Toad. Their river was my river and their woods were my woods. I loved them. And I wholeheartedly agree that “there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”
2. Black Beauty – Anna Sewell: the death of Ginger broke my nine-year old heart. This book is described in the Encyclopaedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare as “the most influential anti-cruelty novel of all time”. Anna Sewell’s depiction of the cruelty of the bearing rein (used to keep horse’s heads held high while pulling carriages) caused outrage and the practice was subsequently declared illegal in Victorian England.
3. The Incredible Journey – Sheila Burford: Cats and dogs can be friends! And they travel through Canada together! And it has a happy ending!
4. Watership Down – Richard Adams: The Animal Farm of the rabbit world. Adams places the individual and the collective against the corporate and the establishment. I can never look at fluffy bunnies in the same way again.
5. Tarka the Otter – Henry Williamson: one of the most stressful endings ever.

Friday Five: Spring is coming!

Earlier this week I was swooped by a magpie, while out running. Yes, we have magpies around all year, but during the mating season they get particularly aggressive and territorial. Cyclists wear cable ties pointing up from their helmets to discourage the vicious aerial attacks (although it is doubtful whether this actually works) and the cat cowers indoors. This to me, more than the reports in the newspapers of the tulips being planted for Floriade and the inevitable ensuing disapproval over the use of non-native bulbs, heralds the advent of spring.

There are other indicators too, such as the effervescent golden wattle – Australia’s national flower. It bursts and froths from the bush like Ocker champagne and is native to every state of Australia. Obviously due to climactic variations, it blooms at slightly different times, but it is always in ‘early spring’. Wattle Day was first celebrated in 2010 in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, on the suggestion of naturalist A. J. Campbell. He proposed that the wearing of a sprig of wattle would demonstrate patriotism for the new nation of Australia. It also came to embody the beginning of spring and has been commemorated on 1st August and 1st September, depending on where you are when it blooms.

Spring is a glorious season, although it still feels weird when it arrives at the end of the year. I can cope with snow in July and Christmas in summer (although it will never seem normal) but the other times – what they used to call the ‘shoulder seasons’ in Queenstown – still have the ability to confuse me. It seems odd that calendars begin with pictures of autumn in Australia, but whatever the month, there are clear indicators that spring is coming!

5 Indications of the beginnng of Spring:

1. Grass starts growing again. Last weekend our neighbour cut his lawn: the sound of the suburbs is returning for the season, along with that delicious smell, by which I mean the freshly mown grass not the diesel two stroke engine.
2. Asparagus spears appearing in the supermarkets. After a few months of roast meats, casseroles and hearty pasta meals, we welcome fresh salads and crisp green vegetables.
3. Delicate furry buds on the peach trees (surrounded by flocks of far-from delicate galahs)
4. People spotted out and about in Canberra – in winter they scuttle from home to work and back again as quickly as possible, a small step away from hibernating, much like the common (and cute) wombat.
5. Him Outdoors saw a wombat while out running down by the river. I am jealous.

Friday Five: Automobile Personality

Over the past three weeks, as I have caught the bus to work, I have had ample opportunity to gaze out of the windows at Canberra’s cars. I like looking at the stickers people put on their cars, as I find it’s a way in which they identify themselves by declaring their allegiances. By affixing a sticker to a car window, you are displaying your affiliation in much the same way as you might wear a slogan t-shirt.

Similarly, we used to write lyrics and band names on our exercise books at school when we wanted people to notice how cool we were. It was easier than having to articulate it, which we were probably unable to anyway. Some people brand their flesh with tattoos for the same reason. Anyway, a car sticker is a cheaper and less permanent way of telling people what you like without actually having to talk to anyone. This is what I found in Canberra:

5 Car Stickers:

1. A set of Stars Wars stick family transfers - Han Solo and Princess Leia adults with baby Yoda and Chewbacca
2. Husqvarna Racing (on a black Holden ute) and a World Rally Championships
3. Canberra Raiders (rugby league)
4. The Batman symbol
5. Thredbo Ski Resort

I also saw a couple of 'give blood' stickers, but as these were in the Red Cross House carpark, I didn't think they were necessarily representative of society.

So based on my totally non-scientific survey, I would have to conclude that the populace of Canberra are obsessed with vehicles, keen on sports, family orientated and a little bit geeky. You'd hardly have to live here a year to figure that one out...

Friday Five: Internet Individuality



Jaron Lanier

 Today's post is brought to you by 'You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto' by Jaron Lanier. I have just finished reading this book and my mind is reeling. Lanier is a respected Internet visionary, a gifted computer scientist, and an expert on virtual reality. He is disappointed that the limitless power of the Internet has not been used to reach its exciting potential and has instead been harnessed by homogenous conglomerates or, as he refers to them, 'lords of the clouds'.

Rather than experimentation and creativity, he fears the hive mindset of Internet users encourages mediocrity and degrades personal interaction. But he is not entirely negative - he is a product of the e-generation himself. He suggests some ways we can individually encourage original thought and personality as an antidote to endless mashups of other people's popular culture.

5 Ways you can 'be a person instead of a source of fragments to be exploited by others': 

1. 'Don't post anonymously unless you really might be in danger.'
2. 'If you put effort into Wikipedia articles, put even more effort into using your personal voice and expression outside of the wiki to help attract people who don't yet realise that they are interested in the topics you contributed to.'
3. 'Create a website that expresses something about who you are that won't fit into the template available to you on a social networking site.'
4. 'Write a blog post that took weeks of reflection before you heard the inner voice that needed to come out.'
5. 'Innovate in order to find a way to describe your internal state instead of trivial external events, to avoid the creeping danger of believing that objectively described events define you, as they would define a machine.'

Friday Five: Red Cross

I know I've blogged about the Red Cross before, but this is slightly different because I have got a temping job there for a few weeks and it has re-emphasised my admiration for the organisation.

5 Things I Admire about the Red Cross:

1. Impartiality - 'It makes no discimination as to nationality, race, religious beliefs, class or political opinions.'
2. Humanity - 'Born of a desire to bring assistance without discrimination to the wounded on the battlefield, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement endeavours, in its international and national capacity, to prevent and alleviate human suffering wherever it may be found.'
3. Neutraity - 'In order to continue to enjoy the confidence of all, the Movement may not take sidesin hostilitieas or engage at any time on controversies of a political, racial, religious or ideological nature.'
4. Volunary Service - 'The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a voluntary relief movement not prompted in any manner by desire for gain.'
5. The stunning simplicity of the symbol - For 150 years the emblem has saved lives, particularly those of the wounded, prisoners or war and civilians in wartime. In armed conflict the red cross says 'Don't Shoot!' The red cross and red crescent emblems have in recent times been mistakenly believed to have religious or political connotations. This led to the need for a third emblem - the red crystal - to be adopted in December 2005.

Friday Five: 1950s Drama

When I first heard I had got the part of Ann in Edward Albee’s At Home at the Zoo, I thought I’d better do some research around the play. Albee wrote the one-act play The Zoo Story in 1958, centring on two men meeting on a bench in Central Park. Peter has gone there to read his book and he is accosted by Jerry, a transient who wants to talk.

Criticism of the play focussed on the fact that Peter wasn’t a fully fleshed-out character, so Albee wrote a first act, Homelife, in 2004. This act explored the domestic scene and Peter’s interaction with his wife, Ann, suggesting reasons for his behaviour during his later encounter with Jerry. Albee has not allowed The Zoo Story to be performed without Homelife (and vice versa) since.

The 1950s was a fascinating decade for drama. I discussed this with my mother (she’s great at literary debate and was frequenting London theatres at this time, so knows her stuff) and she pointed out that theatre in America was very different from theatre in Britain at this time. Britain was reacting to a Tory government, which always makes for interesting drama, as Churchill’s Conservative Party won the 1951 general election (with fewer votes but more seats than Labour) and Labour did not return to power until 1964.

Unemployment was steady, the system did not allow social improvement and many chose to fight against this system and bring attention to the working and middle classes. Within ten years, British theatre had shocked the establishment and moved a world away from the likes of Noël Coward and Terence Rattigan. Before the 1960s kitchen sink dramas, the stages in the 1950s were full of social alienation, working class realism and a move towards Absurdism. Many of the playwrights of the 1950s were left-wing and angry. In 1950s theatre in context, StageWon, Dan Hutton explains, 

“The defining play of this era, however, and arguably the one which changed British drama forever, was John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger. It has gone down in theatre folklore as the piece which singlehandedly managed to pull British drama out of the innate Victorian traditionalism of the first part of the 1900s and into the 20th century. Charting a few days in the life of the now infamous Jimmy Porter, it was panned by many critics but spawned one of the most famous reviews of all time by Kenneth Tynan in the Observer, who said they he “could not love anyone who did not wish to see Look Back in Anger”.”

Whereas the anarchistic Angry Young Men (and Women – Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey is a classic of the era) were particularly British, some of these themes were also being developed in American dramas. Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams may have been a little more structured, but Hutton argues it was clear that “a precedent had been set for plays from which meaning was difficult to extract”. Plays began to appear meaningless with lack of plot and action; the death of the narrative led to confused and bewildered characters, and probably audiences.

So, besides reading around Albee and the historical period against which these plays were set, I have been discovering and re-reading some great work of the era.

5 Quintessential 1950s playwrights: 

1. Arthur Miller – The Crucible (1953); A View from the Bridge (1955) – looping dialogue in which characters desperately try to explain things to each other and are rarely understood
2. Samuel Beckett – Waiting for Godot (1953); Endgame (1957); Krapp’s Last Tape (1958) - a massive step in the direction of the absurd
3. Tennessee Williams – Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955); Orpheus Descending (1957) - terribly conficted characters doind desperately brutal emotional things to one another
4. Harold Pinter – The Dumb Waiter (1957); The Birthday Party (1958); The Caretaker (1959) - the plot disappars into dialogue and the theatre of menace is born
5. Eugène Ionesco – The Lesson; The Chairs; The New Tenant (1953) – one-act plays which he described as ‘anti-pièces’ or anti-plays; extended sketches of nonsense as words overwhelm the characters to create a sense of unease