Author: Stephanie Mary Doe

Character Development Scenes.

As we are producing a completely original piece of theatre we do not have the security of performing a well known play, which audiences may have preconceptions of characters backgrounds, personalities that the play therefore can miss out and take as a given to their audiences. I therefore believe it is important to offer the audience more of an incite into our characters, each having important back stories created in our casting session workshop that i believe we need to bring to the audiences attention.

It is a difficult task trying to relay information without making it seem as a necessary scene in order to continue with the rest of the play. I therefore believe that to contrast the naturalistic setting our script has created quite reminiscent of a fairytale, we can have a parallel surrealist movement woven into the play, representing a cryptic look into each characters pasts or current issues that have made them the the way they are today, without looking too matter of fact. The following scenes will be completely comprised of stage directions and no dialogue to play to the ‘tech heavy’ side of our production.

 

 (See ‘Appendices Character Development Scenes’ for the script i produced of these)

Characters and Casting Session Workshop

 ‘The Vision’ – Possible ideas to play with in the casting session:

  •    The Gothic revival of the fairy tale as a reflection on society and gender values.
  •      Inspiration/based loosely on Angela Carters deconstructed fairy tales ‘The Bloody Chamber’
  •     I feel the idea of corruption is a theme we should really play with, in acting, set design, lighting it can all tie in together.

“And for the first time in my innocent and confined life I sensed in myself a potentiality for corruption that took my breath away.”-(Countess Bloody Chamber)

  •      Exploring the idea of ‘corruption’ under and positive OR negative light in opposition to the ‘perfect’ fairy tale endings. If we explore the effect of corruption on the countess it actually pulls her away from the fairy tale innocence archetype.

“He sensed a rare talent for corruption.”

Exploration of gender binaries, fairy tale literature representation etc.

  •     E.g. the mirror scene in the bloody chamber shows the sexual awakening of the young woman, she herself views her corruption as positive as she looks at her reflected body.

“Elaine Jordan suggests that the death of the virgin girl is the symbol of ‘killing masculine representations’ not a ‘killing of women’ – (Regarding the Snow Child,  Deconstructed masculine evil in Angela Carter)

  • How do you feel about this?
  • Why is there a feeling that this image is not correct?
  • What sort of message have fairy tales inadvertently been creating?
  • Do you feel Angela Carter represents a female awakening in her tales?
  •     I place the countess as having just  finished her fairy tale ending and  married the count – and what we are left with is the ‘reality’ of her situation. What glitches are created between the fairy tale and real worlds that can transcend into more than just a spectacle. E.g. fairy tale vs. reality becoming childhood memories vs. adult life.

Character Breakdown (various interpretations for you to choose what you feel suits the character you visualise playing)

Count

  •      A typical villain or simply perceived this way through the countess subconscious desires to ‘be free’ from her innocent confined life? Is he used as an excuse for the countess to be corrupted?
  •   Where do you feel the evil really lies in this tale? If any true evil at all?
  •     The Count Vs. The Piano Tuner

As the inversion of binaries is something we are definitely approaching (on what scale remains to be explored, but im thinking big!) I do not necessarily see the count being your typical stalking, dark, piercing figure as like so many other traditional villains. He could perhaps be the most unsuspecting looking character who the audience feel truly shocked when faced with his actions, it challenges how they should feel and what stereotype they have come to expect … even when told that this is dark fairy tale, they still come with certain expectations.

Countess

  •   Is this girl really innocent?
  •   Does she herself have villainous qualities?
  •    Does she become her ‘own woman’ through corruption?
  •    Is this positive or is this negative?
  • How does it make you feel to think about something positive coming from such a deeply negative scenario

She has stepped out of the fairy tale, mundane world of her life and into ‘reality’, with this she welcomes her sexual female awakening. Some arguable villainous qualities that outrank the count. She takes the innocent image of the fairy tale character no longer in a positive light but as female repression. She becomes her own woman after marrying the count. She has longed for excitement and actually places herself in the situation. She is not ignorant or naïve to her marriage. She is curious.

The House Keeper

The house keeper keeps things ordered and is constantly trying to ‘maintain’ relationships, I vision her constantly trying to fix the corruption around her by fixing cracks in the sets, putting paintings back together, hiding broken mirrors etc She is very much part of the furniture, set in her old fairy tale ways – a character who refuses to leave the fairy tale setting but who finds herself placed in this new age of corrupt independence. The world, even this mock-fairy tale world is moving on and she is left behind.

The Piano Tuner

The blindness of the piano tuner gives him insite, as he is blind to the corrupt world around him – he is in his own world and this gives us room to explore what sort of world he imagines himself in

  • e.g. should it be a fairy tale like most people or should it be a version of reality?

He is in love with the countess because of her desire to be free, not because she is reserved or innocent. In some ways she is the very opposite of this innocent piano tuner, he is attracted to the differences between their two worlds.

I vision him being unable to tune the piano so even the music he plays is corrupted, as a literal representation of a dislocated time but which at the same time holds elements of truth and beauty to it that you would not get with a perfectly tuned piece of music.

The Ghost/ Spectre/ Mother/ Ex-wife/ Nature

This character is very much open to interpretation and it is something I want us all to explore in the casting session and reach a decision with.

  •      Should this character act as a warning? If so, to who?
  •   If it in an ex-wife character did he count truly love this woman?
  •      Do we want a supernatural element heavily involed? It was very common in gothic literature to have characters representative of nature. Reflective of mother nature, human nature etc

I imagine this character to be heavily linked with the design, almost a ‘Puck’ like character from Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream – containing mystical, supernatural elements but with a rational truth or warning attached to them. (Also can help if any narration is needed, although I don’t want It to be heavily narrated!)

The Snow Child

Starting off as a pure innocent picture of perfection. The snow child almost seems out of place in our production because of her links to the traditional, but this is something that will work in creating and blurring the borders between the two worlds. I see the snow child as almost another narrative going on within our play, her own journey could perhaps mirror the passage from child hood fairy tale to the adult world?

  •      What happens to the snow child in the end?
  •     How do you think we can show this journey?

Workshop Tasks (some of this can be done in preparation for the workshop/casting session)

  •        Try to come with answers to all the questions I have posted above, I think it is important to have different perspectives put forward to create the best possible production. We will begin by discussing these so we have a feel for what sort of character we are pushing for in the casting session.
  •     As a short exercise, (if like you can prepare this beforehand alone or in pairs, and you will be given some time on the day) in order to explore the passage of time and the corrupt ‘fairy tale’ image I feel it would be useful to see where these ideas stem from. Take a well-known fairy tale character and move them on 15 years in their life to after their fairy tale ending.
  •        What has happened to these characters?
  •       Has there been a corruption?
  •   Do you feel they’ve maintained the perfect fairy tale ending?
  •  What images of corruption can you see?

This can be a short improvisation; perhaps the character simply reflecting like we will have the countess doing in scene 2, or it could be a quick scene from a day in their lives.

(for inspiration see the video below, a new film based on Hansel and Gretel 15 years into the future)

 

 

After this we will turn to the characters in our production and discuss how the previous exercise can be applied to the lives of our characters.

  •      Have an idea of the character you want to play and why you want to play this. What experience can you bring to this character?
  •    What corrupt images/symbols do you see in your character that you feel can be explored?
  •      You will be given a short extract of your character from the script with someone to read with you if need be, to get a feel for the role and to see if you suit it well and how you feel in this role after the workshop today.

… That’s it!

 

*Appendices “The Gothic Tradition”

The Gothic Tradition – Romanticism 12/02/13

A genre of writing called ‘Terrorist Writing’ was the eventual name for the Gothic. It was originally viewed with a lack of seriousness and from the work of women writers.

There was a sense of monstrosity in terms of setting. Very stereotypical, stylised gothic buildings containing remote passageways, cellars with a sense of mystery embodied. There were also outdoor settings such as forests with the feeling of the wildnerness and secrecy within.

Very much transgressing moral and social values, with excess of male power, violence and sexual deviancy.  Supernatural features, e.g. giant suits of armor, moving portraits explained supernaturally but with suggestions of a naturalistic explanation in the end. The idea of the ‘unspeakable’ was prominent and the characters tend to be stereotyped. e.g. power vs helpless victims. There was also a fairytale sense in the characters, with extreme emotional registers, literature to excess.

1716 – 1820 – Housed the idea of the pure Gothic novel with all these conventions. After this the Gothic became mixed up with realism e.g. Jane Eyre, Great expectations, Dracula, Frankenstein …

There was also a fad for Gothic architecture with medieval aesthetics. e.g. Notre Dame and Lincoln Cathedral.

In the Mysteries of Udolpho there is the idea of entering the chamber, (similar to Angela Carter’s later work) and the idea of terror dragging your imagination because into the unknown

‘Emily passed on with faltering steps, and having paused a moment at the door, before she attempted to open it, she then hastily entered the chamber, and went towards the picture, which appeared to be enclosed in frame of uncommon size, that hung in a dark part of the room. She paused again, and then, with a timid hand, lifted the veil; but instantly let it fall – perceiving that what it concealed was no picture, and, before she could leave the chamber, she dropped senseless to the floor. (Vol 2 Ch 6)

Introducing stereotypical Gothic themes, haunting, groans, apparitions, mutilated bodies, decaying corpses, violent deaths, sexual threats. Freudian readings etc.

This became the explained supernatural with suggestions of fear and fear becoming pleasurable.

‘The Romantic Gothic’

It was revolutionary Gothic e.g. Frankenstein, Mary Shelleys parents were both renowned political radicals and both parents were right in the centre of radical political discourse. The monster in political terms presented himself as the victim (e.g. Frankenstein), the monster speaks back and protests and the narrative encourages sympathy. The social construction of monstrosity, symbolic of the french revolution in the terror and execution and violent aftermaths. The monster was arguably used in the Gothic as a warning to society, of society creating its own monster.

The Gothic became more and more an opposition to enlightenment values. It came to symbolise everything deemed ‘other’, a dark barbaric genre in comparison to the literature people were used to. The Gothic houses abuses of power, primitive social power and emotional access compared to enlightenment values of reason. The Gothic was desperate for punctuation, a form of writing that reflected the monstrosity of the writing at the time.

‘The idea of the absolute monarchy and the contemporary resonances of this. Presenting limits to a Kings power e.g. The Magna Carter and The Glorious Revolution. (Horace Walpole, John Wilks)

A certain emotional discourse presented the Gothic with relations to Romanticism, exploring interior worlds, introducing the idea of the ‘sublime’, an encounter with the unknowable, producing feelings akin to awe.

‘Sublimity, then, refers to the moment when the ability to apprehend, to know, and to express a thought of sensation is defeated. Yet through this very defeat, the mind gets a feeling for what which lies beyond our thought and language’ (Philip Shaw, The Sublime)

Suggestions of fear being part of the sublime, in alignment with the unspeakable. Obscurity seemed to be necessary to attain fear.

The attitude to the Gothic has varied quite a bit, are there serious ways to discuss the Gothic?

1) Symbolic Dramas of the unconscious, (Freud)

Fairy tale and dreams embodied ideas of the unconscious, symbolic narratives exploring what lies beneath the conscience. (See Goya painting) Origins of the dream were explored, dream like qualities emerging in literature, events drifting into each other producing powerful symbolic images but not necessarily being coherent (state of the dream or nightmare). In the mid 20th century, the surrealist movement – there was a fantasy of power unleashed paranoia,extreme mental states. Helplessness in nightmares, themes of claustrophobia and entrapment in the passage ways of a Gothic setting (ANGELA)

2) Political discourse

Gender binaries – indirect engagement with social reality. The male tyrant vs the female victim in patriarchal society. Exploration of what exactly makes the woman a victim, power being socially instituted by law, attitudes and culture. Exploration of feminism, women were presented as very unnatural. The representation of the monster in many works were symbolic of the narrative itself. e.g. The monster in Frankenstein was seen as symbolic of ‘the angry mob’ e.g. french revolution

3) Psychological Plight

Mechanics of Gothic machinery became metaphors of an internal landscape. Disturbed states of feeling and mind.

The internalising of Gothic forms represents the most significant shift in the genre, the gloom and darkness of sublime landscapes becoming external markers of the inner mental and emotional states’ (Botting,Gothic, 91-2)

See Coleridges ‘Pains of sleep’ – for images of the tortured mind.

The Romantic and the Gothic had a few things in common also.They were both beyond reason, imagination and feeling reacting against the rational world view. Emphasis on the subjective world and a reinvestment in the supernatural, hauntings, apparitions. Both engage with the sublime

*Appendices “The Liminal Experience”

Liminal

  1. Of or relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process.
  2. Occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.

“A kind of liminal experience undergone by audience/participants when engaged In the brief liminality, drama and film. Turner describes these aesthetic forms as representing ‘the reflexivity of the social process, wherein society becomes at once the subject and the direct object” (initiation and disobedience)

“the act of reading a story can become a small initiation, a movement away from old patterns of thinking into new and, ideally, better ones.”

In all of Angela Carter’s tales there are version of “The Bloody Chamber” usually represented through the idea of a room or a space. I think this would be a good concept to adapt in our piece, taking something simple such as  a room full of mirrors and exploring what truly occurs in a space. In most of these spaces there is as a paradox between enlightenment and violence, innocence and experience – which is something we as a theatre company have been exploring in the children vs adult theatre.

Throughout all of Carters stories there is the idea of social change represented through a Gothic and almost timeless tradition. Something that i think lends itself perfectly to our manifesto as a tech heavy, spectacle group. It also is worth noting that to create a spectacle does not necessary mean there needs to be a stage full of props, elaborate lighting plans etc. Less is more when it comes to creating something symbolic of a time, a memory trace or even a simple border between two worlds, theatre vs reality, audience vs actor, young vs old, past vs present …

Many of the stories focus on the idea of liminality, of existing on the threshold between two places or states of being.  This is something we can take, easily adapt, create something totality unique adapted from a small influence of Angela Carter, the threshold can be physically represented if we look back to the idea of the room that all her stories contain. A liminal space.

In literature, liminal spaces traditionally give the occupant both power and torment. At the same time, he or she is condemned never to be fully accepted in either state. What does it mean to separate the fairytale from the real life, why do we aspire for the ‘fairytale’ ending when what we are seeing is something of our own creation?

The two halves of the liminal being’s experience do not seem to make a satisfying whole. Carter explores liminality primarily through half-beings: werewolves, vampires, and the special case of Wolf-Alice, the hyphen in whose name pronounces her liminality most definitively. – Exploring the idea of the half being, why do we use metamorphosis in literature to address issues that we as human beings experience? Is there a truth we are trying to avoid? Why does Carter avoid using human beings in these roles?

Her more radical statement, however, is that all women are forced to live life as a liminal experience. The heroine in “The Tiger’s Bride” realizes this when she considers that men consider women as soulless and incapable as animals.” She is a human who is treated like a beast, and is therefore living as liminal and unfulfilled  life as The Beast – as these themes are recurring in all of her stories, we do not necessarily have to restrict ourselves to three, if we are adapting and (rights restricted) then why not create our own concept of what it is to experience the fairytale, with echoes of traditional stories to make the comparison, creating ANOTHER liminal space not only on stage but between action and audience, what has happened somewhere in between the memory trace of a fairytale and the acceptance of more darker themes on stage and life.

The two worlds – the fairy tale world and the world of touristic experience – share the fact that in the ‘other’ world the hero behaves in a manner which differs from   his or her usual behaviour. Both an act of storytelling that traditionally would take place in a liminal period of time and a journey away from one’s home convey the impression of being on the border of several different worlds.

 

“The transition from the ordinary environment to an extraordinary one is a
typical feature of fairy tales; the protagonist enters an unpredictable world, although
its beginning is familiar for him/her” (Liminality and the imaginary)

*Appendices The Gothic Revival: From Context to Contemporary

This week we have been exploring the short Gothic stories of Angela  horror, specifically her adaptations of fairytales in her 1979 work The Bloody Chamber. The potency of the Gothic genre has extended from the Gothic revival of the eighteenth century to twentieth century modern fiction. In this blog we aim to establish context and inspirations from the Gothic genre which we can build through our theatrical adaptations of  fairytale.

Goya_-_Caprichos_(43)_-_Sleep_of_Reason752px-John_Henry_Fuseli_-_The_Nightmare

(Goya’s ‘Sleep of Reason’ and Henry Fuseli’s ‘The Nightmare’)

Angela Carter – Gothic horror and conventions are taken to the extreme, the pinnacle of heightened emotions contrasted with childhood innocence. This links to the context of the eighteenth century Gothic revival, where “middle class readers, safely tucked into their stable and unthreatened the social positions, could feel secure enough to cultivate imaginary fears and fantasies, in the same way that a child may do, reading horror stories and experiencing the delicious thrill while apparently immune from real danger.” (Gothic Tradition, David Stevens, p10)

This ties in with the genre of sensibility which ran parallel to the Gothic revival. This was the move away from rationalism and  towards heightened emotions concentrating on fantasy and escapism. There was a sense that “over-reliance on reason could rob human experience of its essential flavour.”(Gothic Tradition, David Stevens, p10)

Gothic and the Child

“The link between the Gothic and the experience of childhood is, perhaps, an especially strong one … many adults remember formative reading experiences in which fear played a compelling part, at once terrifying in its intensity and strangely fascinating and attractive. So-called ‘fairy tales’, clearly, are  excellent examples of this perennial fascination – it is hard to think of a fairy tale which does not feature some form of darkness or evil” (Gothic Tradition, David Stevens p32-33).

(Word Count: 314)

 

Works Cited:

Stevens, David (2000) The Gothic Tradition, Cambridge University Press.

Carter, Angela (1995) The Bloody Chamber, London: Vintage Classics.

 

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