Modern Writing. Where did it all go weird?

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Permalink Reply by Gary Owen on October 28, 2009 at 11:38am

Best. Thread title. Ever.

Welcome here, Tim. And prepare for it to get even weirder.

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Permalink Reply by Gary Owen on October 28, 2009 at 12:00pm

And then to actually reply to your question - what has happened to just following characters in a story? Well, that's still going on. And I'm afraid the weirdness started long before Crimp. Lots of people like Buchner, Wedekind, Pirandello, Fassbinder have been pushing playwriting beyond 'characters in a story' for, oooh, at least a hundred and fifty years (I'm sure more learned theatre scholars than I can point out earlier and better and more examples. Perhaps from amongst the Greeks). Lots of writers in Britain - Crimp, Sarah Kane, Caryl Churchill being perhaps the most obvious examples, but far from the only ones - have been inspired by these continental writers and gone beyond traditional story form in their writing.

We're left with (and I say this without prejudice) nutter extremists of two flavours, and one happy gang of sane people in the middle. One kind of nutter extremist says this 'characters and story' nonsense is old-fashioned and over, and we should replace it with this sparkling new hundred and fifty year old experimentalism, and sod the fact that huge audiences still want to come and watch characters moving through a story. Another kind of nutter says this experimentalism is tosh and we should only do proper plays with a beginning and a middle and an end, despite the fact that some of the best loved pieces in theatre history (like, in fact, Attempts on Her Life) have been boldly experimental.

Thankfully, in the middle there are (and again, I'm being fiercely objective here) the sane people, who see that no technique or means of expression should be off-limits for being 'too traditional' or 'too experimental': they are all tools, and we should be free to use whatever tool suits the job in hand.

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Permalink Reply by Tim Chivers on October 28, 2009 at 3:55pm

Thanks Gary,
You make a very good point but I don't think it's that clear-cut. There are a lot that tend to blend together. Brecht for example his plays are fantasticly engaging, they have both experimental and traditional elements to them.

At the same time though I have to ask at which point does the experimantal become a play if there is no characters, no set and no stage direction? (like Attempts On Her Life)

(Not to offend anyone) But surely it can be argued that it is just text on a page ??

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Permalink Reply by Gary Owen on October 28, 2009 at 6:10pm

And the 'is it theatre or is it just text' question can apply to work that is very much about story and characters - Brian Friel's The Faith Healer, say, or The Fever by Wallace Shawn, or Conor MacPherson's monologues. Why are those texts that demand staging - could they not just be read?

But - to carry on talking about Attempts on Her Life because it's a play I know - it isn't quite true that it has 'no set'. Crimp is very specific about its set - but he says what the set should achieve, rather than what the set should be. Lots of designers find that a liberating challenge, and many productions of the play have been very design heavy.

Similarly, even though there are no stage directions, production of Attempts... often have plenty of action (unlike, say Conor MacPherson's own productions of his monologues, where he directs the actors to 'just stand there and say the words') - but it's action the director and actors have to find for themselves. Again, some people find this freedom liberating (compare, for example David Rabe's published texts of Hurly Burly and Those The River Keeps, which are so dense with stage directions they're almost unreadable).

So are you saying that you think Crimp is leaving too much of the work to directors and designers - rather than offering them freedom to interpret his words as they will, he's abdicating his responsbility as someone who writes text which is meant to be staged?

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Permalink Reply by Tim Chivers on October 28, 2009 at 9:54pm

"...abdicating his responsbility as someone who writes text which is meant to be staged?" That is a very good choice of words.

I beleive that he is not giving adequate description to make it a viewable performance.

For example, a dance show doesn't have a script but you can see what they are trying to tell in the performance. Where as, AOHL has a script but you may not be able to see what it is telling you in the performance.

As for the directors and designers how much freedom can you truely get from a script? You are still restrained in a way by the text and personal views.
There are a lot of people out there that are pushing the bounderies of what a theatre is and how far they can take an audience out of the everyday reality and into the reality of the performance - but sometimes vice versa.

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Permalink Reply by Hannah Bevan on November 23, 2009 at 2:25pm

Hello! Sorry, I have only just come across this discussion and I think there are some very interesting comments made. Attempts has become one of my favourite plays due to the writing style.

Your comment 'But surely it can be argued that it is just text on a page ??' is something that I have debated about for many years at uni. It seems a case of where does the writer stop for the director, production team and actors to pick up and carry on with the text? From my point of view a director should release the text from the page and have the vision of what could be achieved visually as well.


I disagree that the sections/scenes have no connection as they are all about the same woman and the first scene with the answer phone messages sets up the following scenes of all her different identities. Also Crimp never states that she is not present on stage although most productions have her as an absent character. Do you think that would make it more visually interesting to have her physically on stage? Would the audience make more sense of the play? Could you have her saying lines?

AOHL is restricting and liberating at the same time. You have the restriction of the text, but because of its open style of writing it gives endless ways of staging the text, who could be saying the lines etc. It could be argued that the restraints and freedom of the play is one of the main themes running through the text itself.

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Permalink Reply by Kevin Johnson on November 25, 2009 at 1:59pm

Gary, you've made more sense in one post than I've read in years. Theatre, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

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Permalink Reply by Mei Lewis on November 29, 2009 at 4:37pm

Hunter S. Thompson to thread.

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Permalink Reply by Nikki Joseph on November 30, 2009 at 12:51am

personally i am a fan of modern writing because of the freedom i have been able to get from the lack of stage direction in the script. being a designer i find this format much easier to work with and prevents productions just being a reproduction of another production and everything starting to look pretty similar. but the freedom modern texts have given me has also encouraged me to throw stage directions out the window when looking at older writing.

i love the writing of carol churchill and debbie tucker green, being just a few of the playwriters that made me want to go and work on an imaginary production just from reading a script.

crimp on the other hand has been a testy issue with me. during my time at drama school it was dug up every single year by one course or another and i sat through productions, discussions and a very annoying room mate who was studying it for his dissertation and even had a drunk acting student try and convince me he is a modern day shakespeare because what he says is so beautiful. and after all of that i have never made sense of it all.

i love plays that make you think. plays that stay with you for days or even weeks while you wrap your head around their subject matter but when it comes to AOHL and some of crimps other works i just cant understand it. and 5 years after being first introduced to it i dont think i ever will.

the one thing i have discovered from my vast contact with AOHL is that it is like marmite. you either love it or hate it, you get it or you dont. i am in the "hate it" camp... sorry!

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