Reconnecting with the Story 4 May, 2008
Posted by pryde in rehearsals.trackback
Now that we have been focusing on the technical elements of the play for the past week it is time to return to the text and remind ourselves of what the playwright may have been trying to communicate to an audience. I urge you to do a thorough reading of the text on your day off.
Below are a numbers of ideas, theories, questions etc that I’d like you to contemplate…some of it may inform your work.
Eva says: “Everybody knows what they WANT it’s just what they think they can DO that they don’t know”. Wow, what a line! To me it’s the most important idea in the play. All the characters seem to want a peaceful, God loving, forgiving, compassionate life but they don’t seem to realise what they are all capable of. They want to be kind but they are capable of rape and murder. They want to be accepting but they are capable of harsh judgement. So often in life we are surprised by what we are actually capable of, of what we can DO. Often it doesn’t have anything to do with what we really WANT. What does your character WANT in life? AND / BUT what does your character DO in life?
The people praise Driver like he is Jesus Christ himself. I think they love him much more than Jesus. They see him as a young man who was sacrificed for no good reason. I could go on forever about the parallels that I think the playwright draws between Driver and Jesus but I’m sure I’d drive you all crazy. So, instead, I simply urge you to find the religious reverence your character has for Driver.
I do have to say this about Driver and Jesus though: throughout the play we gather that Driver was actually violent towards women, and loved the fame and adoration he received from driving slot cars. We could say that he is guilty of at least two of the deadly sins: lust and pride. Skelly goes so far as to say that Driver “wasn’t human”. What I would like to posit is this: if the people of Eldricht are actually followers of the egocentic, inhuman Driver instead of the compassionate, forgiving God are they following a fasle prophet, an anti-christ, a person who has robbed them of their humanity? ……just a thought : )
If you remember the table work and the sense memory work we did right back at the beginning of the rehearsal process, you’d remember we made strong connections with how “broken” the town is. It’s a ghost town. This is a town where industry, retail and farming is not in good shape. The people are poor and they don’t seem to be able to find a way to save themselves from what could be seen as a financial recession. Most young peple have to move away in order to find work. The ones that stick around are mostly unemployed (or at least underemployed) and bored. To top it all off, it looks like they are in for a drought. I’m sure that in this environment the men of the town must feel at a loss. In an age when the man was the “bread winner” and the “head of the house”, the men of Eldricht must feel weak, unmasculine. I think they have lost sight of what it means to be honourable men because they have lost full employment and therefore a sense of purpose and identity. For the men of the cast: please consider how your character has been effected by the economic downturn emotionally and morally. How do we sense the effect of the downturn in your actions / relationships with others? Jenna: does Wilma call out “Papa” because she grieves the loss of “real men” in the town?
Another theory on the state of Eldricht: if you look through history and find communities of people who find themselves in this sort of predicament we often find a certain type of behaviour emerging. “Scape-goating” is what I like to call it. What I mean is this: when people’s lives start to full apart they need to find something or someone to blame for their hardship, they find a “scape goat”. As you all know, in the lead up to World War II the Jewish people were blamed for the financial hardships being experienced by the German people. The Jewish people were not only made out to be greedy and rich by the Nazis but the propaganda made them out to be evil. Many Germans who were suffering decided to take comfort in the views of the Nazis and blame all their troubles on a completely innocent group of people. It seems to me that suffering can lead to people “scape-goating” which in turn leads to hatred which then leads to one group of people wanting to kill another group of people, or in the case of Eldricht, kill an individual. Please consider the suffering that your character has experienced in recent years that may be resulting in such a deep distrust and hatred of the “evil” Skelly.
Some questions:
* Has your character been “bruised” by living in this town? We know Mary is bruised literally but I think there are others that may be metaphorically bruised.
* Does your character call to God with a capital G or a lower case g. Why?
* Does your character want “truth” or does s/he want “order”?
* Does your character want to be responsible for his/her own actions or does s/he want the Church or the Law to always play the disciplinarian parent? So, is your character really an adult or a child?
* Men of the cast: are you refered to as a “man” or a “boy”? How does that make you feel?
* When is God at work in the town and when is Satan at work in the town?
* What happens to the people of a town, or a nation for that matter, when they are at war? (As you know, this play is set during the Vietnam War). What is our response to violence and death in a time of war?
Oh, I could rattle on for hours sharing my theories etc on the play but I think that’ll do for tonight. Thanks for your work today. It’s such a rich play with so many poignant messages for an audience. Please continue to consider what it is your character has to share with the people of 2008.
Cheers,
b
It’s spelt Eldritch, not Eldricht. Thanks for the notes
ooh, this from Mr Wandering Apostrophe Swampfoot! It has been noted.