I have been thinking about the first week and reflecting on how I feel about working with material that sits on the knife edge. There are times when we become something other than ourselves and oscillate from a presence to a threat, onstage to offstage, self to alter ego e.g. Mr Bateman etc. I have been thinking about the beautiful phrase 'The promise of violence' which somebody said to me recently and how someone else said to me that a female writer for Mills and Boon always imagined the romantic hero might be possible of rape and that is how she made him so attractive to millions of readers. This promise of violence crops up a lot with Phil's stage directions and asides e.g. 'Later I'm going to cave your skull in' and I wonder where our complicity or rivalry or camaraderie comes from. If it is there in the first place. Who are our allies? Who are our enemies? If we are guardians of the encyclopedia or the agents of the sponsors then Quis custodiet ipsos custodes (Who guards the guards?). Not necessarily seeking character motivation here just a sense of why we are presenting our findings. In a theatre. To an audience. This is The Beatles album cover I mentioned. I remember more blood. I will bring a book with more images from the photo shoot. Look at them smiling. Look at them holding hands. Look at their teeth.
1 comment:
The Beatles image is great, and while the white coats may not be what we're after, the feel of the photo is appropriate. As for oscillation, yes, perhaps there is a link to the promise of violence. It is an appropriate phrase, I was also thinking of Malice:
mal·ice (mls)
n.
1. A desire to harm others or to see others suffer; extreme ill will or spite.
2. Law The intent, without just cause or reason, to commit a wrongful act that will result in harm to another.
It cropped up in a book Rachel recommended to me, called 'Grass' (See how everything links up). It has a species in it that are frequently described as full of malice. Our agents are full of malice, a promise of violence. Yet I'm not sure its physical violence, each panel of the triptych is a violent act. Perhaps my stage directions are just a crude way of highlighting that and indicating a mind set. Like you say Michael motivation it not the point. This is a mindset for those who think the end has already happened, those caught between two deaths. I'll explain that later.
As for why a theatre, to an audience; theatre is all they have left, there's no progress, no business to be done. To quote a book I haven't read yet its the 'last human venue'.
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