May 17, 2007

DELIVER US: the forum

John Smythe      posted 5 Mar 2007, 08:44 PM / edited 6 Mar 2007, 12:33 PM

My review of Deliver Us by Paul Rothwell has provoked 21 Comments from 13 participants (so far): click here to read them. Now Willem Wassenaar, who – among many other reactions – feels the shows is “dangerous and unsafe”, has asked for a forum. So here it is.

I offer a series of questions, provoked by the debate to date. You may find it useful to use the (A), (B), (C) etc. in having your say, but it’s not compulsory.

(A)  PROPAGANDA OR PROVOCATION?

Does the play:

(a)  preach an anti-abortion message? If so, is it allowed to?

(b)  critique the socio-sexual revolution of the 1960s/70s for failing to recognise there is a subconscious emotional dimension to having an abortion?

(c)  simply focus on unresolved grief and/or guilt, using abortion as an example?

(B)  UNSAFE OR A THERAPEUTIC CATALYST?

(a)  Many have worried on behalf of others whom they fear may identify too closely with Cherie’s experience and leave the show an unresolved emotional wreck. Is this valid?

(b)  The review suggested some may need counselling. Did/does anyone? [Privacy to be respected here, of course.]

(c)  If the play is “unsafe”, how might it, and/or the production, go about making it “safe”? As Willem says, “Where lies the responsibility of an artist?”  [Please cite any examples of demonstrably “unsafe” theatre that you have experienced.]

(C)  WELL CRAFTED POTENTIAL CLASSIC OR IMMATURE HOGWASH?

From a playwrighting perspective, did the form serve the content? Did all the ingredients serve each other to make something greater than the sum of their parts, or did they clash in ways that reduced its potential?

(D)  SERVED OR SLAUGHTERED BY THE PRODUCTION?

Despite the obvious fact that some actors played a generation above themselves, and it had a very short rehearsal period, did the production elucidate the play or get in its way?

SUGGESTION: Draft your contribution off line then, when you’re ready, copy and paste it to the Forum.

Paul Rothwell     posted 6 Mar 2007, 12:47 AM

Sometimes I walk down Manners Mall and look at all those kids and think if only your mother had an abortion, you wouldn’t be here messing up those funky galvanised steel boxed gardens outside Hoyts. (damn those reflective windows by I-play, I didn’t recognise myself for a second.)

For everyone who doesn’t believe in a spiritual side to life, abortion is an open and shut biological issue. By weeding out the unwanted we can sculpt a better society, while avoiding an unnecessary interruption to the fun and frivolity of our early twenties when babies are an untimely burden.

If you do believe in the soul, abortion is an intensely humanitarian issue that is all but invisible. Deeply personal, yes, but with broad implications for everybody.

Abortion The Debate Topic has always been historically characterised by extremes, division. But the revolution is over, abortion available virtually on demand for over twenty years. Catch up, you. Propagandist I most definitely do not intend to be. Propaganda for what? Keeping your babies so that they might live a life as meaningless as mine?

The characters suggested no solution to unwanted pregnancy, nor gave a valid excuse for what happened, because I don’t hope or believe that there is one for either. The issue has defeated us.

For myself, I’m too preoccupied drinking and thinking about sex to hold a real opinion for more than a fleeting moment and I’m not even being ironic, ask my mother.

Ultimately Deliver Us was an entertainment for me, like a horror movie, The Ring, perhaps. I accept that it is glib and admit that I chose to make it sensationally entertaining, which was an easy path. Mostly I feel condemned that I could never write the depth of feeling that character must have had. If I had captured anything of what that kind of supernatural creature might really feel, I’m sure people genuinely would need therapy. 

Willem Wassenaar           posted 6 Mar 2007, 04:45 PM

ok here we go. excuse for my formulation of sentences (english is my second language) i hope i can elaborate on a few things in response to the issues raised in this forum. thanks john for opening it up. my intention is not to only relate to deliver us as i feel this is a matter for the entire industry and the future directions in which we want to push the art of theatre.

dangerous and unsafe. for me it has everything to do with how artists, the play deals with heavy content as such. musical theatre, comedy (i generalise) deals with subject matter in a light way, drama and tragedy obviously not and has indeed set goals for itself to create a catharsis/a cleansing effect on audiences. as such, an audience knows that it will not be treated as a porcelain doll and if i am going to see such a work, I DO NOT WANT TO. the contract between audiences and performers is made and clear. WE ARE IN FOR A LIFE CHANGING EXPERIENCE, THAT CANNOT BE FOUND ON THE FOOTBALL FIELD, ON TELEVISION, IN CINEMA.

my thinking around this is this, if we invite the audiences into a life altering experience, we also have the responsibility to secure that the subject matter is treated with the respect it deserves. if we are dealing with life and death, with abortion in the case of deliver us, with the refugee question in my production of mirad, we have a heightened responsibility to create a context in which there is space for interpretation and/or debate. practicality is for me no excuse. as an artist you have the power to move, to shock, and as such you simply cannot create a context in which you bombard an audience with a very dominating message without giving the audience the opportunity to react/to relate/to interpretate. it is like being a teacher and you touch something in your student, without taking the responsibility of the consequences of your work. that is what i mean with dangerous and unsafe.

confront me, shock me even, i do not care. but give me space! in the case of deliver us i felt like i was smothered with its message that abortion is wrong (if that was not the message, i am sorry, but for me then the opposing arguments were not strongly enough staged). medea and antigone give me as a reader the opportunity for space, to emphasize with different characters and then i can make my own personal opinion.

space to breath, to let it sink, to question allows the artist to stage brutality. in that case a production becomes uncomfortable and can create disturbance, but it secures safety and does not become dangerous (in the bad sense of the word). does that make sense??

i have seen much more shocking work than what was presented in deliver us, however the difference is that in these works the context backed the artists up to raise the issues.

as for me, i assess everything i do with the question if i treat the subject matter in a sophisticated way. the first time that it really hit me was when i performed mirad, a boy from bosnia in front of teenage refugees. two kiwi actors took the courage to be storytellers in front of this experienced audience and tell the story of a young bosnian refugee going to holland. the play was written in a sublime way and only because of that i dared to confront these refugees with essentially their own story. the play dealt with the horrors of being a refugee, and i knew that my purpose of staging it should be bigger than our own artist ego’s. i knew that this play could retraumatize these kids, it had the power to do that, but we created a context in which the kids themselves had the opportunity to relate to mirad’s journey. the question became bigger: “if you have experienced such an awful history, how do you continue, how do you place your own history in a way that it does not become destructive for your future?”

internally i freaked out when the performance started and i congratulate the actors involved for their bravery. we did a preshow talk and a forum afterwards. i could see tears and disagreement in the refugee kids’ eyes, but also they felt that they were acknowledged, that their history was not neglected and they had an opportunity to speak out their own experiences if they wanted. i do not want to advertise that we did an amazing job there, i just want to point out that there was safety required in staging that peace. we did not spare these kids, we did not treat them as porcelain dolls, because that would have been also disrespectful. but we did manage to give them space. assessing that production, i think that we could even have done a better job in terms of that.

safety and danger has for me everything to do with space and context. is that clear and does that make sense?     

Willem Wassenaar           posted 6 Mar 2007, 04:57 PM

just read the playwright’s contribution to this forum. well, if you are talking about taking responsibility, you can read it all there. question: are you serious when you write: “Ultimately Deliver Us was an entertainment for me, like a horror movie, The Ring, perhaps. I accept that it is glib and admit that I chose to make it sensationally entertaining, which was an easy path.”

i made my point.

Ryan Hartigan    posted 6 Mar 2007, 05:11 PM / edited 11 Mar 2007, 09:24 PM

Oh, good grief. I think it’s fair to say that Paul’s post was an extremely ironic posting – and, as I commented to David today, very much in the spirit of Joe Orton’s tongue in cheek trouble making letters as “Edna Welthorpe (Mrs)”.

On the wider point, if we are to only accept pieces that “make room for debate” – and the examples you offer are deliberately framed in such a way, which is a formal decision as much as anything else – then I say we chuck out Philip Ridley, Sarah Kane, get rid of Jarry, Arrabal, Pinter, Beckett. Most of all Beckett – his world is so clearly envisioned, shaped, presented. It can’t possibly be safe. Let’s just have Brecht – oh, and let’s make sure it’s only his “learning plays”.

Sure, if the piece is being presented “as” a forum, like a piece of community theatre (which I both teach and have made) then the responsibility is somewhat different for artists and their audience.

But even if, EVEN if a piece has a sustained point of view, and confronts where there is no internal debate, how does that shut out the possibility of reacting to it? To my mind, that would seem to provide an *ideal* place for these debates to take place. I’d much rather see something that’s tendentious rather than tedious.

Besides, I’m reminded by the words of Max Stafford-Clark, when he came out to talk in New Zealand a couple of years ago. Now, with his extensive career, working with both new writers and his community theatre work with Joint Stock etc, he has a pretty fair knowledge of making and viewing work. The subject of his lecture? Why theatre is dangerous, immoral, confrontational and subversive…and in his opinion should stay that way, and is at its best when it plays in that territory.

Purely wearing my “reception theory” hat, doesn’t an audience ALWAYS have a reaction to a piece, even if there “wasn’t any room for it”? Isn’t that what we’re doing?

Moya Bannerman            posted 6 Mar 2007, 09:21 PM

Let’s be clear here. What’s ‘dangerous’ about Deliver Us is that a woman who has had an abortion in the past and remains unresolved about it at a subconscious level could, by watching this play, find herself dealing with all sorts of feelings she’d rather not be having. But surely, as with anything unresolved, they are in ‘danger’ of having such feelings provoked in all sorts of unpredictable ways as they go about their daily lives.

Here’s how I see it. From the 1970s (the late 60s, even) on, it has been legitimate for women to choose, when confronted with an unplanned pregnancy. And in SOME cases, even those who do not admit to a ‘spiritual’ dimension to their lives, whether they have had a religious upbringing or not, whether they are escaping such ‘conditioning’ or not … even demonstrably ‘agnostic’ women have been shocked to discover feelings welling up inside that could be ascribed to grief or guilt.

And because it has not been politically correct to admit to such feelings, these women have often felt alone, confused, alienated … Where do they go to deal with such things? Surely one of the most valuable things theatre can do is to allow such people to realise they are not alone, that others share and/or understand their position. (This applies to countless private aspects of human experience.) And whether or not Paul Rothwell even began to think of his work in those terms (if you take his statement literally, he didn’t), I believe Deliver Us has that value.

It also means that anyone who needs to get counselling to deal with their unresolved issues has been alerted to that need. Again, if it wasn’t this play that had prodded them, something else would have. Meanwhile, what real damage has been done? I know BATS has done work around youth suicide, for example, and they ensured their were support mechanisms on hand for that. Should something similar have been on hand for Deliver Us – and if so what? Who? Where? When?

What I would really like to know is this: can anyone cite a specific example (naming no names, of course) of someone being traumatised, or ‘re-traumatised’, or otherwise adversely affected by seeing this play? And if so, what has been the outcome? (I know people who have been angry, felt judged, just wanted to get the hell out of that theatre … But I don’t think they were urgently in need of counselling. They just hadn’t expected to have to deal with that issue, then and there, in the name of being ‘entertained’.)

To me a ‘dangerous’ or ‘unsafe’ play could be one that genuinely incites racial hatred, or similar, to the point that people become dangerous in the real world as a direct result of seeing the play. Can anyone cite an example? The anti-Semitic cabaret acts of Nazi Germany spring to mind. But were they the cause or a symptom of a much more deeply entrenched social sickness?

But while there is definitely a theatrical dimension to propaganda – and politicians and activists do rehearse to become ‘star’ performers – can the relatively abstract art of theatre be said to have the same power? It’s ‘make believe’ for heaven’s sake. Fantasy. That’s why it’s called ‘the willing suspension of disbelief’ – because we all know it’s not real. As John has said elsewhere, those who cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality need help per se.

neil furby             posted 6 Mar 2007, 11:23 PM

Moya How can you write that “one of the most valuable things theatre can do is to allow such people to realise they are not alone and then further down in your comment write that” It’s ‘make believe’ for heaven’s sake” Is it you or myself that cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality? I admit I need counseling 

Moya Bannerman            posted 7 Mar 2007, 07:35 AM

Fair point, Neil. The link is relevance. We can directly relate the fiction of theatre to the perceived realities (objective and subjective) of life, without believing what happens on stage is finally ‘real’. Hence, as this play unfolds, we may willingly suspend our disbelief in the proposition that the aborted foetus has a body, name and life unlived (even more extreme than the anthropomorphising of animals and plants in fiction). Then afterwards we recognise the scenario itself was make believe and extrapolate ‘truth’ accordingly.

This also links back to that other Forum, started by Erin Banks herself, about whether or not to bow. And didn’t someone make the point that the ‘curtain call’ marks the end on make believe and the return to reality?

John Smythe      posted 13 Mar 2007, 07:39 AM / edited 13 Mar 2007, 10:45 AM

DELIVER US and theatreview got a mention in Melbourne last weekend, in The Age arts review section. Raymond Gill, his playwright wife Joanna Murray-Smith, literary manager Dr Christopher Mead and designer Ralph Myers were the Australian guests at the recent Staging the Future II symposium.

Judith Dale          posted 16 Mar 2007, 01:57 PM / edited 16 Mar 2007, 02:00 PM

For something I think is highly relevant to what people have been saying here, can I cross-refer you to a new Forum entry I’ve just posted, called “The Duty of a Play wright”?

(I’m new to the net, a veritable babe, so excuse my over enthusiatic multiple postings!)

Mary Anne Bourke          posted 25 Mar 2007, 09:47 PM

I went along to ‘Deliver Us’ ‘cos you said it was a ‘modern classic’. Yeah I reckon it had the makings. But what I saw on stage remained an interesting premise; the play degenerated into abject confusion – for want, it seemed, of an idea that the playwright was prepared to own up to. It seems to me that the promise (sincerity?) of ‘Golden Boys’ was met in the vehemence of ‘Hate Crimes’, but has fallen away with the under-considered delirium of ‘Deliver Us’. Well, hey, sexual politics in the twenty-first century – fools rush in etc. Do you really expect us to believe that ‘more resources’ or ‘better production values’ are what is required here – when David Lawrence has frequently demonstrated the dramatic excellence that can be achieved with committed performers on the smell of an oily rag? Might not the problem be something to do with the script? Surely there comes a time when even the most evasive (‘ironic’) personality accepts that writing for an audience is more work than play, or ‘having fun playing with genres’ as you put it this time. I’d venture that it’s the playwright here that has reached the moment of truth.

(Note: I transferred this from the Kissing Bone comment thread)

John Smythe      posted 25 Mar 2007, 09:52 PM

“Unconsidered delirium”? No. For me there is well-crafted coherence in the way Cherie’s unconscious delivers her from grief and guilt, by removing her husband and son, leaving her free to bond, at last, with her unborn son, her daughter and her grand daughter.

But then I also loved Albee’s The Goat while others (in Wellington, anyway) backed right off: “Why would I want to see a play about a man who fucks a goat?” Or having seen it, they still could not see the ‘why’ beyond the ‘what’ – just as many, it seems, couldn’t see Deliver Us as anything beyond an anti-abortion play (I assert all the raging about the play’s lack of structure and craft begins with anger at this perceived offence).

Just as Albee seeks to jolt us out of our complacency by asking what we are prepared to excuse in the name of love, so Rothwell seeks to challenge the notion, held by many in the generation that delivered him, that having an abortion is no big deal. He plays with the abiding truth that unresolved past actions will take their toll until they are resolved.

Paul Rothwell is 25 and his transition from adolescence to adulthood is marked with an extraordinary body of work that speaks with deep-felt eloquence for his generation and their place in the continuum of our social history. And it’s done with flair and a great sense of play, in every sense, thoroughly focused on engaging his audience – and your intimation, Mary Anne, that he is playing with himself is totally unwarranted.

Yes, I do agree that “David Lawrence has frequently demonstrated the dramatic excellence that can be achieved with committed performers on the smell of an oily rag.” How could I not, having performed in his no-budget Hamlet? It’s just that as I watched the premiere performance of Kissing Bone, the scrappy setting go in the way of my willing suspension of disbelief and I couldn’t help wondering how much better a well designed rural setting might have served the play. I also felt they were a few run-throughs short of a great opening night.

May Anne Bourke            posted 25 Mar 2007, 09:57 PM

I agree, John, that Rothwell is to be encouraged; his writing has an energy, voluptuousness and frequently a resonance that is more than welcome. Why I called ‘Deliver Us’ unconsidered was not because it questioned the wisdom of abortion on a spiritual as well as emotional level (great) but because it was unbalanced; so slanted in favour of the imagined foetus’ experience.

The characterisation of the mother was conveniently shallow and essentially stupid: all emotion, no brain, no active memory and certainly no soul or spiritual life, unlike the aborted male foetus who had it all. And as a result I have to say, it seemed to me the soxygen whiff of misogyny hung heavy in the air, not relieved by the fragrant blossom of homo-eroticism. (Am I wrong?)

Not even Erin Banks’ charismatic performance could supply what the play was so deprived of; an explication of the woman’s experience. Yes, this was what left me unengaged. If the woman was fully rounded person then you might have had a worthwhile argument to the play; her reasons and her feelings about having had the abortion being played against the righteous anger of the foetus. As it was the ‘argument’ was incoherent, lost in the babble of voices which seemed like a ruse to camouflage what I suspected was the lack of an idea that could resolve the thing. No wonder, you might say. (And yes, some of this chaos is good expressionistically but not when so little ends up comprehendable)

I think there is a lot of work still to be done on this play, but that it could be developed into an important, perpetually challenging work. I’d like to think the playwright was ‘up for it’.

John Smythe      posted 25 Mar 2007, 11:14 PM / edited 26 Mar 2007, 07:27 AM

Good points, Mary Anne, well worth considering. And since I raised The Goat for comparison, it’s fair to acknowledge that moral outrage at a man ‘falling in love’ with a goat, and having sex with it, does get a good airing in Albee’s script – but I don’t think he has written the play to dramatise that particular debate. The goat scenario is a means to a bigger satirical end (goat = satyr = satire). And in that play too – a cautionary tale that evokes ancient Greek tragedy – destructive emotions win the day.

Similarly I do not think Rothwell is out to debate the rights and wrongs of abortion. But perhaps there would be dramatic value in offering some insight into the rationale that prevailed when the decision was made, by Cherie and Merrick, to terminate the pregnancy. And getting a handle on who she is in ‘the real world’ as an intelligent, rational human being, would be of value too … But I took all that as a given, somehow. I certainly didn’t see her as “shallow and stupid”. Maybe it’s because I see the angry young man is a figment of her imagination – as her creation – that I see no need for her argue back at him in self-justification. That is not where she’s at in her head at this point. Dare I mention hormones and menopause …?

The requirement for balance may be valid for news media but it doesn’t apply to drama in quite the same way. As a means of fulfilling the dramatic potential of a theme, however – fair enough. Good point.

I stand my by original observation, that Deliver Us is ‘Comedy of Menace’ meets ‘Gothic Horror’ meets ‘Jacobean Revenge Tragedy’ meets ‘Greek Tragedy’. And I do acknowledge that if Greek Tragedy is to be evoked ahead of the others to justify the emotion-driven blood bath, then it must be inherent that a ‘crime against the Gods’ has been committed; that the abortion constitutes an act of ‘hubris’. To which I add that Cherie’s reaction, arising from deep with her unconscious a couple of decades later when she is no longer able to conceive and her daughter has rejected her own new child, is an entirely valid dramatic idea.

Katie Matthews                posted 11 May 2007, 05:00 PM

Have any of you – Paul perhaps – read ‘First Born’ by Caroline Thompson?

JayMan                 posted 17 May 2007, 08:01 PM

I think Paul & his work can be likened to Katurian’s (and when I say Katurian, I imean the character not the username).  The acerbic wit & voice he likes to play with and layer in his work can be misconstrued as that of an adolescent.  But I believe that it is not, and that he is one of the more “confronting” writers of our time.  His violent and imposing subject matter sometimes can come across a bit blunt.  But He’s mid-twenties, give the guy a break!!!  Who doesn’t want to bluntly confront themes when they’re in their mid-twenties??

I haven’t seen his latest play (wrong city) but I know I know Paul and there isn’t a deadly theatre bone in his body.

Keep up the good work Pawl!