Russia, Freaks and Foreigners

James Macdonald

Description

Russia, Freaks and Foreigners is a collection of three thematically linked plays set against the backdrop of a fractured, post-Soviet Russian society. Written by acclaimed playwright James MacDonald, who has cerebral palsy, these performance texts critique accepted notions of normality within authority, offering various models of difference—physical, cultural, and moral—and their stories of dislocation. Their themes, contextualized here by companion essays, expand the boundaries of British drama and connect to the comic grotesque tradition by giving the “abnormal” a broad appeal. Russia, Freaks and Foreigners is a daring portrayal of disability from the inside.

 

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Theater
• Performing Arts
• Theatre
• General officer
• General
• Drama

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 août 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841502298
• Langue: English

Extrait

Russia, Freaks and Foreigners
Three Performance Texts
Russia, Freaks and Foreigners
Three Performance Texts
James MacDonald
To Mother, Pop, Susan and Inna Four of God s truly elect


First Published in the UK in 2008 by Intellect Books, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2008 by Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2008 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover Design: Gabriel Solomons Copy Editor: Holly Spradling Typesetting: Mac Style, Nafferton, E. Yorkshire
ISBN 978-1-84150-186-4/EISBN 978-1-84150-229-8
Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta.
C ONTENTS
Introduction
Part One: Texts
Bread and Circus Freaks
The Sweetheart Zone
Emigr s
Part Two: Essays
Getting to Know James MacDonald
Peter Thomson
Director s Notes
Martin Harvey
Freaks, Food and Fairy Tales: Confronting the Limits of Disability in Bread and Circus Freaks
Thomas Fahy
Epilogue
Su Elliott
Contributors
I NTRODUCTION
Russia, Freaks and Foreigners: Three Performance Texts does not constitute a trilogy in the formal sense, but several things serve to unite the texts and to justify their collection as a unified book. They are all texts whose first performances were directed by one man. Two of the three were written as part of an undergraduate module in interpretive acting, led by the same man. All three share thematic concerns with various forms of difference. Consummately, I hope, they provide the theatre reader with a dynamic experience of this complex and far-reaching subject - personally, socially, culturally.
Performance texts are primarily for performance, and their dissemination in book form necessitates a discussion of their performance characteristics. This is especially true of new texts (whose performance history is extremely short). I have been ideally served in this respect by having accompanying essays by colleagues of long standing who can discuss the texts in ways that newly published texts are not often discussed in print. Martin Harvey, who directed the performances, discusses the theatrical qualities of the texts; Peter Thomson has known my work for thirty years and gives a historical perspective on its genesis; Thomas Fahy has done extensive work on the literary/dramatic nature of difference and brings this to bear in a detailed analysis of Bread and Circus Freaks ; Su Elliott closes the volume with her reflections on what it was like to perform one of these texts. Their views were expressed independently, and it may well be that they even contradict one another in certain respects. But this is the essence of critical discourse, and any author is privileged indeed to have his/her work focused in this way. Whatever they say, each contributor is a MacDonald expert as well as a distinguished practitioner, and their comments can only enhance the reader s isolated perusal of these texts.
As for my own view (for what it is worth), I have always sought to employ disability much as Dostoyevsky uses epilepsy, to comment on the human condition as a whole. Many writers have used deformity in this way (Rabelais, Gogol, Nathanael West, Carson McCullers), and I feel in kindred spirit with them. Bread and Circus Freaks , for example, was intended to be a contemporary re-working of the Russian vaudeville, a comic play often centred on mistaken identity. As Peter Thomson has noted, questions of identity have rarely been absent from all my work, and Martin Harvey has given a partial glimpse into the reasons why. Transforming life into artefact, with regard to Circus Freaks , I meant the title to refer to all the characters, as Thomas Fahy notes, and for each character to do a turn in presenting her/his take on society. Each is somehow an outsider, and each has something distinctive to say about society. Without their separateness, they would not be outsiders.
I meant the play to be funny, and audiences have definite views not only on the subjects they accept as comic but also on the ways this comedy can be purveyed. Peter Thomson talks about this in relation to a 1984 play he helped produce in London. Peter is quite right that the agent who was helping me at the time had serious commercial misgivings about disability as a subject. She said she had had a terrible time trying to market A Day in the Death of Joe Egg and that the characters in my play were even more depressing to watch. A Times reviewer seemed to bear this out when he averred that Whose Life Is It Anyway? offers a far better view of disability than my play. But inasmuch as Brian Clarke s play is really about euthanasia, its disability statement could almost be seen as fascistic. And I ear-wigged on two patrons in wheelchairs who said of my play s verisimilitude, He d have to be disabled (in order) to know that.
Perhaps Peter is correct when he suggests that it takes direct knowledge of what he calls the other side to fully appreciate depictions of it. But shying away from a subject (for whatever reason) is hardly the best way to respond to it, and theatre has always been in the vanguard when it comes to tackling difficult subjects. Tom Fahy has done splendid work in examining the whole history of the freak show. But outlawing such exhibitions may simply result in removing deformity from the social agenda. One aim of the publication of all three texts is to place issues of deformity and dislocation squarely before the public in such a way that they must respond beyond polite detachment, and unrestrained laughter is a clear sign of honest engagement. In this way the performance of all three texts was an attempt to push back two boundaries - presenting the subject at all, and then challenging audiences to find the displays comic. Neither aim was carried out in a spirit of hostility toward the audience. I was not asking anyone to confront suppressed prejudices. But equally, failure to acknowledge a subject can be as cruel as actively promulgating it. For all the brutality of some of the characters behaviour, they do not flinch from the subjects of deformity and dislocation, and their candour was what we attempted to bring before audiences.
This was certainly so in the case of Martin Harvey s production of Bread and Circus Freaks , and so it has remained in our work with students on the other two texts in this volume, all of which has summoned a tremendous amount of courageous commitment from the performers. This may even exceed one author s fondest dream(s). Performers in the first play were willing to risk unpopularity on the progressive fringe to achieve something of devastating novelty, and then student performers have been eager to commit themselves to work that goes beyond progressive curriculum, involving workshop engagement with issues that have remained hidden for far too long. I cannot exaggerate the extent of this courage; indeed, I have no wish to in paying the fullest tribute to all the contributors to this volume (among whom I am happy to include Sam King, Roberta Mock and everyone else at Intellect). What you have done here is genuinely remarkable, as the life of this volume will clearly bear out. For this reason alone, I have high hopes (and unstinting gratitude) for it.
James MacDonald
P ART O NE : T EXTS
B READ AND C IRCUS F REAKS
A One Act Vaudeville
First performed at the Finborough Theatre, London, on 6 March 2002, under the direction of Martin Harvey and with the following cast:
PANIA ANDREYEVNA
Su Elliott
INNA IGOROVNA
Leah Fells
MARIANNA SELIGMAN
Leslie O Hara
OSIP PISHCHIK
Michael Bottle
VOLKOV
Stephen Harvey
Design
Kamal Desei
Russia Consultant
Inna Rodina
In the countryside surrounding Petersburg, winter.

Marianna (Leslie O Hara) and Pania (Su Elliott) struggle for control of Inna (Leah Fells). Bread and Circus Freaks , Finborough Theatre, March 2002. Photo: Marilyn Kingwill.
Settlement No. 7, some 70 kilometres from Petersburg, a village impacted by snow and by circumstance - the remnants of a collective farm. A bread shop immediately after the morning delivery. PANIA ANDREYEVNA, 42 but looking 15 years older and very thin, supports INNA IGOROVNA through the back door. INNA is nearly twenty but looks five years younger. Most distinctively, though, she is heavily spastic from cerebral palsy. PANIA stations INNA on a chair and begins lifting the bread trays from the floor to the counter .
INNA (After watching her for several seconds.) I wish I could help you.
PANIA: You what? (Preoccupied.) No...you can t do it.
INNA: If we could maybe carry the trays -
PANIA: ...I know. We d feel like millionaires. I d feel like a millionaire anyway. I d feel like I didn t need to work...and then I wouldn t employ you...and then you wouldn t work...You d be an outcast, for people to take pity on or worse...because pity soon turns to contempt...and then you might starve...they d look for your footprints in the snow...and then maybe some night - or maybe first light - someone would discover the corpse of an under-fed girl...half-eaten by wolves...and then they d say, Wasn t that the waif that used to work for Pania Andreyevna? I m sure of it. And then they d come looking for me...and charge me with murder after the fact...and all because I let you help me lift the trays. I wouldn t feel much like a millionaire then, would I? A million s not much good against a murder rap, is it? Especially if it s all an illusion. You can t pay a murder judge with it. If she felt she had a million, she could have showed more compassion to poor Inna Igorovna. That s what they d say...that s the verdict they d bring in on me