So we had our first day with Eva Dahlman yesterday, without the actors, just her, myself, Ragnar, Anja, Arsen, Katta and Bam Bam, talking about the two scripts and then each of us got to talk about the particular scene we'd chosen to do and explain what it meant to us, how we wanted to see it performed and staged, and so on. And then Eva Dahlman gave us a lot of tips on how to go about, first continuing the preparatory work on our scenes, then preparing for the meeting with our actors, and how to approach the scenes with them and how to direct them.
It's so scary. I got Simon Norrthon, whom I'd wished for from the beginning, he's amazing and I've admired him since I was a kid, even though I haven't seen him in much since he's mostly been doing theatre and I haven't really been to any theatres in Stockholm. But he was in one of my favourite films that I show with my mum as a kid, Pensionat Oskar, and he was also in Hugo's midterm film, Altona. And Caroline's told me that he's great, both to work with and as a person, but I'm still terrified, what if what I say doesn't make any sense to him, what if I don't have enough grasp on the text and the play, what if I do anything at all (which is very likely when it comes to me) that makes me look stupid? Etc, etc, etc... so those are the regular jitters. Here are the more pressing, and more justified, ones:
I've chosen a scene which is a dialogue between the main character and her doctor/shrink. I'd decided on the scenery and the blocking and the, everything, basically, based on the fact that there were two characters in the scene, talking to each other, and would be performed by two actors, on the stage, talking to each other... well, guess what, I get one actor. So my whole prep goes out the window as does half of my text analysis, because unless I want the poor actor to behave like he's suffering from dissociative personality disorder and be both characters and talk to himself, the scene has to be performed like the main character re-telling the story of how the conversation with her shrink went when they convinced him/her to start taking medicine, so then everything in the dialogue, including the shrink's lines, are told by the main character, and are then subject to his/her interpretation, judgement, censorship, you name it, it's not objective. For one, it's from her memory, and memories in themselves are not reliable, and her thoughts overall aren't reliable as it is (This is Sarah Kane's Psychosis 4.48, by the way!) and her interpretation of them is very likely coloured by her feelings for her shrink, so biased, to say the least. This makes the most sense to me. And it took me half the day and then the entire ride home and browsing for a bit in another grocery store like a crazy lady muttering to herself with the script clutched to my chest, to figure this out. He is re-telling the story of how he ended up taking medicine, against his better knowledge, and what do you know, I was right, kind of thing... so the second problem then would be, since this is not happening in the now as I'd planned it would be from the beginning, it's already happened, where is he now and why is he re-telling this story and to whom is he talking? He's not talking to himself, he's not sitting in his room muttering under his breath, he's not repeating anything, he's teling it like a story, like he has an audience... so is he actually talking to the audience, and is the audience representing the world, whoever is listening, whoever cares, to whom it may concern... if this is a chapter in his suicide note, I guess that would make sense... but most of the text is addressed directly to the shrink, like the suicide note is written for her/him, so is he really telling all of this to the shrink? Why? They were there, they know what happened. But what if they forgot? What if they think they can just forgot and move on with their lives and shake off any feelings of guilt and pretend they were just doing their job and this was just another unfortunate statistic? No way, and this is why I'm writing this letter, this is why, to let you and the whole world know that this is your fault, all your fault, and my father's fault and my mother's fault, but I blame you, because I loved you because you got me to love you and you got to me and you touched me deeper than anyone ever has and no-one is allowed to touch me but you did and then you betrayed me and lied to me and you abandoned me; my last hope, the one who was going to save me, you didn't and that's why I'm dead. So fuck you if you think you're moving on and sleeping soundly next to your partner at night. I want you to feel bad. I want you to feel bad for the rest of your life. I want you to know what you did to me. You and all the world. I'm taking full responsibility of my own actions, I took my own life, I don't deny that, but you helped, and I want the world and you to know that. You helped kill me... Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. But it's one thing to think it. How do you show it? How do you stage it? Is he standing in the middle of his room at the hospital, walls closing in and all that, screaming at the ceiling, or has he conjured up an image of the shrink before his mind's eye and is spitting the words into their imaginary face, or is the shrink just outside the door, somewhere nearby in the corridor, or are there other doctors outside, that he's trying to reach out to, to actually make himself heard, or is he addressing the audience in a sort of out-of-body experience, the actor embodying the voice of the character in their handwriting of the sucide note?
Questions, questions, questions...
It's a great play though. I can't believe I've missed her and never heard of her before. Sarah Kane. I'm going to read everything about her and all of her plays now. She was brilliant. The whole thing is really sad and morbid but beautiful at the same time. Because this play, Psychosis 4.48, is the last thing she wrote, and it is her suicide note, and shortly after she wrote it she hung herself in her room at the hospital. And of course, knowing that, it makes the whole experience working with the play all the more eerie, like it means more, not because she actually did do it in the end, but because every single word is true beyond doubt, and you know that she's poured out her heart and soul, the very last remnants of both, out onto the page and left them behind, and now you're holding them and can only hope to get anywhere near doing them justice... and of course that adds to the jitters as well. Another scary thing is how much I can relate to so much of it. I've never had a psychosis and I've never had electric shock treatments, which by the way, I didn't know they still used, and was really shocked (no pun intended) to find out that they do, in Sweden even, and is that even safe, and how do they know, but that's besides the point... I can relate to everything she's feeling and thinking. But then again, I think most people can, at least if they analyse the text, because the circumstances may be extreme, but her thoughts and feelings are every person's thoughts and feelings, they're human thoughts and feelings, human weakness and strength, human complexes and complexities, human hybris, human despair, human humour as a self-defence mechanism; and that's what I love most about Sarah Kane and this play, her sense of humor, through it all, even her darkest moments, she still has a sense of humor about it all, and herself, gallows humour. I love it. Like in my scene, she says (and I'm translating from the Swedish translation of the play because I've yet to find the original, so I'm sure it's better put initially...) "I dreamed I went to see a doctor and she told me I only had eight minutes to live, and that's after I'd been sitting in her fucking waiting room for half an hour."
Check out Simon Norrthon and Sarah Kane. And look after yourselves.
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4.48 Psychosis by Sarah KaneMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
How do you review a suicide note? It's beautiful, it's dark, it's funny, it's tragic, it's morbid, it's complex, it's to-the-point, it's hopeful, it's hopeless, it's logical, it's chaotic, it's there, in your face, it's the truth. She has, had, a beautiful way with words, an amazing sense of humour even in her darkest moments, she writes with such clarity, even when nothing is clear to her, she writes in rhythms and images and it's like poetry, or music, and every single word is important, means something, symbolically or directly, it's what's left of her heart and soul, poured out and smeared across a page and it's ruthless and mean and vengeful and, maybe, forgiving at the same time. It's not the words of a victim. It's not a plea for sympathy, or empathy, or forgiveness, or even to be understood. It's a farewell speech, it's a declaration of love, and hate, and it's a statement, she's taking full responsibility of her own actions, but she's not letting the others, who share the blame for why this happened, she's not letting them off the hook either, she's brutal, she's desperate, she's honest, she's waving at us from the space in-between, or she could be flipping us off, or she could be doing a peace sign, it doesn't matter, she was here, now she's gone, these are her parting words, and they're what they are.
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1 comment:
Your life must be totally awesome :D..
I wish I never had to say I miss you :P
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