Theatre Upstairs Research Articles

Anger, Faith and Bewildered Fragments of Self: The Shaping of Ethos in an Argentinean Translation of Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis

4.48 Psychosis is British playwright Sarah Kane’s final play. Its opening took place at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in London in June 2000, only a few months after Kane’s suicide at King’s College Hospital. The initial reception of the play was surrounded by controversy in the United Kingdom, with some reviewers and critics interpreting the theatrical text as primarily autobiographical (Urban 2011, p. 304; Claycomb 2012, p. 113). Informed by a socio-discursive perspective, which specifically looks at the construction of ethos (Amossy 2009, 2010; Author 2017; Author 2019, 2020), this research aims at contributing to the study of subjectivity in translated drama. Focusing on Rafael Spregelburd’s Argentinean Spanish translation of 4.48 Psychosis, published by Losada in 2006, we explore the shaping of subjectivity in the translated dramatic text highlighting the way in which the persona of the translator builds within and beyond the translated text. The case under study features the task of a drama translator who, probably on account of his vital presence in the Argentinean theatrical landscape, is often perceived as integral to the performance text. In this article, we will argue that an analysis of 4.48 Psychosis and, for that matter, of the translation of the play, based on the facts of the playwright’s life, may lack in substance and is, therefore, unproductive to assess the complex quality of the piece. While Spregelburd’s translation uses dramatic strategies and techniques that successfully foster the image or ethos of a rupturist playwright, it still stresses the autobiographical character often attributed to the text. This is particularly evident in the female gender construction of the main voice in the play, which is ambiguous in the source text. Our analysis therefore specifically looks at certain subjective forms in the translated text such as the use of inflected female marked adjectives. In a complementary fashion, our study also identifies the use of masculine forms and masculine generic forms to translate indeterminate forms in the original, which help establish antagonisms between female and male construed identities in the target text. This view, which becomes dominant in the translated text, is reinforced by the image or ethos of the translator as this is shaped within the translated dramatic text and its paratexts. Our analysis also explores the subjective construction of the translator’s persona and positioning in the target dramatic text and system. Assessed within the framework of Spregelburd’s whole production, detailed consideration is given to the use of paratextual devices as well as the translator’s own declarations in interviews.

Making New Theatre Together: The First Writers' Group at the Royal Court Theatre and Its Legacy within the Young Writers' Programme

Making New Theatre TogetherThe First Writers' Group at the Royal Court Theatre and Its Legacy within the Young Writers' Programme Nicholas Holden (bio) The reconstruction of the Royal Court between 1996 and 2000 saw the theatre relocated to the heart of London's West End. The Court's delayed return to Sloane Square, along with the arrival of Ian Rickson as the theatre's new artistic director (1998–2006), allowed for a period of reflection and adjustment as the theatre approached the new millennium. Under Stephen Daldry's leadership (1992–1998), the Royal Court enjoyed one of the most successful periods in its history, with new plays by exciting young playwrights such as Sarah Kane, Joe Penhall, Mark Ravenhill, and Rebecca Prichard all contributing to what was hailed as the "renaissance of new writing."1 Through Rickson's appointment, the Royal Court returned to Sloane Square with new intentions that rejected the "stack 'em high, sell 'em cheap" 1990s paradigm, which saw around fifty new plays produced for short runs in the Court's Theatre Upstairs between 1994 and 1997. Rickson's administration replaced it with a more considered culture of growth and development for new playwrights at the theatre.2 The rebranding of the Court's long-standing Young Peoples' Theatre as the Young Writers' Programme (YWP) and the subsequent relocation of that initiative to a building adjacent to the Royal Court known as the Site proved to be an early sign of Rickson's aspirations for a more unified theatre. Launched in 1998, the Young Writers' Programme sought to focus the Court's work with young people on playwriting, and this implemented what Catherine Love calls a "culture of development" that, importantly, aligned with the Court's identity as a writers' theatre.3 In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Young Writers' [End Page 248] Programme provided the foundation to the careers of playwrights such as Lucy Prebble, Duncan Macmillan, Polly Stenham, and Mike Bartlett, and those writers, in turn, featured regularly on the stages of the Royal Court and in British theatre more widely. The inception of the Young Writers' Programme, therefore, went on to provide an unsurpassed model of success for the Court that has since proved invaluable to the theatre's production of new plays by new writers. The achievements of the writers who have emerged out of the Royal Court's Young Writers' Programme can be measured through the production of their plays in the United Kingdom, the United States, and across Europe. In addition, the work of the Court's International department, headed by Elyse Dodgson, has ensured that the theatre's work with writers has become a truly international endeavor. But in spite of the YWP's significant accomplishments in its fourteen-year history, academic engagement within this area of the Court remains limited. Indeed, it is only Love's 2015 article that has looked to bring some much-needed focus and scholarly analysis to what she describes as the "overwhelmingly successful" structure of the Royal Court's Young Writers' Programme.4 But the YWP is not the Royal Court's first attempt to provide an infrastructure that would offer support for a new generation of playwrights at the theatre. Such ambitions can be traced back to 1958, two years after the English Stage Company first began its residency of the Royal Court, where a writers' group was first established by George Devine in an attempt to further relationships between the Royal Court and a number of aspiring young playwrights of the time. In contrast to the Young Writers' Programme, whose history, as I have noted above, is in the early stages of academic analysis, the purpose, practice, and impact of the first Writers' Group at the Royal Court can be largely comprehended from the recollections of that time in the autobiographies of the group's members and through many of the publications on the history of the Royal Court.5 It is the purpose of this article, therefore, to revisit what should be regarded as the first attempt to bring a new generation of young playwrights to the Royal Court, through the Writers' Group in 1958, and...

Materialising the Audience: Tim Crouch's Sight Specifics in ENGLAND and The Author

This essay considers Tim Crouch's two most recent plays, ENGLAND and The Author, in relation to the performance spaces for which they were commissioned – respectively, a white-walled art gallery (the Fruitmarket, Edinburgh) and a black box studio theatre (the Royal Court's Theatre Upstairs, London). It examines the ways in which Crouch explores and subverts the ideological particularities of the gallery and theatre space, particularly with respect to conventions around spectatorial response. Building on a distinction drawn by art critic Brian O'Doherty, the essay proposes that the disembodied ‘Eye’ conventionally assumed by both gallery and end-on theatre auditorium is displaced by these plays in favour of an awkwardly materialized Spectator, both emancipated from the collective and implicated in the proceedings.

Saxon Violence and Social Decay in Sarah Kane’s Phaedra’s Love and Tony Harrison’s Prometheus

Saxon Violence and Social Decay in Sarah Kane’s Phaedra’s Love and Tony Harrison’s Prometheus Hallie Rebecca Marshall (bio) At first glance the dramatic works of Sarah Kane have little in common with those of Tony Harrison beyond their rejection of social realist drama. Even the history of their critical reception is completely at odds with one another. When Sarah Kane’s first play, Blasted, was staged at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in 1995, the critical response was so vicious that it made headlines. Jack Tinker (1995) wrote in the Daily Mail: “For utterly and entirely disgusted I was by a play which appears to know no bounds of decency, yet has no message to convey by way of excuse.” When her second play, Phaedra’s Love, with which this paper is concerned, was staged at London’s Gate Theatre in 1996, the critical reception was no warmer. In contrast, Harrison’s first play in London, The Misanthrope, was effusively praised by critics. The “Commentary” section of the Times Literary Supplement (16 March 1973) wrote: It must be many years since London’s dramatic critics went out to praise the translation of a classic—the usual ploy is to insist how much has been lost in the process. This time, though, Tony Harrison has seen himself turned into the golden boy of theatre by his brilliant and concise rendition of Molière into rhyming couplets. Leaving aside the view of critics—though it should be noted that the reputations of both authors have been subjected to the shifting tides of critical opinion—these snippets of reviews point to the fundamental differences in approach that each author is known for. Harrison’s work in the theatre is associated with classical drama and traditional verse forms that have long since fallen out of fashion on the British stage. His drama depends upon form, language, and intertextual engagement with canonical texts of the Western theatrical tradition for its dramatic power. Kane’s plays on the other hand were on the forefront of what has become known as “In-Yer-Face Theatre” “or “New Brutalism,” which is marked by the [End Page 165] rejection of the norms of the contemporary British stage in terms of language and form while embracing explicit sexual and violent content. Despite the differences in the works of these two authors, this paper will argue that there is substantial overlap between two works produced in the 1990s: Kane’s Phaedra’s Love and Harrison’s Prometheus. Both works are built upon classical models; Phaedra’s Love took Seneca’s Phaedra as its starting point, while Prometheus takes the Aeschylean Prometheus Bound as its primary intertext. While the ways in which the two authors engage with their classical models are very different, both use their work to engage with issues of social decay in post-Thatcherite Britain. That Harrison would choose a classical model comes as no surprise. Since his translation of Aeschylus’s Oresteia for Peter Hall’s production at the National Theatre in 1981, most of Harrison’s dramatic works have engaged with classical literature. Prometheus is Harrison’s first, and to date only, feature length film/poem. He had originally conceived of it, however, as a theatrical work. Michael Kustow (1999) has written of the original conception: “Tony wanted to do Aeschylus’s play in the open air, on the slag heaps of a Yorkshire coalfield. Ferrybridge was his site, with its coal mountains and cooling towers. The slag would become the Caucasus to which Prometheus would be chained.” When the play became instead a film, its geographical scope was expanded to well beyond the slag heaps and cooling towers of Ferry-bridge. Unlike the Aeschylean original, which takes place in a single location, Harrison’s film/poem ranges across Western and Eastern Europe, beginning at the slag heaps and cooling towers of Yorkshire and ending on the shores of Eleusis, birthplace of Aeschylus. The locations are unified by their all having been blighted by the destructive power of Prometheus’s gift to humankind, from the coalmines of Northern England to the decaying infrastructure of postindustrial Eastern Europe, from Dresden to Auschwitz. Prometheus, as in...

Genotype, phenotype: upstairs, downstairs in the family of cardiomyopathies.

I loved Upstairs, Downstairs . . . you identify with the downstairs people while vicariously enjoying the life of the upstairs people. —Alistair Cooke, Host of Masterpiece Theatre Upstairs, Downstairs was beloved by a generation of Americans who became entranced by this classic story of an upstairs Edwardian family and its downstairs household. The series chronicled the daily repartee and tangled relationships between the upstairs and downstairs contingents, a tale laced with all of the ingredients of human complexity. Despite their diverse perspectives and backgrounds, the lives at 165 Eaton Place became entwined by their core values, conserved traits, and the shared challenges of the day. In terms of human biology, Upstairs, Downstairs was a classic saga of the interplay between genes and environment. In the family of human cardiomyopathies, another complex story is unfolding, this time around the divergent backgrounds and perspectives of clinical cardiology and molecular genetics. In this cardiological version of Upstairs, Downstairs, the theme is Genotype, Phenotype, and the initial storyline revolves around the precept that the primary determinant of the clinical phenotype is the molecular genotype. The clinical viewpoint has been underpinned by noninvasive analyses that can quantitatively assess differences in chamber volume, wall thickness, hypertrophy, systolic versus diastolic dysfunction, and outflow tract obstruction, leading to three clinical subtypes: hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), and restrictive cardiomyopathy (RCM). The molecular viewpoint has been driven by: 1) the discovery of diverse cardiomyopathic genotypes, resulting in a detailed examination of the differential phenotypic effects of mutations in a myriad of sarcomeric and cytoskeletal genes, 2) cataloguing the effects of missense mutations by the severity of the charge change within a given disease gene, 3) evaluating differences between haploinsufficiency and missense mutations, and 4) correlating these diverse disease genotypes with differences in the severity, time of onset, and diversity of the cardiomyopathy phenotype. The theme of this early script is that there may be a specific set of molecular pathways

Spinning Into Butter, and: Far Away, and: Credible Witness, and: The Bogus Woman, and: The Mother (review)

Credible Witness. By Timberlake Wertenbaker. Royal Court, Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, London. 15 February 2001.

A Modo Suo (A Fable): A Production History

Tony Nardi and I recently met to discuss his second play, A Modo Suo (A Fable), written in an Italianized Calabrian dialect and published here for the first time in an English translation by Antonino Mazza. The play was first staged at Canadian Stage Company’s Theatre Upstairs on Berkeley in April and May of 1990. It was produced independently by Tony, actor Mary Long and me and co-directed by Tony and Italian commedia master Alberto Fortuzzi. It featured Tony in the central role of Raffaele; Mary Long; Frank Crudele; Dom Fiore; Lucy Filippone; and me as Linda, the daughter. While A Modo Suo (A Fable) secured substantial funding from both government and private sources, was the subject of over twenty articles and reviews and received a Dora Mavor Moore Award nomination for Best New Play in the Small Theatre Division, from a historical point of view the production is important because it provided a focus for a number of questions about the production, reception and critical evaluation of plays written in a language other than English or French that are as relevant today as they were a decade ago. The mere fact that the play was performed in Calabrese by a group of professional Equity actors in an English-language mainstream theatre in downtown Toronto rather than in a local Italian church basement by amateurs caused a stir among the English and Italian media.

Fireweeds: The Diary of a Dream

The busy first day hubbub of the Muskoka Festival’s annual Music Theatre Writers’ Colony. As an actress, I will be assigned to two different projects which we will rehearse all week and then present as staged readings with music for an invited audience. None of this is really new to me – this is my fourth season at Muskoka Festival. I know that this will be a busy, hectic, challenging, frustrating and rewarding week. After the usual early morning meet-and-greet with coffee and doughnuts and a welcome from artistic director Michael Ayoub and Colony co-ordinator Patrick Young, my first stop is rehearsal for my main project assignment – a new musical called Fireweeds by a writer I have not met – Cathy Elliott. We have been exiled to a basement room known as the “Grotto” with a tinny sounding electronic keyboard and the ever-present humming of the huge air conditioning units that service the theatre upstairs. No one is very happy about this – least of all our musical director Stephen Woodjetts. Along with director Patrick Young, veteran music theatre performer Diane Stapley and Muskoka Young Company member Robin Zionce, we await the arrival of our playwright / lyricist / composer. I don’t really remember her arrival – just that suddenly she is there – tiny and quiet – with a huge grin flashing out from behind masses of reddish curls. She seems nervous and shy – almost apologetic – until she sits down at the piano to play us some of her music. Her soft chameleon-hazel eyes sparkle alive; her small hands powerfully attack the keys; and the cool musty underground air of our basement room is filled with one of the warmest, richest, and most compelling voices I have ever heard. We read through the rough sketch outline of a half-hour first draft version of Fireweeds, stopping for Cathy to sing song after song. At the end of it all I find myself wanting it to go on and on. I can’t stand for the voice to end – the voice of her songs, the voice of her words, the voice of the soul of this unearthly little being that can reach right down into your heart and take hold and not let go.

The Search for Epic Drama: Edward Bond's Recent Work

In our recent study of Edward Bond's works for the stage, we noted in the Preface: “Given that Bond is a developing writer, this book is hardly the last word. ” Since writing The Bundle (July-October 1977), Bond has completed Orpheus, “a story in six scenes,” which, with music by Hans Werner Henze and choreography by William Forsythe, was performed by the Stuttgart Ballet Company in March 1979. Orpheus was written between December 1977 and February 1978. After Orpheus came a full-length play , The Worlds, written during Bond's tenure of the Northern Arts Literary Fellowship in the universities of Durham and Newcastle, and first performed in March 1979 by a cast of students at the Newcastle Playhouse. The Worlds was subsequently performed by the Royal Court Theatre's Activists Youth Theatre Club at the Theatre Upstairs in November 1979 and received its first professional production at the New Half Moon Theatre, London in June 1981. Published with The Worlds was an important group of theoretical writings, developed over two years, and titled The Activists Papers (see note 13 below). A libretto, The English Cat, followed The Worlds . It was written between March and May 1979 with music again by Henze and, after a series of postponements, is to receive its premiere at Schwetzingen in May 1983. Two more full-length plays followed. Restoration: A Pastoral, written between July 1979 and October 1980, received its first performance at the Royal Court in July 1981. Summer: A European Play goes into rehearsal in December 1981 for production in January 1982 in the Cottesloe auditorium of the National Theatre. In note form in April 1980, Summer was completed in January 1981. As I write, another play, “The Human Cannon,” the first notes for which are dated July 1979, is in progress. The catalogue above illustrates both a remarkably steady output of work and emphasises the truth of my opening sentence, for in these works , Bond has developed the theoretical and practical range of his work to a remarkable degree.

The Search for Epic Drama: Edward Bond's Recent Work

In our recent study of Edward Bond's works for the stage, we noted in the Preface: “Given that Bond is a developing writer, this book is hardly the last word. ” Since writing The Bundle (July-October 1977), Bond has completed Orpheus, “a story in six scenes,” which, with music by Hans Werner Henze and choreography by William Forsythe, was performed by the Stuttgart Ballet Company in March 1979. Orpheus was written between December 1977 and February 1978. After Orpheus came a full-length play , The Worlds, written during Bond's tenure of the Northern Arts Literary Fellowship in the universities of Durham and Newcastle, and first performed in March 1979 by a cast of students at the Newcastle Playhouse. The Worlds was subsequently performed by the Royal Court Theatre's Activists Youth Theatre Club at the Theatre Upstairs in November 1979 and received its first professional production at the New Half Moon Theatre, London in June 1981. Published with The Worlds was an important group of theoretical writings, developed over two years, and titled The Activists Papers (see note 13 below). A libretto, The English Cat, followed The Worlds . It was written between March and May 1979 with music again by Henze and, after a series of postponements, is to receive its premiere at Schwetzingen in May 1983. Two more full-length plays followed. Restoration: A Pastoral, written between July 1979 and October 1980, received its first performance at the Royal Court in July 1981. Summer: A European Play goes into rehearsal in December 1981 for production in January 1982 in the Cottesloe auditorium of the National Theatre. In note form in April 1980, Summer was completed in January 1981. As I write, another play, “The Human Cannon,” the first notes for which are dated July 1979, is in progress. The catalogue above illustrates both a remarkably steady output of work and emphasises the truth of my opening sentence, for in these works , Bond has developed the theoretical and practical range of his work to a remarkable degree.

Joan MacIntosh of The Performance Group

During this past December and January, The Performance Group undertook a rather rigorous performing schedule, doing their four-hour Mother Courage [T66] at 7 PM followed by a midnight show of The MacIntost Project [T70] in the theatre's upstairs space. Joan MacIntosh played the lead role in both productions. (Marilyn actually used two casts playing simultaneously in a mirror image production; Elizabeth LeCompte also played the part of The Star.) At one point MacIntost told Richard Schechner, her husband and a director of the Group, that she had decided that Mother Courage dies and goes to heaven where she becomes Marilyn Monroe.Since the members of the Group all participate in cleaning the theatre, setting props, and about an hour and a half of pre-show notes and warm-up exercises, this meant being at the theatre from 4:30 PM to 2:30 or 3 AM besides whatever other rehearsals, classes, and day-today chores were involved.

Challenging the silence

The problems created by the policy of apartheid for the theatre in South Africa are discussed by the playwright, actor and producer Athol Fugard in this interview with Michael Coveney, Assistant Editor of Plays and Players (November 1973). Athol Fugard was in London to produce his play Sizwe Bansi Is Dead, which he had written in collaboration with the two actors taking part in it, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, and which has been very well received both at The Theatre Upstairs in London and on its tour of the provinces in November and December.