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Staging ‘The Other Scene’: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Contemporary British Political Drama
Abstract
In this essay we argue for a privileged relationship between the imaginary structure of the theatrical event and the imaginary structure of human subjectivity. We will examine in detail three examples of the considerable body of recent British drama which has been expressly concerned with political issues, in the light of Laplanche and Pontalis’s work in refining Freud’s ideas about Fantasy.1 As well as David Hare’s Plenty (staged 1978), Trevor Griffiths’s Occupations (staged 1970), and Howard Brenton’s Greenland (staged 1988), which all explore the relationship between what have been traditionally conceived of as discrete areas of human activity (the personal and the political), we will also refer briefly to a number of other works both by these writers and also by others such as Howard Barker, Caryl Churchill and David Edgar which address similar issues.2 Drawing on Laplanche and Pontalis we will read contemporary political theatre in the light of two linked themes: firstly, that all fantasies (those of the artist as much as those of the dreamer) are structurally dependent upon the organisation of fantasy described by Freud as the primal fantasies, and, secondly, that these fantasies are erotic and are organised through sexuality and sexual difference. In applying psychoanalytic thought to the question of theatrical representation we will offer an account of that ‘other’ scene which both lies behind and also organises the theatrical representation itself.
Theatre and performance studies; trauma studies; cultural studies; sociology and social anthropology; philosophy; classics.
Subcultures mainly emerge as a resistance to the status quo/ the Establishment. They create their own discourses/ languages and an escapist dream world of their own in which, they think, they will be momentarily happy, and will symbolically vomit their anger, as if they were in a carnival, as Bakhtin argues, where many voices are heard, and which deconstructs the norms of the Establishment. In relation to this idea, it might be argued that, similarly, rock bands’ aggressive manners while singing reflect their rebellious nature and resistance towards the mainstream culture. In a way, they exhibit carnivalesque characteristics through defying the rules with their own ways. David Hare, in his Teeth ’n’ Smiles (1975), which is set in the late 1960s, tells a similar rock band which mirrors its rebellious nature through rock ’n’ roll songs. The aggressive nature of this band and their songs, are, in fact, reflective of their disillusionment and may be an answer to the events or situations observed not only in Britain but also abroad such as May 1968 French students’ rebellion and Britain’s loss of power after World War II. It is also important to state that the frustrations observed in the 1960s as reflected in the play, in fact, reflect the frustration that Hare himself experienced when he was a student at Cambridge. In the light of the above-mentioned statements, this paper aims to discuss the relationship between Bakhtin’s idea of carnivalesque and the rock ’n’ roll band in Hare’s Teeth ’n’ Smiles, in terms of exhibiting their rebellious nature and of a momentary escape from frustrations resulting from the errors of the Establishment.
DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2013.v2n3p437
What is it that gives a particular piece of theatre an appeal which transcends the culture from which it originally emerged? The processes of translation and adaptation clearly have a role in the successful engagement of audiences of different periods and cultures with a particular play in performance; but are there certain themes and issues that transcend borders of time or place? Rona Munro's Iron, first produced at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh in 2002, has been subsequently translated into at least fifteen languages and licensed for production in approximately 21 countries. This article, using two complementary theoretical models of spectatorship and taking three productions (Edinburgh, Athens and Osaka) as case studies, proposes an ‘account’ of the engagement of the spectator, in both theoretical and practical terms, focusing on the relationship between the play and the spectator and considering how the performance is re-accommodated and re-read within three contemporary but contrasting social, artistic and theatrical contexts.
Rona Munro has been successfully writing for theatre, television and film for almost 25 years, and yet her work appears to have received very little scholarly attention. This article is a preliminary attempt to address this gap, offering a general overview of her work to date, and examining two of her stage plays in more detail.
We have also consulted the revised text of Occupations (Faber, 1980), the original edition of Plenty
- David Hare Plenty
- D Hare
Revolution in Poetic Language
- Julia Kristeva
A Case of Paranoia Running Counter to the Psychoanalytic Theory of the Disease
- Pontalis Laplanche
- Sigmund Freud
are now beginning to address this question of desire and fantasy within the larger political framework elsewhere; see Stuart HallBlue election, election blues
- Stuart Cultural
- Hall
Cultural critics, notably Stuart Hall, are now beginning to address this question of desire and fantasy within the larger political framework elsewhere; see Stuart Hall, ‘Blue election, election blues
- S Hall