Put Your Characters Through Hell
I'm never short of ideas. But I am often sorely challenged
to focus and whittle them down, working out what is most important in the story
and what or whose story am I ultimately telling. If I can't do this, the play doesn't
work.
A dear friend, playwright/director Stephen Beresford once
pointed out that I empathised too much with my characters, that in fact I was
loathe to hurt them. He said to me: "You must be like a Greek God!" and
with relish: "Put your characters
through hell." It's a thought that
keeps me analyzing my motives as a write.
Am I treating these characters as friends? Professional boundaries must be applied. Who is to stage an intervention between
myself and my characters...?
The Love of Other
Confession: I often become fascinated by my central male
characters. Excuse: the sole female in
our house, I am surrounded by males...
And yet I am writing a woman's story .
Both men and women may write authentic male and female characters. Yet gender is a strong factor in how we view
the world, as is race, economic privilege etc.
For this reason it is crucial that both genders, and all races be
adequately represented in theatre and film – until we are all so prolific that
we begin to see the world through the lens of the other. Unconsciously, our ideas about our society
and the world are reinforced or changed through the art we view. And yes, series appearing on HBO are mind-shaping
art. Even “The Kardashians”!
Although I often empathize with men, I can only empathize with
them from the outside looking in. I am
energized and intellectually stimulated by apparent differences between the
genders, analyzed in psycho-physical terms. I think we are more similar than not, through
the fact of our embodied humanity. Much
as across cultures, or the real/perceived boundaries of society and class and
race etc. a great commonality exists.
This condition of humanity can unite us in shared understanding if we
allow conditions to ripen...
The Archetype Within
A next evolution for the two genders in seeking equity and
nourishment within a male/female partnership is to acknowledge and seek to
understand some of these more typical differences, while still treating one's
partner/children/friends /colleagues as distinct individuals. It is also my
belief that we all carry archetypal male and female characteristics within
ourselves. Much of my work seems to be
about this, an attempt to unite the male and female within.
It appears that my male characters are giving voice to an
outgoing, active side of
myself, the more psychologically aware side - whereas my
female
characters are harder for me to discover. Mysterious and
introverted, they appear to hide from me as I write in much
the way I hide from myself!
It’s suffocating in here! But ultimately in each new piece I
am striving to bring out my ‘female’ voice more centrally. My focus as I whittle down in a play spotlights
the female character/s.
The Ruler is Watched
Women have watched men closely since time immemorial. Reflecting on a time not so long ago in
Europe (and still current in much of the world) in which the man has the
final say and is center of the household, I can imagine the women in a
household watching the male center like a hawk, attempting to guess his next
move. And what’s more I have seen this happen. And done it myself…
I had the opportunity of staying for a prolonged visit with family members (in one of
the top ten poorest nations in the world) who are in this situation today. The culture is a classically macho one. The
women in the family tend to hide their motivations and their activities in
order to gain small freedoms. Their brothers and fathers are 'allowed' to interrogate and berate the women in a way that would be
completely counter-cultural in reverse. The women defend, in soft voices, but never
attack. They often lie to protect
themselves.
Education is Crucial
As a voice teacher I was struck at how high the voices of
the women are...without exception. They’ve learned to manipulate - a natural
defense of the disempowered... Their
worlds are enclosed; the subject of their conversation: their neighbors and
other family members. In this culture too, there is a greater valuing of the woman as the center of the home, a deep loving of the mother, a greater embracing and caring of older people. Family is truly valued.
On the other hand, the women have had very
little access to education and know nothing of the world outside. Theirs is a seraglio of invisible yet
tangible enclosures. Education is a door
to one’s own world, which furthermore can open endlessly onto other
worlds. The women in the family who have
education are different, although they still have had to bow to
their husbands. Those women may stand out in the family and be discouraged by the other women from leaving the home to work. If anyone does not feel
concern about the attempt in some parts of the world to deny education to
women, they need to make these connections.
The best way to maintain control over a person or a society is to deny
them education. Is this not the present
racial inequity in our society today here and now? Poverty is an oppression multiplying itself
within the hearts of its victims.
Education is a way out. And by
education, I simply mean access to knowledge and the possibility of using that
knowledge.
Gender as a License to Abuse
While the men go out and take enormous license, particularly
in terms of unrestrained sexual freedom the women must stay indoors more or
less, traveling between the market and their home, or other family members
homes, their whereabouts questioned on a daily basis. Friendships with women outside of the family
are regarded with suspicion. 'Who knows
what those women might be plotting.' Infidelity
is not unheard of for women but it is the norm for the men in this culture. Clarifying the heading of this paragraph, at
it’s most extreme, this is a place where armed thugs wait outside of schools
and steal young girls. They do so
without consequence. Most of these children
are never seen again. The few who
return may commit suicide. The violence endemic to this place has come about
partly through prolonged civil war (an effect of endless colonization by a
number of European/American entities both overt and covert), corrupt
government, the West’s thirst for drugs.
An entire blog is required to give this discussion justice.
It is important to acknowledge that this type of violence is
also alive in wealthier, colonizing cultures.
Public outcry, laws and law enforcement, a greater ability to protect
our children and greater empowerment of women have forced it underground.
Getting back to centuries of women watching men, it came to
me that negative stereotypes about women being manipulative, conniving,
deceptive and gossipy have come about entirely as a result of disempowerment. Think about negative stereotypes of the poor
and unprivileged today. Where do disempowerment and stereotype convene?
Hit by Love the Drug
In our own culture, I think women often find that when first
love hits, their lives are subsumed by the male object of this love (much as I am distracted
by my male characters in the first flush of writing, for indeed writing a play
is to me like being very much in love)! I
spoke to a married male friend about this, whose wife is a younger woman in her
early twenties. She followed his
movements closely. Her world revolved around him. It appeared that she herself resented this absorption in him and wanted to strike
out and do some of the things that he was doing in his life. Yet she continued to make him the center. He had apparently encouraged her to broaden her own horizons. I tried to
explain that as a married woman in her mid-twenties she might even be
biologically wired to focus on her husband, as everything in her being is
preparing for creating a family whether she actually wants to have children or
not. Just a theory…which seemed
appropriate to this particular couple.
No, actually I was at the time reading “The Female Brain” by Louann
Brizendine, M.D. and was very intrigued by the power of biology as described by
her in this book...
Reading this book, I recognized much of what Brizendine describes. As women grow older, they put
themselves at the center of the circle - having experienced the opposite posture from early
(heterosexual) relationships (I shall have to ask a friend who is in a female
partnership how she sees this playing out for herself).
Women at this time of life engage in a self-focus akin to the younger male, focusing on their
careers, caring less what people say about them, become more self-directed and
confident. Women's careers are sometimes forged
later in life, particularly artistic work. It is fortunate when this coincides with a
male partner wanting to stay home more and focus in on family a bit more. Of
course many young women are striking out as well. But it still appears to be a choice for women between children and personal advancement/development
one way or another during different stages in life.
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