Experiments with Female Characters in Howard Barker's The Castle - Book Report/Review Example

Critically explore and account for experiments with Female Characters in Howard Barker's The Castle (1985) Howard Barker: playwright, poet, visual artist, and essayist. Barker encompasses the total, complete and methodical approach to theatre and the construction of mise-en-scene. In this he shares much in common with European theatre practitioners, such as Antonin Artaud and Bertolt Brecht. He is not typical of the British theatre establishment and has often alienated himself from them. He is not the type of artist to leave the script at the rehearsal door and not engage with the process beyond that. He is detailed, descriptive and respectful of the discipline of dramaturgy. Barker has gone so far as to formulate his own theory of theatre and performance: Theatre of Catastrophe. This essay will explore the process of experimentation that centres upon female characters in Barker's The Castle (1985). It will also incorporate Barker's theoretical principles of Theatre of Catastrophe and his approach to the structures of composition and narrative. Howard Barker uses many different types of resources in creating his work. He adopts the structure and form of other playwrights' works to evolve his own distinctive style. Amongst the material he uses and absorbs, as influences, are Shakespeare, Middleton and Chekhov. To these can be added the Bible as a performative source as well as historical and mythic characters: such as Judith and Holofernes, and Alexander the Great in The Possibilities (1987). He uses characters that are symbolic and representative in role of social types and fictional archetypes and stereotypes. With these he paints broad and bold images on stage in his works that can be viewed as allegories of society. He manipulates theatre as a form of communication in this way in order to represent and make capital from his, often radical, political views. Barker discovered in his career that theatre should not be a zone of complacency and comfort, and so he strived to politicize and radicalize what he saw as the safety of the established practices. As Amanda Price states in her introduction to the second edition of Barker's Arguments for a Theatre: Barker's interrogation of the role of playwright and the nature and status of the art he produces is specific to the period in which he finds himself writing for the theatre [Britain of the 1970s and 1980s]. The crisis he perceives to characterize the contemporary British stage threatens the extinction not only of the artists who work within its sphere but also of the audience it serves. Without acknowledgment of this crisis the whole corpus of theatrical endeavour is in danger of becoming a corpse to which we give the last rites in empty auditoria.1 This is a powerful and provocative line of examination by Price, considering, in no uncertain terms, the death of theatre in Britain. But then Barker provokes powerful responses and has an uncompromising attitude that requires similar passion from those who appraise his works. One cannot be neutral when confronted by his plays or his opinions. In 2004 Barker gave a rare interview on the occasion of his play Scenes from an Execution (1985) in performance at the Dundee Rep Theatre. In this interview he succinctly and clearly describes what he does and why he does it.2 What remains clear is that he does not intend through his work to provide any answers, or any clear, comfortable solutions: 'I am a speculative artist, I ask what might be, I don't narrate what is'. At the basis of the formulation of his theory of theatre is the superior nature of Tragedy as a dramatic form. After he wrote The Castle he published part of a manifesto in The Guardian newspaper (once known for its left wing principles) outlining his thoughts on what theatre should be composed of: 'Fortynine asides for a tragic theatre' (1986).3 This was in imitation of Martin Luther's 'Ninety-five theses' that he nailed to the door of Wittenburg Church in Germany in 1517. This act is seen as the symbolic commencement of the European religious Reformation. Barker, in symbolically nailing his manifesto to the masthead of a left wing newspaper in the 1980s, was declaring his radical position and making a stand for the change that he saw was necessary in the arts in Britain. The sixteenth century English Reformation in Barker's view also signalled the beginning of a new attitude in the English and their language of performance: 'the English (I cannot speak of the Scots) are moralistic, and have made moralising their discipline since the reformation'4 In Barker's opinion this 'moralistic' attitude has indicated a deadening of the possibilities of performance. It has meant, with the exception of Shakespeare, that writers have had to be moralists. This, Barker finds incompatible with what a dramatist must do as speculative artist and has led to a preponderance of liberal humanist driven narratives. 'Tragedy', he states in his 'Fortynine asides', 'is not about reconciliation.' It is therefore 'the art form for our time.' It is his role then, to construct tragedy as the true commentary on our time and the Theatre of Catastrophe is the consequence of this manifesto. The theatre must start to take its audience seriously. It must stop telling them stories they understand. It is not to insult an audience to offer it ambiguity.5 On first encountering the script of The Castle it is evident that Barker has prepared the ground for female characterization in the play. 'Ann' is listed in the cast of characters as 'A Changed Woman'. He has also established the route into ambiguity and the representation of problematic material, rather than a comfortable narrative. The characters are described simply and depicted via the stage directions: 'A MAN wrapped against the rain, stares into a valley.'6 Narrative fluency and tidiness in Barker's work would be incongruities. The Castle is a fluid, difficult, angry, visceral poetic drama. It is a sequence of challenging scenes that chart the tensions and conflicts of varying social and political scenarios. This fashioning of the drama works as a template for interpretation and development of mise-en-scene. To insinuate that Ann is 'changed' opens up a range of possibilities in the depiction and development of the character. Ann's story has taken many turns since her husband, Stucley, has been away at war. He has been fighting for the conservative, Christian, crusading forces in the Holy Land. He arrives home to find out that unfamiliar and disruptive forces have been operating on his wife and servants. For him it is confusing, so he attacks Cant, a village woman, who is one of the first to demonstrate how the women are altered. He lashes out and then goes 'barmy'. Cant reports to the other women that Stucley has gone on the rampage: chucked the loom out, picked it up and dropped it on the shit 'eap Stucley goes to the church for consolation an' finds it locked an' pigeons shittin' up the belfry. 'e goes screamin' mad and puts 'is foot through all the winders 7 Stucley, as reported here, destroys the loom - one of the means by which the community is sustained. He indiscriminately throws it onto the 'shit 'eap'. When he finds out that the women have rejected the sanctity of the church and allowed the pigeons to overrun and foul it, his sense of order and authority is outraged. Stucley's priorities are not the same as those the women have developed in his absence. He wants to now impose a new technology and architecture on the society that he rules. 'The Castle' engineered by Krak, his new comrade, will impose the sense of order that he feels is required. He has reckoned without Ann and new path she has embarked upon with Skinner, the widow woman described as a 'witch'. Skinner and Ann have discovered a new social order: a Sapphic, child-centred, fertility-worshipping cult. Skinner loves Ann who has now become mother to the community, in which children thrive and flourish. Skinner summarises how they triumphed whilst the men were away: First there was the bailiff, and we broke the bailiff. And then there was God, and we broke God. And lastly there was cock, and we broke that, too. Freed the ground, freed religion, freed the body. And went up this hill, standing together naked like the old female pack, growing to eat and to market, friends to cattle who we milked but never slaughteredgave instead to the hungry, turned the tithe barn into a hospital and found cunt beautiful8 The 'experiment' is not just Barker's; he depicts the women in the drama entering their own phase of social experimentation. But the Utopia that Skinner, especially, considers is belongs to them is fragile and already under threat. The complexity and lack of resolution in theatre that Barkers threatens us with in his manifesto results in 'catastrophe' for the women. Ann is drawn to Krak, the foreigner in the land, and becomes pregnant by him, but mutilates her own growing abdomen when she realises that it did not mean what she had hoped: All these children, children everywhere and I thought, this one matters, alone of them this one matters because it came from love. But I thought wrongly. I thought wrongly. (Pause. She looks at KRAK.) There is nowhere except where you are. Correct. Thank you. If it happens somewhere, it will happen everywhere. There is nowhere except where you are. Thank you for truth. (Pause. She kneels, pulls out a knife.) Bring it down. All this. (She threatens her belly. Pause) (Pause[Stucley] holds out his hand for the knife. She plunges it into herself. A scream)9 This is one of a number of visceral, disturbing enactments of the trauma and tragedy in the piece. As the castle itself is constructed and the walls grow higher, encroaching on the lives of the people, the society that Stucley and then Ann and Skinner have constructed becomes more shattered and disparate. The values of Stucley were replaced with those of the women and their joy and celebration of life, children and generosity. But this seeming liberation becomes oppressive as the religion of 'Christ the Lover' takes over and the 'worship of the cunt' ensues. Skinner, who amidst all the women bearing children is barren, bewails the situation 'I hate God and nature, they made us violable as bitches!'10 She sees what the power of women can do to men, and what the power of desire does to society. The men and women are drawn back together and Skinner anticipates the paradigm shift of when the female emancipation is overshadowed and walled in by the building of the castle. So she murders the builder, Holiday, and into the raging scene in which Ann and Krak torment one another she staggers, wearing the decaying corpse like a pregnant belly as her punishment. But Skinner, ever the contrary character who grows to hate what she was supposed to love ("Sod the womb!"), wears this grotesque talisman as a badge of honour - the better to mock the men with. She claims that Holiday's shrivelled organ is better than any other as it 'butts' up against her and she cherishes her 'child' as the rooks and crows pluck at it. This, like Ann's suicide, is a shocking scene from Barker in which he gives to the female character an iconic role relating to the symbolism around motherhood and death. The experimentation he engages in for his female characters places a huge burden on them. He gives them a great responsibility to be poetic and morbid, sensual and visceral. Their sexuality is not subtly hinted at - it is grabbed and exposed and put on display. For a playwright constructing this work in the 1970s and 80s it was still rare to do this on stage. For female actors in the roles there are huge physical challenges and inhibitions to combat, but in the playing of these roles there will also be a great deal of freedom. Barker is cunning and knowledgeable about controlling the arrangement of mise-en-scene, with information about lighting changes, movement, mood and sound effects in his stage directions, but enables actors and directors to have flexibility and scope around how they handle roles. Tragedy is the greatest art form of all. It gives us the courage to continue with our life by exposing us to the pain of life. There is nothing 'pessimistic' about this. Tragedy doesn't understand pessimism, it's a critic's word. Tragedy tells us what the world is - it doesn't explain the world. My own tragedies have no moral meaning whatsoever. They are called catastrophic because a breakdown of order - social or personal - is always the starting point, and the protagonist must invent himself out of the ruins of a life. Often this journey leads to a bitter solitude. But so what Theatre isn't a massage. We ask it to take us seriously.11 This quotation moves us in the direction of understanding The Castle, somewhat. It is not necessary to explain the play fully, as it needs to be a living, pliable theatrical entity that can change with the playing from one performance to another. There are a series of climaxes and shifts throughout the action and it would be up to the performers and director as to how emphatic these are. It continues; ploughing forward into the future with Krak and Skinner (festooned with Holiday's skeleton) in 'bitter solitude' at the end, straining to remember and to hear as the world encroaches on them. The Castle, however, is entitled 'A Triumph' by Barker. By that we can appreciate it as the account of the exploits of a returning hero or military victor: a pageant, celebration and parade of tableaux that describe the events and adventures. In a triumphal procession shackled prisoners are displayed, animals and captives are led to sacrifice and captured treasures are laid out to impress the crowds. The action would work in this context and above all others on show and on parade throughout the action is Skinner. She is the prophetess, the witch, the iconoclast and rebel who creates an alternative system of belief which triumphs for a brief period. In that time she is worshipped, also victimised and imprisoned and finally cast outside the walls of the castle, dragging the bones of the builder with her. What does this mean Barker is typically elusive as to the meaning of this plot and what the characters and their situation represent. One thing he does hint at is the catastrophic progress of Skinner and her journey towards solitude via her rebellion. It would be a most unimaginative culture that could not see the virtues of solitude, or the reasons why one might opt to exclude oneself from society. Men and women have chosen it for centuries. It is true that the relentless pursuit of knowledge can lead to nothing elseIt arrives to some as a consequence of their supreme powers of resistance - they become idols: who in The Castle can discover the means of communicating with Skinner, for example12 Finally, the means of communication with Skinner are thwarted and she represents the elusive, difficult rebel and outsider, a simple and logical conclusion to her actions. What Barker is insistent upon in Catastrophic Theatre is the way that characters can inhabit their roles in multiple ways. Skinner can be both idol and outcast. Stucley is 'both the victim of his emotions and also the shrewd exploiter of them.'13 Remembering that this is to be played out as live theatre it places the audience within range of something very risky and exciting. The experience of seeing one of Barker's plays is not meant to be complacent or neutral of course. He is anti-naturalistic and in favour of theatricality for its own sake, even grandstanding as with the evisceration and display of rotting corpses, which causes, in his vision of performance, the 'impossible' to be drawn into the 'proximity' of Catastrophic Theatre.14 It might be useful to think of Barker as similar in style and his approach to theatre as punk rock musicians were towards pop music and the music industry in the late 1970s. Meaning became elusive; values and standards were redundant in punk as a social and cultural movement. Barker exercises this attitude to make a thoroughly confident form of theatre that, in its confrontational and rebellious approach, is difficult for the British establishment to contain and condone. His purpose in creating and experimenting with female character, role, mise-en-scene and narrative forms is to outrage the establishment, represent problems to his audiences and not make it easy for the public or insult their intelligence. In making the form of theatre he calls 'catastrophic' he ultimately creates a reflection of life: as difficult, problematic and painful but finally (despite his own reticence) representative of a form of truth. Always deliberately inconsistent it is nonetheless intellectual and powerful. As recently as his interview with Nick Hobbes in 2004, Barker was provocative and thoroughly anti-establishment, recounting his continuing disputes and rejection by the British theatre establishment, incorporating his thoughts on the propaganda and ideology of a 'National' theatre: a National Theatre is an ideological construct, it is not a benign provider of facilities to serious artists. [Peter] Hall, [Richard] Eyre, [Trevor] Nunn, [Nicholas] Hytner, all knew of my work and its reputation, internationally as well as locally. Yet they have all resolutely declined to stage it. One might argue this neglect runs counter to their remit, which is to offer the best work in the English language. But that's never the issue. They are there to cultivate the national ideology, which might have been at one time, patriotic royalism, but is now liberal humanism. Still, it is an ideological function. Quality is not the first consideration, the first consideration is whether the text is compatible with the prejudices of the age, as interpreted by these carefully chosen individuals. At the same time I think there should not be a national theatre, the huge resources wasted here should be bestowed on a dozen vigorous independent companies.15 BIBLIOGRAPHY Barker, Howard, Arguments for a Theatre, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2nd edition, 1993. Barker, Howard, 'Collected Plays, Volume 1, London and New York: John Calder Press, 1990. Barker, Howard, interview by Nick Hobbes, http://members.aol.com/wrestles/barker.html Read More