Saint Punch Rulz!!!!
Well the curtain closed and the plays now an object of critical review. I can not believe how satisfying this project was and how much I owe to the brave and courageous set of cast and crew who privileged me with their labour. Feedback has been quite positive and generous and my first station on the way to a thesis has been a paper delivered to the School Post Grad Conference last week. Here's the abstract.
This paper argues that, within theatre practice, the conscious engagement with misrule can support opportunity, rather than causing a text to lose its focus. Misrule can ignite a creative spark that enriches the final performance. I argue that misrule is an element of both the mediation, and the related collaboration processes, and is reflective of the carnivalesque that is often found within a performed text. It can provide the performed text with another level of meaning and intention. By consciously choosing to pick up and ride the ‘happy accident’ meaning can be found within the performed text that is not implicit within the written script. I suggest a performative text such as a play, a film or a television show should be considered open, and undefined until they are placed upon the ‘stage’ and interact with an audience. My reading of Marshall McLuhan’s phrase “Medium is the message”(McLuhan 1964) guides my thinking. In carnivalesque terms it is as though the medium serves as a kind of technological game of Chinese Whispers. Change and becoming are infused into the mediated journey of the story. To illustrate this I wish to consider one moment within my recent workshop performance of Saint Punch. This moment arose though consideration and sensitivity towards the cast and yet served to further underline the significance of the moment within the text.
As you can see from the video, the play looked quite different up from what it was in rehearsal. Some of the marvellous opportunities offered by Elliot and Des and Rosie and the Rosie Gang (best stage crew ever!) made the feel and the look more than I could imagine.
I feel so happy now as I sit down to write that we more than fulfilled the promise of the carnivalesque, that our 'comedy between two rapes' was balanced and not too upsetting for an audience I wanted engaged even if I wanted them thinking without explanation, with out road-map so that their experience and impression would be similar in substance but fiercely independent in spirit- the nature of Carnival.
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