During this lesson, we further investigated the relationships between characters and the events within the story that are most important to the three women, Carol, Anna, and Bonnie.
The most important event for Carol that our group chose was when she has found out that she is pregnant. We chose to use this because this is the determining factor whereby Carol choses to live for the following 16 years for Anna.
The most important event that we chose for Anna was the death of Carol. We chose this because it seems to be the event in which her Anna's life appears to go downhill and spiral out of control shown by her drug addiction when she hits her twenty's. Although, I felt that another equally as important event was when she 'recovers' from her drug addiction in rehab. This is because although Anna seems to recover, she clearly doesn't when she spirals again after the birth of Bonnie. These events are both as important as each other as they reveal Anna's mental state and how it declines and rejuvenates.
The most important event that we chose for Bonnie was when she decides to sterilize herself at the end of the play. This is vastly important, not just for Bonnie, but for Carol and Anna. This is because it seems that the depressions and suicides follow/get worse after the birth of a child and if Bonnie were to have a child, she would get depressed and potentially commit suicide. Additionally, her sterilization would stop the trend of women becoming depressed and distanced from society like Carol and Anna became.
The following video is from a DV8 performance. They are a physical theatre based company and use dance, naturalistic movement, videos, circus skills, and text to present their stories.
There are many aspects about this piece of theatre that I enjoyed and became entranced by when we watched it in class. I thought that the couple resembled Carol and John. The element of someone watching the couple within the piece implies that they want what the couple have but also seems like they are invading the couple's privacy. In Anatomy of a Suicide the audience are invading the character's privacy, especially during/after the suicide attempts, the multiple births, and the relationships within the play. In this sense, the audience may want some elements of what the women within the play have, for example a loving husband in the form of John.
There are some moves that the couple do in the above piece that show that they hold each other up. In AOAS it is shown that John holds Carol up emotionally, especially after her attempted suicide, however, Carol doesn't hold John up emotionally. This could be because she is trying to distance herself from John, so that when she does eventually commit suicide, he's not as emotionally attached and can stand emotionally on his own without the aid of Carol. However, this treatment towards John doesn't work because he keeps coming back to Carol to hold her up emotionally which may be for his own reasons rather than for Carol as he may want Carol to reciprocate the feelings that John still harbours for her.
At some points within the piece, the light made it seem as though the couple were made from shadow. I think that this could relate to AOAS because the shadows of Carol and John's relationship can be seen throughout the play in the speech that other characters use, sometimes at the same time as other characters, and in the actions that the character's take and their reactions to it such as Anna's reaction to the birth of Bonnie, which is somewhat similar to that of Carol after the birth of Anna.
Moreover, as the above piece takes place in the confined space of a hallway. I think that this could relate to AOAS because all three women feel trapped by something which is what the piece feels like. Carol feels trapped by life and somewhat by Anna; Anna feels trapped by her past addictions; and Bonnie feels trapped by her heritage.
In the piece, the couple is seen to be moving through gaps that have been created by their bodies. We used this to develop the transitions between our freeze frames and it also made the freeze frames and stories to be more interconnected. These interconnections can be seen by the overlapping speech and scene titles throughout the play.
The freeze frames and transitions can be seen in the next blog piece.
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