Anatomy of a Suicide - Part 9

Lesson: Monday 6th November 2017

During this lesson we used Stanislavski's magic "if" to explore the characters within Anatomy of a Suicide. The characters that we looked at were Carol, Anna, Bonnie, and John; I was given Bonnie. Individually, we looked at the script and found the key events of our character. For Bonnie her key events mostly included Jo, the house, and the presence of her dad, Jamie, towards the end of the play. Her major event is the decision to sterilise herself which I think that she did to stop the legacy and post natal depression that occurred after her grandmother and mother had children. I think it also gives Bonnie the chance to make her own decisions about her future rather than being encompassed by a child like Carol and Anna were.

After this, we were told to further imagine what it would be like to be our character and have the experiences that they have throughout the play. We tried to play our characters as they are at the last point that we see them - for example, Bonnie would be a few days before she decides for sterilisation. Below are some of the questions that we were asked as our characters and my responses to them as Bonnie which I thought about:

1) What year is it?
Late 2030s.

2) How old are you?
Mid to late 30s.

3) Where have you been living?
Partially in my own flat but most of the time in the house that my grandparents bought in the late 1960s.

4) What is the most significant thing to happen to you this year?
The decision to stay in the house and not to sell it which goes against Jamie's, my father's wishes.

5) Imagine the ceiling. What does it look like?
Bumpy with lines in it.

6) Imagine the room that you sleep in. Who's room is it? Where is the bed? Where is the window? Where is the door?
The room is the bedroom that belonged to Carol and to Anna when they lived here. The bed is pushed against the back wall and is the same bed that Anna and Jamie had when they first moved in - it has hardly been slept in, due to Anna's premature death. The window is to the left of the bed's headboard and you can see fields and plum trees (although not as many as there were when Carol and Anna used to live here). The door is to the right of the foot of the bed and next to the door is a large cabinet. Next to the window is a dressing table that belonged to Carol and then to Anna. The dressing table is the thing that is significant to Bonnie because of Carol's will to always look perfect which could have in some ways been passed down to Anna and to Bonnie. I chose this object because I don't think that Jamie would have allowed anything of Anna's to be given to Bonnie such as their wedding ring, although I could have used another object such as a key which would symbolise Bonnie not being able to sell the house.

After this, we each devised a small interaction with the room we were in and with the object we had chosen that had special importance. I walked into the room and immediately went to look out the window towards the plum trees - I think that this enables Bonnie to feel closer to Carol and Anna because of their strong attraction to the trees and it also makes her think that she won't ever get to know them but wants to anyway, and the trees are one of the only ways to do that without becoming pregnant and developing post natal depression herself. I then sat down on the bed and stared at the dressing table to show again that Bonnie wants to be connected to Anna and Carol in some way, and as this belonged to them, it brings Bonnie somewhat closer to them.

Then, we added some speech to the scene by talking to the object as if they represented another character from the play. I chose to speak to Anna through the dressing table because it shows Bonnie's longing for a maternal figure and to want to know if Anna ever loved her. The speech that I used was along the lines of:

"Plum trees. Did you like them? Okay. Would we have shared something? Like dad does with his kids and his wife? Were you lonely? I'm sorry."

I said the line "Plum trees" whilst I was looking out of the window to show the audience what I was doing and what I was looking at. The following line was said because Bonnie doesn't know about what her mother liked or disliked as she only knows a few vague facts such as where she was born in the house and where Carol and Anna committed suicide. She is trying to feel closer to Anna in this respect. The "Okay" was said because this is a line that Bonnie uses frequently throughout the play and I felt as though the scene would stray from Bonnie's character if this wasn't included. The next line is supposed to show how much Bonnie missed out on by Anna committing suicide so early on in Bonnie's life. Bonnie wants to know that they would have shared a bond so that she can have some form of love which clearly seems to be lacking from the rest of her life, be it from her refusing love from Jo or not receiving any from Jamie throughout her childhood because she reminded him of Anna so much. The line about her father and his relationships with his other children and his other wife is supposed to show that Jamie can't bare to see Bonnie because of her affiliation with Anna. It is also supposed to be quite cynical because if Anna hadn't committed suicide then there would be no need for the other children and the other wife. "Were you lonely?" implies that Bonnie feels isolated from her father and from anyone else in her life. This can be seen throughout the play as no family members from Anna and Carol's side of the family talk to her that we see. This can only imply that Bonnie is isolated from her family, much how Anna and Carol felt before they committed suicide, and may hint that Bonnie is also about to do something life changing - the sterilisation. The final line echoes what Bonnie says throughout the play or attempts to say as these words don't come easy to her sometimes.

Next, we did a version of hot seating whereby we interrogated the four characters that we were given. When we asked John questions, we set his character just after he has seen Anna in rehab. The majority of the questions that we asked were to do with John's relationship with Carol and how he had failed to help her much how he had failed to help Anna through the later teen years of her life, it seems. The questions that were about his relationship with Carol were mainly bout their marriage and how it was falling apart due to their differing views on each other (John loves Carol but Carol doesn't love John) and their lack of sex life. We also brought up that John wanted another child whereas Carol didn't which emotionally affected John because it was clear that he was still largely in love with Carol.

When we asked Carol questions, we set her character a couple of days before she commits suicide. The majority of questions were about her mental stability and her relationship with John. Something that interested me was her response to what a marriage was to her - she responded with being a good wife which included cooking, cleaning, and looking after children. I think that this sums up much of what Carol fills her time with, especially as Anna grows up.

When we asked Anna questions, we set her character a couple of months before she falls pregnant.  This made the majority of our questions about her mental state and how similar she was to Carol, especially when she began to talk about wanting children where we criticised her because of the post natal depression that she could suffer much like her mother. We also asked about her relationship with her husband and if he knew about her recreational drug addiction in the past and is she was scared that she'd become like that again even though addicts don't generally recover from their addiction.

When we asked Bonnie questions we focused on her past relationship and about her parents. At first Bonnie refused to answer about what her parents do but quickly had to open up when we kept prying. If in was in the hot seat at this time I would have reacted quite angrily to how much they were prying much like how Bonnie reacts when Jo turns up at the house with lamb in order for Bonnie to cook something. A question that again stood out to me was if Bonnie had ever been in love to which she responded yes. If I was in the hot seat I think that I either would have not responded to the question at all or gone with no. This is because I think Bonnie has a hard time expressing her feelings and additionally I don't think that she was ever in love with Jo because she only responds to Jo when Jo begins to tell her about how she feels about Bonnie.