Anatomy of a Suicide - Part 25

N2C - Wednesday 24th January 2018

During N2C time, we worked on two scenes from AOAS which were Scene 10 and Scene 11. Out of the two scenes, Scene 10 is much easier to learn as there are fewer interjections from the other sections during the speech that Anna has in the scene. Scene 11 is much longer than Scene 10 and has a lot of speech for Anna which is mainly another monologue except from a few interjections from Lola, a nurse, and from Bonnie's side of the stage.

In Scene 10, Carol's section is titled Sleep and includes Anna as a young child. This is the first time in which we see Anna as a young child and it may be weird for the audience to see both a young Anna and an older Anna on stage at the same time, especially as the older Anna is about to give birth to Bonnie. This scene is quite nice in some ways as it shows how good a mother Carol was initially to Anna and shows how close they once were. However, it also is quite concerning because Carol is awake at 3am which suggests that she hasn't been sleeping. This would suggest that Carol definitely has depression at this point as one of the common signs of depression is insomnia/sleeplessness which Carol is demonstrating in this scene. The phrase "I'm a bit frightened" from young Anna on the last page of the scene can easily be about all characters onstage across the three generations. Young Anna doesn't know why she's scared which is something that all children experience at one time or another, especially as she is up with Carol at 3am. Young Anna may be scared because she may have sensed the difficulties that John and Carol are having in their relationship which may have made her feel on edge but as she is so young at this point she can't describe why she feels scared. Carol may be scared of life or of continuing to live especially as she has the thought that she has to keep living for Anna until she's older. This raises the question for me that if Carol had committed suicide when Anna was much younger, Anna may not have gotten so attached to Carol which would mean that Anna may not have turned to drugs or had such an adverse reaction to Carol's death. This may have impacted John more, but would have given Anna and John the chance to get closer and wouldn't have led to sixteen years of heartache for the three of them. However, it may have led to Anna and John becoming distant like Bonnie and Jamie do, as shown in a later scene, as John may have seen too much of Carol in Anna and wouldn't have wanted to look after he, something which seemingly happens after Carol's death anyway. I digress. Anna may be frightened as she is giving birth which is a frightening experience for any woman but especially as she doesn't have Carol to help her with how to be a mother. Additionally, Anna doesn't have anyone in the room with her for most of the scene after she tells Jamie to leave the room so may be nervous about how she's going to cope. Anna may also be nervous because she knows that Carol was also somewhat effected after Carol gave birth to Anna and may feel like that will happen to her. Bonnie may be frightened because she may not necessarily want to end her relationship with Jo but because Jo has kept prying into things that Bonnie wasn't ready to explain she had to end it. She may have been frightened about opening up to Jo because of the reaction that she may have gotten from Jo, especially as her family history isn't normal. Jo may be frightened of Bonnie's outburst, especially as its the first time that Jo and the audience have seen Bonnie react so negatively and hugely.

In Scene 10, Bonnie's scene is called Dinner and includes an argument between Bonnie and Jo. This is the first time that the audience have seen Bonnie show an emotion rather than indifference which could be quite shocking as they wouldn't expect that from her. Although, it could be expected from her because of Carol's reaction in her Dinner scene of tipping the dinner over which is somewhat similar to Bonnie throwing a casserole dish in this scene. It may also be expected because the anger is somewhat similar to how Anna's anger in Scene 6 which is directed at Jamie when he admits that he thinks about her. Bonnie seems very bitter in this scene, especially as she keeps saying the word "Apparently" which shows that she's not sure what actually happened in the house. This is because Jamie probably didn't tell her much about her mother or her family's past, probably because he felt that Bonnie was too much like Anna. John probably didn't talk to Bonnie that much either about Carol or about Anna because it was too painful for him, especially as both his wife and daughter had committed suicide. He may have made the link that if he was involved in people's lives then it led to pain so maybe didn't want to influence Bonnie's life that much. In previous scenes, Bonnie has been calm talking about what the house means to her and her family to an estate agent and a child. Why has she decided this moment should be where she begins to get angry about the house and what happened in it? Possibly because Jo has been prying too much into her life and Bonnie wasn't comfortable with it. She told the estate agent because the estate agent wasn't prying into her life and neither was the child. One thing that we did to show similarities between Bonnie's section and Anna's section is by having Bonnie and Jo stood in line with Anna where she's giving birth. We do this at the line "Here's where I was born. Right here. Apparently" which reinforces the relation between Bonnie and Anna . We also moved Bonnie and Jo to the back of the stage to mirror Carol and Anna's position in Carol's scene at the line "And here is where my grandmother sat and held my mother" which would again reinforce the relations onstage. By having Bonnie point out where all these things happened in the house, it reinforces how these things have already happened and that the audience are seeing the ghosts of the past and may allow a profound sadness to manifest in the audience's minds - it certainly has for me.

In Scene 10, Anna's scene is called Sex. Anna has just started to have contractions when Jamie comes in and begins to rub her back before trying to initiate sex between the two of them. Although sex can help during the early stage of labour to "help things along" (as glamorously put by Jamie), it really is a stupid move by him to even contemplate having sex with Anna when she's obviously already in a lot of pain. The scene is fairly humorous especially with the way that Anna phrases trying to give birth and with Jamie's explanation of how its supposed to help. When Jamie begins his advances on Anna we staged it so that the audience has a clear view of what he is trying to do and to enhance the comedy of the scene. We did this by having Anna look up and then look at Jamie's hands on her thighs and move slightly away from him and his face in her neck. Anna is not as aggressive in response as I originally thought - Chipp suggested that she was more astounded that Jamie would attempt this kind of thing and thinks he is stupid so her tone would be incredulous. Throughout the scene, Anna is trying to control her breath so any line that she has is between breaths. When Jamie leaves the stage, Anna's breathing becomes much faster which is because Bonnie is about to be born which is suggested by Anna's scream at the end of the scene - this could simply be a stronger contraction. However, as Bonnie points out that "they thought they had plenty of time then out I fucking shot", it may suggest that Anna does give birth after the scream at the end of the scene.

In Scene 11, Carol's section is called Doctor and stars Carol and a doctor who is trying to get her to have another round of ECT. This scene is very frustrating for Carol because she keeps saying that she doesn't want ECT and Felix, the doctor, isn't listening at all. Chipp compared it to rape because of the amount of times that Carol says no - if it were in a sexual situation, it would be illegal but because its not, it isn't. The level of violation is high because the doctors are going to mess with her mind despite how much she doesn't want to and how many times she has said no. I think that its significant that a male doctor is pressuring her to have the ECT as it suggests that men still have control of society and will force women to do things they don't want to do. Although, as Felix is adamant about the ECT it could suggest that he really thinks that it could work for her. The demand for Carol to have ECT will have probably been pushed by John. Carol mentions that "Anna will be frightened" which would be true because she wouldn't know where her mother would be - Carol may be using this to avoid having ECT. As Felix uses the word "Attempt" which Carol repeats, it would suggest that the ECT may not 'fix' her and may just make her depression worse than it was before. This proves to be true as it seems to be one of the final contributing factors as to why she decides to commit suicide.

In Scene 11 Bonnie's section is called Sex. It appears that Bonnie has had a one night stand, potentially after the break up between her and Jo. Bonnie is sat on stage by herself for a long time in the bathroom of Esther (the woman she had the one night stand) seemingly annoyed at herself for the one night stand. The interjections between Bonnie's scene and Anna's scene at the end of the scene gave me chills when I was voice recording so I could learn the lines for the scene. The lines run as follows:

ANNA: A baby

BONNIE: I'm sorry

ANNA: I had a baby. A real baby.

ESTHER: What for.

The first interjection from Bonnie could show that Bonnie is apologising for being born and for the pain that she ultimately caused Anna, Jamie, and John. Although this is a fairly big leap, the lines next to each other made me think that. The second interjection from Esther makes it seem as though she is questioning why Anna had a baby. This is because she dies only a few months after having Bonnie and isn't there for her life. It seems as though Esther is asking why should you have a baby when you aren't going to be there to look after her. This again is potentially too far a jump to make but I thought it was somewhat important.

In Scene 11, Anna's section is called Sleep. It shows the aftermath of Bonnie's birth on Anna and how she can't sleep, all of which is told to a nurse, Lola. In this scene, Anna gives a graphic description of a dream that she had after Bonnie was born. This is the first time such description has been given in the play so could be quite shocking for the audience to hear, especially as we staged it as though Anna wasn't really affected by it and is just recalling a dream that she wanted to tell. This allows the horror to happen in the audience's minds something which was previously demonstrated in the monologue in Scene 5. After pregnancy, women are often tired and 'messed up' in normal circumstances, however, Anna may be slightly more affected due to her past of depression and drug addiction. Everything that Lola confirms to be normal such as having "blood in....shit" is a normal reaction to the body after giving north which would suggest that how Anna is reacting is more normal that we may have initially had thought. There is, however, an element of trippiness when Anna begins to talk about her dream - the dream involves Anna giving birth to a baby boy and swimming to the bottom of a bath with him before squishing him between her "finger and thumb". During the lead up to her dream Anna admits that she "wanted a baby boy". This could imply that she knows that her mental health problems had been passed onto her by Carol and thinks that if she had a boy then her child wouldn't be affected by the mental health problems. During the description of the dream Anna says that "she was there" which could suggest that either Bonnie or Carol was the she in her dream as she may feel close to both of them in this section; she may feel close to Bonnie because she has just had her in her stomach for nine months; she may feel close to Carol because Carol reacted in a similar way after Anna was born. During the scene, we staged it so that Anna stays standing remaining in the same place throughout. This would show how affected Anna is after Bonnie's birth.