Lesson: Monday 5th February 2018
In this lesson we read through the remaining scenes in the play which was both a relief and heart breaking especially as AOAS ends on Carol and Anna's deaths.
In Scene 13, Carol's scene is called Doctors. In this scene, Carol is talking to a doctor/therapist called Mark. Mark is much kinder compared with Felix from the previous scene, largely because he listens to what Carol is saying whereas Felix seemed to be blatantly ignoring her. Birch could be making a statement that medical care toward people with mental health problems has gotten better since the 1960's but as Mark suggests that Carol has more ECT and as Anna is having ECT done to her in the middle of the stage, Birch may be suggesting that mental health care is not yet perfect. This can be seen as ECT is still used for people with mental health problems and it works; although it is less painful than it was during Carol's time period and much more humane, the fact that ECT can completely change the way someone's brain behaves is deeply unnerving, especially as it doesn't seem to work with Carol and Anna. Carol describes the past sixteen years of her life as "a building that's been on fire" which shows just how much she wants to die and how choked she has been by society, John, and to some extent Anna as all three are the reason that she had a baby and had to keep living otherwise she'd be deemed a 'bad' person and and even 'worse' mother. During the anger of her burning building speech, Carol calls Anna "his child" as in John's child. This lack of a claim to Anna could show that Carol is trying to distance herself from Anna when she's alive so that Anna doesn't get all the societal problems e.g. people talking about her in a negative way due to Carol. As Carol says this in anger, it could show that she is showing resentment towards John as there has been a clear gap growing between them since the beginning of the play so may be using Anna as ammunition in the feud that they seem to be having, especially as it may have been John who convinced Carol to go for another round of ECT. However, this may be a simple slip of the tongue, something that makes the character of Carol much more believable for the audience as we all say things we don't mean when we're angry and as Carol corrects herself after Mark questions why she said it. Carol also mentions that Anna has lots of friends and seems perfectly happy with her life at this moment in time which is horrendously juxtaposed by Anna's ECT in the middle of the stage. It also seems to give Carol an excuse as to why she wants to leave as Anna seems happy so therefor she can leave, knowing that Anna will be fine which doesn't turn out to be true as Anna turns into a heroin addict and eventually commits suicide. In the scene, Carol's lines are relatively spread out from Mark's lines which suggest that she is trying to think about what she's going to reply. However when Mark tells her that she should have more ECT she immediately replies with "No" which shows that Carol is deathly afraid of having ECT done again, especially as Felix didn't listen before she had the ECT last time. Carol's last line in the scene and in the play is "I'll be fine" which is an obvious lie as she has shown suicidal tendencies throughout the play, the audience know from Anna's previous scenes that Carol is dead, and that she has made up her mind that she's going to 'leave' soon. It is certainly purposeful that Carol's final scene is not with Anna or John as it suggests that she is trying to distance herself from the two of them so that they aren't as emotionally and mentally affected when she does decide to leave which shows that Carol does still love John and Anna, just not enough for her to keep living - she has to do this for herself because for the past few years she has been living "For Anna" as she puts it in Scene 9.
In Scene 13, Bonnie's scene is also called Doctors and features the first contact that the audience see between Jamie and Bonnie. I think that it is significant that Bonnie and Jamie only share one scene together compared to John and Anna's four. This suggests that John had much more impact on Anna's life than Jamie did on Bonnie's especially as they seem to have a lack of communication between each other. I think in some ways that Jamie is somewhat selfish as after Anna's death he seems to have cared for Bonnie less, especially as he got a new wife and kids and subsequently grandchildren, as he couldn't face her because she reminded him too much of Anna. Although in some circumstances, this is somewhat 'allowed' I think that Jamie lost his relationship with Bonnie as he was too focused on his new wife, pushing Bonnie to the sidelines due to her resemblance to Anna. I also think its significant that we don't see Bonnie's childhood apart from the two scenes where Anna cares for her as a baby. This is because it gives a bigger shock when it's revealed about Jamie's new wife. The more practical reason is that Bonnie doesn't have any memories of her mother or of her mother's guidance hence why we saw Anna's childhood as she was strongly influenced by Carol. Apart from Jamie, none of the family members from Anna and Carol's family make an appearance in Bonnie's scenes which could suggest that Bonnie didn't have much of a relationship with them as Jamie was also reminded too much of Anna when he was around them. A point was also made that Bonnie seems to be the only 'nice' doctor that is shown within the play - the other 'nice' medical staff have been nurses and midwives. Perhaps this could suggest that Bonnie is trying to help others because her mother and grandmother didn't get the help and protection from their doctors which caused them severe pain - maybe Bonnie is trying to prevent events from the play from repeating themselves in other people's lives by 'curing' people. In the scene there is some repetition from earlier scenes such as the Carol's section of scene 8 where Emma, Toby, John, and Carol are having dinner together. The repeated phrase is "Do you need the money? Do you want me to give you some money?". This is a repetition of when Emma asked John if he needed money because he paid too much for the house. This is kind of cruel for the audience as they will be reminded of the aforementioned scene and therefore be reminded of the negative consequences that came from that. Jamie also repeats something that he said in Scene 6 - "I can't stop thinking about you Bonnie". This is again very painful for the audience as they will be reminded that Anna is dead and potentially the only reason that Jamie is thinking about Bonnie is because he keeps being reminded about Anna.
In Scene 13, Anna's scene is called Swimming and features Anna having ECT. This will shock the audience as ECT is quite horrible to watch and will remind them that Carol has had this done to her several times. It is also quite heart breaking that Anna has the same treatment as her mother, albeit with a few slight modernisations, which suggest that treatment for mental health problems was still being treated the same way as it had been over the past thirty years or so. Birch may be making a social comment about how ECT is still being used today to cure depression - it also have claims to have worked - which suggests a comment about mental health vs physical health. Physical health is certainly taken much more seriously than mental health but sometimes mental health problems can be much more devastating than physical health problems. As Anna doesn't seem to be a stable state of mind, as shown by her equating everything to swimming in this scene and also her saying that ECT "just feels like river swimming", the question is raised about who made her have the ECT treatment as she certainly seems that she can't make a decision for herself. Perhaps it was Jamie and John who made the decision together, as they are her next of kin and in the previous scene, John seemed very concerned when he saw Anna talk about the "universe on the head of a pin". Maybe this is why Bonnie holds some resentment towards Jamie as she could think that the ECT pushed her mother over the edge, if she was ever told. This may also give a clue as to why Jamie didn't tell Bonnie much about Anna as he was too guilty about what he had done and why he decided to almost 'abandon' Bonnie.
At the beginning of the scene, we staged it so that Anna was sat up in her hospital bed which would enable the audience to see her facial reactions and also so that May, the nurse in this scene, could take off Anna's shoes, jewellery etc off easier and in full view of the audience, much like how we hope to stage the costume changes (by having Carol, Anna, and Bonnie dressed and undressed into costumes on stage which would further enhance their vulnerability). In order to get the ECT process right, we watched the following video:
We more or less copied the process that is shown in the video. However, as the other sections in this scene were much longer than we anticipated, it left May and another nurse awkwardly standing at the back of the stage. It was also suggested that Anna have Velcro restraints on her wrists, which may not be historically accurate, but will pronounce the violent and brutal nature of ETC.
In Scene 14, Carol's section, Picnic, is what the audience will focus most on because it has the majority of the speech allowing for a couple of sentences on Bonnie's side of the stage. In Bonnie's section, Bonnie has just finished swimming when a woman enters her cubicle asking about her own daughter (presumably) Anna which completely decimates Bonnie, making her collapse to the ground. In Anna's scene, Anna is sat on the toilet seat staring at Bonnie as a baby in a Moses Basket. As Bonnie is in a Moses Basket this suggests that Bonnie is still very young which makes Anna's suicide much more horrific as it shows clearly that Bonnie never got to know Anna at all. In this sense, I think that Anna is definitely selfish because she didn't allow Bonnie to grow up with a mother. Although, it is completely understandable due to her wrecked mental state, presumably from the ECT. Anyway, back to Carol's section. In this scene, Carol doesn't make an appearance, instead, John and Anna are on stage at a cliff side and are about to celebrate Carol's birthday, Anna thinks with Carol. It is here that John breaks the news to Anna that Carol is dead. As Anna is so young, 16, in this scene, it shows how unprepared Anna was compared to how prepared Carol thought she was to face the world on her own. This can be seen as Anna breaks down as she begins to cry at the end of the scene due to the loss of her mother. This is the scene that we see John speak the most but he doesn't really show much emotion as he appears to be simply describing how Carol died. It could be that Anna first sees John break when they see each other in rehab as shown in Scene 4 of the play. In his speech John mentions an aquarium - "I had to go to the hospital and stand next to an Aquarium to be told she was dead" - this links back to Scene 2 when Anna mentions an aquarium to Dan whilst high. This could have been her trying to remember what she had been told about Carol's death and confusing it with Dan which makes Scene 2 seem a lot darker than when it initially appeared to be. Another link back to Scene 2 in this scene is when Anna says "I can't fully see out of this eye though" which links to Anna commenting in Scene 2 how her eyes were "a bit crap, a bit fuzzy". Moreover, Anna says that she is hungover which could be the starting point to her drug and alcohol related problems later in her life. John mentions that he has committed "numerous failures" which could be his link to his part in Carol's death - potentially forcing her to have ECT, having a baby, and not fully getting to understand her. Even at 16 Anna calls John by his first name instead of by dad. This and the fact that she had to "get on two trains" to be at the cliff side, suggests that at 16 she didn't live with her parents. Instead she may have lived with Emma, Toby, and Daisy whilst John was trying to get carol better and as Anna had a greater relationship with her mum and may have heard Emma refer to John as 'John', Anna may have copied this. This also shows why her and Daisy are so close later in the play as she seems to be one of the first people to whom she tells her pregnancy to in Scene 9.
In Scene 15 we have lost Carol's section of the stage as her story has now been fully played out. In Scene 15, Anna's section is called Picnic and features Anna with Bonnie as a baby and shows Anna killing herself. It also contains a small monologue which is reminiscent of Scene 11 where Anna was telling Lola, the midwife, about her nightmare. In the scene, Anna's speech is not as normal as it has been throughout the play which shows just how mentally unwell she is and shows that she is in no state to take care of a baby. The line "Hook's gone. Line's gone" links back to Carol's section of Scene 9 - "She's a line, she's a fish hook round my middle pulling me up when I want to be under" - which shows how similar Anna and Carol have become. It suggests that the line/hook that was once holding Carol 'afloat' has gone because Anna has also committed suicide which means that Carol is free. It could also show that now that Carol has committed suicide in the other section of the stage, that she is free from the fish hook that was Anna. It could also suggest that there is no fish hook connecting Anna and Bonnie so therefore Anna feels no guilt about committing suicide. In Scene 15, Bonnie's section is called Doctor and shows Bonnie talking to a doctor about sterilisation. I think that it's important that the doctor in this scene who's treating Bonnie is a woman because all the doctors in Carol and Anna's section have been male which shows that Birch is making a social comment about female professionals. However, Diane, the doctor, does show similarities to the other doctors in the play because she also doesn't let her patient really express her feelings or get what she wants as she suggests that Bonnie goes to counselling. This is a much better way than ECT to cope with mental health issues which may have been suggested if Bonnie was talking to a doctor during Carol and Anna's timelines. In this scene, we see Bonnie start to cry for the first time which shows just how affected she has been by the suicides in previous generations which suggests that your ancestors decisions do make an impact on your life.
In Scene 16 only Bonnie's section is on stage and features Bonnie finally selling the house. Perhaps Bonnie's decision to sterilise herself means that she can now move on from the past knowing with full certainty that the troubles of the past won't be passed on to a new generation of the same family. A woman and a child seem to be buying the house which suggests some hope - perhaps the house that lasted throughout the generations will finally see a happy, healthy family. This hope is signified in the last stage direction of the play - "The light changes. Just a little."
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