Heart's Desire - A Look at the Writer and Her Aims

Writer Background:

The playwright, Caryl Churchill, is who wrote Heart's Desire in 1997 as part of the Blue Heart series which contains two one-act plays which mainly experiment with structure and prose. Churchill was born in 1938 in London, moving to Canada after WW2 with her family. She is most known for dramatising the abuses of power, for her non-naturalistic techniques, exploring sexual politics and for her feminist themes which can most certainly be seen in her play, Top Girls. She was inspired by Brecht's use of Epic Theatre, which was, therefore, one of the influences for performing Heart's Desire in a Brechtian Style, as she could use his style to explore gender and identity. From the 1980s onward was more inspired by Artaudian techniques as shown by her experimentation in dance theatre which maybe is something that should have influenced the piece more.

In 1960 she graduated from Lady Margaret Hall, a woman's college at Oxford University where she gained a BA in English Literature. This is potentially where her feminist themes began to develop as she was constantly surrounded by women who wanted to make a better life and thus needed some feminist theory to help get them there due to misogyny. Hence why I think there's an element of feminism within the piece concerning Alice. It is at Oxford that she began to write plays with her first four being performed by a student theatre ensemble from the university.


In the 1960s/70s, she wrote short radio dramas for BBC Radio and TV plays for the BBC. Between 1974-5 she was the resident dramatist at the Royal Court Theatre which shows that she was experimental as the Royal Court allows young experimental playwrights (such as Alice Birch who wrote AOAS) to write plays for them.

Why were they writing?

"The prolific Churchill continued to push boundaries. In 1997 she collaborated with the composer Orlando Gough to create Hotel, a choreographed opera or sung ballet set in a hotel room. Also that year her surrealistic short play This Is a Chair was produced." 

Source

It would, therefore, appear that Heart's Desire is a continuation of the surrealist style that Churchill appeared to be following in that year. Certainly the adjustment to a traditional play's structure can be seen as absurdist but I do think that the structure does show an element of the Verfremdungseffekt - it tilts an audience's perspective on how a play should traditionally be performed (traditional in this sense is that of Stanislavski's naturalistic style which most would be familiar with).

There is limited online and offline material about Blue Heart as a whole and this is one of the reasons why I think we found it hard to give the play a solid political meaning until much later in the rehearsal process. In some ways I do feel that the rehearsal process was similar to AOAS - attempting to get used to the structure and then add meaning - does this suggest that AOAS was more absurdist than naturalistic? I digress.

Due to the limited material, and the fact that the play has only been performed minimally professionally (notably in 1997) because of the structure it was highly probably we were going to deviate from Churchill's aim which I will explain below:

The Aim:

Rather than having a political message it would appear that Churchill is pursuing a social message and perhaps a message within the playwriting community. The social message that is clear and was clear to me at the start of the rehearsal process was a comment on social family roles and how the unsaid can be transformed into something much worse i.e. the breakdown of family roles and the family unit. Rather than pursuing a solely social standpoint, Churchill seems to be toying with the idea of writing to explore the structure of a play. Maybe this is why we found it hard to approach the play from a Brechtian angle - as said before, Churchill seems to be writing in an absurdist fashion in 1997 and so the Brechtian style wouldn't really fit with Churchill's aim.

The extract in context:

As is clear from Churchill's aim. we have deviated from this slightly in the final performance. Our decision to pursue a social message of family tensions in differing social classes is somewhat different from Churchill's aims. Although it does show Churchill's minor aim of showing family tensions, the major aim of her experimentation of structure is limited. Perhaps the extravagance of having scene changes and different people playing the same characters detracts from this major aim. In some respects it takes away from Churchill's minor aim as well - in original productions, the same actor would play the same character but due to the number of people we had in our group we found this hard. Maybe we should have not focused on the Brechtian element as much when choosing the play.

Heart's Desire Part 5

The following video is the final performance of Heart's Desire:

The following video is analysis of the above video:

Heart's Desire Part 4

After the discussion in the previous lesson, we all believed that we had a great grasp on character and therefore a grasp on the piece as a whole. For this rehearsal, it was suggested that we learn the majority of our lines and I take pride in that I managed this task before anyone else. Although I was still shaky with some lines, this allowed me to act without script in hand and explore the section we are doing much better. The video below shows our piece from this lesson: 

The next video is my analysis and explanation for the above video (unfortunately the audio from the above video in this version has been cut out): 

We performed the above version for Chipp which resulted in a conversation concerning the message of the play - or rather, the message that we understood from the play. From Chipp's understanding, due to the changing of roles (which was initially just a way to incorporate everyone into the play) it resembled different families with different backgrounds - it appeared we were commenting on class alongside family tensions which we weren't initially trying to portray. He also commented on the layering of props - the jackets and books - and suggested if we were going to layer these items it might be best to layer other items, such as the cups, in order to show that this was a constant thing rather than it being for technical reasons. In this conversation, we discussed how we could include the idea of social class into the piece which would give the political/social class more meaning rather than having the other broad term of family tensions. This focus allows for characterisation to be more effective and gives the piece an overall purpose.

It was found that the Brecht style of the piece is made by the constant rotation of character and introduction of extras - such as the section where children run onto the stage, or the family are killed by assassins - applies spass to the piece, as does Maisie, which allows a contrast with the overarching emotional situation. We can't have the same message of Churchill - of which we had yet to discover - because of how we designed our version over the script text.

The major changes to be made is to apply the play to different classes (working, middle, and upper) which the choice of costume/props, a change in accents, and to play with levels of emotion. This is something that will be talked about in further blogs from rehearsals. I will dedicate a later blog to Churchill's aims.

Frantic Assembly - Lesson 3

After the N2C performance, we adjusted the piece slightly. Below is the final product: 

Below is an analysis of the changes we made:

Heart's Desire Part 3

In the rehearsal, we found ourselves getting bored with the piece because we had blocked all of it and spent a portion of time on Thursday 'perfecting' it and getting all our transitions in with the added costume. The repetition of the piece doesn't help and thus we all felt that we'd lost our way in blocking the piece and making sure that our characters were all similar in tone and in movement/stature. In order to combat this boredom of the piece and also try and make sure that what we were doing fits with each other we decided to have a discussion about the characters within the piece and what motivates them. This discussion can be found in the following videos: 

Left out of these videos is the reasoning we gave to why Churchill wrote the piece. We suggested that the piece is to do with family tensions and how these can play out in different possibilities with the possibilities getting more and more absurd each time such as gunmen bursting in and killing all the characters. The play does focus on a social element of how different family members are treated within the family. Taking into consideration Churchill's background of feminism, its clear to see the links between how Alice is shown and talked to and feminist ideas of how women should be treated - that is equal. In this sense, Alice's involvement in the argument is at level terms with Brian's involvement. This discussion as to what the play is about will be discussed in more detail in the next blog concerning Heart's Desire which will include a conversation with Chipp and the whole group about how Brechtian the play is and what we can do to get the political/social message of the play across.

Heart's Desire - Part 2

A major part of the discussion after the first performance of the piece on Monday was that of differentiating the characters and how we use the props that are specified within the piece. In sticking with the Brechtian technique that we want, we decided that simplistic costumes should be the way forward with major characters having simple but defining costumes/props that add to their character.

For Brian, this was made easy because it says in the script that he either enters wearing a cardigan or jacket of some kind and thus we procured a variety of jackets from the store cupboard. The major issue that we have is the number of people that enter as Brian with a jacket throughout the piece. Not only does this render us incapable of having the exact same jacket each time as this would complicate transitions, but it also means that there is a build up of jackets/cardigans on the chair that Brian sits on. The idea behind this as well as from a technical point of view was to show the alternate realities crashing into one another, reminding the audience of what has happened before. Moreover, it creates an element of spass because the actor playing Brian has to sit on a mountain of jackets in later scenes.

For Alice, we wanted something quite feminine and thus chose the prop/costume of a scarf. The scarf is much more transferable between scene changes so the technical element is all sorted. It also clearly defines the character just as simply as Brian's jacket does and allows Alice to throw the scarf around her shoulder at some points and have something to straighten out.

For Maisie, we chose to use glasses and a book. The book is significant because when Marlon is Alice for the first time, Alice talks about platypi and thus we assumed that she was reading from a book about animals. In hindsight, this may not have been such a good idea because it ignores the stage directions that Maisie is fretting about the room. Moreover, in the script, it never mentions anything about the use of a book. However, it should be noted that the task is to have a piece that is script motivated and thus there is the ability to have some level of devising. The glasses provide an interesting touch as they are often perched on the end of our noses which allows the audience to see Maisie's age. However, the glasses may suggest that Maisie is older than Brian and Alice which is not exactly the case so something should be done with trying to make Alice and Brian seem a bit older which is something we can incorporate in later rehearsals. We also added a chair for Maisie downstage left for Maisie to sit on as it felt awkward having Maisie stood at the bottom of the stage alone.

In this rehearsal, we managed to block the last portion of the play. In this, we added the sound effect of a ding using a phone which shows a Brechtian technique of using modern technology. Whenever the ding sounds, we are to pause what we are doing in/out the scene, turn and look at the phone and then move which allows better synchronicity when transitioning. Unfortunately I don't currently have access to the video but these elements will be seen from future rehearsal videos.

Heart's Desire - Part 1

The next unit that we are completing is that of the Contemporary Theatre Unit whereby we must perform 10-minute extracts of contrasting contemporary practitioners. Practitioners may include: Brecht, Artaud, Kane, Churchill, Frantic Assembly to name a view. The performances must be entirely text driven which leaves little room for devising. The group that I will be working with for both of these productions are as follows:
Kathryn, Izzy, Leah, Lauren, and Marlon.

The first play that we attempted to explore was Vinegar Tom by Caryl Churchill which is based around the Salem Witch Trials where we would be doing this in a Brechtian style as her technique is very similar to that of Brecht - songs, the Verfremdungseffekt (tilting the audience's perspective) and having a social or political point. Vinegar Tom has all of these aspects hence why we wanted to explore the play. However, as we began to work on the play we found the play boring compared to the Churchill play of Cloud Nine we had worked on before. It was in this state that we decided to move onto another play by Churchill - Heart's Desire. 

Before I move onto discussing Heart's Desire I would like to draw attention to the debate that the group had surrounding what practitioner and what play to explore next. Initially, we were going to work on Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis which I think would be the most suitable candidate, apart from a Frantic Assembly play, for our group. However, the majority of the group didn't like this idea and thus our attention moved onto physical theatre, most notably DV8 who are much more dance-orientated than Frantic Assembly. This dance element alongside the lack of available texts worries me slightly and I do think that we would be much better to focus on a Frantic piece as we have explored this practitioner in class.

Heart's Desire is the first in a duo of plays in the book Blue Heart and is written by Caryl Churchill. It is an interesting play to read because every so often the play will restart to the beginning or toa significant point previously in the play and at every restart, something either significantly or discreetly changes such as differing speech. The action on stage should remain the same in order to emphasise the change at the end of the scene - such changes include gunmen bursting in and a group of children running across the stage. The basis for the play can be defined below (source):

The first play in the piece, Heart's Desire, is about a family waiting for their daughter's return from Australia. Her father, mother and aunt play through the same scene, time and time again, a few seconds at a time, with variations. Some variants appear to be wish-fulfilment on the part of one character or another; some to represent a collective attempt to settle on a mutually acceptable compromise account; some include random intrusions from, for instance, a group of armed paramilitaries or an angry emu. With a more or less definitive version of the daughter's arrival, the play ends in mid-sentence.

It would appear that Churchill is playing on the tension of family dynamics as the whole play does appear to focus on an ongoing family argument, something which doesn't appear to be resolved fully at the end of the play. Moreover, as Suzy only appears at the very end of the play, it would suggest Churchill is trying to show the hidden family dynamics and thus would give a social issue which hints at the Brecht style we would be trying to achieve. Additionally, as the dialogue keeps changing each time the play resets, it gives differing views and interpretations of the same scene which can be related to the Verfremdungseffekt as both allow for a tilting of an audience perspective. As there are only three main characters within the play - Brian, Alice, and Masie -, two secondary characters - Lewis and Suzy - and many other characters - school children and gunmen - we immediately found it necessary to have multi-role. So, we decided that we must go around the characters in a rotation which reminds the audience they are watching a play with multiple actors. This reminder that the audience is watching a play is dotted throughout as shown by the repetition of scenes and lines. As Chipp and Starbuck are unfamiliar with the play, it means that we won't have as much support in this aspect. Despite this, I do think that we are more than capable of pulling it off if we incorporate more Brechtian techniques and discover what Churchill wanted to achieve from the play.

I don't feel that at this stage of the process that we have grasped the characterisation of the characters and thus will give a suitable character analysis is future blogs.

The photos below show the extract of the play we're doing with blocking annotations:

The video below shows our first attempt at blocking part of the extract:

For a first attempt at this kind of play structure and the various multi-rolling throughout, I think that we did okay but from the video above its clearly evident that we need to find a stronger grip on the style. Despite this, we have already blocked half the time that we need and so we can dedicate more time to focusing on character, finding out what Churchill wants from the play, and how to include more Brechtian techniques.

Positives 

- repetition of voice and movements very similar in order to show the audience they are the same characters. It would make sense to accentuate characteristics more to make this much more obvious.

- 3:15: the use of modern technology which Brecht would have wanted within his piece. Moreover, the use of technology was visible and the head movement out to the audience broke the fourth wall slightly.

- 5:17: there's a slight difference as Kathryn doesn't walk across the stage. Is this slight change something an audience would notice? It brings in the tilting of perspectives - verfremdungseffekt.

Negatives

- the usage of books instead of photocopying scripts made the transitions messy and confusing. This can be easily solved by the following lesson.

- no defined character traits.

- the transitions were messy and there was no pause to define the moments before and after transitions.

- there is a lack of movement.

- my walk at c.3 mins had no purpose and so we should incorporate this into the piece.

- 3:25: Marlon stood at the side so had limited focus. To improve the focus he should move to the middle of the stage.

- 4:23: the massive speech - we all have an issue with it so to combat this we should break it up and try to think about what the words actually mean and why Brian is saying it.

- 6:20 - "daddy always knows where Suzy is" - Marlon didn't say it in the way that implies something related to Lewis' alcoholism. Marlon should say it as though he's jealous because of course Brian would always know where Suzy is because she's the star child - Brian appears to have given up on Lewis, something which is more evident in later scenes.