Author Topic: CRAVE QUESTION- antistarvation  (Read 15658 times)

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Re: CRAVE QUESTION
« Reply #11 on: August 22, 2007, 12:21:02 AM »
David, Cris, THANK YOU! thank you for your insight, your sharing, your sensitivity! I think there's a real community going on here. We are at a somwhat early stage of rehearsal and the way you saw the play works inside me in many ways. Were are you, in London? We'll be doing it in NY - if you'll be here in the next month or so, please e-mail me. So far we are sticking with the A=B and C=M senario. We thought that the musicality will come out anyway. We trust that the connections will happen within the audience inevitably and what we could do to help them be intense is focus on the intentions & the actions. So, we are really working on it as a straight piece, a Chekhov let's say, only abstruct (parts of what's going on has been abstructed from the text, so we'll have to built it physically with what's going on in the room). At the same time a fifth performer is added (a dancer), something like the screen you had, but on a different level. The dancer is working on creating a differnt truth of the text - a rape, a metamorphosis, a handicap, ... The truth is that I don't really know what it's going to look like unless it's actually up and there are people there to witness it. The lights will probably go out in our piece at the end - let the light be created by the actors in the audience's inner eye. We think that the two are stuck in the mental institution and therefore cannot escape the truth about their condition and their relationship. There's no way out. I'll tell you more as I go on, I feel teribly lucky that you are there to talk to and listen to and share. Thank you guys! all the best, yours, eugenia

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« Last Edit: September 12, 2007, 04:47:20 PM by Iain Fisher »

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Re: CRAVE (@ Edinburgh)- David
« Reply #10 on: August 22, 2007, 12:20:26 AM »
Don't you DARE apologize for providing us with such wonderfully detailed information!!!

What makes "Crave" such a wonderful text is just how open-ended the theatrical possibilities are. We, too, wanted to avoid the four chairs scenario and retain the potential ambiguities in the text but felt it necessary to have a back-story worked out for ourselves in some situations. Sometimes the text was played as scenes between A&C and B&M, sometimes as 'therapy' sessions in which M is the counsellor and the other three the patients (chiefly the "Listen" "Look" "Listen. I am here to remember" passage after A's long speech down to "the point, if there is one, is to record the truth"; then If you won't talk, I can't help you" down to "The outside world is vastly overrated")...there were also segments in which the four were isolated in their own spaces , talking out to the audience, and other sections where they spoke as four facets of the one personality.

We too went for the blinding light at the end - our theatre has double doors in the back wall, so with as many 2500 watt lights as we could muster behind them, the doors opened at the end of the play, so that apart from the last 10 lines of the play, the final image for the last minute or so was blinding white light. We also painted the theatre space white and had a cinema projector putting slides on the back wall. There were about 40 slides, I think, ranging from appropriate images (poppy fields, planes, broken noses) through to subtitles for B's foreign phrases.

What I will never forget about our production (or indeed the play) is just how incredibly focused and tight and disciplined your actors need to be to pull it off. Every night I marvelled through the chunk with barely any punctuation (after B's speech about "A cricle is the only geometric shape..." down to "Found her" "Loved her" "Lost her" "End" a few pages pater), watching those actors and thinking "How the f*ck are they doing this?" I have never seen any piece of writing before that can make actors come so strongly together as an ensemble. Earlier this year we did a full text "Hamlet" and the actor who'd played Hamlet was B in "Crave"; after the first performance he said "That's the hardest thing I've ever done in my life; four hours of 'Hamlet' was easier than that 50 minutes of 'Crave'."

What an incredible piece of writing this play is...

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« Last Edit: September 12, 2007, 04:46:58 PM by Iain Fisher »

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Re: CRAVE (@ Edinburgh)- Chris
« Reply #9 on: August 22, 2007, 12:19:26 AM »
Our staging for the Edinburgh production at the Underbelly was a deliberate attempt not to simply replicate the 'four chairs' scenario done at the Royal Court. The space we used was a square, with C and B sat on the floor at the front, A and M behind. Each of us had our own space which was just big enough to move around in when sat down, with a small number of objects for each. A had a chair with some two books (some Alistair Crowley and the Bible I think), M had a clock (running out of time) and a mirror behind her that was partially shattered (ideas of a fragmented self and also about confronting her own aging). C was wrapped in a small duvet, as if she had woken up in the middle of the night (maybe 4:48am who knows!) plus a music box just outside her space that was just out of reach (relating to childhood memories that "she cannot remember but cannot forget... and has been hurtling away from ever since" that she reached for once before breaking away). B had a bottle of vodka and a packet of cigarettes I more or less chain-smoked throughout. Costume: A had smart trousers and a waistcoat, M a dress for a night out (Lucie who played the role once thought of M having just come back from a night on the town looking for men and seeing herself in the mirror and just going "what am I doing"), B clubbing gear and C pants and a top. Though each outfit was quite individual, each incorporated the same blueish material somewhere (e.g. the top I wore) to suggest they were connected in some way.

In terms of physicality, we debated how much action we could get away with but agreed that attentions to the rhythms of the text were most important; too much movement could have been distracting and have detracted from the overall musicality which we wanted the audience to pick up and be carried along by. Rather than going for complete minimalism, the central part of our set was deliberately designed to offer a contrast to the quite realistic 'spaces' each of us had. Basically, a beaten up trash can was in the centre of the stage, with fibre optic lights spilling out from it into the four spaces along with barbed wire. The spaces for each voice were divide by a floor covered in broken glass: the idea being that if any one of us tried to reach the other then we would cut ourselves. The set also gave the impression that we were all floating in a sea of glass. The overall effect we were looking for was the suggestion of an almost womb-like space, populated by entities (either independent OR belonging to the same individual) who could not connect or fully escape from each other. Having seen productions where sequences had been delivered as character dialogue, we decided to make it more ambigous by directing everything out to the audience. For example, even during the possible B/M sections, both Lucie and I still delivered the lines out though our body language could suggest we were talking. This wasn't designed to be a cop-out in not choosing a definitive interpretation of what the situation actually was, but rather something open-ended enough that people could make up their own minds. It was also effective having A directly behind C and M directly behind B, especially during the love speech. Lighting was kept to four spotlights and the muted fibre-optics, but we played with those a bit: in the long yes/no section for example, the spots flickered as if to suggest that the entity was literally 'breaking down' in some sense. The lighting also built as to be almost blinding towards the end of the play.

In terms of M being an older C, A an older B, it's certainly useful having a look at this possibility. In rehearsal we tried to make sure that most readings of the text could still be applied, and there is a lot between the older and younger characters that could be connected. Both A and B answer to the name of David, and one could plausibly imagine that a young B, having endured rejection by M, could adopt a more abusive attitude a la A. However, this on its own is too reductive. The possible abusive history of A and C could have started much earlier (C talks about playing on a climbing frame at the age of six, then describes a "handsome blonde fourteen year old" who arrives that could be A - this could have been when they first met,and the suggestion of a shared memory between the two is deliberately HINTED by both referring to "eyes full of the sun" - oh the possibilities). Ultimately, we saw the A/B relationship as a means for Kane to interrogate modern masculinity : B is full of bravado to begin with ("all things to all men", the cocky "are you a lesbian?") that breaks down into dependence on another. A has found a limited form of power through abuse, and this maybe something B aspires to, maybe not. M could also be an older C who has concluded that a child is a means of carrying on, but her constant assertions that "I'm not your mother" to B then C are ambiguous: C has a mother who is "dead to me... someone has died who is not dead" - their is a whole faintly outlined past concerning C's family, with the suggestions of an abusive mother/father relationship. Maybe C sees in her parents (the father "beating my mother with a walking stick") a template for her relationship with A, and the fact that she has found herself in the same position as her mother is something she blames her for.

Interestingly, as well as making the play simply more 'universal', the foreign quotes B comes out with also could relate to countries that Britain have conquered in conflict through the (very masculine) exercise of war (Spain - Armada, Serbia - Bosnian conflict, Germany - WW2); their presence could partly be allusions to a masculine power B half harks back to in oder to combat his craving for M.

Apologies for all this, Crave is still very much in my system and I think always will be after having worked on it so intensively. I don't claim to have found any 'keys' to unlocking the play, and all of the above are merely suggestions, not confident assertions. I could go on and on about the play (plus the other four), and worryingly am still able to recite the entire bloody thing well after the summer - I'm stuck with it for life maybe. Thanks to those who liked our production: praise is always good for massaging the ego. We got a lot of good reveiws in Edinburgh, but perhaps the thing that will stay with me most is the very different reactions we got EVERY night. Some people would find the text extremely funny and applaud like crazy at the end, , most would watch it in a kind of stunned silence that would continue well after the final line. Memories of me sitting on the (cold and dank) Underbelly floor when the lights went down for a good five/ten minutes while the audience just sat their refusing to leave are still very much with me. Hope the above is in someway useful xx chris

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Re: CRAVE QUESTION- antistarvation
« Reply #8 on: August 22, 2007, 12:18:15 AM »
Thank you Chris!Unity that one mind seeks for is certainly one of the levels of the play, I totally see it as well. So, in your production you had all characters sitting in chairs facing the audience? that's the image I get from what you discribe..or did you get more physical? We are actually thinking that A is the young B and C is the young M. What do you think? best, eu

Archive 22-11-2002
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Re: CRAVE QUESTION- Hazel
« Reply #7 on: August 22, 2007, 12:17:46 AM »
just realised urs was the edinburgh production...got around to reading some more articles! 'Wow' anyway. Hazel xx

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Re: CRAVE QUESTION- Hazel
« Reply #6 on: August 22, 2007, 12:17:13 AM »
just to say...chris - was your production at the underbelly? cos i think i saw it. If it's the one i'm thinking of i just wanted to tell you how good it was...completely blew me away. Took me about ten minutes to get my breath back afterwards and has awakened a deep interest in Kane and her work. I went with a mate who saw the original production of 'Crave'; he said he actually preferred urs! Thanks guys!

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Re: CRAVE QUESTION- Chris
« Reply #5 on: August 22, 2007, 12:16:38 AM »
Re: "Will. You. Make. Me. One." - I played B in Edinburgh this summer and this line (for me) underlined B's 'craving' for love or unity with another. It almost certainly refers to the object M makes which he is probably fascinated with, but really gains meaning in the context of a relationship. It could well be a plea to M to make him "one" (attention to the punctuation being always crucial) through love, as his later self-abnegation would seem to suggest. Alternatively, it is a statement relevant to all four of the voices who are seraching for unity, particularly if they do belong to one mind... just a thought. In our production B simply imagined the object a little way infront of him, delivering the fiurst few lines of the sequence with his eyes fixed on it, but then looking straight ahead (suggesting he might be addressing someone, possibly M, or maybe all of the voices) for the final line, paying attention to the full-stops in delivery.

Archive 12-11-2002
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Re: CRAVE QUESTION- eugenia
« Reply #4 on: August 22, 2007, 12:15:57 AM »
Thanks for sharing how you handleded in your production. Actuallity, hugh? - what an issue. How do you make what's in come out; how do you reveal without showing, puting your own finger on(and make the finger more obvious than the thing) - the monk might be having a hot-dog in NY but I do believe that all conect. It's not that I need a reason for every line, it's that I know there is and I need to find it. Thanks people! all the best, eugenia

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Re: CRAVE QUESTION
« Reply #3 on: August 22, 2007, 12:15:11 AM »
A Bhuddist monk goes up to a hotdog vendor in New York and says: "Make me one with Everything"

Archive 9-11-2002
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Re: CRAVE QUESTION- David
« Reply #2 on: August 22, 2007, 12:14:32 AM »
Ahhh, one of those wonderful elusive "Crave" moments...in our production we staged a lot of the early part of the play as little vignettes documenting moments in M & B's relationship (we decided they were having one). If you play out just M & B's lines or just A & C's through the first half of the play you get some fascinating possible scenarios. The section from "It's very nice" to "Will. You. Make. Me. One." was M taking B home for the first time, and marvelling at the unusual sculpture she has. It just seemed like a nice obsessive-compulisve thing, adding every new eggshell to the sculpture. Trying to remember what we had projected behind them.

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CRAVE QUESTION- antistarvation
« Reply #1 on: August 22, 2007, 12:13:48 AM »
Hello all, great discussion you have going on - very glad to participate. I have a question to pose, if anyone has any idea:- In Crave, B asks M to make him one. What is one? Love? A love affair? Made of rejection(concrete), paint(lies)& egg shells(defensive mechanisms)? eu

Archive 8-11-2002
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