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Calum Harbottle

Dramaturg, Script Writer & Performer

My specialisation in the production team is Dramaturgy. Dramaturgy, the study and composition of theatricality and dramatism, is well summised by Cambridge Junction as “the organisation of elements in time and space [1]”. Previously, James Green and I worked as Dramaturgs in a production of Lorca's Blood Wedding, Act II. In that same production, we worked closely with Katie Kent in her performance as the Bride, and with Charlie Le Quelenec in her work as mask designer, applying practical dramaturgy to our piece's aesthetic and theoretic content to heighten and highlight themes and ideas, to bring folk-mysticism to the forefront of our performance. In that process, I learned how dramaturgy can be found everywhere in performance, and it was with this dedication to performance production with heavy emphasis on dramaturgical vision and meaning that I went into Primordial Productions with. Although having three different roles in a production could lead to overextending oneself or lacking in creativity and commitment in any one or more disciplines, it was the application of emphasising a dramaturgical approach in everything the artist creates and moulds that kept me grounded in my work and aware of the work's theatrical implications. Altogether, I aimed to operate more like a "theatrical curator" than as three separate production disciplines. 

From Sophocles to The Simpsons

In Anne Washburn’s Mr Burns, Washburn effectively questions the future of storytelling, and re-examines how storytelling and its socio-political impacts change throughout time, manifest themselves in society, and allow society to change them in turn. In the play, Washburn posits a group of survivors in post-apocalyptic America, recounts three different retellings by the survivors of the classic The Simpsons episode Cape Feare, firstly told in the very near future, 7 years after that, and finally, as an established theatre company and their rendition of Cape Feare has become common contemporary mythos 75 years after that. Mr Burns was heavily influential on my composition of The Victory of The Epigoni; the play helped me think about mythological storytelling in a wholly new, much more relatable and decipherable context, and opened up my writing process to incorporate the infinitely fluctuating nature of stories as they are retold and re-adapted, purposefully or subconsciously.

 

When it came to crafting proposals for our production, I carried Washburn’s themes and commentary into my research into Greek mythology and literature, and found recontextualised ideas and suggestions on storytelling heavily present in Sophocles’ Theban plays; Antigone, Oedipus the King, and Oedipus at Colonus. The three plays, though not considered or created as a trilogy by Sophocles, are amongst the best known Greek plays; even if the viewer wasn’t familiar with the text, most people would have some grasp on the myths of Oedpius and Antigone. The presence of public recognition and preconceived notions of story created a pleasing parallel with Washburns choice to adapt The Simpsons episode Cape Feare (The Simpsons, being one of the most well known and well received television shows of all time, and Cape Feare being a particularly famous and popular episode.) By creating a play with heavy commentary and cross examination of storytelling, it became beneficial to use Sophocles’ three Theban Plays as primary source material for script composition, relying on the stories’ pseudo-familial notions and content to estrange the audience through construction of a clearly false, unrelatable, unreliable parable that conflicts with the original story’s content and gives the audience clear understanding that political and social narratives are being supported in the storytelling.

 

My third crucial textual inspiration in composing The Victory of the Epigoni was Jackie Sibblie Drury’s We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884–1915 (We Are Proud…). Once, thanks to Sophocles and Washburn, I had decided upon the content and commentary of The Victory of The Epigoni, We Are Proud… was very influential in the script’s structure and style. We Are Proud… chronicles the missteps and shortfalls of a troupe of young actors attempting to theatrically recount the genocide of the Herero tribe in modern day Namibia. Sibblies Drury divides the performance into two distinctly different performance spaces, Process (the actors in rehearsal) and Presentation (the actors performing the story of the Herero tribe.) This division of performance space, distinguishing separate performative “realities”, fed into the construction of distinct performative realities or levels in The Victory of The Epigoni, though, whereas Sibblies Drury utilises this technique to portray performativity in both earnest and imitative existences, I used this technique to deconstruct the performativity of of the cast and the stories, and to establish separate versions of suspended theatrical reality, to inhibit the falseness of the performative narratives as a performance space, estranging the audience from the action, and allowing for socio-political decipherings of the play in a removed, objective spectator’s perspective.

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Lastly, helmed with the technique and theory in my writing process, I sought to distinguish the specific themes and messages of The Victory of The Epigoni. Immediately I considered Brecht’s approach to story and thematic content; Brecht’s own adaptation of Antigone saw Creon inhibit the role of fascist dictator, Brecht’s parallel to Nazism and nationalism in his home country, Germany (Antigone was first perfromed and published in 1948, just three years after the fall of the Nazi dictatorship.) In my Brechtian approach to script composition, I incorporated Brecht’s use of intensive allegorical political didacticism, and we progressed in writing the script with this at the forefront of our creative process; In Katie’s Antigone, we see clear parallels to contemporary politics - “Make Thebes Great Again”, in James’ Oedipus Rex, Oedipus states his dictatorial manifesto in an adapted and translated famous Hitler speech - “History sees in them solely the founder of a state”. In my own writing, I incorporated the use of meta-theatre in adding the presence of an unseen dictator whom the stories are tailored for, creating an awareness in the mind of the spectator of whom this seeks to please, and who’s agenda it wishes to support and protect. Furthermore, I decided to introduce the theme of storytelling itself into our performance; as well as The Victory of The Epigoni’s theme theatrical performativity of stories and the performativity of the storytellers themselves, I also sought to examine non-linear storytelling to heighten the theme of story with use of different styles of storytelling narratives. In the Brechtian masque performances of Oedipus Rex, Antigone, and Cadmus, the action follows classically theatrical plot structure (beginning, middle, end, etc) with heavy influence from Brecht’s episodic story composition. In the frame story of the Theban players however, I aimed to create a different sense of narrative flow whilst still aware of the inability to compose a wholly non-linear narrative (principality of time; all events and creations by nature begin, sustain, and end.) In the epilogue of The Victory of the Epigoni, the narrative specifically imitates and repeats the action and content of the play’s beginning, creating a sense of repetitivity. I aimed to evoke this, firstly, to estrange the action of the entire play in the climax with the entire performance appearing to entirely take place within another unstated performance reality. Secondly, the play up until the end takes place in episodic, clearly distinctly separated scenes, each existing in a different performative reality. In the last scene however, in text and in aesthetic, the realities begin to blend and create a new sense of performative “place” just as the play reaches an end, disrupting the classical structure of a play’s final act wrapping up loose ends and setting all themes and concepts to a fully realised end state, instead creating a new narrative style at the very end of the play keeps the performance developing in the mind of the spectator even after the play event itself is over. Thirdly and finally, the final moment of the play attempts to encapsulate the overarching theme of storytelling and storytelling’s socio-political ramifications when used as a tool for political agenda. When the play begins again in a new context, with new details, new pressures, and new perspectives, it reinforces the idea of the cyclical and ever evolving form of storytelling, that stories will always continue to be told, retold, readdressed, reapproached, each time with new intention and subtext, and hopefully this creates a lasting symbol that leaves the audience aware of the play’s intent (intent itself which may diverge in different socio-political directions.)

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Dramaturgy of Script Composition​

My composition and execution of the script, even in its current state as a first draft, was by a long way the toughest challenge I approached in this process. I enjoy writing, I dabble in creative and dramatic writing, but this was the first actual project I’ve experienced where I worked as lead writer and dramatist. However the task became supremely eased through my already detailed primary textual influences, and putting my full creative trust in Katie Kent and James Green’s adaptations of Sophocles’ Antigone and Oedipus Rex. In composing the narrative structure, I tried to subvert the audience’s linear narrative expectations. Sophocles’ Theban Plays form a trilogy; Antigone, Oedipus Rex, Oepidus at Colonus. However the dramaturgical team only scripted two of the plays, with James incorporating elements from Oedipus at Colonus into his adaptation of Oedipus Rex. We hoped the change in execution would create a rift in the audience’s expectations of classic dramatics, estranging them into an uncomfortably unfamiliar perspective for viewing, heightening the plays tension and subversion of expectations be they dramatic or more philosophical in nature. Furthering my experimentation with linear narrative expectations, I tried to unseat action from its typical location in plot structure. Inspired by Brechtian episodic compositional architecture, the action of the play is told through transportations through different performative realities, each segment exploring different themes, symbolism, and representations. The incongruity of messages and ideas presented within The Victory of The Epigoni makes the play’s discussions presented less like fable stories masquerading their true political intent and more akin to a “theatrical manifesto” brazenly portraying clearly encoded action and thought to an aware, critical audience.

I always intended for my first draft to change significantly in conversational structure and content between the first our read-throughs and our finalised production. Wanting to allow for actor agency, I purposefully allowed some sections of the script, such as the Director’s introduction to the Theban Players’ performance. My hopes were that as acting workshops and self evaluation progressed in the performance, we performers could feel more comfortable improvising, experimenting, and adapting the script freely to the same textual end. In my scripted conversation between the Theban Players and Theban Market-people, I tried to leave the dialogue between the actors in the frame play segments short and succinct, wanting to allow our performance contexts and styles to speak for themselves. I did of course try to implement some sort of character and personality into the lines, though the actual wording I chose was designed to feel somewhat wooden and give the impression that the text is outdated, or otherwise distantly relatable. Take Charlius’ line “Oh yes! Please, our dear Theban comrades- I mean, compatriots,excuse the interruption from the.. Uhh... (she’s got it!) the village idiot!” The use of comrades and compatriots was to utilise outdated or atypical phrasings, to reinforce the falseness and unconvincing nature of the Players’ motivation to reinforce the dictatorial agenda. Additionally, Charlius’ use of comrades and subsequent replacement with compatriots was to draw the audience's attention to the performances contemporary allegories and references; comrades holding strong connotations with USSR and Leninist-Stalinist communism, and the patriots suffix to compatriots implying nationalistic, pseudo-American subtext. If, given my earlier noting, the scripted dialogue here did change and take on new subtext and meaning, then it would be through Charlie Le Quelenec’s own actor agency that the change would come from, and she would carry my full trust as an actress that her own, personal dramaturgy she applies to her line, would carry as much thematic weight as any subtext given in the original line, as I approached the process without any semblance of sacred text to mandate my writing (if I adapt and totally reconstruct Sophocles’s tales, then it seems only right that my own tale should be vulnerable to reconstruction itself.)

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In an attempt to further ingest Brechtian alienation into my script composition, I knew I wanted Tiresias’ interruption to feel abnormal even in the surreal reality-shifting narrative that had been laid out until then. I took to finding ways to estrange Tiresias through the text, and decided upon writing Tiresias’ cry in verse, with heavy use of rhyme, alliteration, and rhythmic pacing. I hoped that Tiresias’ proclamation would take on a supernatural quality in the narrative of the play; the significance of their words being amplified by their poetic presentation. Tiresias in the source literature is a Theban prophet and advisor; according to myth he advised Cadmus at Thebes’ conception, he plays a role in Sophocles’ Antigone and Oedipus Rex, and according to myth even led the civilians out of Thebes after the Epigoni’s victory. Due to this context, I assigned Tiresias as the human representation of the spirit of Thebes in our play; a lightning rod for Thebes’ strife, expressing the fictional reality of the drama and grounding the play’s commentary and messaging in dramatic conflict. However, again rejecting classic dramatic narrative, I injected the end of Tiresias’ interruption with a meta-theatrical reflection on stories within stories and the cyclical nature of storytelling as form. Tiresias ends their speech;

Do I exist? Or save? Or martyr? Or ascend? 

Regardless, be brave, we approach our end.

I intended this to suggest the futility of Tiresias’ actions, they don’t actually exist as a part of the performative reality of the play, for we as storytellers instead decide to focus on the performance of the Theban Players. Furthermore, Tiresias’ futility encapsulates the fate of liberal humanist morality in the face of fascist authoritarian regimes; not irrelevance, but oppression. 

Dramaturgy & Collaboration;

Studies in Falseness

With sound understanding of Brecht and his methodologies, we embarked into the unknown of pre-production. The cornerstone of our Brechtian influence was our utilisation and development of Verfremdungseffekt, wherein the audience becomes removed and alienated from the drama and thus are forced into undertaking a higher artistic perspective on the action unfolding. One particular method of audience alienation that Brecht is known for heavily applying to his theatre is the use of masques, or frame plays, in which action occurs within the play itself. The use of a clearly false narrative within an already false narrative highlights the non-realism and anti-immersive nature of the action taking place, effectively removing audience emotionality from clouding the purposeful messaging of the scene. Perhaps the most famous use of frame plays are in Shakespeare; in A Midsummer Night’s Dream Nick Bottom and the Mechanicals perform a comically poor rendition of Pyramus and Thisbe. In The Taming of The Shrew, almost the entirety of the action all takes place within a court performance for Sly, a drunkard tricked into thinking he is a Lord. The opportunity to perform to the higher perspective spectator that Brecht’s alienation effect affords us was was we strove towards, as we were more concerned with representing themes of political and philosophical satire/allegory than emotion piquing domestic/social performance (not to imply that any one discipline of theatre is inherently better or worse than any other discipline.)

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Integrating estrangement into the composition of our piece, I designed four distinct levels of “performative realities” that the play would occupy, each level becoming more removed from reality and alien to the audience. Firstly came “Objective Reality”, the “actual” performative reality of us, Primordial Productions in 2020 Canterbury. In studying performativity Schechnerian theory, to me personally, mandated a recognition of performance in all contexts, and judging by the performative messages that we as Primordial have encoded into our performance, it would be wrong not to recognise the 

performativity of Primordial in our performance piece as a whole. Secondly, “Subjective Reality”, wherein the Theban players act as storytellers of Cadmus, Oedipus Rex, and Antigone. This performative reality was based off of classic theatrical notions, one standard reality in which the audience suspend their disbelief and accept the performance as a truth (admittedly with a meta twist in having actors play fictionalized versions of themselves.) Thirdly is the “False Reality” of the Theban Marketpeople telling Theban children Theban stories. This level inhabits the same level of non-reality as Brechtian masque; the action is heavily removed from audience emotionality and the audience regard the inherent falseness of the scene as a base manifest of the entirety of the scene’s action. In this level it is the highlighted presence of falseness in an already falsified environment which drives the content and reflection of the text. Finally came the fourth level, “Symbolic Reality”, the masques within the Brechtian masque level, the purposefully furthest removed and surreal performative reality, in which the audience’s total disbelief of the action unfolding in front of them sits them at peak alienation from the play. This creatively liberated performance space in which he audience automatically regard all that inhabits it to be absurd, entirely separated from not just their own reality but the realities of the play, allows for powerful metaphor which powers through any semiotics of belief or disbelief and instead presents idea and theory in a performative vacuum unfiltering the scene’s content through subjective perspective. 

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Through dramaturgical collaboration on the play’s scenography these four performative realities existed in four equal yet entirely disconnected playing spaces which the audience could easily move between. In particular I collaborated my collected dramaturgy with the skills and expertise of Chief LX George Plumbe, Sound Designer Holly Wakeman, and Set Designers Amy Chambers and Charlie Le Quelenec. In lighting, George crafted a spectrum of lighting designs which evoked different senses of theatrical place. George designed a false “house lights” setup for Subjective reality, creating a relatable theatre environment, in design and in theory, slightly removed from the environment of an actual theatre. George planned a classical Mikander wash for false reality, reinforcing the idea of this reality being heavily performative, and creating a familial sense of dramatic non-actualised space readying the audience for the presence of falseness. Finally, Symbolic Reality was to be lit with dance inspired lighting, non-traditional lighting fixtures, and use of bold colour, shape, and texture. This was to create a physical rendering of “symbolism”, notifying the audience of the metaphorical nature of Subjective Reality’s content, and to dramatically reinforce the action of the scene. In sound, Holly and I discussed incorporating musical motifs which could distinguish the separation of the realities and connections between those realities audibly. In the Marketplace soundscape Holly included familiar advertising sounds, such as the Mcdonalds whistle, not only for engaging the audience in the atmosphere of marketing, but to subtly create distrust in the mind of the audience in regards to the performance, due to their being primed to recognising being “sold” products or agendas. In Antigone, Holly created a soundscape using British and United States American nationalistic anthems to create contemporary understanding of the parrallels and commentary that the play is drawing on in the scene. When it came to set design, we agreed early on that following Brechtian style, set design would be sparse, simplistic, and rely primarily on imagination/ suspended belief. Amy went about designing mockups for the market stalls in False Reality, all of which would be made out of card, and be designed to appear two dimensional and cartoonish. We hoped that these design choices would hold an inherent feeling of flatness and fakeness, with the drama removed from genuinity, and all the action in the scene to purposely evoke a two-dimensional sense of theme; there is little depth or creativity in this reality beyond the painfully obvious political agenda the scene represents and promotes. We planned to keep props and costumes onstage in clear view of the audience, and refrain from going offstage, or even using the offstage space at all. With these choices we hoped to bring the visual dramaturgy of the piece to the forefront, partially to engage the audience in the play as dramatic art form, and partially to disengage the audience from relying on set design spectacle and creativity to create senses of place, instead turning to the acting, lighting, and sound for signifying time and space.

Performativity;

Applied Dramaturgy in Acting

As stated previously in my “about” section, I aimed, as a dramaturg, to pursue dramaturgically invested approaches in my two other roles in the production; writing and performance. My dramaturgical approach to writing has been recounted under From Sophocles to The Simpsons, but concerning my dramaturgical approach to performance, I still needed to clarify my intent and theory. I read Richard Schechner’s Performance Studies: An Introduction, but found no commentary on the confluence of dramaturgy and performance. I ransacked journal essays on applied dramaturgy to find some sort of basis for my exploration, but still left every essay empty handed. 

 

Luckily, the answer fell into my lap; while watching the T.V show Community, one line in particular rang around my head and informed my process going forward. In the episode “Documentary Filmmaking Redux” Abed Nadir (played by Danny Pudi), reflecting on his experience as a documentary filmmaker states

 

Documentarians are supposed to be objective, to avoid having any effect on the story. And yet we have more effect than anyone, because we decide to tell it. And we decide how it ends. Will your story be yet another sad one of yet another man who just wanted to be happy? Or will your story acknowledge the very nature of stories, and embrace the fact that sharing the sad ones can sometimes make them happy?[2]”

 

The quote in its entirety held striking relevance to my dramaturgical vision, but in particular it was the use of the word documentarian that really piqued my creativity. Oxford distinguishes three dictionary definitions of documentarian; “A photographer specializing in producing a factual record… A director or producer of documentaries” and “An expert analyst of historical documents.” It was this last definition on which I based my approach; the performer as documentarian, and performance as analysis. As our piece is based almost entirely on historical mythologies and literatures, and analysing these texts’ content and contemporary reflection, I found as a performer, the crux of my performance exploration was active analysis of story and narrative. 

 

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By not focusing on myself as performing something internal, or throwing my emotionality into performance, I allowed my performance to take on a more diplomatic, removed role. By suppression of the performer’s ego, I was immensely more aware of myself as performer, and what messaging my performance conveyed. To this end, I held a famous Stanislavski quote at the forefront of my active performance; “Love art in yourself, and not yourself in art.[3]” 

 

I further my deconstruction of the performer by considering the function and effect of a performer in a play. In my dramaturgical work, I was decoding storytelling as an art form and the nature of stories, and the ideas of storytelling being omnipresent in all aspects of life and performance really helped me to reconsider the performer as the storyteller, yes, but more importantly the performer as merely an aspect of the story they tell. This distinction between “performer:storyteller” and “performance:storytelling” and how these distinctions can intertwine greatly inspired my process as a performer. To balance out my deep delves into storytelling in my performance, I researched storytellers’ words for something to balance out this devotion to the art of storytelling and keep my perspective on the performance grounded. In an article in the Harvard Business review of all places, I found a quote from Peter Guber which re-evaluated my perspective on the storytelling of our piece. “Orchestrate emotional responses effectively, and you actually transfer proprietorship of the story to the listener. [4]” This simple translation of the separation between story and storyteller certainly grounded me in my performance process; understanding that acting as storyteller does not mean that the story belongs only to you, that ownership of story is fluid and imprecise, that the audience will decode and retell themselves my stories in their own rite of passage as storyteller comforted me, as it reassured me that my performative storytelling ought to strive not for authority and ownership in storytelling but for clear analysis and relaying of the story’s crucial themes.

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James Green. Improvised Movement Piece.

(Left to Right)

Katie Kent, Charlie Le Quelenec,Amy Chambers, James Green. 

Reading the first draft of  a new scene in rehearsal.

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Bibliography

[1] Cambridge Junction, Introduction to... Dramaturgy, avaliable at

 https://www.junction.co.uk/introduction-to%E2%80%A6-dramaturgy

accessed 10.05.2020

[2] Abed Nadir, Ganz M. “Documentary Filmmaking: Redux” (2011) Community, NBC, 17 November, 8/7c

[3] Stanislavski C. (1956) My Life in Art Meridian Books: New York

[4] Guber P. (2007) “The Four Truths of the Storyteller” Harvard Business Review, December. Avaliable at https://hbr.org/2007/12/the-four-truths-of-the-storyteller Accessed on 07.05.2020

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