READING COMPLETED: For this week I read Joan Templeton’s essay “Of This Time, of This Place: Mrs. Alving’s Ghosts and the Shape of the Tragedy in PMLA”. Although I was confused in parts I liked points she made throughout. The question I was most interested in was “why has Mrs. Alving been so singled out for blame?” to which the answer was “Cherchez la femme” translation to “look for the woman”. Although I may not be exactly on the right lines, I found this interesting as it is true – in times of blame it is at most times placed on to the woman. Although I digress, I wanted to touch upon this further as even in today’s society women are always at blame.
“Why did you get pregnant, you should have used birth control”
“You shouldn’t of wore that, you were asking for it”
Comments like this are always placed on the women and bever the man who is usually the one actually committing the act – blame is always put on the women and within Ghosts it is the same.
Mrs. Alving blames herself for not bringing much “gaiety” into his home and throughout blames herself for not only Mr. Alvins actions but the reasons as to why he did them. When you think about it this is ridiculous and she is in no part to blame. The only blame she holds is returning to him; however, this was in part down to the duty she had towards her husband and other foolish things women are “given” such as virginity. I found this conclusion point in Templetons article so interesting and relatable. This made me think about the presentation of Mrs. Alving and taking inspriation from Nublings performance (where Regine has 5 younger siblings) we could do a piece where there are several versions of Mrs. Alving portraying all different versions of her e.g. a version which represents her duty, a version which represents her anger, a version which represents her regret etc. Other versions could include the person who she wants to be and the person she will become after the play.
Templeton, J. (1986). Of This Time, of This Place: Mrs. Alving’s Ghosts and the Shape of the Tragedy. PMLA. Unknown: Modern Language Association
MONDAY: This was reading week and we came in on Monday with Susan. Here we discussed a lot of ideas and thoughts. We also did an activity with words and actions, where we a line then attached a feeling to it and then attached a movement to it. We showed these to one another a feedback on them also. After two groups were asked to merge their movement sequences as two separate pieces but happening at the same time. They found this very difficult as it is hard to be aware of doing your piece whilst being aware of another group doing their piece whilst also being aware of the space around out and combining the space at the same time. It took many attempts to happen and, in the end, I think we all slightly gave up. We also used this time to show pieces to Susan for feedback on what we have done already. This was useful as we had not seen her in a while and she had not seen some of the pieces we had done.
We also spent some time using rope and throwing some ideas around. One of these was to have Mrs. Alving and Pastor Manders skipping with the rope, however this did not get far as many of us could not skip.
Groups going forward were decided and acts were assigned to each group this was due to commitment issues within the group so groups were assigned and sections so everyone held equal accountability and responsibility.
WEDNESDAY: We did not meet today as this was originally reading week which we would usually have off. So, nothing was devised but a few comments and ideas were passed to one another via WhatsApp.