'Oh Thomasina!' Such a drama in a diagram

Arcadia

Last evening I really enjoyed a performance of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia at the Duke of York's, or soon to be - The Tom Stoppard Theatre:

Act I, Scene 2  

'Septimus ... You should no more grieve for the rest than for a buckle lost from your first shoe, or for your lesson book which will be lost when you are old. We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew? ...'^ p.20.

 Act II, Scene 3

'Lady Croom We are intruding here - this will not do, Mr Hodge. Evidently, nothing is being learned. (To Noakes) Come along, sir! 

Thomasina Mr Noakes - bad news from Paris! 

Noakes Is it the Emperor Napoleon? 

Thomasina No. (She tears the page off her drawing block, with her "diagram" on it) It concerns your heat engine. Improve it as you will, you can never get out of it what you put in. It repays eleven pence in the shilling at most. The penny is for this author's thoughts. 

She gives the diagram to Septimus who looks at it.' p.74
...
Now Septimus retrieves his book from Thomasina. He turns the pages, and also continues to study Thomasina's diagram. ... 

Septimus Why does it mean Mr Noakes's engine pays eleven pence in the shilling? Where does he say it? 

Thomasina Nowhere. I noticed it by the way. I cannot remember now. 

Septimus Nor is he interested by determinism -------

Thomasina Oh... yes. Newton's equations go forwards and backwards, they do not care which way. But the heat equation cares very much, it goes only one way. That is the reason Mr Noakes's engine cannot give the power to drive Mr Noakes's engine. 

Septimus Everybody knows that. 

Thomasina Yes, Septimus, they know it about engines! 

Pause. He looks at his watch 

Septimus A quarter to twelve. For your essay this week, explicate your diagram. 

Thomasina I cannot. I do not know the mathematics. 

Septimus Without mathematics, then.' p.75.

 
Tom Stoppard, (1993) Arcadia (Playscript), Faber & Faber, pb. ISBN 9780571169344.
https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571169344-arcadia/

My text source:
https://collegearts.yale.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/arcadia_by_tom_stoppard.pdf 

^ n.b. This was therapeutic, but I still mourn the losses from Alexandria and other libraries ... today.

Interviews, playwriting, and clinical encounters: pause for breath - Roger Lewin

It can be surprising how you know something. Something that should be obvious to you. It's your 'Bread and Butter' as the saying goes. And yet for a variety of reasons, you persist in not seeing it, or you frame it in a way that ultimately reveals a bias, influence, and may even mask several aspects of truth. It might be the influence of work over four decades plus. Sitting down, or frequently finally getting out for a walk after several weeks of nudging, in a one-to-one therapeutic context. Or, ever since secondary school, that distant performed encounter with the Crucible. And, more recently as 'Ken', a Post Office subpostmaster and his wife (a brief 10-12 mins), and over the years a desire to write dialogue.

Reviews of Roger Lewin's Complexity, vary in their conclusions about the book's quality. No surprise there, but reading the book it was a revelation to see the method: a series of interviews and the resulting dialogues. 

'In this revision of his book originally published in 1992, Roger Lewin explains what the science of complexity is all about through interviews with some of its most important practitioners (and critics) organized around some of the central ideas. As such this is both a fine introduction to the subject and an interesting read. Lewin includes 16 pages of photos of the scientists he interviewed captioned with a significant quote from each. He has added an afterword on the application of complexity science to business, and an appendix about John Holland, whom he dubs, "Mr. Emergence."

"Everything works toward an ecology" is an old dictum of mine. I have the sense that I came up with that myself, but I probably read it somewhere years ago. At any rate, what is being said here is that complex systems work toward a state of equilibrium near a transition phase, near "the edge of chaos." This equilibrium can be an ecology (Darwin's "tangled web"); indeed it can be the entire planet, as in the concept of Gaia in which "the Earth's biological and physical systems are tightly coupled in a giant homeostatic system" (quoting Stuart Kauffman on page 109).'

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/384547.Complexity

There's nothing profound in this post, and yet this melange of interviews, playwriting, and clinical encounters gives me pause for breath.

Previously: 'Our broken sticks' c/o Roger Lewin "Complexity: life at the edge of chaos"

Book: 'Complexity in Health Care - A Paradigm Shift for Clinical Practice'

This book was published in 2023, so I am most grateful to Daniela and colleagues at SpringerNature for the review copy. My reading will also inform both the presentation I've to deliver, and the learning during the conference's three days and the rest of a visit to Morocco.

With a 15 minute talk and 5 minutes for questions, I have 15 slides. The final one, is a listing of sources, plus this book:

1. Estrada, E., Submitted (2026) Emergent Geometry in Complex Systems from Relational Dynamics. I. The Classical Setting.
https://ifisc.uib-csic.es/en/publications/emergent-geometry-in-complex-systems-from-relation/
2. Napoli, P.H., Fischer, B., Salati Marcondes de Moraes, G.H. et al. (2026). When complexity does not mean chaos: nonlinear dynamics of entrepreneurial ecosystems. J Technol Transf  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-025-10314-7
3. Hylin MJ, Kerr AL, Holden R. Understanding the Mechanisms of Recovery and/or Compensation following Injury. Neural Plast. 2017;2017:7125057. doi: 10.1155/2017/7125057. Epub 2017 Apr 20. PMID: 28512585; PMCID: PMC5415868.
4. Zanin, M., Papo, D. (2020) Assessing functional propagation patterns in COVID-19. Chaos, Solitons & Fractals 138, 109993
5. Braithwaite J, Ellis LA, Churruca K, et al. Complexity Science as a Frame for Understanding the Management and Delivery of High Quality and Safer Care. 2020
6. Bergström, J., & Dekker, S. W. A. (2014). Bridging the Macro and the Micro by Considering the Meso: Reflections on the Fractal Nature of Resilience. Ecology and Society, 19(4), art22. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-06956-190422
7. Rickles, D., Hawe, P., & Shiell, A. (2007). A simple guide to chaos and complexity. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 61(11), Article 11. https://doi.org/10.1136/jech.2006.054254
8. Miller, K. (2007). From Fears of Entropy to Comfort in Chaos: Arcadia, The Waste Land, Numb3rs, and Man’s Relationship With Science. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 27(1), 81-94.
9. Frankel, Steven & Thurber, Steven & Bourgeois, James. (2023). Complexity in Health Care: A Paradigm Shift for Clinical Practice. Cham: Springer. 10.1007/978-3-031-14949-8.

Also pointing to the bibliography in the sidebar and the template link. 

More to follow ...

Theatres of War and Healing

INDIVIDUAL

|

     INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

|

GROUP

Theater of War Productions presents community-specific, theater-based projects that address pressing public health and social issues.	Wounded Ukrainian veterans find healing on stage c/o Reuters

Previously: 'theatre' : 'war' : 'public (mental) health' 

In search of socio-political logics

'The logic of appropriateness refers to actions which members of an institution take to conform to its norms. For example, a head of state will perform ceremonial duties because it is an official obligation. By contrast, the logic of consequences denotes behaviour directed at achieving an individual goal such as promotion or re-election.' p.87.

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic -------------------------------------------  mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group-population

'Institutions are far more than the theatre within which the political drama unfolds; they also shape the script (Peters, 1999). This emphasis within the institutional framework on the symbolic or ritual aspect of political behaviour contrasts with the view of politicians and bureaucrats as rational, instrumental actors who define their own goals independently of the organization they represent.' p.87.

'Further, institutions bring forth activity which takes place simply because it is expected, not because it has any deeper political motive. When a legislative committee holds hearings on a topic, it may be more concerned to be seen to be doing its job than to probe the topic itself. Much political action is best understood by reference to this logic of appropriateness rather than a logic of consequences. For instance, when a president visits an area devastated by floods, he is not necessarily seeking to direct relief operations or to achieve any purpose other than to be seen to be performing his duty of showing concern. In itself, the tour achieves the goal of meeting expectations arising from the actor's institutional position. "Don't just do something, stand there", said Ronald Reagan, a president with a fine grasp of the logic of appropriateness.' pp.86-87.

    

See also: 'drama' : 'bridges'

Hague, R., & Harrop, M. (2007). Comparative Government and Politics (7th ed.). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Peters, B. Guy. (1999). Institutional theory in political science: the new institutionalism. London: Pinter.

The poetry of presence c/o Kenner's 'Mechanic Muse'

'... Eliot's poetry responds to yet another of the new century's pervasive experiences, that of being talked to by people we cannot see. This happens whenever we pick up a telephone, a thing we do so many times a day we quite overlook the strangeness of what lappens next. A character in The Cocktail Party remarks that you can't tell the truth on the telephone, meaning probably that you lose three quarters of your communicative power when you cannot be seen and your breathing body is absent, and you must fabricate mere semantic sequences. Your words are only a fraction of what you say, and the telephone throws you back on nothing but words. It is in Sweeney Agonistes, the play that gives the telephone bell a wholly metrical speaking part, that we hear the famous phrase, "I gotta use words vhen I talk to you."
    When the phone rings in that play - 

    Ting a ling ling 

    Ting a ling ling

Dusty snatches it up and says,

Hello Hello are you there?' 

Kenner, H. (1987) The Mechanic Muse, Oxford: OUP. pp.34-35.

Normansfield Theatre in Teddington

Normansfield Theatre in Teddington

'My favourite building is the amazing Normansfield Theatre in Teddington that John Langdon Down (1828-1896) built to provide positive and stimulating education for learning disabled people (Down syndrome is named after him). At a time when most disabled people would have been shut away in horrific asylums, Down adapted his own house as a residential home, and built a beautiful theatre for creative rehabilitation. It's one of the few surviving private theatres from the period, with original painted scenery and other ornate fixtures, recently remodelled. For me, it's also a reminder of how the wealthy often used their money for good causes, which feels less common now. Jos Boys, guest curator and co-director of The DisOrdinary Architecture Project'

My source: The pick of London Open House. House&Home, FTWeekend. 6/7 September 2025. p.8.

Image: Langdon Down Centre

Previously: 'learning disability' : 'theatre' : 'architecture'

Scholarship in Arnold Wesker's 'The Friends'

... n'just t'lethee know that's, scholrship up int North ...

'MANFRED. Our trouble, Crispin, us lot, the once-upon-a-time bright lads from up north, is that we've no scholarship. Bits and pieces of information, a charming earthiness intelligence and cheek, but-not scholarship. Look at these books here. (He picks up a pile and throws them round him.) Renan, Taine, Kirkegaarde, Wittgenstein, Spengler, Plato, Jung, Homer, Vico, Adorno, Lukacs, Heine, Bloch-you've not heard of half of them, have you? And half of them, two-thirds, I'll never read. Do you know, new knowledge disrupts me. Because there's no solid rock of learning in this thin, undernourished brain of mine, so each fresh discovery of a fact or an idea doesn't replace, it undermines the last; it's got no measurement by which to judge itself, no perspective by which to evaluate its truth or its worth; it can take no proper place in that lovely long view of history scalloped out by bloody scholarship, because each new concern renders the last one unimportant. No bloody scholarship, us. And when I sometimes get a feeling that two people in love or one man afraid of death might be a supreme consideration, along comes this man with his 'we are moving into phases of creative disorder' and his 'everywhere the lines are blurred' and I've no defence. He sounds so right, I think, and besides-he's got scholarship. What's 'silly loving' and 'banal dying' in all that? Evil? You want me to confess to the knowledge of evil? I confess it. I say it-evil! So? And what  shall I do with that bit of knowledge?' p.18.

 WESKER, Arnold. The Friends. London: Jonathan Cape, (1970). Hardcover. First edition.

Play - “The Ballad of Crooked Lane” 6th & 7th Oct.

Media Release - 

Blind Poet’s Life to be Celebrated in New Play. 

The life of Edward Rushton, Blind Poet and key figure in the Campaign against Slavery, will be spotlighted in a new production by Valley Theatre Drama Group in Liverpool. The play – entitled “The Ballad of Crooked Lane” – is set on the day Rushton, now well into middle age, awaits eye surgery to regain his sight. While waiting, he goes over his eventful life with his friend and biographer, William Shepherd, the Minister of Gateacre Chapel.

“Rushton was a larger-than-life character,” says writer and director Tom Mclennan. “The story is that he lost his sight going below deck to help sick African captives on their way to the plantations. I first read about him in Bill Hunter’s biography “Unsung Hero” and have always felt his life deserves more recognition.”

Apart from campaigning against the slave trade – not always a popular thing to do in those days, since a large amount of Liverpool’s wealth was based on the evil triangular trade – Rushton was also instrumental in establishing the Liverpool School for the Blind, one of the first in the country, as well as being at the forefront of efforts to end the notorious pressgangs that terrorised coastal neighbourhoods, intent on kidnapping sailors for the British Navy.

“The Ballad of Crooked Lane” will be performed as part of a double bill along with Day Sheehan’s “Wake” for the Liverpool Fringe on Monday October 6th, 7.30pm, at Valley Theatre n Netherley, and on Tuesday 7th October, 7.30pm, at The Studio Beyond, 63 Wood Street, Liverpool L1 4AL

Entrance for the Valley Theatre event is free (pay a donation if you like it). Tickets for the Studio Beyond are £8/£6 and can be bought from:

https://store.makeitwrite.org/product/balladandwake/

I read a part for this at Valley Theatre, very interesting and will look to see a performance.

See also: Edward Rushton: Who was this blind revolutionary?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-ouch-29957645

My source: https://www.philosophyinpubs.co.uk/

Currently reading, Arnold Wesker's 'The Friends'.
https://www.arnoldwesker.com/plays/the-friends/index.html

The compact: a knowledge project

Some things don't change . . .

 'Doctor Faustus'

'FAUSTUS discovered in his study.

     FAUSTUS. Settle thy studies, Faustus, and begin
     To sound the depth of that thou wilt profess:
     Having commenc’d, be a divine in shew,
     Yet level at the end of every art,
     And live and die in Aristotle’s works.
     Sweet Analytics, ’tis thou hast ravish’d me!
     Bene disserere est finis logices.
     Is, to dispute well, logic’s chiefest end?
     Affords this art no greater miracle?
     Then read no more; thou hast attain’d that end:
     A greater subject fitteth Faustus’ wit:
     Bid Economy farewell, and Galen come,
     Seeing, Ubi desinit philosophus, ibi incipit medicus:
     Be a physician, Faustus; heap up gold,
     And be eterniz’d for some wondrous cure:
     Summum bonum medicinae sanitas,
     The end of physic is our body’s health.
     Why, Faustus, hast thou not attain’d that end?
     Is not thy common talk found aphorisms?
     Are not thy bills hung up as monuments,
     Whereby whole cities have escap’d the plague,
     And thousand desperate maladies been eas’d?
     Yet art thou still but Faustus, and a man.

        ...'

THE TRAGICAL HISTORY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS
By Christopher Marlowe
From The Quarto of 1604
Edited by The Rev. Alexander Dyce

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/779/779-h/779-h.htm

Film - Doctor Faustus ( 1967)

https://archive.org/details/doctor-faustus-1967-1080p-classic-older-hollywood-films

See also:

'Camp Concentration' by Thomas M. Disch

'AI' - Humanity's Faustian compact?

#individual #collective #power #safety #governance #ethics #morality

'Theatre' by Caroline Walker

Individual

|

      INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC  --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

 SOCIOLOGY  :    POLITICAL 

|

Group

'Theatre' by Caroline Walker

Image source: 
https://www.inglebygallery.com/news/7465-caroline-walker-the-scottish-national-portrait-gallery-theatre/

line of sight (seeing is believing) : 'care' : 'community' : 'theatre'

My source:
Harriet Baker, PAINT, FEED & PLAY, FT Weekend, Magazine. July 12 2025.  #1,133, pp.46-52.

https://www.ft.com/content/6e50181b-689e-4cd5-b084-37b311446e94

Great read too. The exhibition moves to Pallant House Gallery, Chichester from November 22nd.

Caroline Walker: Mothering. The Hepworth Wakefield. 17 May - 26 October 2025

https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/artists/caroline-walker

Entry to the Theatre of Nursing & Space

I do understand that reading theatre related texts, joining a theatre group, my writing a play is still pi in the sky. It's the journey, that's all. In Hodges' model I've differentiated between structure and content. This is the center of the stage about which Hodges' model turns. In the guided discovery by which students and audiences can discover the model,  these are the bases to touch in turn.

Sir Alan's focus on construction in writing: is narrative, time, location, characters (p.12). The overall message for me is, the frequently uttered - less is more. I must take heed and listen. During Ayckbourn's career, he has encountered the full retinue of writers and directors young and 'experienced'. Reading this, it is nice to be both 'new old-er' -

'Then there is the new old playwright. Far more difficult to deal with. They have probably nursed this script for twenty-five years and they're damned if you're going to mess it up for them when they've waited so long. Especially someone your age who wasn't even born when their harrowing play about World War Two was still raging, dammit.' p.110. (My emphasis in bold.)

Thinking about 1959 and the start of Sir Alan's career, his reference to WWII, made me recall nursing assistant and student nurse studies and placements at Winwick Hospital in 1977. On the geriatric wards for entertainment it was WWI songs were often sung, or records played. Long players, indeed.

In health we are usually accustomed to stopping before the 'true' end, with the exception of palliative care, although even then the ending should be 'better' than what it would otherwise have been.

If I am nursing Hodges' model, I've been doing so ever since 1987-88. As Sir Alan also observes of writers, while passionate about the utility of the model - my project - not my model; I am filled with self-doubt. Is this an over-valued idea - in my hands (and mind!)?

In other reading - Stagecraft. The Complete Guide To Theatrical Practice, by Griffiths Trevor R. 1982, I came across the word 'proscenium'.

'Incidentally, when we came to stage [the play in question is 'Woman in Mind' PJ] the London proscenium version this was far more difficult to achieve. Proscenium theatres generally make scenic statements whether they want to or not; the round makes none unless called upon to do so.' p.32. 

There are many insights into sets, design, and the various pros and cons. In May and earlier this month, with three other cast members I performed a role 8-9mins in a Living Newspaper (40-50 mins in total). It was fascinating to watch the various aspects developing from the initial reading in January. With Hodges' model an idea, the question of set design is not straight forward. But as with over-valued ideas, I am probably over-thinking (as usual) making things more complicated than necessary.

One golden nugget of advice, is if you are the writer and write well, well you don't have to think the set design. That is a problem for someone else to solve. Hopefully you will be impressed by the interpretation and realisation (often in film credits) of your work.

That is, unless you're unlucky and find yourself on the receiving end of Obvious Rule No. 13:

Beware of competitive set designers, particularly those with a 'concept'.

The name Ayckbourn is synonomous with The Stephen Joseph Theatre, which is in the round:

'The Round provides a truly unique experience as the audience is seated all around the stage. Not only does the audience see the performance from every angle, it also brings the actor into the same space as the audience.'

"Let’s have the actors in the same room as the audience, let’s have four front rows, let’s get really excited about this acting business!"

Stephen Joseph, 1959 - https://sjt.uk.com/about-us

From the mid-1980s and 90s I used to visit Bolton's Octagon quite regularly. Performances were frequently in the round. Last month, Abigail's Party was too (the last night).

Whatever, the staging, set, I'd be interested to see the 'concept'. On directing:

'As regards interpretation. you may need to tread more warily. As I said earlier, many playwrights are not naturally theatre creatures - certainly they are rarely visual theatre creatures, I have seen them sit there and watch their play physically anfold with a look of total amazement. pordering sometimes on delight, sometimes on dismay. What was in their head has been made three-dimensional flesh.' p.111.

Space has been and remains fundamental to my thinking about Hodges' model. Even pushing the envelope to topology, this is well beyond my ken. But not other gifted researchers. Hodges' model provides inter- multi- transdisciplinary bridges: we need to Before the time of schools becoming fenced and patrolled sites, we used to play cricket, tennis and football. There was a large wall at front of a former school, great for tennis, but not return of serve. Now a projection shared in the round - so everyone sees the same thing (yes, another rule!) might hold potential. There's acknowledgement that technology moves on too (p.123). And room for comedy, Ayckbourn's starting point. 

'Designers, it has been said, even the best of them, sometimes get hold of the wrong end of the stick. ... Always get to look at drawings, ground plans and, most helpfully, scale models of what they intend.' p.120.

The Crafty Art of Playmaking by Alan Ayckbourn. Faber, 2004, softcover, ISBN 0571215106.

https://www.concordtheatricals.co.uk/s/45898/the-crafty-art-of-playmaking

In Theatre, Silence is a genre, and therapeutic ally

'As a playwright it may be your intention to build a vehicle to take us to the stars. But do make sure you have people aboard.' (p.9).^
Alan Ayckbourn in The Crafty Art of Playmaking.

Sound of silence in activism

Quite fitting in the two decades since publication, given the rise of AI and the impact upon the arts, specifically human imagination, creativity, and livelihoods. Meaning: silence as a tool for protest, and activism is also a genre and a can be a therapuetic ally. 

Going backwards - Sir Alan writes: 'Theatre for me has always been, in a way, a reflection of life writ somewhat smaller'. p.10.

While the point concerns the faith and trust placed in theatre directors by the company, there is an analogue in healthcare. The belief of the patient, in their doctor and the medical team. Or, at least the knowledge and skills they should, and appear to possess. For Ayckbourn '... the director looked as if he knew.' (p.10).

Obvious rule no. 4: 'Use the minimum number of characters that you need' (p.13).

What can I say? Society, has peeled back the patient - doctor (substitute health profession as needed) to the person whose monologue seeks confirmation of illness x,y, or z. Apparently here in the UK 1 in 4 adults have a mental health condition. The debate is ongoing as to what is going on. But the subject of Hodges' model as a possible crucible for a work of drama can certainly keep to character count down.

Not only that, but is this a book on counselling - interpersonal skills?

'An audience that doesn't care stops listening in the end. '. p.14. 

As part of -

'Obvious Rule no. 5: They need to care about your characters. (So you should too.)'

So, for both playwrights and carewrights, there is a duty of care (for all of course - despite the actions of so many governments).

In health the patient is the character study. There is, should be, must be - a plan of  care, a care plan. As a 'play', Hodges' model begins as a template of at least five acts [Spiritual (Four domains) ]. That is whether or not they are all 'written'. The attitude though should be unconditional positive regard.

There's no Waiting for Godot here, unless the character is social care?

Could it be that as organisational hierarchies have been flattened, the notion of character has been under siege? The onion that is our identity, personality, persona unpicked, skin-by-skin by social media, social change, and policy affecting education. Character building used to be a thing didn't it? No longer needed now is it?

Sir Alan, supports this hypothesis in his 'Obvious Rule No. 28:

People in general are reluctant to reveal themselves.' (p.65).

I still wonder about the potential of Hodges' model in secondary level education. More than ever, with all the talk about resilience, recovery, mental health issues, the rising UK welfare bill, may beg the question: What is character today? But, it is not defined by a stiff upper lip.

Not to sound 'ableist', but the 'crafty' in Ayckbourn's title, can be read in health terms; the disciplines drawing on science and the arts. Plus, they involve craft - use of the self, empathy and rapport. Not limited to, but in mental health care, it could be 'crafty' in the exercise of power, so frequently a theme central in drama and the human condition.

^A nice reminder too, of a Poul Anderson's SF classic Tau Zero (and a previous post).

The Crafty Art of Playmaking by Alan Ayckbourn. Faber, 2004, softcover, ISBN 0571215106.

https://www.concordtheatricals.co.uk/s/45898/the-crafty-art-of-playmaking

https://www.isthiswhatwewant.com/

Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b0/Is_This_What_We_Want%3F.jpg/250px-Is_This_What_We_Want%3F.jpg

https://www.amazon.com/Zero-Coronet-Books-Poul-Anderson/dp/0340163364

Theatre in TI:ME

The Crafty Art of Playmaking

In health we're dealing with time in all its forms: cardinal; birth and death and all that happens in-between. Aka, 'life', illness, and palliative care. And, even if not recognised, chronological and pathological time, which policymakers should pay more attention to. The art of theatre, has its time (p.20): stage time, and real (theatre foyer) time. 

'At its most successful, theatre views things from a human standabout.' (p.9). 

I'd second that, especially allied with the notions (ideas!) of health career, and life chances. 

Since the publication of TCAoP in 2004 people seem to quite ready to dispense, disregard, downplay, demote the humanistic with the rise of AI and assisted dying for the terminally ill (of course).

Time recurs - as a frame. (p.25) with a touch of elective surgery. 'Think of your story as a piece of thread. Where you cut in is the point at which the lights come on in Act One. Where you cut out will be your final curtain. (There may be a knot or two in the middle to denote the intervals, too.)' p.25.

In the first post re. TCAoP I stressed the complexity, plethora of ideas that Hodges' model can create. Sir Alan provides a potential 'get of jail free card' (or as near as?) in his original rule no. 9. 

'If a play can be too simple, it can also be too complicated. If one element is particularly complicated, keep the rest of it simple.' (p.25).

Very useful advice! But achieving it when having and applying an idea is another matter.

What's this though? Step back to original rule no. 6:

'There is no hard and fast rule as to which constructional element comes first.' (p.20).

Butrint National Park Albania   

In the guided discovery exercise in students (audiences..) creating the model, there are two constructional elements, that also contribute to the one big idea.

It gets better! Original rule no. 14:

At least fifty per cent of your play is going to be visual. (p.33).

I must make sure I don't confuse concept/ual with visual/imagery.

More to follow.

The Crafty Art of Playmaking by Alan Ayckbourn. Faber, 2004, softcover, ISBN 0571215106.

https://www.concordtheatricals.co.uk/s/45898/the-crafty-art-of-playmaking

Theatre - which one?

The Crafty Art of Playmaking

Summer reading includes Ayckbourne's The Crafty Art of Playmaking published in 2004. Already half way through, writing has been covered, directing follows.

Looking at what I can learn in contrasting health and theatre, there is more than both laying claim to having a 'theatre'. Perhaps health got there first in a very primitive, existential, and fundamental sense. The 'theatre of war' covering battle, and the fight for food and survival. Even as civilisation emerged, on the battle field, triage was practised in a more deliberate way with skills that were built on emerging knowledge handed down orally - to become art.

So, no doubt there was a concurrency going on. Heroics in so many guises, shared around the fire. Plus, our individual dreams and nightmares that are framed collectively.

Ayckbourn offer pithy lessons learned over his career that began in 1959. There's an acting maxim:

'When playing a miser, stress his generosity.'

So can we restate the acting maxim as:

'When playing a patient, stress their strengths'?

Or. 'When playing a patient, stress their personhood'? . . .

If that is a challenge to the healthcare sector (even if unintended), then it is one that is actually long-standing. There are the three R's: rehabilitation, reablement and recovery.

Ayckbourn explains how the darker the subject the more a writer needs to find the light. And vice-versa. This suits me fine, and medicine is recognised as a great source of humour across several cultures.

The book lists a series of  'Obvious Rules' all numbered. 

Of No. 1: Born in Liverpool, I never would look down on comedy; and never as a poor cousin of drama.

After reading his obvious Rule No. 2, 'Never start a play without an idea'; I put my pants back on.

Do I have an idea? Oh my! Well Brian's at least.

In a way it's the other way around. The shout goes up - "Eratosthenes! Please pass me a sieve."

On having an idea, Ayckbourn writes: 'They assume, I think, that if they start the journey, maybe an idea will occur on the way. Perhaps a map of where they're going will blow in through the car window. In my experience this never happens.' p.6.

This is good advice, with the additional complication of having many maps, and yes, none: c/o Hodges' model. I need a theme, a situation and a thread. I'm writing a few ideas down. And helpfully Sir Alan advises not to throw ideas away. He describes, from experience how disparate things can come together.

Today (19th), I finished TCAoP here in Corfu. A great help for me, that is, the writing section pp.3-96; as I will try to explain in further posts. Sooner than expcted, I've started a book that will be a 'review'. 

A visit to Albania tomorrow - early start pick-up 0710.

The Crafty Art of Playmaking by Alan Ayckbourn. Faber, 2004, softcover, ISBN 0571215106.
https://www.concordtheatricals.co.uk/s/45898/the-crafty-art-of-playmaking

Theatre - the best way to learn ...

Pardon me, while I stay local - in Liverpool . . . 

I've always been interested in drama since school days (aged 13-14) and playing Francis Nurse in Arthur Miller's Crucible. Recent reading (inc. Theatre of the Absurd, The Shifting Point), see 'drama' - with more to follow) encouraged me to find out more. As a community mental health nurse on a visit, I've sometimes thought of this script being written as we engage with each other. Framed within  interpersonal skills and the society 'outside', there's a sense in which a screenplay is also writ large. 

The fact of whether the session is therapeutic, progressive, person-centred, structured, ethical, purposeful, has tea and custard creams ... is the drama of course.

In a way the creators of formal psychotherapies are playwrights - directors:

After all, they keep producing 'original' therapy manuals, don't they?

In the new year I noticed a community message about a theatre group Valley Theatre Group, planning a 'Living Newspaper' for a drama festival that took place last month. There is another performance next month in Liverpool, as per the edited message below:

People have been asking what’s going on and when for our Hope Street performances June 6-8^th. So here’s the details.

We start each evening with the play about a 1930s Socialist Theatre group, “Unity”. (Cast: Peter Merrill, Ted Grant, Steve Donegan, Meggan Pye, Day Sheehan and Donna Lauder)

Then, on Friday 6 June, in the second half, we have our first Living Newspaper. This is the one that has most of the sketches submitted by outside writers and developed at the workshops. Then on Saturday 7th, second half, we have the Leverhulme group (The one that won the award at the festival) with their Living Newspaper. Finally, on Sunday 8^th, in the second half, we have the last of the Living Newspapers, the one with slightly longer pieces like Scouse Man. This final one also has an original sketch from a 1930s Living Newspaper, the Munich Pact.

Tickets are on sale at the Hope Street Theatre website (link below) and from Ticket Quarter. Please come along and try to get other people along as well.  It'll be a good night's theatre! 

Thanks for all your support. The WTM team

Ticket link:  www.hopestreettheatre.com

Phone: 0344 561 0622

Curtains ...

'I'm not sure many rational designers would set out to emulate, or even to echo the interiors in David Lynch's films. These are rooms that haunt us: the chevron carpets, the red velvet curtains, the peeling wallpaper suggesting that our environment is somehow theatrical, temporary, a dream - an expression of our subconscious. ...

"I don't know where it came from, but I love curtains," Lynch - famously reluctant to explain his work - said in 2014. "There is something so incredibly cosmically magical about curtains opening and revealing a new world. It resonates on a deep level with people."'

INDIVIDUAL

|

      INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC  --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

 SOCIOLOGY  :    POLITICAL 

|

GROUP

IMAGINE a curtain: What colour is it? Imagine opening the curtain -	<<== CURTAIN                       [a room: LxDxH] - is the wallpaper peeling? ...

Edwin Heathcote, Head spaces, Interiors, House&Home, FTWeekend, 1-2 February 2025. p.4.

Previously:

A headspace full of 'cans'

"David Lynch: A Thinking Room"

'box'

'Un Caso Clinico' BUZZATI (I906-I972)

Reading The Theatre of the Absurd earlier this year was a very enjoyable and disconcerting experience. In acknowledgement: I have quoted from the book at length below. I do so to better convey the context, and in the hope other people may similarly obtain and enjoy this classic theatrical text.

Reading, I was reminded of starting my career as a nursing assistant and student nurse, and the 'lock-up' wards: male and female. Listening now to the current Reith Lectures I will post regards: 

Gwen Adshead - Four Questions about Violence

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0025cmg

As a community mental health nurse in community mental health teams and nursing home liaison, residents on the ground floor (of two or three floors - with 'general') 'knew' there were very poorly people on the top floor. In summer, windows open, they could often be heard shouting and in the night. Inside, for staff, family members, friends became advocates expressing concern for a lack of access to fresh air and sunshine. Something, of course, we can all benefit from. For some residents there was an in-house understanding of NOT wanting to be moved 'upstairs'. At times I gather, if a resident 'played up' such re-location (displacement) was used as a threat: a cue for education.^

DINO BUZZATI (I906-I972)

'In Les Bátisseurs d'Empire the flight from death takes the form of trying to escape upwards. The same image appears in the opposite direction in a remarkable play by Dino Buzzati, the eminent Italian novelist and journalist on the staff of the Corriere della Sera in Milan. This play, first performed by the Piccolo Teatro, Milan, in 1953, and in Paris in an adaptation by Camus in 1955, is Un Caso Clinico. In two parts (thirteen scenes), it shows the death of a middle-aged businessman, Giovanni Corte. Busy, overworked, tyrannized but pampered as the family's breadwinner, whose health must be preserved, he is disturbed by hallucinations of a female voice calling him from the distance and by the spectre of a woman that seems to haunt his house. He is persuaded to consult a famous specialist, and goes to see him at his ultra-modern hospital. Before he knows what has happened, he is an inmate of the hospital, about to be operated on. Everybody reassures him - this hospital is organized in the most efficient modern manner; the people who are not really ill, or merely under observation, are on the top floor, the seventh. Those who are slightly less well are on the sixth; those who are ill, but not really badly, are on the fifth; and so on downwards in a descending order to the first floor, which is the antechamber of death.

In a terrifying sequence of scenes, Buzzati shows his hero's descent. At first he is moved to the sixth floor, merely to make room for someone who needs his private ward more than does. Further down, he still hopes that he is merely going down to be near some specialized medical facilities he needs, and before he has fully realized what has happened, he is so far down that there is no hope of escape. He is buried among the outcasts who have already been given up, the lowest class of human beings - the dying. Corte's mother comes to take him home, but it is too late.

Un Caso Clinico is a remarkable and highly original work, a modern miracle play in the tradition of Everyman. It dramatizes the death of a rich man - his delusion that somehow he is in a special class, exempt from the ravages of illness; his gradual loss of contact with reality; and, above all, the imperceptible manner of his descent and its sudden revelation to him. And in the hospital, with its rigid stratification, Buzzati has found a terrifying image of society itself - an impersonal organization that hustles the individual on his way to death, caring for him, providing services, but at the same time distant, rule-ridden, incomprehensible, and cruel.' 

Esslin, Martin. Parallels and Proselytes, The Theatre of the Absurd. London: Pelican, 1982. (3rd Ed.).pp.277-279.

The Bewitched Bourgeois

^Rest assured, there were and are excellent centers of care too.

Update: 11th January 2025: c/o John Self. Meet the forgotten maestro of the ultra-short story. Saturday Review, The Times, p.15.

'One of his most widely published stories, Seven Floors, is set in a hospital where they put the "mildest cases" on the seventh floor, and so on in increasing order of sickness down to the first floor, which is occupied by those who are "beyond hope"'.

Lawrence Venuti. (2025) The Bewitched Bourgeois, New York: NYRB Classics ISBN: 9781681378671.

Cover image: NYRB.

The mask ...

'I will speak from my experience with Balinese masks, but I have to go back one step before that. One of the first, knockout exercises that you can do with actors, which is used in lots of theatre schools where they use masks, is putting a plain, blank, white mask on someone. The moment you take someone's face away in that way, it's the most electrifying impression: suddenly to find oneself knowing that that thing one lives with, and which one knows is transmitting something all the time, is no longer there. It's the most extraordinary sense of liberation.

This is one of those great exercises that whoever does it for the first time counts as a great moment: suddenly to find oneself immediately for a certain time liberated from one's own subjectivity. And the awakening of a body awareness is immediately there with it, irresistibly; so that if you want to make an actor aware of his body, instead of explaining it to him and saying, "You have a body and you need to be aware of it," just put bit of white paper on his face and say, "Now look around." He can't fail to be instantly aware of everything he normally forgets, because all the attention has been released from this great magnet up top.' p.219

self

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES              

humanistic ------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL   

|

other

Brook, P. (1989). The Shifting Point. London, UK: Methuen. pb.

Secondhand from Reid's, Mount Pleasant, Liverpool, this book was already 'musty'. On October 18th it got 'wet' in a downpour from Sorrento to Capri and back. It smelt even more historic afterwards. It still provided great reading though! I noticed in a new pb edition the images were not included.  https://reidofliverpool.co.uk/

ii "Nye" | Full Show [now ended] | National Theatre at Home

Watching yesterday on YouTube, I enjoyed NYE and was challenged by it personally and as a grandfather, son, nurse and tax-payer.

It wasn't all sweetness and light regards Aneurin "Nye" Bevin's character. Politically, he clearly pushed boundaries in response to the values he carried on his sleeve. As the family's of many health care professionals may recognise, needs outside the family can be prioritised at the family's cost. The theory-practice gap is expressed in so many ways. 

Whether by intent, or accident, the play points to the timeless challenge of social care and women's role in delivery of this care. This strikes home in the drama not just as care of the elderly, but being confronted (alone) with the slow, painful dying of a loved-one; and the reality of occupational diseases - 'black lung'. Women are exploited as carers, their hearts and feet may as well be bound; in the same way the mine owners exploited the workers. There was a stark reminder for me, of how continuity of care is often lacking today.

Nye becomes personal, as even up to 1970s working class parents would have worried, did worry about the prospect of their (invariably male - with some exceptions?) offspring going down the pit, especially in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Watching and listening to this you can appreciate how education was seen a passport to alternative white-collar work. My paternal grandfather worked in a slate quarry. I recall many invites to punch him in the 'stomach': a slate wall. He walked quite a few miles to work and wasn't that old when he died; although he (soon) followed grandma J.

For quite a while I've been drawn to the theatre. Aged 15 I was Francis Nurse - yes, the irony - in the school play, Arthur Miller's, The Crucible. It was Miss Smith, a drama teacher who first brought my attention to the idea of 'social awareness'. I recall Miss Clayton too who was a student teacher. On visits to London I've been struck by the relevance of Ibsen today. 

If there were to be a play in me, perhaps 'Axes and Crosses' must be-up-there as a working title? For  my father the 11+ exam was the icon to ward off the evil that was work down a mine; or lying under a an excavator / crane at 0400 to get the machine fixed for the shift due to start. The 11+ and need to pass this has provided its own anxiety, burden, and it must be said - motivation not just for me, but many more senior adults. I can see this now. So thank you Tim Price, National Theatre and Nye (2025!) for many further insights into stagecraft. 

See also:
https://www.bohs.org/media-resources/press-releases/detail/deadly-lung-disease-in-uk-kitchen-worktop-workers-is-avoidable/

September 2024: 'The Lightest Element'
https://www.hampsteadtheatre.com/whats-on/2024/the-lightest-element/

Previously:
What wright to care?

drama (theatre), arts