PARIP 2005

International Conference | 29 June - 03 July 2005

Owen: Roger | UK

LOVEFURIES: SHATTERING ALL EXCUSE

Names of those involved: Prof. David Ian Rabey & Dr Roger Owen, University of Wales, Aberystwyth

Areas of Practice: Theatre and Performance Studies

Outline of what is to be presented: Two linked 20-minute expository writing-based papers, considering the recent Lurking Truth/Gwir sy'n Llechu Theatre Company performances in Aberystwyth, Dublin and Cardiff in 2004-5 of Lovefuries: The Contracting Sea and The Hanging Judge from the perspectives of director/dramatist and performer of the second production of the second piece, respectively.

These two poetic uncompromising performance texts deal with grief at the death of a lover, and the surprising and shocking resurgences of life that break through that grief: The Contracting Sea being a mythical and consciously mysterious account of transformative sexual quickening in the psyche of the recently bereaved; The Hanging Judge being an exploration from the inside of wrestling with the introjected voice of a childhood sexual abuser, and how one survivor finds the courage to discover defiance. Our paper will principally address the second half of LOVEFURIES, THE HANGING JUDGE, with the presence of the performer. THE HANGING JUDGE was conceived and written in my outrage at the sexual abuse of people I know by a school Drama teacher who committed suicide when he became the subject of a prosecution (for background, see http://www.wales.gov.uk/grafix/N0000000000000000000000000023498/clywch.e.htm). THE HANGING JUDGE presents a specifically theatrical response to what was perpetrated in the name of Drama teaching in Welsh schools, whilst avoiding the repressive and/or legislative impulses which have driven one AM to call for the use of all drama texts in school teaching to be vetted by the National Assembly. It seemed to me appropriate to explore how theatre and drama could specifically engage with this matter in a non-restrictive way. JUDGE bypasses cut and dried legal language and any deterministic and legalistic approach to the physical experience/sense of burden/sense of possibility for those involved. Like its companion piece, THE CONTRACTING SEA, THE HANGING JUDGE repudiates distancing and objectivity as a mode of obtaining clarity, in order to assert uncontainability and defy determinism by making the performer a conduit for a variety of voices, increasingly inflected by meter and rhyme and moving towards discovery and ritual exorcism. We may offer DVD illustration as part of our paper.