Following on from World Theatre Day yesterday, I found this article while rummaging through my stack of old newspapers today to use as a background for my Picasso meets Street Art creation for #sothebyssundaysketch. You can read the online version here:
Lucy Kirkwood's play 'Mosquitoes' is about theatre meets science. I find science endlessly fascinating and having studied Marlowe's Dr Faustus, it's right up my street. Each character represents a main idea in the play. This relates back to my previous post where I mention that most plays are about conflict. In this play, the conflict is mainly between two sisters : Alice, who is a scientist (physicist) and Jenny, who becomes anti-science after her daughter dies. Ironically, Jenny works as a saleswoman for medical insurance. In addition, Alice's son (Luke) is an environmentalist, which creates conflict with his mother because he thinks her job is detrimental to the environment. Jenny looks after their mother, who, like Alice, was a talented scientist, but now suffers from dementia. The sisters also experience inner conflict.
The conflict between science and morality is also brought out through the sisters' attitudes: Alice the scientist is portrayed as feeling superior to her sister because she is carried away with her own self-importance as a top scientist working on an important project (Hadron Collider experiment). The contrasts between the sister's lives is also depicted through their locations: Alice lives in Geneva in Switzerland while Jenny lives in Luton, UK. Although they are siblings who grew up together, their lives have become disparate economically, class-wise, status-wise, as well as in their lifestyle. Alice has a high power career, Jenny's life is taken up with being a carer for their mother. This exacerbates the conflict between them. Yet they are not as disparate as it appears on the surface. As Billington puts it, they are "complementary emotionally" even though they are "uncomplimentary verbally".
The bottom line of this play is to explore the moral obligations of the scientist who can, like Alice, live in an ivory tower of science and become too disconnected with society and people in general. This is a common worry where scientists are concerned. If you read some science articles, you can very quickly lose the thread because they can be so over-specialised and technical, that they become un-understandable. This is why I was motivated to become a science writer. I undertook a course run by Leeds University on 'science writing' which explained the need for non-science specialists to write science articles and blog posts which make complex science papers and concepts accessible for the general public to read and understand.
There are other complex issues within this play, all revolving around various ethical aspects of science, as well as the problem of discrimination against women scientists. Although Kirkwood deals with a broad amount of issues, they all have a narrow focus on the ethical obligations of scientists towards the general public.
Plays are not just about the playwriting and the acting but also about all the other people who work in the theatre who help to make the production come alive and have a key role in creating the live theatre experience for an audience. Billington mentions the way the producer (Rufus Norris) makes everything hang together and who praises the visual effects, lighting and sound technicians for engaging the audience's emotions. It's easy to take these technical effects for granted but without them, a script and plot could fall flat, no matter how brilliant the acting. For instance, Billington highlights how "Paule Constable's lighting and Paul Arditti's sound design" create a sense of "momentousness of the Geneva experiments". He also found Katrina Lindsey's circular discs "visually impressive". This shows the importance of the teamwork that goes into any theatre production. Although seen as technical jobs, they are, nevertheless, more creative than they are perceived to be.
So when going to the theatre, one needs to appreciate how every part of the whole production is individually and collectively equally important, from stage setting to costume design to technical work to acting (including understudy actors) to directing, and, of course. not forgetting the playwright, without whom we wouldn't have a play to stage! 🎭💖
The audience too are essential to any stage performance. They play their part in the energy, ambience and emotional journey of the play 👏👏👏👏. Just as tennis players spark off from the responses of the spectators, so actors spark off from the responses of their audience, which is why no two performances are the same. As I mentioned in my previous post, actors stick to scripts more than they did in the Elizabethan times when actors interacted with audiences directly and improvised. However, a live audience these days also interacts with the actors with their emotional responses to the events unfolding on stage and the characters' progression; how they deal with their problems; their dilemmas; the way the characters express themselves; their mannerisms; their interaction with others; and their general outlook on life.
Once the theatres are open again, I recommend you forego your pint or two at the pub and go and see a play and just soak up the atmosphere! 🙂😍 🎭😂😥😯😱😭😟🙂💖💗
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