Download SHP Companion Guide

WRITTEN AND COMPILED BY Taylor M Wycoff
SPECIAL THANKS TO;
Anonymous Donors;
Kamaya Jane & Diane Zeps, in honor of their mother Elaine Lipinsky;
San Diego Commission for Arts & Culture; The County of San Diego
This publication is to be used for educational purposes only.
SHOCKHEADED PETER
TABLE OF CONTENTS
SECTION 1- ABOUT THIS PRODUCTION
Synopsis ....................................................................................................... 3
Characters .................................................................................................... 3
About the Creators ....................................................................................... 4
Production History ........................................................................................ 6
Glossary……………………………………………………………………………7
SECTION 2- THEMES & TOPICS
Back to the Source ....................................................................................... 8
Setting the Scene ......................................................................................... 10
A Brief Evolution of Storytelling .................................................................... 12
Creating Shockheaded Peter ....................................................................... 14
SECTION 3- RESOURCES .............................................................................. 15
Cygnet Theatre Company values the feedback of patrons on the content and format of its Study Guides. We
would appreciate your comments or suggestions on ways to improve future Study Guides. Comments may be
directed to Taylor M. Wycoff by email at [email protected].
2
SECTION 1
ABOUT THIS PRODUCTION
SYNOPSIS
Fall into a world of Victorian steam-punk nightmares as a manic music box spins stories of naughty children and
misguided parents. Silly and sinister, Shockheaded Peter dares us to ask what’s beneath the floorboards.
RUNNING TIME: Approx. 1 hour and 45 minutes.
PERFORMANCE RATING: PG-13 for violence and mature themes.
CHARACTERS
THE MC
FATHER & MOTHER
3
SIREN
ABOUT THE PLAY
ABOUT THE CREATORS
JULIAN CROUCH
Julian Crouch is a director, designer, writer, and teacher whose career has spanned Theatre, Opera, Film, and
Television. Julian was a founding member of Improbable Theatre and was co-director and co-designer of the
international and West End phenomenon SHOCKHEADED PETER. Other shows for Improbable include
SATYAGRAHA in a co-production with the English National Opera and The Metropolitan Opera, SPIRIT, which
Julian directed, and which was a co-production with The Royal Court, COMA, which he co-devised and codesigned, STICKY, THE HANGING MAN, COMA and 70 HILL LANE. He designed and was associate director
on the multi award-winning JERRY SPRINGER: THE OPERA at the National Theatre, West End and UK tour.
Other recent productions include HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (Broadway); BIG FISH (Broadway);
CINDERELLA for The Dutch National Ballet, DR ATOMIC for The Met / ENO, THE MAGIC FLUTE for Welsh
National Opera, the Broadway musical of THE ADDAMS FAMILY, and THE ENCHANTED ISLAND for The Met.
His most recent production was THE DEVIL AND MISTER PUNCH, which he devised, directed and designed,
and has just finished a sell out run at the Barbican, London. Julian is Artist in Residence at the Park Avenue
Armory in New York City. Julian has received a Tony Award Nomination for Best Scenic Design of a Musical for
HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH.
PHELIM McDERMOTT
Phelim McDermott has been directing and performing since 1984. He co-founded dereck dereck Productions
with Julia Bardsley, and productions include Cupboard Man, as solo performer (Fringe First), Gaudete, as codirector and performer (Time Out Director's Award), and The Vinegar Works, The Glass Hill and The Sweet
Shop Owner, all as director. Other directing includes Alex (The Arts Theatre and tour); The Ghost Downstairs
(Leicester Haymarket); Dr Faustus and Improbable Tales (an entirely improvised two-hour play at Nottingham
Playhouse); The Servant of Two Masters, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Government Inspector (West
Yorkshire Playhouse); and A Midsummer Night's Dream (English Shakespeare Company in 1996/97, TMA
Award for Best Touring Production). He co-wrote with Lee Simpson and appeared in Get Off My Foot. He
directed Shockheaded Peter (London and Little Schubert Theatre Off-Broadway), with Julian Crouch; a junk
opera collaboration with The Tiger Lilies for Cultural Industry (Olivier Award for Best Entertainment, TMA Best
Director Award and Critics Circle Best Designer Award). He developed a musical version of The Addams Family
for Broadway with Julian Crouch and Elephant Eye Productions and directed The Metropolitan Opera's 125th
Anniversary Gala and the world premiere of The Enchanted Island. Productions with Improbable include the
multi award-winning 70 Hill Lane, Lifegame, Animo, Coma, Spirit, Sticky, Cinderella, The Hanging Man and
Theatre of Blood (a collaboration with The National Theatre). He also directed Philip Glass' Satyagraha, in
collaboration with the English National Opera and The Metropolitan Opera. In 2003 he was awarded a NESTA
fellowship to research new ways of rehearsing and creating theatre using Improvisation and Process Oriented
Conflict Facilitation Techniques. As part of this work he has facilitated many Open Space Technology events.
He was made an Honorary Doctor of Middlesex University in 2007. Current productions include the world
premiere of Philip Glass' opera The Perfect American for ENO/Madrid.
4
ABOUT THE PLAY
ABOUT THE CREATORS
MARTYN JACQUES (and Adrian Huge & Adrian Stout of THE TIGER LILLIES)
Martyn Jacques, the founder of The Tiger Lillies, spent much of his early years living above a brothel in
London’s Soho. He is a self trained musician and singer, playing mostly the accordion, piano and ukulele. His
hauntingly beautiful falsetto has become The Tiger Lillies’ trademark and combined with his dark and edgy
songwriting style has led to him being widely known as the ‘Criminal Castrato’. Martyn has composed music for
and performed in numerous shows all over the world and enjoys working with artists of all disciplines: from
highbrow theatre to circus, and from experimental dance to burlesque and puppetry. He is very proud that The
Tiger Lillies have performed in opera houses and rock festivals as well as circus tents and smelly pubs. His
music has been used in films (Plunkett & Macleane, Luftbusiness, Drunken Sailor, Return to Nuke ‘Em High)
and recently he composed music for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which he performed as a live accompaniment
to the iconic silent film in his first ever solo show. Martyn has been commissioned by acclaimed American
photographer Nan Goldin
to compose an original
score for her Ballad
of Sexual Dependency
slideshow project and has
actually performed the
piece with The Tiger Lillies
as a live soundtrack to
Nan’s startling images.
Martyn’s work has been
nominated for a Grammy
Award (The Gorey End in
1998) and his memorable
performance in cult hit
musical
Shockheaded
Peter won him an Oliver
Award.
MICHAEL MORRIS
After serving at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) as Director of Performing Arts in the 1980s,
Michael Morris established his own production company, Cultural Industry, in 1988, developing long term
relationships with artists including Robert Wilson, Pina Bausch, Robert Lepage, Laurie Anderson and Brian Eno.
In 1991, alongside James Lingwood, Morris was made Co-Director of Artangel, now established as a leading
commissioning and producing organization working internationally with exceptional artists across the visual arts,
literature and performance as well as forging innovative collaborations with film, broadcasting and digital media.
Beyond Cultural Industry and Artangel, Michael is Artistic Advisor to the Manchester International Festival, the
London Roundhouse and Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center in Long Island. He is also a member of Tate Modern
Council, an Ambassador for Alain de Botton’s The School of Life and a Trustee of Longplayer, Jem Finer’s
1000-year musical composition.
5
ABOUT THE PLAY
PRODUCTION HISTORY
PRODUCTIONS
Commissioned by the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds and the Lyric
Hammersmith in West London, the show debuted in 1998 in Leeds before
moving to London and subsequent world tours. Shockheaded Peter made
its American premiere in 1999 at New York’s Victory Theatre, followed by
award-winning revivals in London (2002, 2004) and New York (2005), and
more recent productions in Vienna (2009) and Oslo (2013). In 2015,
Company One and Suffolk University in Boston collaborated with Walter
Sickert and the Army of Broken Toys to become the only production to
date to bring in a pre-existing band with its own aesthetic to fully reorchestrate The Tiger Lillies’ original score.
CRITICAL RESPONSE
“A vile and repulsive story told by reprehensible characters in a thoroughly
degenerate fashion—ABSOLUTE BLISS.” David Bowie
“Shockheaded Peter is the two-word answer to people who think that
theatre has had its day… The most original piece of theatre of the past 10
years…” The Guardian
“…’Shockheaded Peter’ is both the silliest and the most sinister show in
town. It is also, as it happens, one of the smartest.” The New York Times
“…entertainment that’s as uproarious, and exquisite, as it is demented.”
Variety
6
ABOUT THE PLAY
GLOSSARY
EPIC THEATRE: A theatrical movement that arose in the early to mid-20th century
from the theories and practice of a number of theatre practitioners (such as Bertolt
Brecht) who responded to the political climate of the time through the creation of
new political theatre. Epic theatre is often characterized by a series of loosely
connected scenes that avoid illusion and often interrupt the storyline to address the
audience directly with analysis, argument, or documentation.
GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM: A series of related creative
movements beginning in Germany before WWI that reached
a peak in Berlin during the 1920s. Expressionist art
emphasizes directness, frankness, and a desire to startle
the viewer.
COMMEDIA DEL’ARTE: A theatrical form characterized by improvised dialogue
and a cast of colorful, masked stock characters that emerged in northern Italy in the
15th century and rapidly gained popularity throughout Europe.
THE GRAND GUIGNOL: A theatre in the Pigalle area of
Paris that specialized in naturalistic horror shows.
THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI: A 1920 German silent
horror film, directed by Robert Wiene and written by Hans
Janowitz and Carl Mayer. It is considered the quintessential
work of German Expressionist cinema, helped draw
worldwide attention to the artistic merit of German cinema
and had a major influence on American films, particularly in
horror and film noir genres.
PINAFORE: A collarless sleeveless dress, tied or buttoned
in the back and typically worn as a jumper, over a blouse or sweater.
WEEVIL: A type of beetle from the Curculionoidea
superfamily, which is known to cause great crop damage.
[CORNELIUS] AGRIPPA: A German polymath, physician,
legal scholar, soldier, theologian and occult writer of the
late 15th-early 16th century.
GHERKIN: Another word for “pickled cucumber” typically
used in the UK, Ireland, and Australia.
7
SECTION 2
THEMES & TOPICS
BACK TO THE SOURCE
Written in 1845 by Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann, Der Struwwelpeter was one of the best
selling illustrated children’s books of the mid-19th century, and remains one of the
most popular children’s books of all time. Hoffmann, a German physician of some
social standing, set out shortly before Christmas in search of a picture book suitable
for his then-three-year-old son, Carl. But the
more he looked in the Frankfurt bookshops, the
more discouraged he became. The books were
too sentimental, didactic, or boring. Having
found the psychology of the children’s literature
for sale entirely ill suited for modern needs of
civility, he brought home an empty copybook to
create a picture book of his own instead. Carl
was delighted with his Christmas present, and it
wasn’t long before relatives and friends
persuaded the surprised author to let his little
book of verses and illustrations appear in print.
The original title of the book was Der Struwwelpeter oder lustige Geschichten und
drollige Bilder für Kinder von 3 bis 6 Jahren (or in English, Slovenly Peter or Funny
Stories and Whimsical Pictures with Beautifully Coloured Panels for Children Aged
3 to 6). It contained five tales in rhymed verse: “The Story About Naughty
Frederick,” “The Story About the Black Boys,” (when translated for English
audiences, this story became “The Story of the Inky Boys”, a reflection of the racial
concerns of Twain’s southern background) “The Story About the Wild Hunter,” “The
Story About the Thumbsucker,” and “The Story About Soupy Kaspar,” and a shorter
poem titled “Slovenly Peter.” The first edition of fifteen hundred copies sold out
within four weeks. For the second edition, published in 1846, Hoffmann added two
more stories: “The Very Sad Story About the Matches,” and “The Story About
Fidgety Phillip.” By the fifth edition, published in 1850, “The Story About Hans Who
Never Looked Where He Was Going,” and “The Story About Flying Robert,” were
added, Struwwelpeter’s image and verse were moved to the front of the book and
the title was shortened simply to Der Struwwelpeter (or in English, Slovenly
Peter). By 1986, the one hundredth edition had been printed and, to date, literally
hundreds of editions of this little book have been published.
8
THEMES & TOPICS
BACK TO THE SOURCE
The final version of Der Struwwelpeter, as it is known and loved today, contains
nine different rhymes and their accompanying illustrations depicting children in the
act of misbehaving. In each rhyme, the naughty children have to suffer the
consequences of their disobedience, sometimes resulting in a rather tragic
outcome. A tenth poem is about a hunter who narrowly escapes becoming the
victim of the rabbit he set out to shoot, and an eleventh poem serves as a kind of
prologue to whole book, tells a story about the Christ Child, bringer of gifts at
Christmas time in German-speaking countries, who will present each well-behaved
child with lots of presents and pretty picture books.
The book went on to be translated into numerous languages, including an English
translation by none other than Mark Twain in 1891. The English version proved in
general to be an excellent complement to Hoffmann’s original drawings, preserving
the emphatic rhythms of the original text and conveying its imaginative world without
being slavishly literal. That being said, the names of the characters were Anglicized
or substituted with more common English names. For example, Paulinchen in “The
Very Sad Story About the Matches,” was replaced by Harriet and Augustus took
Kaspar’s place in the ‘The Story
About Soupy Kaspar”. St.
Nicholas
in
“The
Inky
Boys” (originally “The Story
About the Black Boys”) was
recast as the 16th-century
German
scholar-magician
Cornelius Agrippa, since St
Nicholas’s Christmas role as a
chastiser, as well as giver of
gifts, was not part of British
tradition. Agrippa would have
been familiar to British parents
of the 1840s from popular
theatre and literature, and ‘great
Agrippa’, with his scholar’s
inkwell, proved an effective, if
more
esoteric,
substitute
authority figure with whom to
impress British children.
9
THEMES & TOPICS
SETTING THE SCENE
A SNAPSHOT OF VICTORIAN-ERA CHILDHOOD
Dramaturgical notes by Ramona Ostrowski & Ilana M. Brownstein
for Company One’s 2015 production of Shockheaded Peter
Heinrich Hoffmann’s gruesome verses made their first appearance in 1845, not
quite a decade after Queen Victoria took the throne in Great Britain. Her long reign
(1837-1901) was one of general peace and prosperity, especially for the rising
middle class, which was benefitting from both mercantile and industrial
advancements. There was a strong sense of national confidence, as well as deeply
moralistic Victorian sensibilities that privileged sexual restraint, hard punishments
for criminal activity, and a strict code of social conduct. Hoffmann’s book,
Struwwelpeter, implanted these values at its core.
But Victorian England was also a society of contradictions. The semblance of
decorum often masked grittier realities, from prostitution and sexual license, to
exploitative child labor among the underclasses. Appearances were paramount,
and maintaining outward morality drove much public social behavior, including with
one’s children.
The structures of Victorian childhood focused on instilling proper manners and
behaviors suitable to a bourgeois life, rather than encouraging and guiding the
child’s individual development. Children from wealthy families were typically raised
by nannies who acted as substitute parents. Their central job was to educate and
teach manners and propriety, rather than to nurture. A child’s day was highly
regimented, with little time for exploration or free play; he or she typically only saw
the parents at certain hours, under formal circumstances. Parents were a remote
presence to be admired and feared rather than an actual source of comfort and
care.
10
THEMES & TOPICS
SETTING THE SCENE
Bleak and joyless as the wealthy child’s existence might be, poor children had it
much worse. Many were sent to work outside the home at a very young age—
sometimes as young as four or five years old. They worked in mines, factories, and
mills, as chimney and street sweeps. Workdays were long, and the conditions were
barbaric.
In Hoffmann’s Struwwelpeter, children suffer grievous punishments for not adhering
to the expectations of proper middle class behavior, but they rarely die. In the
hands of Improbably Theatre and The Tiger Lillies, however, mortality is fully on the
table. The verses are no longer just cautionary tales for children, but for adults as
well, warning us to the danger of suppressing the messy impulses and desires in
children… and ourselves. The impulse to bury that messiness under the
floorboards—to hide behind a veneer of propriety—is fuel for the out-of-control
steam engine that is Shockheaded Peter.
Today, over fifteen years since the premier of Shockheaded Peter, Improbably
Theatre’s critique of Hoffmann’s (and Victorian England’s) expectations for children
still feels potent. We may be far removed Queen Vic and her notions of morality,
but are we really so distant from the urge to have children burnish the reputation of
a family?
What, then, are we remembering, when we nostalgically romanticize the faraway
land of “childhood?” And what do we owe the youth of today? Shockheaded Peter
may have started as a cautionary tale to a 19th century child, but it hold different
lessons for 21st century adults, if we’re willing to take a critical look under our own
floorboards.
11
THEMES & TOPICS
A BREIF EVOLUTION OF STORYTELLING
Stories work with people, for people, and always stories work on
people, affecting what people are able to see as real, as possible, and
as worth doing or best avoided.
-Arthur Frank, Letting Stories Breathe (2010)
Though it is impossible to trace the historical origins and evolution of fairy tales to a
particular time and place, we do know that humans began telling tales as soon as
they developed the capacity of speech (and perhaps even before, using sign
language to communicate vital information for adapting to the environment.) Units
of information gradually formed the basis of narratives that enabled humans to learn
about themselves and the world that they inhabited. Informative tales were not
given titles, but were simply told to mark an occasion, set and example, warn about
danger, procure food, or explain what seemed inexplicable. Stated simply, people
told stories to communicate knowledge and experience in social contexts.
FABLES
One of the oldest known genres of storytelling is the fable. Beginning with Aesop in
600 B.C., archaeologists discovered didactic narratives on clay tablets in scripts that
closely resembled the fable in both form and subject matter. The stories were short
and primarily featured animals to exemplify a moral. Though inanimate objects,
mythical creatures, and sometimes even humans joined the cast of characters as
the fables spread and transformed through different cultures, animals remained the
dominating vehicles for resolving the “human” conflicts depicted in the
fables. These conflicts had to be adjudicated in such a way as to potentially
establish ethical guidelines or principles of fair play, and it is in this regard that
fables contributed to the civilizing process of all societies and the constitution of the
humanities.
FOLKLORE
Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a unique group of people,
encompassing the traditions common to that particular culture, subculture, or
group. The term was coined in 1846 by the Englishman William Thoms, who
fabricated it to replace the contemporary terminology of “popular antiquities” or
“popular literature.” The second half of the compound word, ‘lore’, is easy to define
as its meaning has stayed fairly constant over the last two centuries: stemming Old
English lār (instruction), and with German and Dutch cognates, it is the knowledge
and traditions of a particular group, frequently passed along by word of mouth.
12
THEMES & TOPICS
A BREIF EVOLUTION OF STORYTELLING
The concept of ‘folk’ on the other hand proves somewhat more elusive. When
Thoms first created the term “folklore”, folk applied only to rural, frequently poor,
frequently illiterate peasants. A more modern definition of folk is a social group that
includes two or more persons with common traits, who express their shared identity
through distinctive traditions. This expanded social definition of folk supports a
broader view of the material, bringing folklore (or folktales) into contemporary
consciousness and no longer circumscribed as being chronologically old or
obsolete.
FAIRY TALE
A sub-genre of the folktale, fairy tales tend to be longer, more descriptive, and more
complicated than other type of folktales (like legends, myths, and fables). As they
evolved, fairytales borrowed motifs, themes, characters, expressions, and styles
from other narrative forms and genres. Countless fairytales were written in 17th
century France, however most of the stories still told today are much older in
origin. And many of these stories, which were not originally intended for children,
have been edited and altered to remove the darker, more gruesome
elements. Classic fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and
Beauty and the Beat can be traced back to tales of antiquity that concern rape,
sibling rivalry, and mating. Over time, more and more European authors began to
write explicitly for children, though most tales still courted favor primarily with
adults. That being said, there was an overwhelming tendency in these fairy tales to
provide a model of behavior for the schooling of upper-class children, and the
stories were cultivated to assure that young people would be properly groomed for
13
THEMES & TOPICS
CREATING SHOCKHEADED PETER
An excerpt (p.158-159) from Sticks and Stones: The Troublesome Success of Children’s Literature
from Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter by Jack Zipes
The history of how the production
came to be realized reveals
important links to the origins of
Struwwelpeter in the nineteenth
century and how the production’s
creators sought to critique attitudes
toward the book and toward
children. In a 1990 interview with
the journalist Lyn Gardner, Michael
Morris, founder of Cultural Industry
(the production company behind
Shockheaded Peter) remarked: “I
can’t remember any other books Tamzin Griffin, Anthony Cairns, Julian Bleach and
we had in the house when I was a Graeme Gilmour in the original production of
child during the sixties, but I do Shockheaded Peter.
remember Struwwelpeter. It was a book you wanted hidden but at the same time
always wanted to know where it was. It was just a question of trying to bring out
what was already there. I just upped the death rate.” Of course Martyn Jacques,
the lead castrato crooner of the Tiger Lillies, did much more. He wrote all the songs
and music, a blend of French cabaret, Kurt Weil, and Central European folk
melodies, investing them with deeply sarcastic and gruesome overtones. But the
sublimely nasty music and songs needed a structure and plot, and after Morris and
Jacques discarded the idea of a variety show, they decided to ask Phelim
McDermott and Julian Crouch, the directors and designers of Improbably Theatre,
to create a show through improvisation and the use of puppets. After coming up
with the idea of a self-contained Victorian toy theatre for the set, they had difficulty
finding a narrative thread with a focus on children. But then, as McDermott
explains, “one day Julian suddenly
said we shouldn’t be thinking about
the children but about the
parents.
That
was
the
breakthrough. We sat down on the
computer and wrote a story
beginning ‘Once upon a time.’ We
took turns to write just one word
each and we came up with a story
about a couple having a child, and
there’s nothing wrong with the
child, but because it was not
Julian Bleach and Tamzin Griffin in the original
exactly this couple’s idea of
production of Shockheaded Peter.
perfection, they tried to get rid of it.”
14
SECTION 3
RESOURCES
READ the source material that inspired the musical, Slovenly Peter translated by
Mark Twain (or in the original German, Der Struwwelpeter by Heinrich Hoffmann),
available from Project Gutenberg at www.gutenberg.org.
LISTEN to the original music by The Tiger Lillies, available at www.amazon.com.
LISTEN to Walter Sickert and the Army of Broken Toys’ re-orchestration for
Company One’s production, available at www.amazon.com.
READ more about life in 19th century England in the book How to Be a Victorian: A
Dawn to Dusk Guide to Victorian Life by Ruth Goodman.
READ more about contemporary childhood and its cultural impact in the book Free
Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy.
LEARN more about how the production Shockheaded Peter can be seen as an
interrogational response to Der Struwwelpeter in Jack Zipes article The Perverse
Delight of Shockheaded Peter, in the book Sticks and Stones: The Troublesome
Success of Children’s Literature from Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter, available at
www.amazon.com.
LEARN more about the differences between Heinrich Hoffmann’s original Der
Struwwelpeter and Mark Twain’s English translation, Slovenly Peter, in Marian
Fuller Wahl’s essay Mark Twain’s translation of Der Struwwelpeter.
15