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Resource Notes for The Picture of Dorian Gray Resource Notes for The Picture of Dorian Gray Introduction: By Fiach. Who is Oscar Wilde? Oscar Wilde was a playwright, poet, essayist, novelist and celebrity in the late Victorian period in England. He said once “I put all my genius into my life, I put only my talent into my work”. Wilde’s life and work are intrinsically connected. One might not be able to tell where Wilde’s persona began and the person ended. Wilde plays were hugely successful and he became a celebrated public figure in Victorian London. He said “the man that can dominate a London dinner table can dominate the world”, no doubt referring e to himself. His celebrity turned to infamy in 1895 when he was tried and convicted of having sexual relations with men. Wilde, however, was always something of an outsider. He was an Irish Nationalist, having been influenced by his mother, a poet and an activist who wrote for The Nation under the pen name Speranza. When he was a student at Oxford he deliberately marked himself out as different to his English upper-class peers. He flirted with Roman Catholicism and went to the trouble signing in at the gates of Magdalene College in his full name, Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde. A name which, not only took up two full lines on the page of the ledger, but which was also unmistakably foreign. So beneath the amusing charm of Wilde’s wit there is a barbed satire of the Victorian ruling classes. Wilde was a proponent of socialism, Irish nationalism and a homosexual who showed the powerful elite an ugly reflection of themselves, using clever, quotable paradoxes to make his point. When Wilde, in the guise of Henry Wotton, says "conscience and cowardice are really the same things. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all", his point is made all the more cutting for its humour. When A Picture of Dorian Gray was first published, with its barely veiled references to homosexuality, it was met with staunch and moralistic criticism. Wilde wrote a preface to the second edition, defending it, saying that there could be no such thing as moral or immoral book. A book, he said, is either well written or badly written and that is the only criterion by which it ought to be judged. This preface is now famous in its own right and is one of the most important texts espousing the tenets of Aestheticism (see below) Wilde, like Dorian, led a double life. On the surface he was a family man with a wife and children, but he secretly engaged male prostitutes with his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The couple were constantly harassed by Douglas’ father, the Marques of Queensbury, who disapproved of the relationship. In 1895, at Douglas’ urging, Wilde took Queensbury to court. The true details of their affair emerged in the trial and Wilde was later tried and convicted of gross indecency. Wilde’s glittering career ended in imprisonment and ignominy. Having served his sentence, Wilde lived in France in lonely, self-imposed exile for three years before dying of an ear infection in 1900. As Neil Bartlett points out in the introduction to this adaptation, Dorian and Alfred Douglas bare an uncanny resemblance – not just in how Wilde describes them physically, but in their tastes, social position and airs. However, Wilde didn’t meet the man who would bring about his downfall until after the publication of A Picture of Dorian Gray. So “Dorian is not a reflection of Wilde’s life” says Bartlett, “but an uncanny anticipation of it. He may be a complete fiction, but for the man who created him he turned out to be horribly and inescapably real” Aestheticism Aestheticism is a philosophy of art that was popular in the nineteenth century. It espoused the idea that art is for art’s sake. Aesthetes said that art cannot be judged as moral or immoral, but only as beautiful or not beautiful. One cannot judge a piece of art by the social or political values it purports because art is not instructional or useful, its only purpose is to be aesthetically exciting. Following the moralistic criticism of its first publication, Wilde’s preface to the second edition of A Picture of Dorian Gary has become the most famous articulation of the aestheticism movement, with its final, memorable line “We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless”. Synopsis The play begins in the studio of Basil Hallward, who is being visited by his friend Lord Henry Wotton. A large painting is placed in the room and a member of the chorus speaks the words “All art is quite useless” Lord Henry is praising Basil’s portrait of Dorian Gray as his best work yet. Basil reluctantly explains how he met Dorian and how he became infatuated with him and that he won’t display the portrait because he is afraid he has shown in it “the secret of [his] own soul”. The beautiful and gauche Dorian arrives for the final sitting of his portrait and Lord Henry shares his philosophy for living with Dorian. He says that one should give in to one’s impulses and that it is only the fear of society and the fear of God that stops us from doing so and realising “one’s nature perfectly”. Dorian is both seduced and fearful of what Lord Henry says, being reminded of his own secret desires of which he is ashamed. Looking at the beautiful painting, Dorian is saddened by the inevitable decline of his own beauty. Dorian wishes that the painting could grow old and he could be forever young. For this, he says, he would give his soul. Unbeknownst to Dorian, a pact is made. At the theatre a month later, Dorian is introduced to Henry’s wife. It seems that Henry and Dorian have been spending a lot of time together and Lord Henry and his wife lead separate lives. While having dinner, Dorian tells Lord Henry about Sybil Vane, an actress with whom Dorian says he has fallen in love. He has gone to see her performance every night in an unfashionable East-End theatre and wants Henry and Basil to come and see her show. Sybil is working, at her mother’s insistence, in order to pay her brother’s fare to the Australia. Sybil’s brother, James, is sceptical of the advances of Dorian, who has been sending flowers but not identifying himself. James says that if this man does her wrong he will return from Australia and kill him. To Basil and Henry’s surprise, they are notified of Dorian’s engagement to Sybil Vane. However, that night at the theatre, Sybil performs very badly. She explains to Dorian that this is because, having now experienced love with him, she could not believe in the artifice of the theatre and stopped being a good actress. Dorian, now that she has become a terrible artist, falls out of love with Sybil. She begs him not to leave and threatens that her brother will kill him if he does. He does leave. Alone with his portrait the next morning, Dorian sees that it has changed slightly, it has become less beautiful. He writes Sybil a letter asking for forgiveness. But it is too late. Lord Henry comes with news that Sybil has committed suicide. Dorian takes responsibility for her death, saying that he has murdered her. But Lord Henry persuades him not to feel guilty, saying that the events of life are merely to be observed from afar and that Sybil’s death “was all simply a scene from some strange, tragic play”. Dorian takes solace in this and goes to the opera that night. Basil visits Dorian and wishes to see the portrait. Dorian refuses to let him. Basil confesses that he has very strong feelings for Dorian and that this fact is revealed in the painting of Dorian’s portrait. Dorian callously dismisses him and has the portrait moved to the top of his house. In the attic, Dorian now sees that it has changed again following his meeting with Basil. Dorian continues to live a decadent life. Allowing his impulses to govern his actions, he grabs his servant, Victor, and kisses him violently. We later see Victor being bundled out of the scene by thugs. On his 38th birthday, Dorian’s looks still have not changed and he throws himself a lavish party. At the party, Basil confronts Dorian about the rumours of his immoral behaviour, and how his relationships with young men and married women seem to lead to their destruction. Dorian takes Basil up to the attic and shows him the painting which, by now, has become a hideous display of his sins. Basil is horrified and Dorian kills him as he says The Lord’s Prayer. Dorian blackmails a former friend, Dr. Alan Campbell, into disposing of Basil’s body. Dorian goes to the theatre. Little has changed in the 20 years since we last saw these characters in the theatre except that everyone seems to have deteriorated – apart from Dorian. While chatting, Dorian is haunted by the ghosts of Basil and Alan Campbell, who we learn has killed himself. Dorian is distressed and rushes off. Dorian, drug addicted and frightened by spectres, goes to a brothel and takes opium. He is recognised by a sailor, one of the other clients. The sailor is James Vane. James is about to kill Dorian when Dorian persuades him that he can’t be the man he’s looking for, since he is so young looking and the crime was committed years ago. James is told by one of the prostitutes that Dorian is, in fact, over forty years old but it’s too late, Dorian has disappeared. Dorian escapes to his country residence where is joined by Henry and Lady Monmouth, an American heiress with whom he has had an affair and who is trying to rekindle the relationship. She is not succeeding. They chat about a beater who has been accidentally killed on Dorian’s land when he stepped out in front of the hunters. Dorian considers this a bad omen and is in a nervous state. He then learns that the dead man was not a beater, but James Vane. He declares that he is safe. Another 10 years passes. Henry is sick and Dorian is visiting him in a sanatorium. Dorian tells Henry that he has resolved to be good from now on. Henry doesn’t think much of this idea and praises, with certain envy, the life Dorian has had. This only serves to strengthen Dorian’s resolve to change his ways. And he says goodbye to Henry, who later dies. Dorian, back at his home, is tormented by the ghosts of his victims. They mock him for his new desire to be good and persuade him to go up to the attic and look at the portrait. He does and it has become more horrible than ever. Dorian takes a knife, the same knife with which he killed Basil, and slashes the painting. This wounds the real Dorian and he dies. Characters Dorian Gray. We hear about Dorian before we see him. He is described as a man of such extraordinary beauty that he both absorbs and terrifies Basil Hallward. When we meet him we discover him to be gauche young man, quite unaware of the extent of the affect he has on people. Basil says he feels as if he has given his “whole soul away to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put on his coat.” This youthful superficiality is to be Dorian’s downfall. His beauty is, at once, his blessing and his curse. For it is while looking at the painting of his own mythical beauty, that he regrets that he will grow old while it will stay the same, and then makes a pact to preserve his superficial beauty at any expense. He goes on to live a life of decadent indulgence at the expense of his soul, while always appearing youthful and unsullied. As the portrait takes on the appearance of his sin, Dorian says to his mentor in hedonism, Henry Wotton, “I wish I could love. Or escape. Or… forget” and he realises the expense that his beauty has been bought for and is eventually driven to destroy himself. Lord Henry Wotton. Lord Henry is the play’s central corrupting figure. He sews the first seeds of hedonism in Dorian’s mind, having identified the secret desires he harbour, and gives him permission to act on impulse without concern for the affect it may have on others. Lord Henry is married but, it seems, is somewhat estranged from his wife who remarks that she “always hears Harry’s opinions from his friends.” Henry takes Dorian under his wing, as a kind of apprentice, who becomes a “polished reflection of his tutor”. Henry is Wilde’s mouth-piece in the book. He is a font of the delightful, paradoxical reflections on life which for which Wilde was known. For example, “My dear boy it is people who only love once who are shallow. What they call fidelity, I call lack of imagination.” However, as with Wilde, Wotton’s quips are amusing on their face but actually hide dark, radical and subversive ideas. In the end, Henry is Dorian’s only friend. He is so completely taken by Dorian’s surface beauty that he seems to be the only one who cannot see past it to the monster he has become. Basil Hallward. Basil is the artist of the portrait of Dorian Gray. He admits to Dorian that his admiration for him was so strong and with “more romance of feeling than a man usually gives or should ever give to a friend” that it was revealed in the painting he made of him. And so, he says, could never display it because He has shown in it “the secret of my own soul”. Basil, while good friends with Henry Wotton, is very wary of him and his ideas. He is reluctant to introduce him the beautiful ingenious, Dorian Gray. When Basil asks himself why he likes the dastardly Lord Henry so much, Henry responds; “because I represent to you all of the sins you have never had the courage to commit”. Perhaps in this way, we may see a lot of ourselves in Basil; he is moderate, moral and has a basic empathy for those he shares the world with. But there is dark desire beneath it all which he is repressing in favour of his morality. Sybil Vane/Duchess of Monmouth. These two characters are, in this production, played by the same performer. Sybil Vane is a young and beautiful actress with whom Dorian falls in love and becomes his first victim. She is a working class girl who is working to pay for her brother’s passage to Australia and is, by Dorian’s account, a remarkable actress. However, once they have declared their real love for each other, Sybil is confronted by the absurd artifice of theatrical love and ceases to be a convincing actress. Her sincerity does her no good in Dorian’s eyes, who casts her off. The Duchess of Monmouth is an American heiress who married a Duke for his title. She has an affair with Dorian, but, as with everyone else, he discards her when he is no longer interested. The Duchess is the symbol of the rising global power of America in the twentieth century which would eventually end the aristocratic way of life altogether – and end lives like Dorian Gray’s. Both Monmouth and Sybil show us the power that Dorian’s mythical beauty has over people. Chorus. The chorus are an ever-present force in the production. They serve the show in many different ways. They address the audience directly as narrators, they serve as the voice of Dorian’s demons who echo words that torment him, they emphasise certain physical action by mirroring it so that it has a sort-of ripple effect across the stage, they populate the different worlds of the play, but mostly, they serve as silent witnesses to the events of the story and Dorian’s crimes. They are, in some way, the audience’s representatives on stage. Many of them are working class people, the servants of the play’s main characters, including Francis who is reminiscent of the butlers in Wilde’s plays. He sees and hears everything in the house and is the picture of stoical discretion – but into Francis’ non judgemental presence, a guilty soul might read their own guilt. When the chorus narrate the story to the audience, often speaking into microphones, they drop character and speak in their own, mostly, Irish accents. Bartlett had a particular reason for this directorial decision. He says that to his ears, “the music [of Wilde’s language] is often deeply Irish” in spite of the manner and “accent” being of his adopted London. To have the contrast between the life Dorian creates for himself in an affected upper-class English accent, while be privately haunted by demons in Irish accents, was a suitable mirror of Wilde’s own story. Themes Hedonism and Advertising “I have never searched for happiness. Who wants happiness? I have searched for pleasure.” -Dorian Dorian Gray lives a life of hedonism – a life in pursuit of pleasure at the expense of all else, including morality - and it destroys his soul, and eventually destroys his body. Lord Henry Wotton is the play’s main proponent of the philosophy of hedonism. He tells Dorian that “the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden itself”. Lord Henry says that it is society and religion that cause people to fear their instincts, not nature. Living a life purely in the pursuit of personal pleasure, Dorian sacrifices the beauty of his soul and so his beauty is merely surface beauty. The aspect of Dorian which is the picture in the attic, the aspect which is out of sight to all but him, is hideously decayed by ugly sin. This production of A Picture of Dorian Gray asks questions about the contemporary culture and its emphasis on surface beauty, without pause for thought about a deeper beauty. Neil Bartlett, the director of this production, in his piece on the Guardian’s blog on 8th October, uses the example of the Abercrombie and Fitch poster on Dublin’s Dame Street to illustrate a point. It is a three-story high, naked, muscular, male torso – with the face out of shot. It’s an impossible ideal (much like Dorian’s unfading surface) and, as Bartlett says, it suggests that the kind of liberation from shame that’s required to be naked and three-stories tall on a busy shopping street, can be bought in a shop. In Dorian’s case, the liberation came not from a purchase, but from a mysterious trade he makes as a young man. However, as beautiful as he may have looked, beauty is harder won than a purchase in a shop or a magic trick. Bartlett goes on to say “Sometimes I stand for a bit and wonder if the poster-boy on Dame Street has a picture in his attic even uglier than Dorian’s, rotten with the commercial hijacking of pleasure and the commercial negation of individuality.” -Is Dorian a perfect innocent before he meets Henry Wotton or is Dorian pre-disposed to a hedonistic lifestyle? -What products or services have you noticed that are marketed at you? What products or services have you noticed that are marketed groups of people that don’t include you? What are the differences between them? -Should you be able to do whatever you want? What stops you from doing what you want? Superficiality “I do love acting. It is so much more real than life.” – Lord Henry Wotton The portrait takes on Dorian’s secret sins so that he can be, in appearance, beautiful and virtuous while in fact he is living at the cost of his soul and so the total picture of Dorian Gray cannot be seen, only the most beautiful, but superficial, fragment of him. “Society cannot believe anything to a man’s dishonour” says Dorian, “if he has still the look of one kept unspotted by the world” Sybil Vane, the actress with whom Dorian falls in love and then callously dismisses is not made for a world in which the surface does not match up to what’s underneath. To her delight, she discovers that when she falls in love, the performance she has been giving in Romeo and Juliet is empty and ridiculous. Having experienced real love for the first time, the fantasy of the theatre is broken and its artifice is exposed to her so she becomes an unconvincing actress. Sybil pays the price for her sincerity, as Dorian wants nothing to do with her once she stops being a god actress. Once she fails as an artist who creates beautiful surfaces, she is no use to Dorian Gray and she kills herself in grief. In the final scene between Dorian and Lord Henry, it seems Henry is Dorian’s only friend left. He is the only person who has not, by now, seen the corruption of Dorian’s soul and Henry praises the life Dorian has lead, saying “What an exquisite life you have had. Nothing has been hidden from you….and it has all been to you no more than the sound of music. You are still the same.” Dorian says he is not the same, now fully aware of the whole of the picture of himself, including the portrait in the attic. But the old and blinded Henry can see only the superficial Dorian and not the whole of him. -Why is Henry the only remaining friend to Dorian by the end of the play? What is it about Henry that admires Dorian so much? -Do you look forward to getting older? -Do you treat attractive people differently? -Can you think of a time when you had to present yourself in a particular way, a job interview or in an argument, for example? What did you have to do in order to succeed at that? Was that dishonest? Was it superficial? Social Status “There were some carters, on their way to Covent Garden, and I wondered what they thought of me; whether they knew anything of this city’s splendour and its shame…its fierce, fiery-coloured joys, its horrible hunger. What a strange London they see…a city free from the smoke of night and the sin of day; a pallid, ghost-like city. I envied them everything they did not know.” - Dorian The main characters’ lives are ostentatiously expensive and decadent. Their clothes are beautiful, their houses are large, and they employ servants. What they do to earn the money to pay for this lifestyle, is conspicuous by its absence in the play. They are the ruling class of Victorian England who have inherited aristocratic titles and vast fortunes which sustain them. Though they do seem to have a sense of each other’s relative means, as Dorian’s family wealth is discussed by the ladies in the theatre foyer who quip “Young people nowadays imagine money is everything...and when they grow older, they know it.” Dorian seems to have infinite wealth, as he throws parties, maintains town and country homes and pays off the witnesses to his crimes, almost without thinking about it. This stands in contrast with the mainly silent onlookers, those who serve play’s main characters. They live in a separate world, one of servitude rather than self-servitude, people for whom Lord Henry’s philosophies for living are a practical impossibility. This fact is clear when Lord Henry says “No civilised man ever regrets a pleasure, just as no uncivilised man ever knows what a pleasure is” before he calls for his footman, Lane, to get him a cab. Part of the freedom that Dorian’s wealth affords him is the freedom to cross social strata and pursue pleasure in all corners of society. Dorian can go to the opera with Dukes, take opium with prostitutes, avail of rent boys, seduce an actress in an East-end theatre and sexually abuse his servant, then have him disappear when he begins to displease him. His wealth and social status, as well as his unblemished physical beauty, allow him to extract the pleasure he wants from his life. Dorian says, to his servant Victor, “Society is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating” before kissing him aggressively and drawing blood. Neil Bartlett, in directing A Picture of Dorian Gray, paid particular attention to creating a tangibly different physicality and vocal quality in the different worlds of the play. Although the same actors play the ladies of the theatre foyer, the servants and the prostitutes of Limehouse, Bartlett, the cast and voice director Andrea Ainsworth, created a different physical and vocal language for the dwellers in each of these separate worlds so that the audience have a sense of the contrast Dorian’s journey between them. -Do all people have a right to be treated equally? Why? -Is there a class system in Ireland or is that just a featured of British society? -Do rich people in Ireland today live like Dorian Gray? Complicity “Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.” –Preface to the Second Edition As Bartlett says in the introduction to this adaptation, there is actually very little information given in A Picture of Dorian Gray about what Dorian looks like. Similarly, the portrait itself is scarcely described and yet, people have quite clear ideas in their mind’s eye about what they look like but, in truth, the mind’s eye is simply that of the beholder. We all have our own personal Dorian Gray. We invent him based on the suggestions that Wilde gives us, leaving us to fill in the rest. Not only do we imagine our own pictures of Dorian Gray but we also imagine his crimes, Bartlett says. If you were to ask someone with a passing knowledge of the story, or even someone who had read the book some time ago, ‘what are the crimes of which Dorian is accused?’ They might mention drugs, homosexuality, and the suicides that he causes – all of which are merely suggested in the book. By asking us to fill in the particular details with that which stands for ‘beauty’ and ‘crime’ for us, Wilde is revealing to us our own desires and fears. When we participate in imagining these things, we become complicit in the story’s moral traps. In a way, the critics of A Picture of Dorian Gray weren’t blustering about the morality of the piece itself, but rather appalled by their own visions of a sumptuously beautiful young man and his debauched crimes. Lord Henry’s assessment of why Basil likes him so much could well apply to us all; “because I represent to you all of the sins you have never had the courage to commit”. Dorian Gray is the reader’s Rorschach test. The theatre is a medium which requires very active audience participation and makes the audience complicit in its creation– and so Dorian Gray is very well suited to theatrical adaptation, particularly this one by Neil Bartlett. In the theatre, not everything can be fully realistically rendered and if it was, it would be doing all of the work for the audience. In the theatre the artists represent, rather than realise. In a production such as this, with a stripped down set - in which a jump from one location to another might be suggested by an atmospheric change and the movement of a table and where the performers speak directly to the audience - the spectators are very active participants in the experience. They imagine that which the minimal set stands for and are never allowed to become passive absorbers of the experience, but rather, always have to be active creators of that experience. -What did you know about A Picture of Dorian Gray before you saw the production in the Abbey? Or, if you have not seen the production yet; what did you know about it before reading this resource pack? What was your own vision of Dorian Gray? What does he look like? What is his manner like? Who, that you know, is he most like? Appendix 1 Dorian Gray Abbey Theatre Workshop Outline 120 Minutes Aims: To prepare the group for the piece they’re going to see. By the end of the workshop the participants should be equipped to question the piece. In particular the workshop should: -introduce and contextualize the theme of Hedonism -introduce and contextualize Wilde’s particular language -give an insight into how the piece was made (chorus work – the various effects that can have on an audience’s perception; status, highlighting certain moments, how does that tell the story?) Face Morph (10 mins) Get into pairs, preferably someone you don’t know. Assign yourselves an “A” and “B”. B sits and A stands facing them. B is to be as neutral as possible. They look into each other’s eyes. There may be giggles. That’s fine. Acknowledge it, let it happen, deep breaths, move on. A looks into B’s eyes, then around their eyes, then widening their attention to the upper half of their face, taking in the details, getting to know them, then the lower half of the face, then the face as a whole. Take it all in. Then A, with the whole of B’s face in focus, allows themselves to see their face differently. Allow their eyes to change shape, their mouth to move place, their beard to grow, their eyebrows to thicken. Don’t force it, just let it come. It doesn’t have to come immediately. Treat it like a magic eye trick and it will happen. Then suggest that you imagine their face as the face of someone who’s lived life lived kindly... and after a time when they have done that, ask them to imagine the face morphing again, this time to the face of someone who has lived life cruelly. Hedonism – text talk (30 mins) Form a circle. Ask for people who are happy to read aloud. Give them a piece of this text to read aloud. The aim of life is self-development, Mr Gray; to realise one’s nature perfectly – that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays - they are charitable, they feed the hungry and clothe the beggar, but they have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one’s self. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, and the terror of God, which is the basis of religion – these are the two things that govern us. And yet... I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream, the world would gain such an impulse of joy……. Passions that have made you afraid; thoughts that have filled you with terror; day dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheeks with shame... Start a discussion based on this extract, including the following questions. -What’s important to you? -What are the things you must do with your life? -Is a painting or a button hole important? -What would your life be like if beauty was your highest value? -Is it ok to do what you want? Wilde’s Aphorisms (15min) Oscar Wilde is known for his wonderfully paradoxical aphorisms such as: “I can resist anything except temptation” “All women become their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, that is theirs”. "Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught." This exercise allows people to come up with their own Wildean aphorisms. Divide into small groups and ask each group to come up with some general statements on common subjects for example “Work” “Beauty” or “the Abbey”. The results will be something like : “The Abbey Theatre claims to produce Irish work” “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” “Work is something to live for” You then ask them to look through their general statements and follow it up with some form of inversion of the generally true statement. So for example: “The Abbey claims to produce Irish work but Irish work produced the Abbey” “Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder but sometimes the beholder is blind” “Work is something to live for but work can bring you to your grave.” You then ask them to make some form of comment on the previous statements. So, for example: “The Abbey claims to produce Irish work, but Irish work produced the Abbey. It is the people, not buildings, who make art.” “Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder but sometimes the beholder is blind. Blind beholders make the best critics.” “Work is something to live for because it can bring you to you grave. No amount of relaxation will ever do that for you” Chorus (20 mins) -walk around the space -imagine the floor is on a fulcrum; you have to keep it balanced but keep moving -stop when I clap my hands. Start walking again, everybody at the same time. Look for a silent agreement. Feel it. Go with conviction. (Then ask half of them to step out and watch this) -Now when I clap my hands, quickly form a tableau facing the audience. Everybody has to be touching at least one other. Vary the levels. (Try this a few times, offering suggestions) -Form a tableau. Everybody look at a fixed point (you decide). Over a slow count of 8, everybody look at a different point (you decide). Then, on a snap, everybody except one person (you decide) looks back to the first point. (Repeat if necessary) Ask the audience: How did my instruction affect the picture? What do you see? What’s going on in this picture? (Look for story, relationships and mood in their responses – we want them to create little scenes) (Swap over groups, repeat the exercise) -Now, starting from the point of contact with the person next to you, on a count of 8, move in to a different position in the tableau, never losing contact with the group. On 8, settle and look at a fixed point. Try a few different combinations, asking the audience to read in subtext. Who are these people? What are the hierarchies? What are the agendas? Swap groups. Repeat exercise form tableau, get them moving in unison. Text and Chorus (20 mins) Then ask one person to read the first half of the text on stage, off to one side, while the chorus move. Ask the audience what this adds to the text? Is there a clear Lord Henry? Is there a Dorian? Where is this set? See if a director emerges. Nominate them to direct the chorus’ movement to the text being spoken. Swap groups. Repeat exercise with the second half of the text. Composition (15 mins) Divide them into their groups (the director and text reader have now swapped groups) Give them 10 minutes to prepare a series of still images (tableau) with transitions between them, as before, which in some way illustrate the text they’ve been given. Come back with a composed piece to show the groups. Reflection (10 mins) Go back over questions that have been raised in the workshop so far. Refer to the aims of the workshop at the top of this workshop outline. Appendix 2 – Rehearsal Blog by Assistant Director, Oonagh Murphy Blog 1 Neil Bartlett stands before the assembled staff on the first read-through of his new adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray. First read-through mornings at the Abbey are notoriously nerve-inducing events, an atmosphere which Neil dispels immediately, telling the crowd that he met Wilde this morning while walking across the green of Trinity College. An avid Wildean scholar, director and long-time adapter, Bartlett has encounter Wilde many times before, and I certainly take this Monday morning’s encounter as further confirmation, if the script itself is not already sufficient evidence, that this production is a meeting of great minds. The Abbey staff sits back as the company, with several debuts and many well-known faces, read the script dynamically, a radio-play that promises much of its fully staged production. As Neil suggests, everyone thinks they know the story of Dorian Gray. It has left a residue on contemporary culture – the well-known phrase ‘She’s got a picture in the attic’ just one example. He goes on to explain how this production will be about meeting those expectations and starting a conversation with them. ‘Why do people book tickets to Wilde?’ Sofas, potted plants, stylish lives and pithy quips... Certainly, this production will satisfy that appetite for style, as designer Kandis Cooke and Neil have devised costumes changes with plenty of frocks and ‘enough feathers to depopulate an aviary’. The company are shown the stage design, bearing the hallmarks of the director’s ability to combine confident economy with arresting theatricality; ‘it’s about assembling what’s needed to tell the story’ and ‘relying on a simple visual language for character changes’. This is a tragedy in the classical sense. We encounter a hero with a particular problem, and around him are characters who engage with him but who also are invested in the story and seem to know how it ends. What appears to interest Neil specifically, is the audience’s relationship to Dorian, via this ensemble, do we want him to get away with it? The rest of the day is saturated with snatches of insight into how far along in its inception this production is in Neil’s mind. Sometimes as an assistant director, there is an overwhelming feeling that you are in a master-class, and that some of these ideas are ones you will return to repeatedly in your own work. We discuss the dynamics of the piece – the ability of using the chorus to pause, fast forward and magnify behaviour. The thriller quality of the work is highlighted – what is the accumulatory effect of death in this saga with a thrillingly high body count? Neil outlines how we will rehearse this massive production, specifically highlighting the work that will be done with Voice Director Andrea Ainsworth, in developing a speaking ensemble that drives the story to its end. I scribble notes and hope I will be able to read them later. Blog 2 ‘There is something about this story that is written in blood’ – Neil Bartlett. Our first session as a company, without staff or creative team present, Neil asks us each to pick out a line that has stuck in our head from the read-through. ‘What did you not notice before?’ This returned some really interesting snapshots of the play. Hearing certain lines ring out in the voices of these actors, lines that had struck them brought the play into live discussion... ‘Eternal youth. Infinite passion’. ‘I can’t afford orchids but I spare no expense in strangers and foreigners’. ‘I envy them everything they did not know’ ... Everyone’s subjective response was valid. We retell the story, taking it in turns to engage the room with a chapter of the play before passing over to someone else. Neil proposes that within the play there is ‘an idea cooking that we all have a Dorian inside us’. There is something about this saga that people identify with personally, and this comes through in this collective retelling of it. This kind of high-focus group work is the backbone Neil of how intends to work on this piece. Over the course of the next few days, he repeatedly says things along the lines – ‘Don’t give people time to think’. What he means is, don’t get caught in the trap of analysis and discussion. Exercises that demand forward momentum allow the text to become something embodied, rather than cerebral – the muscularity of Wilde’s prose to become workable material, as opposed to venerated and unyielding. The one concept of this production is to tell the story, and to tell it clearly, to root all the work in the idea of language with trajectory. An hour’s full company voice work every morning with voice director Andrea is a good place to begin this. Andrea has a kit-bag of exercises that make simple some really challenging ideas about the actor’s voice in approaching text like this. The actors warm up all areas of their bodies, connecting breath and noise, to an external target. She encourages them to be specific about where the sound is travelling, to one another. ‘Each sound has a beginning and an ending’. So definition lends physicality into otherwise purely oral exercises. What is interesting is how important it is to develop connection within an ensemble early on. Connecting sound to physicality, connecting eyes to breath, and connecting with an external target, other people – these are challenging but essential exercises. They form the basis of good chorus dynamic, encouraging limberness and an ability to sustain momentum onstage together that is both economic and energised. Neil continues with this through-line on chorus voice work. He asks the group in a circle to say ‘Good morning to one another’, swapping places as they say it. They then say the phrase one after another, with the instruction of putting a comma in between each person’s go, so that the long list of ‘Good mornings’ is lightly punctuated but continuous. The same, surprisingly difficult task (‘that sounded more like a full-stop than a comma’) is repeated with the group in various formations, a line, a clump, a wedge with one person at the top. The work then turns to a passage of text from the novel. Text is divided by the circle, with each person speaking a phrase (the text between two commas). The text flows through the circle, with each actor observing the beginning and ending of each phrase. They are asked to notice how far away the end of their sentence is – that is, how much further forward do they need to extend the energy? Neil works like an orchestra conductor, controlling dynamic mainly with his own physicality – an arm, a finger, his eyes – but often issuing direct instructions – ‘Less speaking, more thinking’, ‘Don’t let any more out than comes to you’, ‘Keep a lid on it more’. This work on the nature of comma in text is not arbitrary. The analogy of each voice of the chorus being similar to one domino in a line is articulated repeatedly by the director. The comma controls the forward momentum of passages spoken collectively. The central question here is – what is the character of the chorus? The work moves to explore this more closely. The company are asked to walk across the floor given various instructions – walk towards Neil with a feeling of welcome, walk towards Neil with a secret in your head that you would never tell him, walk towards Neil with a weapon behind your back that are considering using etc. Other exercises involve paired work moving from one emotion to another within a movement of the hand across face. The pairs are grouped together until one half of the company watches the other complete the exercise. What we observe is how group work like this allows for a variety of intensity and interpretations of emotion. This grit – the combination of individual faces and bodies – is the basis of a strong chorus that are live and present. What is the nature of this body of people? Both promising and threatening, knowing and nonchalant. Neil assures us that all of this is up for play, and that’s an exciting place to be on Day Three. Blog 3 The Picture of Dorian Gray explores the clash of social values of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Dorian, in his determination to follow his curiosity, as Lord Henry instructs him, finds himself in parts of London that a gentlemen would rarely go to, mixing with sorts of people who someone of his class would otherwise never interact. The play has within it comment about wealth and grandeur, and its relationship to the working class and criminal underground. ‘Society is never very ready to believe anything that is to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating; it feels instinctively that manners are more important than morals’ - The Picture of Dorian Gray. In order to help the actors to inhabit these various worlds, Neil leads sessions with each social groups – the Ladies of the Theatre Foyer, the people of the working class Poplar theatre where Sybil Vane performs, the prostitutes of Limehouse. Each session takes different shape, but the essence of the work is the same. The focus is to get the groups sharing a physical language and exploring the text in a way that is embodied and characterised without being generic. For example, the work with the Ladies of the Foyer, examined how dress affects stance, gait and voice. Neil also suggested playing against Wildean tropes which was particularly interesting. For example, lines that may appear to be throwaway were to be played as earnest, lines that may seem serious to be tried with lightness, and when a character appears disgusted to play the line with delight. This isn’t an overall rule at all. But rather a suggestion that allows repositioning and a sense of playfulness with text. The ladies provide us with comic relief, but also give a very clear sense of the play’s social context. Moreover, this is a world that Dorian turns his back on. The ladies represent the claustrophobia, monotony and snobbery of the upper classes which hold little interest for the protagonist for very long. Within all of this work on the collective, there is the constant reminder from Neil, of the need to find the individual reason to be there. This is a critical note that allows us not to get swept away in a tide of posh accents and witty quips. Each actor excellently finds specificity in their work. Alongside this, voice director, Andrea, plays clips of voice samples, rooting character in tempo, pitch and a particular relationship with text. This work allows for the ensemble to tap in certain registers connoting a time and place, a lifestyle, but not getting trapped in an un-malleable mimesis. This sort of dexterity is how Neil and Andrea work together throughout, sharing a vocabulary that unlocks the physical work that the actors do in a way that is particular to this process. Within all the rigour, this is an over-riding sense of play and discovery. ‘All things historic and naturalistic only interest me in so much as they tell the story’ – Neil Bartlett.