Month: April 2016

Sylvia Plath was an excellent poet but is known to many for this largely autobiographical novel which was first published in 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. The Bell Jar has become a classic of American literature.
The book is based on her own experience yet one has to be careful not to confuse this novel with an autobiography, it has been written with a certain audience and effect in mind, 10 years after the actual events.

Content.

Esther, an A-student from Boston who has won a guest editorship on a national magazine, finds a bewildering new world at her feet. Her New York life is crowded with possibilities, so that the choice of future is overwhelming, but she can no longer retreat into the safety of her past. Deciding she wants to be a writer above all else, Esther is also struggling with the perennial problems of morality, behaviour and identity. In this compelling autobiographical novel, a milestone in contemporary literature, Sylvia Plath chronicles her teenage years – her disappointments, anger, depression and eventual breakdown and treatment , with stunning wit and devastating honesty.

 

.After reading the bell jar, I found that  it shows the vulnerability of people and how we struggle to manoeuvre through life.  I t seemed to have a very dark underlying tone to it, in regards to what will  happen to a woman’s aspirations in a society that refuses to take them seriously. I could feel the despair  and frustration of Esther, as she questions the world around her and how her search for identity becomes a terrifying descent toward madness. I believe that almost everyone can or could relate to this book as we all have wants and dreams, but sometimes we don’t always achieve them. Consequently, it highlights how we are all just one slip away from the edge.

.In conclusion the Bell Jar has provided me with a stimulus for my own performance and it has given me an insight into just how unhappy Plath was with her life.

 

Over the last couple of days I have been thinking about my performance, specifically in terms of its staging. Therefore, I have come up with the idea of using a circle of rocks for Virginia’s monologue. Theses rocks will sit stage right, and they will be underneath one of the two spotlights of which I will be using in my performance. I want them the represent Virginia’s death, in the sense that once she steps into the circle he fait is sealed and she cannot go back. I think that this idea should prove to be effect in my performance, as the stones where physically used to help her commit suicide, but I feel that they have much more of a metaphorical representation to them.

 

This is a clip from  Stephen Daldry’s film The Hours. The plot focuses on three women of different generations whose lives are interconnected by the novel Mrs Dalloway  by Virginia Woolf. These are Clarissa Vaughan  a New Yorker preparing an award party for her aids-stricken long-time friend and poet, Richard  in 2001; Laura Brown, a pregnant 1950s California housewife with a young boy and an unhappy marriage; and Virginia Woolf as herself in 1920s England, who is struggling with depression and mental illness while trying to write her novel. This film is beautiful in the sense it asks it’s audience the question, What does it means to be human? It highlights how life as both light and dark within it and opens up the question of what is happiness.

 

 

 

The  American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist Patti Smith beautifully, yet  eerily reads The Waves by Virginia Woolf. The rest of the dramatic performance is Smith in her own voice, possibly improvising, possibly reciting her homage to Woolf.  Perhaps the performance held such resonance was due  the fact that the exhibition fell on the 67th anniversary of Woolf’s death by suicide. Of Woolf’s death, Smith says, “I do not think of this as sad. I just think that it’s the day that Virginia Woolf decided to say goodbye. So we are not celebrating the day, we are simply acknowledging that this is the day. If I had a title to call tonight, I would call it ‘Wave.’ We are waving to Virginia.” (Smith, 2008) This notion is extremely profound, as many believe and still do, that Virginia’s death was a tragedy and in a way it could be argued that it was. However I believe that  it wasn’t, as only that person can decide when to end their life and if, like Virginia, you can only find peace and happiness through death then so be it.

.Arguably the most well-known autobiographical performer of recent decades. Spalding Gray  led way to a turn in the American Avant-Garde theatre. I specifically like his use of  direct address within his performances. His fast paced and erratic speech adds a touch of comedy to his performances, regardless of the subject matter.  As a solo artiest he explicitly  address the problems within society  through the use of  recorded media and stories.

 

 

.I have chosen to  research Gray as I am keen to use his performance style and his performance techniques within my own work. Like Gray, I want to use  coordinated writing, live performance, and audio recording to develop the  monologues of both Virginia and  Sylvia. Autobiographical  storytelling will play a big part in performance. As I will be using various sources and stimuli to bring the two women to life. These been Virginia’s suicide note to her husband, as well as poems she had written. I will also be using her book Mrs Dalloway  as a base for my performance and I will also be using quotes and references she herself had  made before her death. For Sylvia I will be using  Ted Hughes Birthday Letters as a stimuli to create her monologue, as well as poems she had written and like Virginia i will also be using things she said in interviews about what she things about life.