Introduction to Theatre.

Aaron Lim Si Ru
Jocelyn Chua
CDP 101: Introduction to Theatre and Performance Skills
14 April 2010

Being Hungry

We fell upon Hungry by Ng Yi Sheng by pure chance, it was a piece that attracted me in a very primal way after taking a more in depth reading into it. I’m not surprised that I missed it earlier when I came across the book; it simply struck me as too absurd. But beyond that façade of absurdity lay the very raw desires of the characters, something that could be easily molded into various theatrical practices beyond what other scripts permitted. The themes of desire and of breaking free from stereotypes were universal enough to be explored in different aspects. Therefore, after rummaging through a few plays that were too restricting, we settled on Hungry.

Hungry was essentially non-naturalistic in its storyline, of dead people, a forgotten god and a corporeal form of death. The setting too was sparse, it never specified where the play takes place, we can’t be sure if it’s hell or purgatory or somewhere in between. The playhouse although well capable of creating wondrous effects, incorporating all of that into a 10 minute production would have been too much of a stretch without compromising our theatre and performance skills. Since “Brecht was against the use of lighting effects to create atmosphere and mood” we decided to emulate his style of epic theatre to make full use of our resources (Erstin 121). Taking into account the minimalist stage, props, sets and the absence of lighting, it has also served to dispel “any illusion of reality”, with a lone toilet bowl seat as a set; which, by itself would have achieved to some extent the V-effect in estranging the audience from any illusory form of reality (Erstin 110).

We placed much emphasis on the notion of wanting liberation in death due to the ambiguity of the entire setting. It is neither hell nor heaven, and essentially it became an exploration of the characters wanting freedom from this limbo realm. This medium of representation resonated with Brecht’s idea of ‘epic’ theatre where “the complexity of the human condition… could no longer be understood in isolation from… social, economical and historical forces” affecting the lives of people (Erstin 111). Simply put, the human condition cannot be understood by exploring the psyche of an individual, but rather through our relationship and reactions towards socio-political influences in our lives. Which stands in direct contrast to naturalistic theatre’s exploration of a character of ‘psychological gestures’, ‘epic’ theatre is anything but; Brecht seeks to educate his audience by highlighting human relationships because “the smallest social unit is not one human being, but two human beings” (Erstin 118). Brecht does not care for the inner workings of a character; he is more concerned with how their inner desires are expressed in their outward attitudes and actions, even Machu’s monologue is directed at the audience to forge a social relationship, unlike other self reflexive monologues in naturalistic productions. Likewise, we needed to do away with characterization and focus in finding a political or social message to portray in Hungry through the expression of human relationships. Liberation as it seems was merely a theme of expression, while Brecht in his view thinks that “the audience… should not be made to feel emotions, it should be made to think”, to be critical and not to be immersed in the play; our version is anything but (Erstin 110). We found ourselves instinctively trying to ‘get into character’ which was a naturalistic technique of finding the psychological gesture behind a character. We had to banish that mindset and find specific ways to shatter the illusion of reality.

Keeping in mind the theme of liberation, we decided to take a political slant, questioning a totalitarian regime and the characters’ fight for freedom. What was originally Chinese Communism gradually evolved into Nazi Fascism simply because fascist governments adopted a more authoritarian stance coupled with the will and ability to carry out violence when necessary to achieve its goals. As I was originally cast as Death, the fascist government was portrayed in the archetype of Death as the absolute arbiter, representing the authoritarian power of the fascist government and the strangling grasp of dictatorship. Death was a challenge to grasp or rather it was a challenge trying to grasp the gestures representative of a fascist government. The script however did not seem to resonate with fascist authoritarian overtones, my Death turned out to be an insidious agent that acts behind the shadows rather than an omnipotent dictator that Death is supposed to be. Yet it was a challenge to strip down the script without losing much of its meaning, struggling to maintain coherence of the plot and facing the difficulty of portraying the political message, relying instead of sets and sounds to relay the message. We were regressing back into naturalistic theatre, which Brecht eschews.

After the full dress rehearsal, we realized that we lacked constancy in our presentation, lacked conciseness in the episodic stories that felt rather naturalistic. Some actors left the stage while others remained in tableau; hence the V-effect was lost becoming more of naturalistic theatre with exits and entries. Episodic stories were unclear, as they didn’t convey the political message in a succinct manner; the episodes were leaning towards naturalistic expression, hence we were not able to fully shatter the illusion of reality. There came a need focus on the social relationships between each character and how they react to each other to flesh out our political agenda. Brecht placed heavy emphasis on “the clear and stylized expression of the social behavior of human beings toward each other”, in the way which Brecht shifts the focus away from the psychological workings of the actor, he emphasizes the way the characters react with each other (Erstin 119). Hence, actors that are not involved in the episodic stories are frozen in tableau; a character like Death is omnipresent but does not participate in conversation is often blank-faced and does not react to the other actors. In juxtaposition, the other actors’ exchanges are often flatly stylized or overtly emotional in a stilted manner, using specific actions to communicate social relationships between the characters.

Several changes were in order; the entire script was rewritten, retaining only the original mother-child scene. Minor casting adjustments were made; I took the role of Sarah (now known as Salah hoping to achieve an alienation effect), Ziting took the role of Death. The rationale for this change was to concretize the social relationships between the characters, there was some unease with the old pairings, I felt that Ziting was being overshadowed by Lester, and by casting her as Death the omnipotent one, would give her more space to explore without being pressured to perform on par with Lester’s high level of energy. Furthermore, the episode of the lesbian artist and the student was not clearly shown during the rehearsal, and there wasn’t adequate time to fully flesh out individual stories.

Since Brecht believed that the smallest social unit was two human beings, we pushed homosexuality up a notch to portray Guak and Salah’s relationship as gay lovers being prosecuted for their love. The mother-child episode is left unchanged, but coupled with the homosexual episode; it served to reinforce the innocent and pure notions of love being mercilessly crushed by a brutal fascist regime. The scene where Death dances with Machu is vaguely reminiscent of the same sex pairing between Guak and Salah, I am hoping the parallel would evoke the spirit of criticism within the audience, forcing them to question even further the motivations behind Death as Brecht himself would have intended.
Death as the omnipresent character stands in stark contrast to both episodes, she represents the cold-blooded hand of the government snuffing out the lives of all the other characters even in death; the scene ends in a tableau of all four characters collapsed on the stage with only Death left standing in centre stage. The line-up party hat scene is in my opinion perhaps the most jarring inversion of expectations we have managed with stilted portrayals of happiness bound in a flat line by the invisible hand of authority. The lines are presented in rapid succession, coupled with the mechanical snapping of heads by the actors, finally ending with the classic Hitler salute with the characters as puppets and Death as the puppeteer to shatter the illusion of reality. Yet despite the stilted delivery our intention was never to eschew emotion, Brecht in no way renounced emotion “but tries to strengthen or to evoke them” within the audience (Erstin 126). Hence, by using alienation techniques and estranging devices to prevent audience identification and empathy with the characters, we hoped to spark audience emotion directed not at the characters but towards the political message we are sending.

Hungry. Even going by the play’s name it was meant to be a negative play, the pure and innocent are invariably crushed, an inversion of expectations from the traditional happy ending or emotional catharsis in tragedy. Brechtian theatre offers no easy resolutions or personal lessons on life, it is a theatre designed to arouse indignation, drawing contradictions, shattering illusions for the deluded; it is a theatre that offers nothing for the audience to take away. Brechtian theatre merely invites the audience in to jar their senses to true reality, leaving them not with satisfaction but with questions.
1551 Words.







Works Cited
Erstin, Martin. Brecht. A Choice of Evils. London: Mercury Books Heinemann Publishing. 1959-1965. Print.