Shakespeare and Chekhov in Production and Reception: Theatrical Events and Their Audiences

8. Playing Culture: Pleasurable Play in The Free State and The Cherry Orchard

Playing culture is central to Sauter’s communicative model of theatre research and to his definition of a theatrical event as “the communicative mutuality of performer and spectator, the elements of play, and their dependence on the surrounding contexts” (2000, 14). Theatre audiences do not respond to a“political”play like Janet Suzman’s The Free State as though it is a political speech, though some Theatre Royal, Bath, audiencememberschosenottogototheplay,fearingthatiswhatitwould be. Rather, audiences are composed of a variety of leisure conventions (chapter 6) and social experiences (chapter 7) with which they approach actors’ embodied performances, sets, and so on as they “play culture” (often other cultures, as in Suzman’s case) with those on the stage. According to their positioning as one or other leisure formation in relation to a particular theatrical event, they may respond to a play’s “politics ”via different routes.Each of those routes is as a theatre audience,with particular perceptual, emotional-aesthetic, cognitive, and communicative responses to the event. For Sauter, that aspect of the theatrical event that he maps as “playing culture” focuses on the importance of skills and style in a performer/spectator’s pleasurable play, which distinguishes this behavior playing culture pleasurable play in the free state and the cherry orchard In the arts, not only is something played, but it is played for someone, who is not the player. . . . Theatre becomes theatre by being an event in which two partners engage in a playful relationship. —Willmar Sauter, forthcoming 8 fromboth“thetrivialexperiencesof everydaylife”andreligiousrituals.Yet, as we have seen already, there is a continuity as well as distinction between theatrical event and everyday life. This chapter explores further this relationshipbetweenthe “playfulrelation”inthetheatreand“everyday”frames intheaudiencebycomparingpleasuresin“skillsandstyle”thatmyTheFree State interviewees found between this production and the ETT’s The Cherry Orchard.Here the long interview method,based on comparing two Chekhovs that respondents had seen recently,proved a useful way of articulating issues of production skills and style and audience pleasure. The first extract from my interview with Stephanie Nailor illustrates clearly the playful relationship (or lack of it) between actors and audience. Stephanie Nailor JT: Let’s pick up one or two things from your questionnaire response. Just looking at it, you clearly weren’t hugely convinced with the recent The Cherry Orchard. SN: I’m afraid that I left at the interval. . . . I had fallen asleep twice. . . . JT: Whereas in your questionnaire, you felt Suzman’s The Free State was “superb”? SN: Yes. Absolutely. They were very convincing [in it]. I think she is a brilliant actress herself, and she is obviously a very good writer to be able to transform it in that way. . . . I heard her on the radio saying that she chose South African actors (with I think one exception) because their voices and way of speaking have the right rhythms, and I think the whole thing hung together so brilliantly. There are three points to make here. The first is methodological. By beginning each long interview from the point in the interviewee’s earlier survey questionnaire where they responded to liking or not liking the ETT’s The Cherry Orchard, it was possible to compare in discussion their pleasure or displeasure in the two performances by way of specific questions about acting styles,skills,and their sense of place in relation to these plays’ settings. These latter — the introduction, for example, of black actors and sets that indicated vast spaces — represented Suzman’s own theatrical approach to the politics of South Africa in her play.By employing a structured interview in this way, it was possible to compare the very Playing Culture 243 different everyday responses of the interviewees to the embodied and visual theatrical politics of Suzman’s play. It also allowed the interview to move between the highly individualized,affective response (often to individual actors) and the more global and cognitive responses evoked by “ideas,” landscapes of place, and embodied ethnicity — in other words, tomaptheinterviewacrossEversmann’sperceptual,cognitive,emotional, and communicative dimensions of the theatrical event. Second, the interview extract illustrates the dramatic difference in pleasure for this audience member, Stephanie Nailor, between the ETT’s and Suzman’s Chekhovs and, in particular, the importance in this response of the “skills and style,” as Sauter puts it, of Janet Suzman and her black actors. Stephanie Nailor took pleasure in Suzman’s skills as an actressbutalsoinher skillsandstyleasadirector andwriter ableto“transform ” Chekhov...