‘The Visit’ was written in 1956 by Friedrich Durrenmatt, a swiss writer. Like many plays at the time, the script features morbid and surreal humour to discuss serious political situations. In this case, (arguably) the question to the audience is ‘Can you buy anything i.e justice?’, as we see the main character ‘Claire’ offer money to the poor people of her hometown in exchange for the murder of a man that wronged her years ago: the local family man Alfred Ill. Like a Brechtian play, the characters and the audience in turn are presented with a moral ultimatum: kill and be rich? Or be poor and morally correct? Additionally, the surreal character descriptions and situations leave room for lots of gestus, and creative direction in terms of establishing setting through physicality (actors as inanimate objects for example), or skipping back and forth in time in an episodic fashion to present the audience with the material they need to decide their opinion on the situation.
At the time that the play was written, Switzerland had recently seen the end of a second world war in which it had retained its neutral stance. During World War II, Switzerland was an ideal country for fleeing refugees. However, Switzerland did not take in the large numbers of people fleeing wars, and of those granted citizenship, working was not allowed. In terms of context, the justice that Durrenmatt is questioning could be based on that which Jews were not given.
More research must be done on this context to further our ideas however.
Previously, we had a workshop with the creators of an adaptation of August Strindberg’s ‘Dream Play’, and their tip for devising with text as a stimulus was to note the landmarks of the play or scene chosen, which was also even more relevant to us because we too were adapting an old text. The ‘landmarks’ can be defined as the main events that happen in the play, and the parts of the plot that need to happen in order to propel the story. Like ‘Dream Play’, ‘The Visit’ is a classic and often revisited play, as well as being a frequently studied text in Germany. Creating a fresh take on the story was consequently imperative, and working out the landmarks of the extract means that we can take our interpretations of the play and devise according to our own intentions as a political company whilst not going too far off tangent, as well as ensuring that a coherent narrative is still present. The landmarks that we have chosen are:
1. Ill and Claire meet again + reminisce about youth
2. Town Celebration of Claire’s ‘donation’
3. Mayor thanks Claire for generosity
4. Claire presents donation on the condition that Ill is murdered
5. Butler presents Claire’s case
6. Blinded witnesses confess
7. Claire shares past – death of her baby and life of prostitution
8. Mayor rejects Claire’s attempt to ‘buy justice’
From these landmarks we then sat down as a group and talked about what questions we wanted to present our audience with, as with Brecht and Durrenmatt also, the political theatre we have studied reflects on societal issues by prompting its audience with a question that the audience should answer by reflecting on their response to the play. For instance, in Brecht’s ‘Caucasian Chalk Circle’ the question is ‘Is a mother defined by her blood relation to her child, or her evidence of love and sacrifices made for them?’. As a result, we decided on three questions that interested us:
1. Can you buy everything i.e. justice?
2. Does a woman have to prove herself a villain in order to not be a victim?
3. How has the justice system today changed since Durrenmatt’s time?
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| Taken from google images |
These three questions for us would answer the ‘Why now?’ rhetoric posed by our teachers – Why is ‘The Visit’ relevant today? I would argue that the play is very relevant in terms of it contemplating how justice could be freely given to those willing to pay in some way, which for me echoes the ‘injury lawyers for you’ franchise, as well as the slightly more pop culture medium of ‘Jeremy Kyle’ doling out justice through paternity tests and embarrassing TV confessions. Our second investigative question, which was highlighted by Claire’s abusive past compared to her cold blooded present appearance, resonates with the societal view of women today. As a woman, I see ‘myself’ (by that I mean representations of femininity) being killed, beaten by abusive partners that I won’t leave, and raped in the name of television entertainment. I am outraged by the cliché that a woman’s murder in a detective programme is usually down to a jealous partner or sexual predator, whilst a man’s death can be the result of a high espionage mission to take down a corporation from the inside, or a monetary dispute.
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| Taken from google images |
This propagation of women’s sexual abuse in particular for entertainment has even come to the point that an entire television franchise –Law and Order SVU – is dedicated to it. This has dangerous effects, as it desensitises the public to sexual abuse, as well as women being victimised too often in the media. Therefore, it is easy to see a woman as fragile and weak, because of the stereotypes we have been fed, unless she is a monster. Lastly, our ideas of the justice system have evolved rapidly over the past decades. Court cases are now brought out into newspapers for the public to discuss and sensationalise, such as the ‘Amanda Knox Trial’ that has even led to the creation of a Netflix series. The justice system could be now seen as a means of entertainment, which we would like to further explore during devising.
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| Taken from 'The Visit' by Durrenmatt |
We were then given the task of creating a rough sketch to encapsulate some of the work we’ve done on the play so far, and to do this my group decided to devise around the question ‘Can you buy anything?’, as other questions would have required research that would use up valuable devising time. As we have been given a lot of freedom about how much or little of the actual text we want to use, we have decided to take bits of the script that support the themes we think are most important to bring to light. For the question ‘Can you buy anything?’ we chose a section on page 36 of the extract, entailing Claire’s condition that her donation to the town acts as ‘buying myself justice’, followed by the mayor stating that ‘Justice can’t be bought’.
This extract goes after the staging of an advert titled ‘Justice 4 U’, complying with the modern day link to buying justice, which features a woman on her couch, phoning her friend and asking where she ‘can get a new cup of justice’. In this part, we use the Brechtian technique of actors creating the furniture by creating the physical resemblance of a sofa for the actress to sit on. The thing I think we need to work on is the reason why this technique is used, as our piece will only be truly effective if the techniques we use are meaningful instead of being included for the sake of ticking a box. Then, I hop onto the back of another actor, Sherene, to create the caricature of the mayor in the extract. The idea is that a) the gestus of a fat mayor is created by my legs around Sherene’s stomach acting as an enlarged belly, which in retrospect we could push even more with the smoking of a cigar and the constant inspection of a coin bag in front of the starving peasants, as well as b) I deliver all of the mayor’s rational lines, whilst Sherene delivers all of the dismissive, oafish lines in the extract. Therefore, I act in a way as the conscience of the mayor, whilst my body adds extra limbs to the character, pushing perhaps the idea that his obsession with money and corrupting the people could be best symbolised by him being a spidery creature.
Having the mayor’s conscience present also makes use of Brecht’s ‘Not…But..’ Technique, as the lines that prove him conceited are contrasted by him being considerate and even polite. Again, I think we need to refine our use of this technique by making the difference in our outlooks even more obvious, perhaps with added props like angel and devil horns, or added lines to enhance our personalities. Lastly, when the Mayor says that he still doesn’t understand how ‘Everything can be bought’, we transition into a restaurant scene, in which the dishes marketed by the charismatic maître d are actually women, sold as brides in the same way that Claire was sold in her past. This explores the age old saying ‘Money can’t buy love’, but with increasing use of mail order bride websites, such as the leading website ‘Anastasiadate’ having 2.6 million visits per month, this statement is close to being retracted. This section acts as an insight into Claire’s past, as well as providing social and cultural links to today’s society.
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