Being Violate and Violated: The Issues within "Unconventional" Plays

A costume creates a tangential relationship between the audience and the roles. How the roles are presented in their costume will be the first identification being trough by the audience after they realize that there are their others. In the process of searching the reference of the costume, the surroundings and how the stage is organized will be pretty much helpful---the surrounding will give a context to the costume thus build a marker between the audience and the characters, the characters and their own--or sometimes various--roles, as well as one character and the other.

In a search of another context, the physical marker will finally take the place. The color of skin or the movement of the body matters in constructing the discrimination, incrimination and criminalization of the roles.

However, even the physical markers do not have something to do with political view or directly relate to a certain social sphere, these bodily markers will be politically charged for the roles. This various relationship will eventually create the boundary between different social spheres and their images.

Several plays deal with these issues by doing violation towards markers so that the roles’ images and boundaries between them turn out to be unconventional.

M. Butterfly: The Violation Towards Physical and Bodily Markers

Separated position of the roles in separated stages functions as the markers which illustrate the roles’ distant with the reality, the audience and the very life surroundings the theatre. The organization of the roles’ positions in different organization of stages will matter the perception of audience towards them. Thus this position will discriminate the roles’ relationship with their images.

Gallamard is positioned in a cell-like stage. It makes his role relates to the one commits the crime long before any other markers are shown. Despite the fact that many reasons can cause the one being in a prison, the discrimination that lead to the prejudice of a crime will appear first --just because the position of the role has been set up somehow.

However, Song is placed in an upstage. This position illustrates Song relationship towards Gallamard, another role, and the audience. The separated stage owned by Song and Gallamard marks the different level they have as well as the space they share. While Gallamard has been labeled as the criminal because of his position, Song will be labeled as the innocent because of Song’s position, which is above Gallamard.

The Song’s role is organized to be a Chinese beautiful woman, as indicated by her costume, in the first appearance while the first role Gallamard has is a criminal. These very first appearances will affect their role for the next scenes. The audience will keep the first impression as the identity of the character and will further negate or relate their following action in dynamic perception process.

The time when Gallamard takes the role as Pinkerton, he changes his behavior as well as the way he conducts himself. Yet, his relation to the audience will be pretty much the same; the criminal who acts the other character. The rest of his roles will be discriminated since the first role has left the negative value.

The role as a criminal then will be related to the markers attached to Gallamard’s body and vice versa. The mature man with European physical characteristic will be related to the figure of the Man, married but still find another women, superior, charismatic and to certain extent being a masculine representation of the West. While Song, even though he is actually a man, since his first role is feminine, in gender, in movement, in his relation with the Man from the west, innocent, then he’ll be a representation of the femininity of the East.

The Real Inspector Hound: The Violation Towards Position and Spatial Space

In the very early relation with the audience, the stage has included audience by reflecting them trough the mirror at the stage. It is indeed a violation towards a boundary that the audience and the roles, as well as character, should have, the spatial boundary among the position and place within the theatre.

Whether it is a proscenium or an arena, the stage will discriminate the subject and the other depending on from which perspective it is seen. From the audience’ perspective, they are the subject and thus they tend to objectify the presence of the characters on the stage. Yet, the thing is, the object, the roles, are letting themselves being objectify which make them no longer as an object because they “let” something happen.

However, by putting a mirror on a stage, the boundary between the subject and the object was blurred. The subject, audience, has been reflected trough the mirror so that they become a part of the performance, thus part of the object.

The stage has also separated the Moon and Birdboot with the acting area at the beginning but it eventually violates its boundary when Birdboot comes close to the acting area and finally being absorbed by his role as Simon. He has violates his role as the one discriminate and incriminate the roles within an acting area by being the one discriminated and incriminated, and even criminalized trough his role as Simon.

The Mouse Trap: The Violation Towards Social Space

Social space is both work and product. It has the characteristic of both things: “it is the outcome of a sequence and set of operations”( Lefebvre: 1991: 73, my emphasize). It is the outcome, means it is the product, and set of operations means it’s done repetitively, which is the characteristic of the product as well. However, in social space “there is nothing imagined, unreal, or ‘ideal’”( Lefebvre: 1991: 73, my emphasize): thing show itself the way it is, not artificially shows its ideal.

Come to this discussion, there is something paradoxical about the production of social space. In one sense, it is not artificially done, there are some elements that are free from production because they are created the way they are. Yet, in another sense, this social space is an outcome of the humanity process and “the past actions”(Lefebvre, 1991: 73) as well. As Lefebvre argues social space “ permits fresh actions to occur, while suggesting others and prohibiting yet others.” This issue of the social space is what is presented in my analysis on Howell’s “The Mouse-Trap”

The existence of the mouse has been my question ever since. In my first finishing reading of the book, I knew that the truth about the mouse remains uncertain. Mr. Campbell’s statement as the trigger to this mouse stuff has a lot of uncertainty at the very first place. He said he “thought [he] saw the mouse”.  He uses the word thought, which means it can be false. Yet, Mrs. Somers and finally all the characters other than Mr. Campbell believe that there is a mouse within the room.

Mr. Campbell has stated at least eight statements regarding the existence of the mouse. The certainty of Mr. Campbell itself can be separated into three levels: certainty on the presence of the mouse, the uncertainty on the presence of the mouse, and the certainty of the absence of the mouse. As I have stated earlier, at the first he feels unsure about the presence of the mouse. However in other part, he is certain the presence of the mouse even though “[the mouse]’s gone long ago”(Pp. 19) but then again, in the middle of the chaos caused by the mouse, he says, “[the mouse] never was there”(Pp. 18) which indicates the certainty in the mouse’s absence.

[to be continued]