Stephen Poliakoff's "Hitting Town and City Sugar": How to approach the problem of incest and taboo

Essay , 2011 , 7 Pages , Grade: 2,3

English Language and Literature Studies - Literature

Course Subject: The Purpose of Art
Essay topic (situation): Imagine to be involved in the performance or production of the play. How would you approach the problem of incest and taboo and of representing incest on stage?

The essay mainly analyzes the way in which difficult topics like incest, or taboo topics in general, are addressed in literature as well as in performances on stage.

General topic: The Purpose of Art

Final essay topic: Imagine to be involved in the performance or production of the play. How would you approach the problem of incest and taboo and of representing incest on stage?

Taboo topics are subjects or issues which cannot be certainly grasped. Due to social and legal regulations it is difficult to approach these topics and even more difficult to present them to an audience. However it is important to discuss these topics, because of the general lack of enlightenment about these subjects. A special topic requires a special medium or a proper tool. In fact it is not a secret that theater is a medium mostly used to touch upon matters of any kind, and especially matters which can be categorized as a blank space concerning their appearance in our society. This space needs to be filled with information, so that eventually there are as little blank spaces, or taboo topics as possible. Incest is such a taboo topic, which existence a lot of people deny by not talking about and therefore abandoning it from their mind. In this essay I will discuss the difficulty of approaching the problem of incest and taboo and the representation of incest on stage.

Theater creates opportunities to talk about difficult topics. While still delivering a message a play can at the same time take the offensive virtue when talking about a taboo topic. A great example for this way of thinking and the realization of talking about taboos by putting it on stage is the Circuito cerrado. Andrea Byrum notes, that Silvia Molina “simply did not see conveying her message in prose” when deciding for her work to be put on stage

instead of the written form (cf. Byrum 2). Byrum also writes that:

In this boldly unique contribution to contemporary Mexican theater, she has brilliantly exploited theater’s potential to act out the painful process of a female breaking the silence surrounding a taboo, and she has chosen the most universal of all taboos in the most sacred of Mexican institutions: family incest. (Byrum 2)

Silvia Molina tries to break down barriers, which already exist for a long time. It was her “writer’s instinct at work” that made her chose an appropriate medium for this delicate topic. This case shows that theater allows for writers to talk about subjects, even though the bare announcement of such would shock a readership. According to Byrum “[t]heater offers elements of representation that narrative cannot; it allows for the visual representation of a process which will have a direct and immediate impact on spectators” (Byrum 3). Mexico is not Europe indeed. However the topic of (family) incest is a taboo topic in most societies and therefore the staging of a play involving incest in another country can be easily compared to the case of Silvia Molina. Moreover theater is an art dealing mostly with gestures, posture or the physical appearance in general, which makes it an nearly barrier-free medium in means of cultural or social boundedness.

Incest was already in the 17th century presented on stage, like for instance in the

tragedy Women Beware Women by Thomas Middleton. However it cannot be compared to incest today, as it had a kind of different status than it has today. Jillian Beifuss highlights that in the play the “incestuous desires” are called “a strange affection” (cf. Beifuss 19). Even though eventually “[t]he problem with familial affection it turns out, is that it's an entirely unstable quality” and there is a “bloodbath at the end of the play,” the influence of the announcement of this kind of affection is somewhat different today, as it is more of a taboo topic (cf. Bleifuss 19f). Due to this status, incest has to be treated and presented in a more subtle way.

Mark Williams remarks that “the short range consequences of father-son incest would be the creation of stress for the child in which the development of self-identity and self- esteem would be in jeopardy as the child attempts to negotiate the taboos of incest and homosexuality” (Williams 177). Of course Stephen Poliakoff's Hitting Town does not present father-son incest on stage, but as the topic incest itself is announced, an audience can quickly catch the image of father-son incest, as it is a very problematic topic in our current society.

Therefore Hitting Town has a special responsibility when approaching such a topic. People need to be enlightened about the problems and consequences - not only the legal ones, but also the psychological – of incestuous relationships. Besides from the purpose to enlighten the audience, this breaking of a barrier to talk about taboo topics is also an achievement in terms of free speech and mind.

As already mentioned earlier, every society has its own taboos. Therefore you can talk about some topics in a land without pushing anyone, but at the same time you will get in trouble talking about the same problematic in another country/society. Robin Taylor and Ian Gaskell bring this phenomena to the point with an example:

A health worker, for example, could not walk into a traditional village where sexual matters are considered taboo, and expect to be well received whilst she or he talked about how to use a condom. However, if the information is presented in a play, the topic can not only be introduced in what is perceived to be an acceptable context, it can also be subsequently addressed in a post show, question and answer discussion. (Taylor & Gaskell 15)

The play unfolds its true power when approaching taboo topics, that would usually be very provocative in the current society. However the play does not only introduce the topic, but at the same time encourages the audience to later discuss the subject further in private. In the best case this movement starts on stage and ends with discussions in private, which make the

former taboo topic a at least temporary common topic of conversation. This leads to a generally more sophisticated society. Taylor and Gaskell also noted that audience showed a ”willingness of the latter to question them intensely, many times long after the performance had finished and the discussion period was over" (Taylor & Gaskell 15). This proves the thesis that the theater (play) is the perfect medium to introduce a taboo topic and start a discussion about this very subject.

However even though the theater is best suited for this purpose, the question of how to introduce such an delicate matter on stage is still unanswered, and therefore needs to be focused on. Hitting Town somehow presents incest on stage, even though the actually act of incest, in which brother and sister are supposed to have a sexual intercourse is not explicitly shown on stage (of course). First of all this cannot be shown on stage due to legal regulations, as it is too great of an taboo. Anyway when presenting incest on stage, the question arises what can be shown to the audience and what can not. Therefore it is not unusual for those involved with the performance and production of the play to walk a fine line, between just shocking the audience or really starting a discussion about the matter itself and not only the scandalizing play.

Taylor and Gaskell remarked that responders argued that the main reason for a drama to be successful is “to open up a taboo topic for discussion, by first presenting it in a non threatening way” (cf. Taylor & Gaskell 19). They argue for the best way to present incest on stage by introducing following example/technique:

As an example, a play dealing with the topic of incest, depicted the act of incest on stage using a performance technique called 'out of association character interaction'. The 'molesting uncle‘ mimed the caressing of 'his niece‘, whilst the actress playing the niece, situated elsewhere on stage, made her protests against him in a non-associated orientation. To have portrayed this more literally, would have caused huge offense,

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• College: University of Stuttgart
• Grade: 2,3
• Author: Volker Hartmann (Author)
• Publication Year: 2011
• Pages: 7
• Catalog Number: V208193
• ISBN (eBook): 9783656356103
• Language: English
• Tags: Stephen Poliakoff, Hitting Town, incest, taboo