Merry Christmas in the fields

It was cold. Slow trains called it a day for the Christmas Eve supper. That’s why they aren’t, though meant to be, in the picture.

Two homes (1)

The family home is a fundamental part of most people’s lives, so it is not surprising that both Lorca and Chekhov have placed such great emphasis on providing the audience with an insight into their characters’ homes. The significance of the homes in the plays is evident from the very beginning, as the titles of both of the family estates are also the titles of the plays, “The Cherry Orchard” and “The House of Bernarda Alba”. The home is a place which every person sees in a different light; some, like Lyuba, see it as a place to be loved, cherished and remembered “I love this house. I can’t understand my life without the Cherry Orchard.”, whereas people like Bernarda see the home as a refuge, a place to hide from the outside and a place of secrets. Whatever attitudes a person takes to their home, it is generally acknowledged to be a place of privacy for the family, somewhere that is not visible to the public. In both “The Cherry Orchard” and “The House of Bernarda Alba” all of the action takes place within the home and we are never shown anywhere other than the house or the grounds, presenting the audience with a reality that would otherwise be hidden from them, providing an interesting array of conflicting views between the characters and between the playwrights and society.

At the time of writing, both Lorca and Chekhov lived in troubled societies. Lorca’s Spain was under the rule of the fascist General Franco and was a society where traditional Catholic values were of the utmost importance and Chekhov’s Russia was undergoing a battle between traditional Russian methods and new Western ideas, as well as integrating the serfs and muzhiks into society after the Emancipation. In both of the dramas, the way that the homes are run and the problems faced within them are representative of what was going on in society at the time.

Bernarda is obsessed with gossip but at the same time wants absolute silence from her daughters and Poncia on subjects that she will hear nothing of. As soon as she hears something she doesn’t like or that is ‘unorthodox’ in her house, she will shout “Silence! Be quiet I said!” and, just like Franco, could easily adopt the name ‘the silencer’. The strict, Catholic values in society and also within the house are evident when the audience is told the story of the woman who had a child out of wedlock. The immediate response of the house’s inhabitants (apart from Adela) is that of incredulity and outrage and Bernarda says that what the woman deserves would be “a red hot coal in the place of her sin!” showing how much society opposes unorthodox and indecent behaviour, which is mirrored in the family’s attitude at finding out about Adela’s affair with Pepe El Romano “I’d have poured a river of blood on her head.”.
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Wierszalin review

One evening, while visiting my family in Poland, I was taken on a surprise visit to the theatre. I’d not been to a theatre in Poland and was slightly apprehensive to begin with, as I’d been told the play we were going to see had caused controversy, particularly within the Church and definitely wasn’t for the faint-hearted.
We arrived in the small town where the theatre was supposed to be, but with no typical theatre in sight, only a small hut with crowds of people surrounding it. Seeing the only building in the vicinity with people around it, we went towards it and found that what we thought was just a small hut, was in fact the world renowned “Theatre Wierszalin”, our destination for the night.
Wierszalin is a small theatre company, based in an old Communist headquarters in Supraśl, North Eastern Poland. Their success in Poland hasn’t been as big as it ought to have been because of strong opposition form the Church who find their productions offensive and insensitive. This, however, has not stopped them. Wierszalin have taken their work to numerous theatres around the world, including Broadway, where one director was so impressed by their work he made a documentary about them.
The play I went to see was about a true story that happened in a village not far from Supraśl. Rumours of a new prophet called Iliah were spread around in the Russian Orthodox Church. This was at the time when the Russian Communists had invaded Poland. The play was all about how this prophet came about and how he came to not be, and portrayed the dangers of religion through the maniacal obsession and dangerous fixation some of the ‘believers’ came to have with this prophet, but also of the terrible and heartless destruction of anything religious by the Russians.
Right from the start, the production was terrific to watch. It attacked all of the senses with astonishing intensity and really gripped the audience for the whole duration of the play. Although the theatre is in a tiny space (there can’t have been more than 100 people in the audience) the sound they produced was really astounding, making it probably one of the most powerful pieces of drama I’ve ever seen.
Polish theatre is traditionally very symbolic and Wierszalin was no exception. Everything that they presented was a symbol for something, nothing was simply as it was presented. Visual symbols were used throughout, such as the cross for the dominance of religion, the actors’ white faces and black lips were a symbol for the inevitability of death (the whole play was about the end of the world), the character who turned into a Russian at the end wiped the crosses with blood after having murdered all of the other characters, symbolising the abolishment of religion and the Church by the Russians.
There were certain parts of the play that I couldn’t quite grasp because the language that the actors used was quite dated to be appropriated to the time period, and occasionally they spoke in Belarusian, which really confused me. However, the actors’ meaning was always clear through the way that they visualised everything.
The actors switched between characters quite often and I sometimes found it difficult to grasp who each actor was presenting. Although gestures, expression, movement and speech were used to perfection and everything from facial expression to their tone of voice presented the characters they were playing with exceptional clarity, it was again the language barrier that prevented me from understanding everything. However, I don’t think that mattered in the end as I understood most of it and the main themes. Being an abstract play, it was more important for the actors to impress upon the audience the meaning of what they were presenting rather than the story itself.
I’d say there were some Artaudian elements to the play, although mostly it was a narration and definitely was not as a mad as Artaud, but some of the techniques were put in there to frighten the audience, such as a metal spade being thrown onto the floor, the lights and the extraordinary music. The actors broke into song so often it could have almost been called a musical, however I think that in this case the music was again used as a symbol. It was always sombre and in a minor key, very similar to Church hymns, again emphasising the dominance of religion within the society.
The play exceeded all of my expectations and as soon as I left the room I was plunged deep into thought, which I think is exactly what the actors wanted to happen after having watched their brutal yet fantastically moving play about religion, the end of the world and death. Maybe it wasn’t the brightest of plays I’ve ever seen, but it was definitely one of the most thought provoking and awe inspiring. If you ever happen to be in Poland I highly recommend going to see one of Wierszalin’s productions, even if you don’t understand Polish it is worth going just to see the visual masterpiece that they create on stage.

from Gothenburg

Never enough time… It was really good to hear from you all. Albert – you put some pressure on me to achieve a little more than I usually do… Anyway, I think the Pilgrims course changed my quite traditional teaching a bit and it has helped me in many situations when I find the course book unbearably boring.
I used the family tree idea with my beginners of Swedish and I could hardly make them stop working! (Their family trees were not at all as imaginative and open-minded as ours, but the students did use a lot of Swedish and felt proud of themselves.) I am not as dedicated as Silvia so I ended up using black and white pictures that I found on Google – but that worked out well.
I’ve also enjoyed watching my students angry, happy, sad etc… when acting out dialogues – and it was great to see them experiencing feeling in the new language.
This year I’m very fortunate because I only have twelve students – (which is of course costing the school a lot) so I can quite easily make them walk around, talk a lot, change places, sit in a circle and talk.
Next week the students are on leave and I only work Monday and Tuesday. I will make an effort to find the surface of my desk… Wish you all a nice weekend.

Rome, The Spanish Steps

The Spanish Steps (Italian: Scalinata di Trinit? dei Monti) is a set of stairs in Rome, ramping a steep slope between the Piazza di Spagna at the base and Piazza Trinit? dei Monti, with the church under the patronage of the Bourbon kings of France, Trinit? dei Monti.

The monumental stairway, of 138 steps, was built with French diplomat Stefano Gueffier?s funds (20,000 scudi) in 1723?1725, linking the Bourbon Spanish embassy to the Holy See, today still located in the piazza below, with the Trinit? dei Monti church.

This is what you can see if you decide to climb up the 138 stairs. Well, I believe it was worth it, what do you think?

March 21, 2007, photo by… me ;)

correcting spelling mistakes

Peter from Step Up wrote:

Have you thought about enable correcting posts by authors and as well teachers?? It’s obvious that none is perfect and sometimes we misspell or write sth by mistake…

With that option, using The GV Blog could be more effective, not misleading, and so forth…

The answer to your question is – yes, and partially yes :)

Yes, teachers can edit all messages. Unfortunately (?), students can only correct their own posts (user level restrictions). That is why we encourage all bloggers to preview their posts/comments before they publish them.