THE NOTEBOOK Based on the book by Ágota Kristóf EDUCATION INFORMATION PACK
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THE NOTEBOOK Based on the book by Ágota Kristóf EDUCATION INFORMATION PACK ** CONTENTS 1. TEACHER’S NOTES AND YOUR GROUP’S VISIT TO THE THEATRE 2. ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE 3. ABOUT THE COMPANY 4. TIM ETCHELLS 5. INTERVIEW WITH ROBIN ARTHUR, TIM ETCHELLS, RICHARD LOWDON 6. MORE RESOURCES ABOUT THE NOTEBOOK 7. CREDITS 8. FORCED ENTERTAINMENT ONLINE The Notebook Information Pack 1
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1. TEACHER’S NOTES AND YOUR GROUP’S VISIT TO THE THEATRE
This pack is designed to help prepare a college or university group for their visit to the theatre. We hope the information
provided will enhance students’ overall critical appreciation of the production.
The aims of this resource pack are:
• To provide some context to the work of Forced Entertainment, especially for those who may be encountering the
work for the first time;
• To provide some background as to how this work in particular is placed in the company’s repertoire;
• To introduce Forced Entertainment’s artistic director, Tim Etchells, and this project’s key collaborators;
• To provide signposts to further resources for those wishing to engage in deeper research.
You can support this through:
• Engaging students in a discussion or some preliminary research about the company, prior to their visit;
• Making students aware Forced Entertainment’s work is very different from ‘traditional theatre’; that it can be seen as
challenging and dark as well as funny and moving;
• Ensuring in their visit that students are briefed to turn their mobile phones off and that quite a high level of
concentration may be required throughout the show;
• Encouraging students to think about what they might ask in a post-show discussion.
If you would like further information on anything in this pack, or to ask any further questions, please contact Forced
Entertainment’s Marketing Manager Sam Stockdale (sam@forcedentertainment.com) and we will do our best to help.
Thanks for arranging a visit with your group. We're pleased and excited to welcome you. We hope you enjoy the
performance.
A large print version of this pack can be made available – please contact
sam@forcedentertainment.com
The Notebook information pack © 2014. This information pack is protected by copyright laws, and may not be
republished, distributed, displayed or otherwise exploited in any manner without express prior written permission of
Forced Entertainment.
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** 2. ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE The Notebook (1986) is a Forced Entertainment performance based on the award-winning novel by Hungarian writer Ágota Kristóf (October 30, 1935 – July 27, 2011). Kristóf has a reputation as one of the most provocative exponents of new-wave European fiction. The Notebook tells the story of two bothers, twins, as they are evacuated from the ‘Big Town’ to ‘The Little Town’ during World War II, to stay at their impoverished grandmother’s farm. Their story unfolds somewhere in a Central Europe still riven with contradiction after the territorial divisions imposed at the end of World War I (it’s not made explicit, but somewhere that could be the border of Germany and Hungary). The twins are never named in the book, and at first appear to be strange and dysfunctional social outsiders, understanding the world by their own harsh moral code. However, as everything around them crumbles into vice, cruelty and opportunism (the church, the state, the army) the brothers are slowly revealed as struggling moralists, doing what they can to survive, trying to live by consistent principles while becoming hardened and conditioned to the situation they find themselves in. The connection between them is foregrounded by Kristóf’s extraordinary decision to have them speak in a narrational voice of first person plural throughout. It is this narrational language – which is stripped down to the bare bones, no embellishment or metaphor – that provides the basis for a compelling performance. Directed by Tim Etchells, Forced Entertainment performers Richard Lowdon and Robin Arthur stand side by side to tell the twins story – a marathon narration of two people trapped in one voice and one shared perspective. The Notebook is a very pared down performance from Forced Entertainment - there's something extraordinary about the relationship between the two people on stage and about the narrative, which is really compelling, but there's no getting away from the fact that the work is built on narration and on talking. Watching this intimate piece demands some serious concentration and engagement. We firmly believe that young people can meet the challenge and make a great connection to this work. * The Notebook World and UK premieres The Notebook world premiere was on 9 - 10 May 2014 at PACT Zollverein, Essen, GERMANY The Notebook UK premiere was on 24 - 26 June 2014 at LIFT 2014 hosted by Battersea Arts Centre, London * PROGRAMME NOTE by Tim Etchells Words paint such vivid pictures, and somehow the simpler the better. Writing The Notebook from the perspective of two children relocated to the countryside during World War Two, the Hungarian writer Ágota Kristóf knew very well the potential of a straightforward approach to language. Her twin narrators – the unnamed boys who describe their troubled lives in the countryside as the war drags to its conclusion and the new reality of Hungary as a Russian satellite state takes hold – have a style that’s poised between kids’ picture book and hard-boiled detective fiction. Unflinching in their gaze when it comes to the hardships of occupied Hungary the boys insist on telling things just as they are. “True things,” they say at one point in the book, “not invented things”, whilst elsewhere they expound the philosophy that appears to have framed Kristóf’s own approach to writing the novel: “Avoiding feelings… and sticking to… the faithful description of facts”, namely, “what is, what we see, what we hear, what we do”. Reading the book Forced Entertainment and I were immediately drawn to the text, because Kristóf’s interest in the pictorial dimension of language chimes so well with our own concerns in a range of different performance projects created over the years; from the imaginary performance described in Dirty Work, to the condensed micro-narratives of Speak Bitterness and the short-form predictions of the future spelled out in Tomorrow’s Parties. We’ve long been drawn to the way that stories and images summoned simply in words alone connect so well with audiences as imaginative collaborators. What’s clear in Kristóf’s extraordinary novel is that the device of bare bones narration is also perfect for creating a moral ambiguity – driving a narrative in which events and actions, presented without apparent judgement from the protagonists, are left to resonate in all of their problematic complexity. Questions about the rights and wrongs of what The Notebook Information Pack 3
happen, the motivation or even the tone of the characters’ actions is often left in a kind of deliberate suspension. The blank facts – simply presented, stripped of adjectives, without comment or judgment – become questions in fact, enigmas of action that we as readers, spectators and witnesses have to make sense of. This too has a deep connection for the work in performance that we have been pursuing at Forced Entertainment, because it echoes our interest in performance itself as a troubling, and to some extent incommensurable act – at once a knot made by the arrangement of words and actions over and through time, a negotiation with the audience, and at core perhaps, simply a problem thrown into a room. Kristóf’s book shares something with the first text we made into a work for theatre – Exquisite Pain – Sophie Calle’s troubling collection and exchange of narratives about heartbreak and suffering. Although different in significant ways, the two works are linked both by a simplicity of language and by a use of narrative statement as the basis for philosophical and in some senses ethical questions. But what links them more, in our minds at least, is the perception that they are each built on deeply performative ground. In Calle it is the act of telling and retelling, an exchange of her personal story with stories of others, that creates this foundation in performance, whereas in Kristóf it is the vivid problem of the twin narrators, a duo who refuse to present themselves as individuals, and whose account of events is framed by a relentless and apparently indivisible ‘we’. Reading the book it is hard not to be struck at once by the violence of this identity confusion or submission to the anonymity of a collective subjecthood, the comical and shocking force of the twins’ insistence on, and individual disappearance in, the act of speaking as one. Staging the book we are confronted by this same shock, not as a linguistic abstraction but rather in the form of the present, performative and material weirdness of two people claiming one role, acting, and speaking together. The Notebook is about brutality and about survival – a tale not so much about soldiers, armies and other active agents, as it is about the population that endures the conflict under occupation – a story about a war presented from a peripheral perspective: that of the old, the wounded, of the women and the children; a story of the war from the perspective of those caught in its’ machinery. Tim Etchells, 2014 | Artistic Director, Forced Entertainment ** 3. ABOUT THE COMPANY Forced Entertainment are a group of six artists. Based in Sheffield, the work they make is presented all over the world. Forced Entertainment started working together in 1984 and in the many projects created since that time they’ve tried to explore what theatre and performance can mean in contemporary life. In doing so the group have made lists, played games, spoken gibberish, stayed silent, made a mess, dressed up, stripped down, confessed to it all, performed magic tricks, told jokes, clowned around, played dead, got drunk, told stories and performed for six, twelve and even 24 hours at a stretch. The work made is always a kind of conversation or negotiation. The group are interested in making performances that excite, frustrate, challenge, question and entertain; courting confusion as well as laughter. It’s seriously playful work and even after 30 years of working together they are still trying to answer questions about theatre and performance - about what those things might be and what kinds of dialogue they can open with contemporary audiences. As well as performance works, the group have made gallery installations, site-specific pieces, books, photographic collaborations, videos and even a mischievous guided bus tour. For more information about the company and how they work visit the ‘About us’ section of www.forcedentertainment.com. You can also find information about all the projects from the last 30 years in the ‘Projects’ section. ** 4. TIM ETCHELLS Tim Etchells (1962) is an artist and a writer based in Sheffield, UK. His work ranges from performance to video, photography, text projects, installation and fiction in a wide variety of contexts, notably as the leader of the world- renowned performance group Forced Entertainment and as an independent visual artist and writer of fiction. He has worked in collaboration with a range of visual artists, choreographers, and photographers including Meg Stuart, Boris Charmatz, Asta Groting, Wendy Houstoun, Elmgreen & Dragset, Philipp Gehmacher, Hugo Glendinning, Vlatka Horvat and many others. For more information see www.timetchells.com. The Notebook Information Pack 4
** 5. INTERVIEW WITH ROBIN ARTHUR, TIM ETCHELLS, RICHARD LOWDON Sheffield 2014 Questions by Anna Krauss AK: Why did you choose to make a performance based on The Notebook? RL: All of us read The Notebook in the late 80s sometime and one of the first things that strikes you about the book is the incredible simplicity and brutality of the language. It’s written from the perspective of the twin brothers who are protagonists of the story and everything is focused on what they do and what they see. The really simple, stripped down, attitude towards narrative is very engaging. It was one of those things that we were drawn to, without really figuring out whether we’d do anything with it. Years later, when we were rehearsing another project, we started using voices speaking in unison and that, in turn, brought us back to The Notebook. In the first rehearsals we started to read it, Robin and I, reading it together in unison. TE: The ‘we’ of the text in the book is tied to the twins refusal of a separate identity. It’s a pretty uncanny narration and all the time you’re reading you’re aware of the impossibility of the ‘we’ they propose – this ‘two people as one’. But when you put the same thing into performance the uncanniness shifts - it's material, it's concrete, it's not the abstraction of a text on a page. I mean – it's not an idea anymore, not something proposed in language – it’s a fact, two people, two voices. It's immediately theatrical and dynamic and it's performative in a very simple way. That was definitely one of the attractions to the text. AK: What is the story about? RA: At a basic level it’s about two boys who get sent to stay with their grandmother during the Second World War, because the city they live in is being bombed the whole time and their mother can't look after them or feed them. It's about how they deal with their new situation in the countryside and the brutalization they undergo – at the hands of the Grandmother but also at the hands of other people they encounter – the local priest, foreign soldiers, the local policeman and so on. At the same time what is interesting about the twins is that they retain a kind of morality. They speak a lot about things that are absolutely necessary – food, or boots to walk in the snow –and for them this idea of people’s needs informs a sort of moral code. The way they act throws up a kind of mirror on normal social engagement – it is disturbing and horrifying; but it's also refreshing that it's critical of the way people behave; their hypocrisy and double standards. TE: It's a story about a war - but it doesn't have really a big part for soldiers. It’s written by a woman, it's a book about children and women and old people and the wounded. So it's a story about the life that continues while the fighting is going on - it's about civilians and a collection of marginalized figures who suffer the consequences of the war without being any kind of major players in it. It’s also about the way that the climate and situation of the war impresses itself on people and does violence to them. For me that's really relevant to the situation that we find ourselves in now, in 2014, even if we're not in the middle of a war. We are in a middle of many different kinds of violence, which are perpetrated and which misshape all of us on a daily basis. I’m talking about the economic crisis and the manufactured tensions about borders and immigration, about the culture of surveillance, about the various remote wars in which we are involved. AK: And is there any difference between the process on this project and the process of making something like The Coming Storm? TE: Theatrically this new project is really simple and it contrasts to performances like The Last Adventures or The Coming Storm where we’re working with many diffferent ideas, people, music and costume to weave something that’s deliberately chaotic. In The Notebook we're working in a much more focussed way. It's just two people on the stage, they're dressed identically, and the performance is a lot of spoken text. What all this does is tune you to smaller details - details of how things are said or of their relation to each other or of the different ways that the work makes a relation to the audience. It operates in a very narrow aperture and every decision you make is a small decision, there are no big dramatic moves to make. But together all the small decisions really count for something; they really change things. RL: It's unusual for us to work with a text, because we're often working from improvisation, generating texts and other things collaboratively. Working from a fixed object as we are in The Notebook brings with it certain pleasures, but also certain difficulties. The book has a shape which you have to deal with, it has a particular energy, a particular structure. We have to find a way to deal with and negotiate those things. AK: DO you present the whole text? Or did you make cuts? TE: We did start with the whole book but that took around 4 hours for us to read aloud! So, yes, we made cuts. I'd say we The Notebook Information Pack 5
are down to about half of the text, tho we really try to make a coherent line, and preserve the major architecture of the novel. What we're trying to do is bring the kind of sensibility that we have from the other work to bear on this text. AK: How is it performing in unison? RL: It's interesting when you have to share a text to that extent. Not all of it is unison - sometimes you're passing smaller pieces backwards and forwards so there’s a sense of completing each other’s sentences. The really curious thing about the unison is that you have to take all of your breaths in exactly the same places. So you find yourself stood next to each other listening for the other persons breathing. We're not really counting time, just listening for the intake of the other person’s breath. RA: We’re reading. There’s something quite simple and straight forward about that. We’re standing there; two blokes, both the same sort of age, not too dissimilar in height, so we could be the twins; it's clearly what we're referring to, but it stays short of actually pretending that we ‘are’ those boys. There is a kind of obvious connection and link but when you do the math it doesn't really add up – that’s what’s happening a lot in the piece, a simplicity that becomes complicated, a gesture to representation or inhabitation but something that stays subtle, understated. ** 6. MORE RESOURCES ABOUT THE NOTEBOOK VIDEO The Notebook: Inside Story 13 minutes http://youtu.be/rfAfrU3N9As The Notebook Production trailer Length: 1:14 http://youtu.be/2I_bYg_Ych0 ** 7.CREDITS Conceived and devised by the company Robin Arthur, Tim Etchells, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden and Terry O’Connor Performers Robin Arthur, Richard Lowdon Direction Tim Etchells Design Richard Lowdon Lighting Design Jim Harrison Production Jim Harrison Co-Producers The Notebook is a Forced Entertainment production. Co-produced by PACT Zollverein (Essen); LIFT (London) and 14–18 NOW, WW1 Centenary Art Commissions, supported by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund and Arts Council England. A House on Fire co-commission with HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), Kaaitheater (Brussels), Teatro Maria Matos (Lisbon), LIFT and Malta Festival Poznan with the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union. Development work generously supported by Lancaster Institute of Contemporary Arts (LICA). The Notebook is based on Le grand cahier by Ágota Kristóf, Éditions du Seuil, Paris, 1986. English translation (c) (1988) by Alan Sheridan. Forced Entertainment Artistic Team Robin Arthur, Tim Etchells (Artistic Director), Richard Lowdon (Designer), Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden and Terry O’Connor. Forced Entertainment Management Team Eileen Evans (Executive Director), Jim Harrison (Production Manager), Natalie Simpson (Office Manager), Sam Stockdale (Marketing Manager). The Notebook Information Pack 6
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8. FORCED ENTERTAINMENT ONLINE www.forcedentertainment.com
Here you can find:
• An archive of all the company’s projects, illustrated with stunning photographs by Hugo Glendinning, video
interviews, programme notes, essays and other fragments.
• Full details of all touring activity, including links to online booking where available.
• Links to online resources including free downloadable packs and articles about the company.
• Chance to sign up to our free mailing list to keep you informed of all Forced Entertainment news.
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ONLINE SHOP
Peruse our virtual shelves to order books, DVDs and other resources including:
Performance DVDs and texts
High quality multi-camera performance documentation of most of Forced Entertainment’s shows from the past 30 years
and texts.
Forced Entertainment Complete Collection
The Forced Entertainment complete DVD collection brings together all 28 performance DVDs, saving you over £150! The
collection now includes Tomorrow’s Parties.
Making Performance
A 30-minute DVD exploring the company’s working process.
Certain Fragments: Contemporary Performance & Forced Entertainment - Tim Etchells
An extraordinary exploration of what lies at the heart of contemporary theatre. Written by Tim Etchells, his unique and
provocative voice shifts from intimate anecdote to critical analysis and back again to investigate the processes of
devising performance, the role of writing in an interdisciplinary theatre, and the influence of the city on contemporary art
practice.
British Library Sound Archive
www.bl.uk/collections/sound-archive/drama
The Forced Entertainment Collection at the British Library Sound Archive contains never seen before rehearsal footage, a
complete collection of our performance DVDs and texts alongside other contemporary performance documentation.
Access is free of but you will need to make an appointment, please contact them on +44 (0)20 7412 7447 or email NSA-
drama@bl.uk.
Our Notebook
As part of our website we have a ‘Notebook’ section. Discover fragments from behind the scenes of Forced Entertainment
both in the rehearsal room and on tour.
Find us Online at:
Twitter @ForcedEnts #thenotebook
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