revew: Alice Birch – Anatomy of a Suicide
Anatomy of a Suicide/
by Alice Birch/
dir Katie Mitchell/
The Royal Court, London/
03/06-08/07/2017//
open the below in tabs. enable autoplay. leave to play over each other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBtVaHkJc4I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa4n_8EK3ig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsAnAQfdyKY
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It’s a shit word for it. Sorry. If you were coming up with a new word for it today you’d want something to reflect the hole of it the gap the massiveness. It is an act of conjuring. The transformation of a tangible thing into endnotes, into an after-the-effect reflection. Suddenly (and here is a persistent metaphor) the piece must be picked up, pieced together, assembled. It is up to a read to make sense of a thing post(humously) the performance.
It’s ok though because language is insufficient.
Need more soil in it, clean isn’t aspirational anymore – it’s everywhere – clean’s boring. Concision’s boring. Want a word that lasts for days. Want a word for it that feels like it. A word that looks like it. A word that demands to be written twenty feet tall on the side of a jobcentre. A word that aches to remember having heard once.
It’s ok though because language is insufficient.
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Everything that is viewed as an obstacle is slippery because it is assumed to be known. When something is pinned down so concretely as ‘the ownership of property, the selling of the family home at the end of Alice Birch’s Anatomy of a Suicide, strikes me as perhaps the most alien thing to me. It is a large leap of imagination to digest that metaphor.’ WHEN these things are pinned down and focused on, other parts slip away. Turning the gaze to things which took attention gives them the weight of importance.
Perhaps the ideal review is a cacophony. Where the acknowledgement of ignorance of experience has some kind of a shattering effect. But in a way that would be just as vain as claiming to ‘get it’.
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my experience with mental health
my relationships with the women in my life
what this means to me
i am a fan of Alice Birch
if you ask me
my duties of care
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Anatomy of a Suicide is such a strange ache. I am filled with yearning and sadness. The play is sad from the start, but sad in a quiet and resigned way. I have come here to watch women die. I knew that before I was even in this city. But I have come to watch other things, too, at the same time. I hope they, I hope that I, feel worthy to have seen them. I hope that they give me something and I hope I feel as if the action has been significant. I hope I feel as though this is worthwhile and that people are not hurt.
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as a side note to that, still reeling from lack of audience care around Anatomy of a Suicide
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BEWARE MALE ARTISTS MAKING WORK ABOUT EMPTINESS
NOTHING DOES NOT BELONG TO YOU
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Who cares if I got it. I saw it. I felt it. I bought the playscript. (Remind me to put that on a t-shirt). I didn’t so much go to see Anatomy of a Suicide to understand or learn from the play. I’m not sure I go to the theatre ever to gain knowledge from a piece of performance. In this case, I felt like I was bearing witness. It felt more than usual as if I were making some kind of pilgrimage. I was sat next to the exit. I left quietly. I went back to a hotel room. The evening was spent in my own company.
I could describe the treatment of women throughout history and in the present as an embarrassment. But an embarrassment to who? Not to the women. Submitting to the narrative of our past being shameful only ends up placing the voice of the discourse as belonging to those committing the shame. Maybe we should hush.
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It is inherently an act which happens on the fringes. The majority of society is not sanctioned to carry it out – otherwise we wouldn’t have anyone left. In that way, being fringe, it is a record where we might read who is being pushed out of society. Maybe it’s a reach to describe it as the apotheosis of asociality. The ultimate action outside of social. But those that perform it are perhaps the most outside one can be. It is an act of eradication, self-expulsion. The people who do it are leaving because we have not let them know they are of use, are of significance, are of any value to Us, whoever We might be.
And perhaps even that is vanity. Maybe the decision is that we are of no use to Them. We are as much their fringe as they are ours.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Jacintha_Saldanha
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When we turn something into a spectacle we privilege it.
When we privilege a thing, we subordinate others.
Maybe it is a quirk of capitalism that there will always be a certain volume of problems, and they must be shoved about instead of eradicated.
I do think often about biology and how we have invented it.
of course having this body has its unique ramifications thats just science
Concentrating every part of the world around us into our own small bodies, we all can do that.
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the power of human relations to break or save us/ the power of a body to perform a biological task/ the expectation/ the fact of how a grandparent died/ the shudder down through history/ time is not linear its just easier for us to pretend it is/ stop trying to heal each other/ stop trying to be a fixer and stop pushing//
It is the rabbit who is the greatest saviour in Anatomy of a Suicide. The rabbit just lives, doesn’t share anyone’s genetics, has no knowledge of history, never housed or helped or knew anyone else. A rabbit never tries to heal, a rabbit’s fears are simple and immediate a rabbit is easily soothed and easily killed. A baby rabbit is called a kitten. Rabbits have been known to eat their own young if they are born on a cold night. This is protection from pain of an absolute form. The rabbit is a comfortable, small oblivion.
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The Samaritans can be called on 116 123
can be emailed at jo@samaritans.org
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It’s ok though.
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It’s ok though because language is insufficient.
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