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Extreme Plays

• Message 1. 

  Posted by tigermonkey555 (U13920376) on Thursday, 16th April 2009

  This must sound like a very bizzar question, but does anyone know of any plays where the actors physically cut themselves and such on stage.
  
  I know about performance artists such as Chris Burden but I dont know of any plays.
  
  If anyone could help it would be amazing, or if anyone could tell me a forum where I could find it as Im sure Ive got the wrong one! I hope not tho.
  
  Thank you!

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• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by Michael Alexander Kearsley (U1675895) on Wednesday, 29th April 2009

  Lots where there were plays about plays where that happened - Miss Marple and Colombo quite frequently had to investigate decapitated actors, among others, I'm sure it's cropped up (or should that be cropped off) in CSI Miami\Vegas etc....
  
  Certainly people have died on stage during performances, Christopher Lee nearly lost a thumb in a film swordfight with Errol Flynn (who was slightly drunk):
  
  
  Brandon Lee died during filming of The Crow when shot by a gun that was supposed to contain blanks, but actually had a partial bullet in the chamber.

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• Message 3

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by Michael Alexander Kearsley (U1675895) on Wednesday, 29th April 2009

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• Message 4

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by Reggie Trentham (U7102122) on Wednesday, 29th April 2009

  does anyone know of any plays where the actors physically cut themselves and such on stage. 
  
  
  Reeks of WUM, or worse, to me. Even if it isn't why should anyone want to ask a question like that?
  

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• Message 5

  , in reply to message 3.

  Posted by Michael Alexander Kearsley (U1675895) on Wednesday, 29th April 2009

  Actor David Rappaport nearly died in a fire onstage while hoisted above ground level, he later shot himself dead a couple of years later, but that wasn't on stage.
  
  Alec Guinness recalled in his diaries being told in one film to run down the steps on the Eiffel Tower, he ran down the steps and only stopped just in time as the staircase ran out.

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• Message 6

  , in reply to message 2.

  Posted by Michael Alexander Kearsley (U1675895) on Wednesday, 29th April 2009

  People being suspended from ropes, fake guillotines, stage bullets, trapdoors, moving machinery - potentially dangerous place the stage and film studios - a lot of actors including those playing roles not classed as stunt roles have been injured in accidents.

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• Message 7

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by lilchaffinch (U8617199) on Wednesday, 29th April 2009

  I saw a very interesting performance thing involving cutting in the Kitkat club in Berlin, although saying that I didn't have a very good view actually and it wasn't a play.

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• Message 8

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by petal jam (U1466691) on Wednesday, 29th April 2009

  Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:56 GMT, in reply to tigermonkey555 in message 1
  
  Have seen a number of umm masochistic performance artists [entrails, vomiting, defecating] but as a play the only one which comes to mind is Jane Horrocks' lady Macbeth who peed on stage nightly.

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• Message 9

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by carrick-bend (U2288869) on Thursday, 30th April 2009

  Thu, 30 Apr 2009 08:45 GMT, in reply to tigermonkey555 in message 1
  
  It does sound like a very bizarre question.
  Why do you want to know?

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• Message 10

  , in reply to message 9.

  Posted by Morganish (U9108847) on Thursday, 30th April 2009

  Second that with knobs on.

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• Message 11

  , in reply to message 9.

  Posted by petal jam (U1466691) on Thursday, 30th April 2009

  Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:07 GMT, in reply to carrick-bend
  
  
  No idea what prompted the question but in the context of contemporary art and artists it's an interesting one. The body and the self as represented by the body have been used for a long time by artists - from the anonymous sketching of your own hand or foot to the self-portrait to making casts or pickles of bodies [own or others - Gormley, Hirst] or bodily functions [e.g. Chadwick's Piss Flowers, Emin's Bed] The use of the artists own body tends to signify the emotional bond with the piece - an ultimate form of self-expression as far from art as interior design as possible. It also illuminates the question of ownership of a piece of art: could a collector be said to 'own' a piece incorporating an artists own blood, sweat or skidmarks in the same way that he could 'own' a 15thC altarpiece embellished with gold leaf [which the artist and his collaborators might have suffered to produce.]
  
  By contrast the actor [and often the playwright] has long been assumed to give of the self emotionally and physically in acting out [or shaping dramatically] another's words and scenes. The audience, actor, writer, director all collaborate to a certain extent each time that play is 're-made'. The ticket holder doesn't take away a physical piece of the actor [usually] but they do take a memory of presence from every performance. The actor is often said to 'expose' themselves psychically on stage - we remember how Daniel Day lewis was unable to continue as Hamlet becuase the conflation of Father's Ghosts became unbearable.
  
  One painter or photographer may use a record of physical change or disguise [ since the beginnings of photography, recently e.g.Cindy Sherman] or at the extreme, self-mutilation, as a specific too. From another direction people who self-mutilate or use disguise to participate in mainstream society [e.g. by behaviour modification, drugs to adjust their consciousness] are often encouraged to use art or drama therapeutically as a means of exploring or articulating what is perceived as their difference.
  
  Take Sam Taylor-Wood's recent exploration of bondage photographs [with the bondage digitally erased.] Googling for a date I find this from a gallery statement:
  
  "Sam Taylor-Wood makes photographs and films that examine, through highly charged scenarios, our shared social and psyschological conditions.
  
  Taylor-Wood’s work examines the split between being and appearance, often placing her human subjects – either singly or in groups – in situations where the line between interior and external sense of self is in conflict."
  
  You could argue that staged drama does that regularly, twice nightly in some cases, that Taylor-Woods 'absent' bondage has been done as Peter Pan flying on a wire for children for a century to illustrate a conflict between interior childhood and external adulthood. Not clear though, whether we interpret what actors and writers do as self-harm in the same way becuase we are not /supposed/ to see the blood. What if we were?

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• Message 12

  , in reply to message 11.

  Posted by Michael Alexander Kearsley (U1675895) on Thursday, 30th April 2009

  Jonathon Miller - Medical Doctor and Playwright used to do experiments on himself, I remember a televised series he did on the Human body that included him putting his arms in tanks full of icy water.
  
  Michael Portillo (neither actor nor playwright) did that experiment where he was deprived of oxygen in an attempt to experience what it would be like to experience what it would be like to be near to death:
  
  
  Christopher Hitchens agreed to try out being waterboarded so that he could evaluate what it was like.

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• Message 13

  , in reply to message 12.

  Posted by Michael Alexander Kearsley (U1675895) on Thursday, 30th April 2009

  There was the anatomical study of a man who was executed in the US who had agreed that after death his body should be diced and images inside and out graphically scanned onto a computer for scientific purposes. That was about 12 years ago now if I remember rightly.

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• Message 14

  , in reply to message 13.

  Posted by petal jam (U1466691) on Thursday, 30th April 2009

  Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:33 GMT, in reply to Michael Alexander Kearsley in message 13
  
  But was that for entertainment, MAK?

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• Message 15

  , in reply to message 14.

  Posted by carrick-bend (U2288869) on Thursday, 30th April 2009

  Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:41 GMT, in reply to petal jam in message 14
  
  PJ, some people used to go to scientific lectures as a cultural/entertainment thing, 150 years ago. (C-B, muddying the waters)

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• Message 16

  , in reply to message 15.

  Posted by Michael Alexander Kearsley (U1675895) on Thursday, 30th April 2009

  Channel 4 of course screened an autopsy one time, was very controversial and if I remember correctly I think they said they wouldn't do it again - a lot of these things there are mixed reasons for showing it, some people see it as educational, soe as entertainment or at least in the sense of just something to do, most of these things are somewhere between.

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• Message 17

  , in reply to message 15.

  Posted by petal jam (U1466691) on Thursday, 30th April 2009

  Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:48 GMT, in reply to carrick-bend in message 15
  
  Indeed - all those paintings of The Anatomist surrounded by eager students, the Romantics watching demonstrations of frogs legs being Galvanised into action; public viewing at Bedlam; hangings and executions; the Roman Circus; professional boxing.
  
  Lots of gory acting in e.g. Coriolanus and the Jacobeans but not intended physical harm to actors being displayed /qua/ physical harm. Artists and performance artists who do it are treading a line between challenging us to really notice what we'd prefer to not see [some of us] and challenging us to tell them to grow up and stop exploiting people who cannot or do not choose when to respond to the impulse.

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• Message 18

  , in reply to message 17.

  Posted by petal jam (U1466691) on Thursday, 30th April 2009

  Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:02 GMT, in reply to petal jam in message 17
  
  Whoops meant to add: was thinking earlier about the work of Karen Finley, whose use of smearing stuff [honey, chocolate] can lead to odd interpretations. Critics have a tendency to assume that she is acting out inner demons, that she is the victim, misery lit style but she generally says not. Is it a one-man play though or is it Art? [In person Finley is terribly quiet and anonymous.]

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