Marlee White August 8, 2012 LIT3043-1 Strict Society, Pushy Playwrights You can throw away the privilege

of acting, but that would be such a shame. The tribe has elected you to tell its story. You are the shaman/healer, that's what the storyteller is, and I think it's important for actors to appreciate that. Too often actors think it's all about them, when in reality it's all about the audience being able to recognize themselves in you. The more you pull away from the public, the less power you have on screen. Said by Ben Kingsley, an actor, this quote eloquently tells us how playwrights are the ones chosen to show the public whats happening during our times. They show us what we, as the audience, publicly admit to being interested in and what we are interested in our private minds but too intimated to converse about openly. For society always has and will continue to deem what is or isnt socially-acceptable to be performed on stage with an audience, as well as putting up the boundaries on those subjects that society considers off-limits. Each era, old and new, in theater history has had different subjects that are accepted by the general public to be talked about freely and those that playwrights always want to push farther past and beyond the boundary lines of. Intimacy is a topic that has always been in the front of peoples minds for there is always a certain amount of caution, and therefore curiosity, concerning it. It has been society itself that knowingly declared that during the Early Modern Drama era intimacy was too taboo and indecent to be discussed on stage. Yet as we now stand in the Contemporary Drama era we see that intimacy has become an issue that is talked about in everyday life and the public now expects it to be in plays and

therefore arent dismayed when it is because we, as a culture, have moved onto more forbidden subjects. Blasphemous, vulgar and off-limits were words associated with intimacy, or sexual relations, during the Early Modern Drama era. This was on stage as well as in the lives of the public during the years of the Victorian era and a decade or two after also. It was assumed common knowledge-unwritten rules you could say-that declared that women were meant to put on an air of always being poised, as well as being bred to serve and obey their husbands by taking care of him and the home. Another rule was that it was unfit for women to sleep with men before marriage and even then it was the most basic of intimacy levels; these were some of the viewpoints of this era which led to strict limitations for playwrights. These were the years people were starting to get tired of the censored, intelligent theater plays and therefore playwrights wanted, as well as had, to adjust to what would attract a bigger audience. This led to many pushing the envelope on these subject matters that werent allowed to be discussed on stage. Charity, a play written by W.S Gilbert in 1874, shows exactly how society viewed women having sexual intercourse before marriage, yet as common for this era, never goes into too many details as in what ways the women sinned. During this time period it was looked down upon for any one of the upper class to mix with the lower class, especially when it came to the affairs of sex. August Strindberg wrote the brilliant play Miss Julie in 1888 which demonstrates the harsh reality of a relationship between a higher class young woman and her servant which leads to the downfall of the girl only because of this sexual liaison. Another playwright to push the limits during this strict time period was George Bernard Shaw who created Mrs. Warrens Profession in 1893. This is a play where there is a very thin line between proper behavior/desires and sexual desires because Shaw presents a young woman who is not the sort

of thing that theatrical and critical authorities imagine such a lady to be (Wikipedia.org) during this time. Continuing with this path, Eugene ONeill is a playwright from this era who started writing mature plays such as Desire Under the Elms in 1924 so as to depict the intensity and illicitness of life and love. This generations society called for stricter and more structured rules in theater and for the playwrights themselves, so as to fit in with the ideas of the times, yet as we all know as years go on people change and therefore so do their ideas and morals. Sex can be considered an everyday occurrence and therefore society has become more acceptable with the topic; a topic which is as normal as the condom commercials now being shown on TV because society no longer sees it as being blasphemous because our views have evolved; these views are what have assisted the development of the Contemporary Drama era. From around the 1950s and onward our culture itself has become more open, therefore in turn allowing playwrights to become more unrestricted and adventurous with their work because there are less boundaries put on them by the general public when it comes to the topic of intimacy-as the quote from the beginning claimed playwrights write about that which is occurring in their audiences lives. Harold Pinter was able to display this new modern sensuality performed in these new era plays with his 1963 play The Lover. The Lover is about a husband and wife who pretend to be each others paramours to make their sex life more stimulating. In 1978 the play Cloud 9 was written by Caryl Churchill and consists of two acts. The first is a portrayal of Victorian Era life and then the second act shows the more modern times and how times change so dramatically when considering intimacy and sexuality. For it discusses the restrictions and then openness of gay and lesbian relationships as well as adulterous affairs. Still moving forward we come up to the year 2000 when David Williamson writes a play, Up For Grabs!, with sex scenes that are raunchy .and kinky to the point of perverted

(theater.asn.au) involving an art dealer who provides sexual favors (involving lesbian intercourse and sex toys) to play her buyers off each other and make her gain greater in the end. Lastly, The Yellowman is a 2002 drama written by Dael Orlandersmith. This story is about an African American man and woman and how their friendship turns into one of an intimate relationship and their consummation of said relationship. Besides society being more accepting now, these plays involving intimacy are not of one certain audience members personal experiences alone, but rather of the experiences of the audiences as a whole makes it okay for these playwrights to continue writing as is. These plays that would have made spectators and critics alike in the Early Modern Drama era shriek with outrage are the ones that portray common, familiar occurrences now a days and are often relatable to the public. Do you ever wonder what it must have been like to grow up and live during a time when men courted women and the highest source of contraception was dried up tissue from an animals intestine? Yeah me neither, but these times did exist and many people did live through it; as a result we gained these famous plays, which are lacking some aspects we now expect, due to the repressiveness of the society. Early Modern Drama playwrights, as aforementioned, wrote during a time when before marriage a young girl was brought up to be perfectly innocent and sexually ignorant, while the predominate etiology of the age insisted that she have little sexual feeling at all (www.innominatesociety.com). So it should come as no surprise when we read plays from this time period and the most risqu scenes involving intimacy are either only implied as is the case in Miss Julie or words like wicked, sinful and tainted are used to describe a fallen women without delving into too much detail about how she became that way (as in the Charity script). Elizabeth Lee, a graduate from Brown University, explained how many playwrights from this time did not want to oblige with such severe roles for the sexes when it

came to their involvements during intercourse or sexuality in general. If anything these rules set by the culture of the time only increased their want to become more expressive when writing intimate scenes in their plays. For at the beginning of this era it was rare for even sex to be implied, yet as the years grew and audiences became bored, playwrights knew they had to add more interests to keep their followers. They pushed just past the boundaries so as not to become too forward that nobody would publish their plays, but just enough to get interest going-whether negative or positive reviews. August Strindberg was one of these playwrights; his play Miss Julie was considered too risky to even be published at first and then once it was, critics called it immoral (Levy, 45). Obviously Strindberg was a courageous man who went too far past the boundaries too quickly, yet this is exactly what his audience wanted at the time because it has become one of his most well-known plays. Yet there were plays during this time that discussed more openly, though just a tad, intimate scenes between a man and a woman. She kisses him lustfully again and again and he flings his arms about her and returns her kisses, (274) end scene! That is about as much as erotica you will get to see when reading Desire Under the Elms, as well as most any other plays during this era. In Mrs. Warrens Profession, the protagonist describes being a prostitute as a job where one must take the rough with the smooth though this is as far as George Bernard Shaw goes in language; its enough to the critics who shunned this play because in their eyes it was bad enough to write about prostitution. Shaw explained how critics reacted to it perfectly in his public apology before the play itself, when he stated there was that sense of the sudden earthquake shock to the foundations of morality which sends a pallid crowd of critics into the street shrieking that the pillars of society are cracking and the ruin of the State is at hand (Gutenberg.org). As shown, playwrights did push the boundaries of

that time period bit by bit so as not to upset society, which obviously sets and represents the proper standards, too much. Women now have the right to ask a man on a date, to use online dating and even to go as far as pleasuring oneself- frankly put, the female sex no longer need to be dependent on men for everything. We have moved into an era where media has taken over, consequently making society evolve to the point where intimacy, while still not a dinner topic, is more socially acceptable to being discussed publicly and allowed to be put more bluntly. As Professor Lynette Hunter once explained, sexual openness should not come as such a surprise within theater, for this started with the times when the social order was starting to let women become directors and writers and thus foreshadowing towards another change for playwrights and plays themselves. Though this great change in societys views is not all or only due to women, it just has a greater effect on them because they were always the ones that intimate repressiveness affected more. All of this transfers over to what Contemporary Drama playwrights can and do write about. It seems as though through this new evolution, society has less expectations, especially when it comes to sex between all people, and this reflects in our contemporary plays. The Lover is an earlier example of this when the pretend lover performs oral sex onto the woman and the couple is more sexually adventurous. Harold Pinter portrays this by writing how the womangrimaces, grits her teeth, gasps and gradually disappears under table where the man already is, as well as when the husband calls his wife a lovely whore and claims she is someone who he doesnt have to respect but could provide lustfulness. Such details would never have been accepted by the general public during the Early Modern Drama era, yet since limitations have been pushed throughout the years its deemed standard now. During the 1960s, around the beginning of this drama era, there was a start of the sexual revolution. These

were changes implemented into our culture that started a change on views of sexual behavior; where people were more sexually liberated. This tended to lean more towards women (who felt as though they gained new freedom) and to those of the gay/lesbian communities (www.alternet.org). In Cloud 9 Act 2 we are introduced to these views as we watch characters of the same sex having affairs as well as discussing marriage-Edward and Gerry and Betty and Lin. Also during this play we experience an orgy played out between the characters as they perform it as an act for the goddess of sex. Same-sex and multiple-partnered sex is starting to blossom within society now and therefore not looked down upon when a playwright, such as Caryl Churchill, decides to put them to use. As I said before, this is also the era when women are learning how to become independent when concerning the acts of intimacy and the use of sex toys is being introduced. The toys were, and still to this day, being used to make sexual intercourse more arousing. This occurs in Up For Grabs! when an art dealer must make use of such an erotic gadget to satisfy the demands of her client. This is a scene in The Yellowman when a friendship between the two main characters, Eugene and Alma, is becoming more intimate and this is the consummation: EUGENE I lay her on the bed -- I touch her -- I touch those warm breasts -EUGENE I make love to her -- I do it slow -- I do not ride her -- I make love to her. EUGENE I'm inside of her -- all the way inside of her -ALMA I'm being ripped apart -- Part of me wants to melt / slide into it -- another part of me is being ripped apart The way Dael Orlandersmith was able to come up these phrases and descriptions is representations enough of how far along our culture has developed and expanded. Society used

to be almost tyrannical to the point that a playwright would never have written this down on a piece of paper, let alone try to get it published, but due to the new social changes this play was able to win a Pulitzer Prize in 2002. Playwrights evolve right along with society, and that will never stop, and still playwrights find more ways to become increasingly imaginative. Imagination leads to not only colorful plays where contemporary playwrights depict early modern views into their plays, but also colorful titles. The Vibrator Play, also known as In the Next Room, is a play created by Sarah Ruhl in 2009. This script, which was obviously written during the Contemporary Drama era, is set during the Early Modern Drama era when the vibrator was invented. Though we now have a different use for said vibrator-now ordinarily referred to as a B.O.B- during the 1880s it was used to treat women who suffered from many ailments, but most commonly for hysteria, and to be therapeutic. Throughout the play the women characters discuss how the missionary position is getting old and tiresome with their husbands and continues to scenes where both women experience their first orgasm with this medical device. Ms. Ruhl was able to portray, in a satiric sense, the ideals of the Victorian Era such as husband and wives being the only ones who can acceptably participate in sexual acts with each other and through the type of clothing worn by the actors. In the performances of this play the actors are dressed as to represent the older era; women are wearing almost neck to ankle covering in big, outrageous dresses while the men are wearing the typical breeches and jacket combo known to this time period. Cloud 9, a play mentioned earlier, is made up of two different acts. The first act is a representation of how society regarded same-sex relationships, the controversy that came with it, adulterous affairs and sex with the lower class during the Victorian Era. Theater critic, Carol Wells, perfectly explains how the characters functioned to enforce all of society's odd notions: that women must be submissive and heterosexual and that men must be women's

masters and heterosexual. Societies views from the early Modern Drama era seem so strict and unjust to the public now that we can make farce of it because, and only because, the society beliefs that we know are ones of such openness-sometimes to the extreme- accompanied with very few restrictions. Early Modern Drama and Contemporary Drama not only differ with their content but also with language and what clothing was worn during the original performances. Obscene language can be considered to exist in both; however what was judged obscene during the earlier era is now thought to be clean and decorous even. Clothing is another aspect thought over by the playwrights themselves as to how they want their characters to be displayed. Using Strindbergs Miss Julie character Julie, as an example for the early era, dresses how a young aristocratic woman should dress covered head to fingertips and fingertips to toes. So even though he creates a young girl character thats overcome with sexual passion, he still must dress them in clothing appropriate for the time. I see this as way the playwrights placated the critics and outraged audience members when they disliked the pushed boundaries already displayed within the content of the script. On the other hand you come to the later era and discover that not only have the views on whats allowed to be in the scripts content evolved, so has the type and amount of crude language and what actors where on stage. Crass language has even taken over the titles of some plays, for instance playwright Suzan Lori-Parks wrote a play with the title Fucking A. Costumes have evolved right along with the beliefs of society because when head to toe coverage was acceptable, now midriff, legs, arms, neck and back are all deemed worthy to be put on full display. We as an audience in todays modern day should learn to not expect that which is common beliefs and ideas when going to watch a theater performance, for there will always be times when playwrights decide to go bigger and badder.

Sexologist, Magnus Hirschfeld once said that, People are born with a certain potential for sexual expression, but this potential can be realized in a great variety of ways. It can be repressed as was most common during the Early Modern Drama era or it can be uninhibited which tends to happen now a days during the Contemporary Drama era. Being a playwright just happens to be one of the lucky few occupations where people get to explore these areas of oppressiveness of intimacy and its opposite throughout the different eras. Society has always deemed which subjects are taboo and which are acceptable, unfortunately I dont see this changing anytime soon, only the views which society has will keep changing.

Works Cited

"Mrs. Warren's Profession." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 31 July 2012. Web. 08 Aug. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs._Warren%27s_Profession>. McCann, Jen. "Up for Grabs (Script Review)." Theatre Australia. N.p., 6 July 2004. Web. 08 Aug. 2012. <http://www.theatre.asn.au/node/10658>. Long, Robert C. "Sexuality In the Victorian Era." Innominate Society. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Aug. 2012. <http://www.innominatesociety.com/Articles>. Levy, Walter. "Miss Julie." Modern Drama: Selected Plays from 1879 to the Present. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999. 45. Print. Levy, Walter. 274 Shaw, George B. "Mrs. Warren's Profession." Project Gutenberg. N.p., 11 Feb. 2006. Web. 08 Aug. 2012. <http://www.gutenberg.org/1097>. Cohen, Nancy L. "How the Sexual Revolution Changed America Forever." AlterNet. Counterpoint Press, 5 Feb. 2012. Web. 08 Aug. 2012. <http://www.alternet.org/story/153969/how_the_sexual_revolution_changed_america_forever>.