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Jonathan's Notes

These are Jonathan's notes on the first group on Monday Dec 5th. He also worked with the Wednesday group, I assume reprising the same method.

Each person gave a short statement about how and in what way the play had
touched or moved them or provoked them. What did it really mean to them.
One idea about directing is that you have to do it from a real inner
passion.

The students then divided into their groups and started to work on their
selected scenes. They were asked to make a short presentation and to ground
their presentation in a key statement about what the action of the scene
was. They then were asked to give a description of all the characters in
the scene giving any qualities and features they thought were important and
to describe the action of each character and cross reference to the action
of the scene. They then had to relate the scene to the play as a whole. How
was it necessary? How would the play be without this scene?

The groups made presentations along these lines. They were presentations in
progress. Principles were enunciated: any means could be used to present
work on the scene (powerpoint, movement demonstration etc), variety and
originality in the presentation was good for the group as a whole: all work
on the scene had to be grounded in the approach indicated above:
encouragement was given to other graphic means (music, images, photographs,
drawings, charts) to make the scene presentation communicative: it was not
necessary to do an enactment of the scene.

Students at the end of the session felt on the whole they were on the way to
being able to make presentations next week. One or two expressed some
'nervousness'.

Emphasis was placed on spending time reading the whole play again over the
next week.

ATTENTION ALL STUDENTS! ATTENTION ALL STUDENTS!

Apparently some of you are getting worried about your assessments. This was brought to my attention by Tony following on from the Year Reps meeting.

It was then decided we'd try to figure out a basic shape to what might form part of a director's approach to a scene/unit/play.

The first point we thought, was to go from the most obvious to the least obvious. A brief description of the scene and what happens in it. How many characters there are in the scene. Any information we can get from information like stage directions where it is supposed to be set. When it is supposed to be set (- day, night, indoors, outdoors etc).

We thought Casting might be a fairly early element in the process. We suggested that with your assessment, as visual material, you might include photos, not so much of famous actors but faces from the internet, digital photos taken of people in your year, or your friends or even people from the Rocket Bar or on the Bus. After all, a director is soon thinking about what actors she'd need to make the play work. These faces will begin to get the imaginative juices flowing - and help you - and your teachers to see if you're on the right track with your thinking about the individual scene or even the whole play.

And if you don't have the internet or a camera, then there are magazines you can cut up. Or you could draw your casting ideas. Or just do written descriptions. Is Shen Te tall, as you see her? Or petite? Is she lean? Emaciated? Curvy? Large? Motherly? Pretty? Plain? Beautiful? What colour hair does she have? How does she wear it when we first meet her? etc etc etc.

Obviously, we thought if a student comes up with a picture of Tom Cruise for Sun and Penelope Cruz for She Te, obviously their imagination hasn't been that deeply engaged. They're on remote control. And will score poorly....

We then thought that the next most logical area might be the STRUCTURE of the scene you've chosen. Does it break down naturally into any sections or units? For example: The Park Scene. One Way of dividing it is
1. Sun and the prostitutes
2. Sun, Shen Te and the prostitutes
3. Sun and Shen Te
4. Sun, Shen Te and Wang.

But another way of looking at it might be:

Sun looking up at the soaring plane.
Sun deciding to hang himself.
Sun interrupted by prostitutes and Shen Te
Shen te forgets about going to see Shu Fu and makes the decision to get involved with Sun
Shen Te asking if she may shelter under his hanging tree
Sun allowing her
The 'You don't know what a pilot is' speech and the 'Crane with a broken wing' speech. Bonding.
Shen Te getting water for Sun
Final image, Shen Te the Water Madonna...

What we're trying to do is get a better sense of the scene. Similarly we might look for the KEY MOMENTS in the scene. These might be things that mark high or low points in the scene. It may be an action: it may be a speech. Or Key Speeches.

We talked about Necessary Props and Scenery. Once again, in The Park Scene, what would it be? A 'tree'. Rope. A log to hang oneself from.A bucket or water receptacle. A cup. A handkerchief. These in turn could be described, photographed or drawn. But they are more than just things. The handkercheif, for example, is a powerful object in the scene. It's Sun's gift to Shen Te in the same way later Shen Te makes a gift of the water. These in turn relate to THE SPACE. So the space needs to be described. Shen Te might need to stand as far from the tree as possible on her entrance - so she has a real decision and a real journey to make to shelter.

Spatial compositions might be taken into consideration. Classic, Old Master type paintings might be referred to - or produced for reference. Shen Te as Florence Nightingale. Sun as a Dead Christ.

Bit by bit we are trying to enrich our picture of the scene.

Costume. We'd get examples of Chinese scenes in the 1930's period. Or we might decide that we didn't want to make it 'exotic' and that it should be set in a more 'European' Szechuan. Belt and Braces. Hobnail Boots. More LS Lowry than China. But whatever we chose we'd have to justify our choices...

Once we have space and costume, we might move on to Lighting the scene. It's dreary weather. It's about to rain... then actually raining. Do we want just 'imitate' the weather with the lighting? Or do we want to follow Brecht's ideas about doing the show in full light? Or a mixture? Maybe the Sun comes out when Sun talks about his flying? What about real rain? It's been tried recently in Mary Stuart at Donmar Warehouse to rave reviews for both play and rain... Or would we use down-lighting for a harsh prison-like effect. Or cross lighting for a surreal effect. Or up-lighting as in Pantomime or Melodrama?

We could talk about research we'd do for the production/scene. China in the 30's. The sort of aeroplane Sun would fly. Tobacco sacks. Architecture of the period in China. Costume of the thirties. Stockings, high heels, lipstick. Is Shen Te that kind of prostitute? Might it be interesting to make her that? Even if the stockings were torn, the heels broken and the lipstick smeared?

We might talk about work we'd want to do with the actors. Approaches that might reward with some characters and some that might not. For example Sun and Te might require quite a lot of TABLE WORK and close study of what is going on between them psychologically. Objectives, Obstacles, Tactics, Stake etc. Action verbs. We might encourage them to talk about the love affair in terms of their own experiences. These are psychologically quite comlex characters.

For other characters we might choose an approach using physical stereotypes; the prostitutes. Commedia Masters and Servants: Wang. We might do status games. We might do Trust exercises.

We might talk about Prep and Research we might ask the actors to do.

We might give some idea of how long it might take to rehearse this scene. Make a rehearsal schedule. Show the storyboard or a part of a storyboard for the scene.

The main thing is to really know the scene. And the best way to know it is to live, breath, eat, sleep, dream and drink the scene. So that you've thought about it from every conceivable angle and vantage point.

TO WHICH END....

We looked at all the financial transactions in the scene. And we made a little diagram of which this is a photograph.

Continuing the Work

Trust Exercise. Two teams. Equal numbers of men and women. Two rows in each team, tallest at one end, smallest at the other, facing one another and linking hands. Then start with the smallest and lightest and invite them to jump into the cradle...

Once there, they're wiggled onto their backs, lifted by the whole group. Carried round about their heads and then dropped into the cradle again. Nice and physical. Slightly risky. Group responsibility. And only Georgina got a wound. Well, scratch.

We then looked at Scene 5 again and spent about an hour on it.

We reread it in groups - trying to find a 'missing element' that we hadn't found before and then asked Helen, Toni, Peter etc to show it us. Quite a few people had spotted it - the rain - but it took another 45 minutes to look at it in some detail.

How the positioning of Shen Te on stage is crucial. If we place the tree that Sun is trying to hang himself from off-centre, then is it a good idea for Shen Te to enter from the nearest side or the furthest?

The latter we decide. By a mile.

She needs to have to walk a distance because when she asks if she can shelter under the tree she cannot be a step or two from it. Her words about the rain are a reason for her to engage with Sun. And a decision. She is on her way to the Carpenter's. She could easily walk on. But she doesn't.

And so their relationship begins. She never gets to the Carpenter's.

We also asked for a couple of volunteers to read the script to see if we could pin down some other key moments. Alexa and Tom were volunteered. And apart from examining in some detail the 'handkerchief moment', the laughing/crying moment and the Shen Te wiping her runny nose on the back of her sleeve, the reading brought to life the two wonderful speeches in that scene that until that moment we'd totally overlooked.

The I'm a pilot speech and the crane speech. How beautiful they are. And how they work in relation to the beginning of Shen Te's love affair and growing attraction to Sun.

It was an excellent first half to the class.

Second Half.

In groups we looked at all the money events in the show, trying to see more clearly what is going on. Who owned what. Who owed what to whom. Who wanted to borrow what. Who hoped to earn what. Who was trying to diddle what out of whom. And who ended up with what. Actually quite a satisfying exercise. And a 'real' one. Because it is on this bed of nails that all the characters in the play have got to exist. No-one avoids the pinpricks of money.

As much so in the Arts as anywhere.

Even in the moment of getting the gift of the 1000 silver dollars, Shen Te is handed a poisoned chalice. Something that will make her life no less easy than it was before as a prostitute.

Once again, a very good start on understanding. Though a deeper understanding would repay the work done. For example, to look at each of the major characters in terms of their economic needs etc. Sun/Mrs Yang, Shen Te, Mrs Shin, Mr Shu Fu. Each one has a different set of needs and objectives - some of which change from scene to scene.

All of this could be plotted in some way. We even tried to do a Shen Te Income/Expenditure budget, but it didn't quite show the chronological ups and downs of her solvency. Particularly the juggling that has to go on at the point at which Sun arrives on the scene. Basically it's Shen's cash-flow problems that need to be documented accurately.

Maybe an accountant should come in and talk to us about how she would express this state of affairs in a budgetary form....

Again good work. And quite surprising some of the people who showed a good grasp of this money side...

Next Monday Steve will be away in Leicester so Jonathan Chadwick will be taking the class. Jonathan is a Theatre Director who often works with Acting Students but has an extensive international career. He works not only in the UK but also in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Steve first worked with him in a production of Caucasian Chalk Circle at Stratford East in which Azdak was played by Tom Wilkinson. Very well too.

John's Fabulous CV. You're in good hands!

Just in case a government official leaves a leaked memo about Al Jazeera with you - you'll know who to contact...

Wednesday. Story Board and On Your Feet.

OK. So we did the same again with the Wednesday Group. But we had more time to develop each scene and, with better instructions and guidelines from Steve at the beginning and him going round checking on the work as we went along, the story-boards, were, on the whole, clearer earlier.

In the Park Scene, for instance, with the team of Richard, Gemma, Mameyaa and Hayley, the rain was included in their story-board (drawn by Richard as a weather-pattern over proceedings). Thus, when we got to put the scene on its feet, it became an actor in the story. Shen Te used it as a way of coming nearer to Sun. So there are two actions: her asking his permission to shelter under the tree on which he's going to hang himself. And him giving that permission.

We were also able to begin to deal with the extraordinary moment when he tries to dry her tears BUT TURNED AWAY FROM HER.

And to locate the moment when he decides to step down from hanging himself. We hadn't located it yet but we wondered with Gemma whether it was the moment that Sun realised he loved Shen Te. Or the moment he realised she owned a shop...

We also looked at Shen Te's moment of going to get water from Wang to give to Sun. And the timing of it as Sun falls asleep...

Steve also pointed out a nice image of what the Monday Group had found, a kind of Pieta - a Madonna kneeling over the body of a Christ figure...

We did the 'Counter Scene'. This was Ieva, Dan, Drew, Selwa and Nadia. It hadn't been called the Counter scene until Selwa sat herself down at a couple of chairs pulled together, but it does seem to be important...

Counters are where money is transferred for goods. Very central to the play...

We observed the image of Shui Ta reading a paper on one side of the stage while Mrs XXXX sweeps/works on the other.



We showed the moment where Mrs Shin exits and meets Sun outside and Shen Te is so excited that she goes and pretties herself at the mirror before realising that she's Shui Ta and correcting herself.

That when Shui Ta comes in he takes a cigar from the counter and 'Shui Ta' sees him do this. And also sees a side of Sun he's never shown to Shen Te.

Mrs Mi Tsu comes in (Ieva) and asks to be paid for something. But Shui/Shen hasn't got the money...

We then had some kind of business deal take place between Shui Ta and Sun shown as them shaking hands. Then we had a great image of Nadia coming back in as Mrs Shin to tell Shui Ta how much Shen Te was in love with Sun. A dagger in Shen Te's already torn heart. We remarked upon this dialectical complexity. Shen Te's love and infatuation with Sun - and yet seeing him with Shui Ta's eyes too. About the complexity of Brecht's showing of Sun. Was he 'good'? Or 'bad'? Or just fucked up by the world he has to live in?


We looked at the Court Scene. We eventually got some clearer picture of this with Jade, Debra, David, Danai and Sam - actually clearer than Monday's effort - but the group didn't make it particularly easy - either for themselves or us the audience.

But it is a difficult scene. There are a lot of bodies on stage. It needs a good eye to try and see the pattern in it. In the end we found one up to the point at which the policeman clears the court. More detail needs to be put into what it is exactly that the neighbours say about Shui Ta, about how the Policeman tries to discredit each of them with the God/Judges, and what is the attitude of the neighbours to Shui Ta.

We also marked the two faintings of Shui Ta/Shen Te.

Fourthly we worked on the Washing Line scene. Eva, Margory, Francisco and David. What we developed here beyond the discoveries of the Monday Group was the relationship between the Margory's Mrs Shin and Shen Te. Francisco had a nice touch where he wrote the cheque out for Shen Te in front of her, but we established not only the giving of it to Shen Te but Mrs Shin's greater interest in it.

We then looked at Shen Te's faint. And established that Mrs Shin had already had a woman's instinct about her pregnancy before Shen Te knew it herself. That we see her discovery on stage. We also see Mrs Shin taking the washing basket off her - a sign of her 'goodness' as distinct from her earlier 'greed' over the cheque.

We started to look at Shen Te telling her unborn child about the tree and the meaning of the arrival of the drunken Carpenter's child that Wang is just about to bring on.

We conclude talking about children. Margory has two. About one's dreams for one's children. About whether one's dreams can be fulfilled. About whether, sometimes, any parent doesn't wonder if she's done the right thing bring a child into such a world....

Very good finish to the three hours.

Monday Session. Key Images.

Over the course of the afternoon we have arrived at four groups each working on their own scene. Group A has charge of An Evening in the Public Park and Interlude. B has The Opening and Tobacconists shop. C the Pregnant Scene. Team D the Courtroom Scene 10.

We did two things this session. Firstly we storyboarded the scenes in Groups. And then showed them to the others.

The main issues to arise out of this were:

The storyboards need to give a strong sense of the stage that they are meant to represent. Yes, by all means draw matchstick men and women. But it needs to give us a sense of the stage picture, the groupings and how the picture will change from unit to unit. Thus, for example, Group three were charged with picturing Scene 7 which starts with a washing line with two characters taking down washing.

They had 'chosen', though, in their storyboard to have the washing line across one corner of the stage and with the women stood close together.

This seemed to miss a golden opportunity. The visual image of a washing line right across the stage and the two women at either end of it seemed something too good to miss. And a way to demonstrate the scene in a public place rather than to make a chamber piece of it.

Once corrected, the resulting work was very strong, served as a foundation for the rest of the scen and contained a number of key images that still remain in the mind a week later, including the Carpenter coming between the washing to give Shen Te the cheque, Shen Te's stagger prior to the revelation that she's pregnant and the beginnings of the scene in which she begins to show her unborn child the tree until the arrival of the real child.


There still was an 'idea'in the staging of the scene, though, as they'd chosen to have a real actor for the imaginary child - an actor that becomes the real child.

Now while that may work as a bit of staging, Steve was suggesting that that belongs to another stage of the process.

He was asking that in the first place the actors should simply 'show' the scene in its simplest form, just so that the structure could be seen VISUALLY.

The point of this work was to CLARIFY the scene for the actors and director. To see how it broke down into units etc. To map it. A sketch map of the ground.

Interesting things came from work that the Public Park group were doing. In putting the fairly thorough storyboard onto its feet, the actors - particularly Peter and Toni - were not demonstrating the picture. They were simply putting their bodies into the spots that they'd marked on the map, without any sense of the physicality or story that those bodies were meant to convey.

The moment they changed this, however, they created a memorable set of images to act as building blocks for the scene. The Pilot reaching for the stars. The 'Madonna' Shen Te kneeling over the body of the sleeping Christ/Sun.

The other two groups had some nice elements but perhaps lacked the simple and killing details that characterised the others just mentioned. Perhaps they were just scenes with less instant 'emotional/visual' impact and therefore more difficult to find the 'key images' for. We, for example, didn't see Tom Chandler's faint as Shen Te as strongly as we should. Because of a staging 'idea' - having the actors in a line across the back of the stage - it wasn't as clear as it ought to have been VISUALLY. It wasn't 'seen' as well. It wasn't shown.

But the work was good and it was particularly good that we say all of it together and discussed all of it together, talking as we did about ideas and resisting ideas for the basic carpentry. Of not running before you can walk. Of making a basic table before you get into the Chippendale version. Structure before decoration and ornament.

Also about taking 'notes' from a teacher or director. About trust. And accepting a degree of expertise.

A final nice note from Ashley on that score. He used the phrase, about theatre, that it was 'contrived'. At first it seemed a strange word to use. Almost a perjorative word. But when asked to explain, it rang a bell. Yes, theatre is contrived. It's made. It doesn't just happen. It's thought about. It's tested - sometimes to destruction. It's made. It's constructed.

And on second thoughts, 'contrived' is a very useful thought about it.

Home assignment for next week: REALLY KNOW YOUR SCENES.

Brecht Video.

Wikipedia Article on Brecht. Check his dates!

Wednesday's class. Same format as before. About the Fourth Wall. About Dialectics. About History and the Future. About Change. Here's a little more detail about the Brecht Video.

It started with Helena Weigel as Mother Courage at the end of the play harnassing her cart. She has lost all of her children to the War. She is old, worn out, dull. Almost like a beast herself as she circles the cart round and round.

We then see Weigel, who ran Brecht's Theatre talking about how she believed that people were intelligent. That 'small people' - she was including herself in this - can change things. That they were thinking human beings.

She talked about Brecht working on the text with his actors. How he wanted the actors to keep the text in their hands for a long time; and not learn their parts straight away. She said he also reminded his actors to remember the moments they were ASTONISHED. To keep hold of it and not lose that astonishment there when they came to perform the scene.

The dramatist Karl Weber spoke. He said that Brecht wanted things made REMARKABLE. Things that are not usual. That can be judged. AND CHANGED.

He talked about the 'Arrangement' (a German word, apparently, though he said it with a French accent); the Staging. How Brecht would sometimes try up to thirty different ways of staging the scene before it was felt it told the right story. It was almost as if you could turn the sound down and the pictures would tell the story themselves. We then saw an excerpt from Die Mutter (The Mother) Scene 5 in which Pelagea Vlassova picks up the fallen Red Flag.

Professor Hans Mayer spoke. He spoke about Brecht saying that there should be an Art of Being a Spectator. A new art. That one of Brecht's favourite sayings was: The Proof of the Pudding is in the Eating. That if it worked, then it was good.

How Brecht started off as an anarchist. How he played the part of a dangerous guy but was actually only playing it. That when he wrote Baal and Threepenny Opera HE HAD NO VIEW ON HISTORY OR HOW THINGS COULD BE CHANGED. But then by the time of his play Mann ist Mann (Man is Man) he'd read and studied Marxism and from that point on History was central to his thinking. That Man could and should be changed.

One playwright, Friedrich Wolf, a colleague, took him to task saying that in Mother Courage, Courage hadn't changed from the beginning to the end of the play and he answered: I don't care that Mother Courage hasn't changed. I want the audience to change.

Mayer said that when Brecht read the critics when the play was first put on in Switzerland in 1941 (and Brecht was in exile - in the USA?), he thought the production must have got it all wrong because there seemed to be too much sympathy for Courage. He didn't want this. And he worked hard to change it with his own production 10 and more years later.

Mayer also talked about Dialectical thinking. And about how Brecht's audiences didn't always react in the way Brecht wanted them to.

He talked about Brecht getting his own theatre, The Berliner Ensemble in Communist East Berlin after World War Two and how he was asked why he didn't go and work in West Germany. That his reply was that there he would have to do stuff in the usual repertoire. Stuff he didn't want to do. Whereas in East Berlin he could do anything he wanted. And neglect anything he wanted. Below is the:

Berliner Ensemble Theatre Website

The class finished in trying to distinguish between theatre, film and tv in which change doesn't really figure. Trying to get dialectical and non-dialectical models. That dialectics involves twos. Two elements.

We talked about Francis Fukuyama. How he came up with this idea of the end of history. That with the collapse of Communism in the early '90s, the West had 'won'. That there was now to be no more history. History had ended. All we were going to get now was more of the same. Wall to wall Wallmart. Blue-waters lapping beyond the horizon.

But how, ten years later, 19 men, some airline tickets and a few Stanley Knives brought a sudden end to the end of history.

That much Anglo drama sees the world in terms of a centre which is being invaded from outside and has to be protected (cf War of the Worlds, Rambo, Alien, Black Hawk Down, Robocop etc). Sometimes the aliens almost win but in the end the status quo is restored by a Bruce Willis hero.

That there is no reason why 'they' attack. They have no reason, full stop. 'They' attack because 'they' are evil or mad or both.

It follows the same pattern with regard to 9/11. They attack us because they hate our freedoms. Our way of life. We bear no responisibility towards the situation. All we can do is destroy them as efficiently as possible. The war on terror.

A dialectical view of the situation might be this:

'Their' point of view is genuinely another point of view. As valid as 'ours'. They are not 'out there' or outside any circle or centre of our creating or imagination. They also have a centre. That out of the dialectic of these two centres will come a third thing.

Task for next week to now read Good Person of Szechuan with this analysis in mind. The idea of the two. Shen Te has to have another to cope with the world: Shui Ta. She has to split herself in two to survive.

How everyone else is being torn apart by it. How the Gods refuse to recognise it. The last image is Shen Te reaching for them to come back and sort this state of affairs out. But they refuse.

The actor speaking the epilogue is really worried that he was unable to satify the audience with an answer. Unhappy audiences = unemployed actors...

Brecht and The Good Person of Szechuan

But first. Handing back last week's assignment on 'News Flash'. Some good work. A couple of firsts. A few two-ones. A handful of two-twos. Some passes. Some fails, too. Ten to twenty percent of people who were away the week the assignment was given but didn't find out what it was. And received no mark at all.

But, as was said on this day of Brecht, anno domini 2005, nothing is over until it's over. There is still the possibility of change - if you want it. No one is damned. Yet. This is your little mid-term assessment. It won't count. Except in my mind and in my memory. Everything is redeemable. The lame may one day walk again.

The main critique would be the lack of detail. In particular the lack of work on Objectives. And Tactics. Obstacles. Stakes and Action Verbs. Having been given a shiny new tool box to do your carpentry, a surprising number of you still used a rusty old nail-file and the heel of one of your old boots to construct your dining room suite.

This led to some group work on Bertholt. In threes and fours knowledge was shared. Then shared with the whole group. Some students apologised that with regard to Brecht they were pretty ignorant. But this is not a sin. The only sin is the desire to remain ignorant.

We started with The Fourth Wall. We agreed that Brecht had wanted to abolish it. We tried to pin down this lack-of-fourth-wallness by asking whether Brecht had invented the idea.

Bit by bit we reminded ourselves that actually the Fourth Wall had only just been built when Brecht came along and knocked it down again. The Greeks didn't have it. Nor the Romans. Nor did the Mummers. Nor the Mystery Play actors. Nor Commedia Actors. Nor the Spanish Playwrights. Nor Shakespeare and the Elizabethans. Nor Moliere. Nor Restoration. Nor Marivaux and the French and Italian companies in Paris in the 18th Century. Nor English Pantomime. Nor Melodrama.

In fact, the Fourth Wall had only existed for 100 of the 2000 years of drama. Little more than a fad or a temporary fashion.

Likewise the idea of putting the audience in the dark. Who made that rule up? Where did that one come from?

We talked about our own experiences of seeing a show at the Globe in London. Standing there in your plastic mac in the rain eating a pie that you've just bought. How the audience is lit and from time to time a 737 makes its final descent into Heathrow. And both actors and audience know that this is not real life. They're in a Theatre.

And that Brecht knew he was in this tradition. That he was the traditional one. It was the theatre of the Fourth Wall and Darkness that was the upstart.

We talked about his poem 'The Lighting' which begins:

Give us some light on the stage, electrician. How can we
Playwrights and actors put forward
Our images of the World in half darkness? The dim twilight
Induces sleep... etc (P426 Poems of Brecht. ed. Methuen.)

We talked about change. We talked about the RESISTIBLE rise of Arturo Ui (Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui). Not the irresistible rise. How there is no word in German. So he invented it.

We talk about dialectic. Dialectical events upon the stage and dialectical ideas on a page. Of a clash of two things. Two ideas. To provide a third thing. A process not a stasis. A river not a lake, we said. Movement. History. The Future. Something Dynamic. Not something endlessly repeated and unending because 'there is no other way'. etc Herr Blair kindly note.

We talked about learning and teaching. About how learning is changing. About how stopping learning is dying. About how learning and teaching are dialectical too.

We then watched the Movie. It was an Open University video on Brecht's Theatre including interviews with Helene Weigel his wife. We had a little discussion about it at the end.

I will write it all up after the Wednesday Group has seen it.

We then broke for tea and tobacco.

And came back and spent time talking about prostitutes we'd known. About whether we need to know what Shen Te 'did'. What her 'menu' was?

We certainly needed to know whether she needed to do it for money. Whether she would have done it if she'd had enough to live on.

We talked a little about the gods.

About whether there were other good people in Szechuan. Whether Shen Te herself was good.

About Sun. Whether he was 'bad'. The students were reminded that many people have ambitions that are thwarted. That many, like Sun, would jump at the chance of a girl-friend who loved them - and had a bit of money so that they could do the job they loved. His 'saviour'. Sun, in some ways, almost a 'tragic' figure. Probably not a million miles away from Brecht himself as he was entering his fifth year of struggle, his fortieth year of life, in exile and unemployment and on the run from the Nazis... But Brecht has bigger fish to fry than concerning himself with Sun's sunset.

We linked Shen Te splitting herself into two with the dialectical idea we were talking of earlier.

We thought of going into a shop to buy something and they're as nice as pie. Get a job at the same shop the next day - and they treat you like shit... Another piece of the dialectic.

We talked about Assessment work and Tony joined us.

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An alternative way of contacting me, by the way, - if you don't want to do it via the blog itself - is via the internal phone system. Above is my extension number. It has a voicemail facility and I would normally pick up messages at these times:

Monday Morning/Lunchtime
Wednesday Morning/Lunchtime
and Thursday Morning early or Thurday Lunchtime
sometimes Friday.

I can access the number from outside college but I'm only likely to do that when I'm expecting a call.