the word “enjoy”

Last week I went to see a local production of Martin Sherman’s harrowing play Bent, which aside from reducing me to tears, forced me to contemplate lots of issues about my knowledge of history and my understanding of the word “enjoy”.

The story focusses on the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi concentration camps as early as the mid-1930s. What is almost as horrific as the theme of the play is the fact that this issue is almost completely ignored by the education system… I (a modest A grade History student) was completely unaware that this persecution began so early, or how the Nazis used a labelling system among prisoners to create a hierachy – with gay inmates at the bottom. The play deals creates a very vivid profoundly disturbing picture of life at Dachau, in which the desparate main character commits dreadful acts to survive and gain a coverted yellow star to label him as a Jew, rather than a pink triange, denoting him as a gay man, as he thinks he is more likely to get better treatment pretenting to be a Jew… that he is more likely to survive….

The whole portrayal of the treatment in these camps was sickening and the play has haunted me since – producing more than one bout of tears. It was an am dram production, but stunningly acted and very well produced. If it does not win a Rosebowl Award (or all of them!) I’d like to know what the judges felt was more deserving!

All that said (and you have no idea how difficult that all was to phrase… or how much I just couldn’t say!) I came out and had to say that I enjoyed the production.

Enjoyed was totally the wrong word, but there just doesn’t seem to be a better word. I had gone to see a friend of mine who was playing a drag queen – at which he was frighteningly fabulous. I wanted to come out and tell him I had really enjoyed it. I did, in fact. It just didn’t feel right saying it that way. However, after other friends went to see it as well, we were able to have a discussion about how enjoy wasn’t the right word. There just is no word to express the sentiment of something being a good and enriching experience, but not being a happy experience. Granted it is a complicated emotional reaction, but we have dedicated words for stranger things in the English language!

I think the whole experience of a play like this is an extremely valuable one, and it should probably make it onto the English Literature and History A Level courses, even if teachers do not feel comfortable teaching about it to younger students. Its absence says a lot about our remaining prejudices as a society and our discomforts at facing such representations of history. And our ideas about the truth of the history we are taught…

Anyway, despite my roundabout and lexical constipation over the issue, I must take my hats off to all involved in Bath Drama for a stunning production and some tremendously touching acting. Excuse me whilst I just go find another tissue….

community laughter

I have just returned from a fabulous production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, starring Penelope Keith, currently playing at the Theatre Royal in Bath. Last minute tickets are truely a fantastic blessing!

I say this not to envoke jealousy (although it really was a very good show!). I mention it because something occurred to me as I returned with my young ward on the Number 5 bus…

The Number 5 bus is not the most inspiring place in the world. A journey on it can be called a life experience, but that is as far as it goes. However, on this particular journey, I observed that the production was far funnier than the recent film production. My neighbour’s daughter is a big fan of the film (mainly because the cast list includes Colin Firth), but even she agreed with me that the play was much funnier. The whole audience was laughing all the way through, in fact. The lines were the same, the sets pretty much the same… but it just seemed to provoke more outright laughter.

It occurred to me that this is true of many plays and films: if you watch as part of a community, you gain more from the experience – particularly with humorous pieces. You don’t need to know the other people in the audience, or even speak to them (except to apologise for squishing past them to get to the loo in the interval – of which there were 2 on this occasion). Being with other people who are laughing and sharing the experience makes it a more involved experience than simply being a passive observer in front of a small screen.

Maybe it is this community of viewing that humour on the web is missing – although there are admittedly some very funny things out there. Maybe the experience could be enhanced by watching in real time with other people… hearing them laugh, being able to whisper cynical comments to them, or even pull faces at them. I know we can already participate in group events such as concerts in Second Life, but are we really experiencing the presence of others? Or are we just seeing animated representations of these others and being left to imagine the web of people around us – prehaps speculating who is really there and who has popped away from their machine to make a cup of tea?

Personally, I would prefer to have the real contact – prehaps by combining a VoIP feature. Wouldn’t it be great if you could choose who to sit next to at an online event… see their faces by webcam and “whisper” to them directly whilst watching a performance… hear the laughter and mutterings of the rest of the audience… prehaps have a scheduled break for ice cream…

Maybe one day we will. I’m not sure whether I would participate, or whether I would still hop on the Number 5 down to the proper theatre with its confined seating and exorbitant ice cream prices. I would just be interested to see whether the live element really makes things funnier or whether it was just the fantastic skill of Penelope Keith…