In our theatre company, Lifting the Barriers, we wanted to ‘provide dynamic theatre that is accessible with a particular view to engaging with young people who want to experience the world in a different way’ (Lifting the Barriers, 2016). Likewise to the Arts council England who believe ‘Arts and culture has the ability to move us to laughter or to tears. It helps us make sense of our lives and the world around us’ (2013). This said, we wanted our theatre company to reflect on a life that may have been unjustly overlooked and emphasize it to educate a young audience so to become more aware of the world around them. The performance was aimed to be thought-provoking, enlightening and above all powerful. As the director of Lifting the Barriers, it was my job to explore the different aspects of Zelda Fitzgerald, and devise a piece of drama that looked into her world whilst dealing with a mental disability she didn’t even realise she had. Although this meant that we had plenty of material to use, it also proved to be a delicate subject, one that still proves relatable to people in today’s society. With the use of Bipolar as a strong focus of the performance, we had to be respectful and careful.
Finding Zelda
Zelda Fitzgerald was the first ever flapper girl and wife to the author F. Scott Fitzgerald. However, to society, Zelda was seen as a distraction or disturbance to Scott. Countless reports showed Zelda to be a flirt with men and a trouble maker, drinking and partying till the early hours of the morning. Nevertheless, it was not discovered until after her death, the turmoil and distress she was under, mostly due to her mental illness, bipolar. Unfortunately, due to the times in which Zelda was brought into, bipolar was not discovered as a mental disorder until twenty years ago. Therefore, she was misdiagnosed with Schizophrenia. On top of this, she was thought to have miscarriages, postnatal depression, and an affair with a French airman and a love/hate relationship with her husband. All of these moments in her life were due to or affected by her mental illness of bipolar. We wanted to highlight this to the audience, creating empathy for the first flapper.
This was why we chose her instead of another influential woman. We did have the intention of using six influential women in the performance, but this proved to be difficult as they all had a deep, complex background. Even though Zelda had come from a world of wealth, she did suffer the pressures of society with an undiagnosed disorder. At the time of her life she was seen as erratic and, in her later years, a danger to society. This inspired us to explore the illness and to how it affected her in day to day life, but more importantly, how she coped with it.
The Zelda’s
In the early stages of devising, the group had to decide who we were going to include in the piece, and what parts of Zelda’s life was most apparent to talk about. We contemplated the idea of having a man on stage, but this would have defeated the purpose of an all-female theatre company. Furthermore, we wanted this performance to be focus only on Zelda, to just have her on stage and tell her story. Therefore, we broke her life down into five life-changing moments. These moments, in our opinion, determined the outcome of her life, thus leading her to Ashfield Highland Hospital in her final days. These moments were:
- In Love Zelda (Abi) – The young, naïve flapper. In love with the idea of love and spending the rest of her days with Scott.
- Party Zelda (Kate K) – The socialite, newly married and extremely happy. However, battling with the rumours of Scott’s liaisons with other women before he married Zelda.
- Depressed Zelda (Hannah) – Upset in her current marriage and living in Paris, Zelda fell for a French pilot. When she tried to confront Scott and leave him, he locked her away in the house until she agreed to never try to leave him again
- Ballet Zelda (Megan) – After the almost breakdown of her marriage, Zelda became fixated on her ballet and drawing again. She attended a ballet school in France and practiced up to eight hours a day. However this was too much of a strain, and she had to quit.
- Hospitalized Zelda (Maddie) – Zelda at the end. After everything she endured, her father passed away and this tipped her over the edge. She was in and out to hospitals until the end of her life.
(Flickr, 2016)
As well as the five Zelda’s, there were two characters present on stage, and another two as recordings. On stage was a researcher from our time, interested in the flapper’s life, and a nurse from the hospital in the 1940’s who questions Zelda’s actions throughout the performance. The purpose for the researcher was to link the other voices to the performance, this being the Interviewer and Zelda’s granddaughter, Eleanor Lanahan. These characters were introduced, not only to narrate, but to link the past with the future, thus linking the audience.
(ibid)
Devising
In the beginning of the process, we knew that we wanted the piece to be stylised due to the mental illness of bipolar and how it can affect the mind. We wanted the audience to experience this first hand. However, we had to understand Zelda and the metal illness first. I researched her life using various websites and books, such as Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (Barks and Bryer, 2003). I also interviewed someone with bipolar and the daily struggles they have. Furthermore, I watched an adapted performance of Scott Fitzgerald’s book The Great Gatsby at the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, where the blog can be found through this link (Sharkey, 2016). I also watched the film Midnight in Paris, as nearer to the beginning of the film Zelda and Scott made appearances, in their youth (Allen, 2011). It also helped me to understand the exciting life of the 20’s and 30’s, therefore understanding Zelda. Through this research I begun to understand how erratic and possessive she would have seemed to society due to her mental health. The sense of unity and consistency needed to be made clear in the performance, linking the Zelda’s to one another as they told their story. This led us to the workshops.
The earlier rehearsals consisted of various technique classes and games, as so to understand Zelda and to determine different ways of expressing her. As there was so much writing of Zelda in her life due to Scott’s work and the tabloids, we begun to favour a physical theatre aspect to the performance, instead of always talking. The games assisted in this, as well as hot seating, we mimicked each other’s walks, used mirroring exercises and walked around the room focussing our attention on one person in the room, keeping them in sight. As these rehearsals went on, we used our research of Zelda to assist in the devising. As the actors knew which Zelda’s they were playing, they were able to develop their characters walk and characteristics. One rehearsal, closer to the performance, we focused a rehearsal on characteristics and walks. The Zelda’s watched one another and copied each other’s walk, making them aware of mannerisms.
Following on from the physical aspect, we used many practitioners in our inspiration for our movements. One of these was Frantic Assembly’s Chair duets (HowBizarreProduction, 2011). The unity of the performance was something that we wanted to embody for Zelda, so we used the idea of movement with chairs to form out opening movement to the performance. Instead of it being a duet, I directed all five Zelda’s to perform at the beginning as means to foreshadow the movements and events that the audience were about the witness. Another aspect of physical theatre we were inspired by was Pina Bausch – Kontakthof (YouTube, 2013). The video showed a woman first appearing to be delicately petted by admirers, which then slowly turned into an attack. This reminded me of Zelda in her own mind, and how she battled with herself. Therefore I directed Hospitalized Zelda to be slowly petted then attacked by her past selves. This turned into the finale of the piece, following after a projection of her past selves, taunting her decrease in life. The full explanation of Pina Bausch performance can be found by this link.
(ibid)
As mentioned before, in relation to mental health the nurse of the performance was slowly changed throughout the process. First there to taunt, I managed to soften her antagonism in the piece, as her questions became less cruel and instead blunter. She eventually became a physical representation of the mental health of bipolar, acting as the voice in her head, questioning her motives and reasoning. The voice was in the form of a nurse due to the conclusion of Zelda’s life and the only physical contact she had with human life at the end. The nurse was only real at the end of the performance, when she touched Zelda in comfort. Up until this point, the nurse kept a distance from Zelda, at least at arm’s length, to emphasise Zelda’s isolation and inability to control her mind. The nurse was the only character allowed to leave the stage throughout the piece, seeing as those who suffer with bipolar hear the voice most clearly when they are at their lowest state. This is why we had the Zelda Zone.
The Zelda Zone was originally inspired by the idea of Brechtian Theatre. We wanted the Zelda’s to not leave the stage, but to help assist in the flow of the performance, whereby the audience can witness every change in Zelda’s state of mind. However, the staging would have proved difficult if we had use minimalistic set, which is how we thought of the letters. Throughout Zelda and Scott’s blossoming romance, they wrote letters to one another of their undying love, which we used as verbatim theatre in the letter sent to her mother which can be found on the blog. Performances such as West End’s Matilda and RSC’s As You Like it, also helped in the creation of the set, as their set also revolves around letters and the telling of a story. Therefore, we wanted to use this as inspiration to the setting of the stage, not to isolate the audience from the actors, but to make the scenes clear and concise; and easy to differentiate between what was the main focus of attention. That is why I was very strict that when playing a Zelda, the actors were not allowed to leave the zone until finished with their scene. This was so not to break focus from that time zone of Zelda’s world. Any props that needed to be handled off or on the stage had to be handled by and un-used Zelda. This is why I was more lenient with other Zelda’s playing different characters, as the current Zelda could not leave the space. The different characters, although different voices and characteristics, were still acting for the one purpose which was to assist in the telling of Zelda’s story.
(ibid)
Show Day
On show night one of my favourite parts was the beginning letter, originally sent from Zelda to her mother. The deliverance of the letter was inspired by slam poetry enthusiasts, Changing the World, One Word at a Time, for the energy and surety of the speech (YouTube, 2014). The blog for this can be found here. If I could have had a chance to improve, I would have liked to have tried different ways to portray the narrator. It proved difficult during rehearsals how to show the narrators state in the show, the presence of her and the researcher on stage throughout seemed the least complex choice. However, if given more time I could have explored further into how to portray her. Also, I would have liked to have used the letters from the set more. Even though the only two Zelda’s to use the letters were deliberate, as they were both taking a chance at life and hope which interlinked them, there could have been ways to further the idea. That’s said, I would not have changed the set because, although it was simple, it was striking and drew the audience in with curiosity from the beginning. Also, I liked the look of all actors on stage throughout. Although some were worried of the Zelda’s at the back distracting the audience, I thought it was powerful in how each Zelda haunted the past and future. The show received positive feedback by a local blogger of Lincoln who commented, ‘The story was emotive, the set was fantastic and the lighting and sound was genius’ (OrdinaryBravery, 2016). Therefore, I believed we communicated the life of Zelda Fitzgerald in the respectful manner we wanted, paired with the severity of mental health.
(ibid)
Citation
Allen, W. (dir.) (2011) Midnight in Paris. [DVD] California: Warner Home Video.
Arts Council England (2013) An animation: Arts Council England’s mission and goals explained. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdTQD3zoPiY
Barks, C, W., Bryer, J, R. (eds.) (2003) Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Flickr (2016) Love First, Live Incidentally. [Online] London: Flickr. Available from https://m.flickr.com/#/photos/61839232@N02/26468989524/ [Accessed 23 May 2016]
HowBizarreProduction (2011) Frantic Assembly’s Chair Duet. [Online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCu5MeHnDyk [Accessed 1 March 2016]
Lifting the Barriers (2016) About Us. [blog entry] 19 May. Lincoln: Lifting the Barriers. Available from https://liftingthebarriers.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/about-us/ [Accessed 23 May 2016]
OrdinaryBravery (2016) Love First, Live Incidentally: Play Review & A little bit of Zizzi’s. [blog entry] 18 May. Lincoln: Ordinary Acts of Bravery. Available from https://ordinaryactsofbravery.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/love-first-live-incidentally-play-review-a-little-bit-of-zizzis/ [Accessed 24 May 2016]
Sharkey, S. (2016) The Great Gatsby. [performance] Adrian McDougall (dir.) Blackeyed Theatre. Lincoln: Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, Friday 4th March 2016.
Tumblr (2015) Zelda Fitzgerald’s Letter Home. [online] New York: Tumblr. Available from http://loveathighspeeds.tumblr.com/post/116579382067/napowrimo-day-9-zelda-fitzgeralds-letter-home [Accessed 8 March 2016]
YouTube (2013) Pina Bausch – Kontakthof (Nazareth Panadero) [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCiT4l8iV-Q [Accessed 15 March 2016]