Please note: Fen includes themes of suicide, alcoholism, and racially and sexually offensive language.
This play has 22 characters and only 6 actors. The roles are double, triple, quadruple, and even quintuple-cast, meaning that each actor plays more than one role. Check out this character map that helps highlight relationships between the characters. Mrs. Hassett is the gangmaster of everyone in blue, and Mr. Tewson is Frank’s boss (in yellow).
England, 1983. The premier production of Caryl Churchill’s Fen opened with British actress Cecily Hobbs greeting the audience, dispelling the haunting cries of a 19th-century human “scarecrow” who patrolled the stage before the house lights dimmed. Dressed in a contemporary man’s suit, Hobbs brought the audience back to the real world; nevertheless, she was not a native of the land, a ragged fenwoman, but a Japanese businessman holding a delicate camera1.
In broken English, this “Mr. Takai” of the “Tokyo Company” welcomed the audience to the Fens and delivered a blunt exposé of the land’s historical development and current market value. He introduced the 17th-century landlords who drained the Fens as “far thinking…brave investors” and the “wild people” living and laboring on the land as inferior brutes with “no vision.” Then, in an impressively long relative clause, he declared the present ownership of the Fens – his. The “Tokyo Company” was there to enjoy the “beautiful English countryside.”2
Off to find a teashop, Mr. Takai never returned to the story. In fact, it seemed like no character, neither the fenwomen nor the men, was aware of his presence as the ultimate possessor of their land, labor, and lives. Yet the specter of this dubious foreigner loomed as the churning machine of global capitalism - the very institution he personified and the play intended to subvert - strangled the humanity of the Fens. Through the Japanese Businessman, the originally western concept of capitalism was both confounded with global economic competition and crippled by the foreigner’s disjointed and accented English. Churchill’s appropriation of Asian identity was undeniably effective, except that this theatrical device operated at the unacknowledged expense of an obscured foreigner deemed threatening and suspicious. Hobbs’ physique as a British woman further disembodied and mystified the Japanese Businessman, rendering him a symbol of the all-pervading public and private constriction that enfolded the people of the Fens. Later in the play, this invisible spectator metamorphosed into the “Chinese radishes” and “Paki” buyers mentioned in an old farmer’s grumble, the same farmer who also speculated on Russians instigating working-class strikes after WWII and the French sending rockets to Argentina in the 1982 Falklands War, displaying equal parts of confusion, agitation, and rejection over these foreign subjects.3 While the ghosts of the 19th-century laborers roamed over the Fens in flesh-and-blood bodies, clutching at the living with a formidable force, the amorphous foreign forces in the play composed a vertiginous phantasmagoria of absurdity and menace, watching the English suffer in ambush.
The Japanese Businessman thus perched on the audience’s mind as an invisible spectator, stirring their anxiety over Asia’s rising power and the world’s changing order in the early 1980s. The proceeding post-war era from 1945 to 1979 was a precarious time for the U.K. to recalibrate its national identity and international relationship. India, Pakistan, Burma, and Ceylon gained independence from the British Empire soon after World War II. NATO bonded the nation to the United States against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Domestically, the state nationalized most industries, encouraged trade unions, and imposed high taxes to provide for a welfare state. Still, large-scale labor strikes broke out in the late 1970s. In the 1979 general election, Margaret Thatcher became the Prime Minister.4 The government was on the cusp of forsaking its previous market interventions, withdrawing from heavy industries, privatizing business, undermining unions, and regulating the increasing number of racial minorities that might “frighten” the nation.5 All the chaos would have eclipsed the peril of the agricultural Fenlands; nonetheless, the Japanese Businessman evaluating the history and struggle so particular to England instantly stamped the Fens onto the global landscape.
The microscopic community of the fenwomen was imbued with the general economic, political, and cultural anxiety of the time. 40 years later, Fen still pounds the hearts of audiences around the world as communities continue to experience the alienation, confusion, and suffocation caused by the lack of social mobility, economic stability, and emotional support. Yet the anti-Japanese sentiment might appear just as vivid for audiences in the United States. In the 1970s and 80s, while America’s heavy industry waned, unemployment rate surged, and national economy staggered (a situation similar to the U.K.), Japanese products swept over consumer electronics and automobile markets. Animosity seeped from the political and economic spheres to mass media and popular culture, leading to an intense wave of “Japan Bashing.” Along the “Buy American” campaigns, signs banning foreign cars were erected in parking lots, and imported vehicles from Honda, Toyota, and Nissan were vandalized.6 In 1987, a group of U.S. congressmen smashed Toshiba products on Capitol Hill.7 Such anti-Japanese violence spilled over to Asian Americans at large: in 1982, the year in which Fen was written, Vincent Chin, a Chinese American assumed to be Japanese, was beaten to death by two white men in Highland Park, Michigan.8 Japanese businessmen also became a particular trope of sinister and avaricious magnates, as seen in Michael Crichton’s murder mystery Rising Sun (1992), its film adaption (1993), and Tom Clancy’s techno-thriller novel Debt of Honor (1994).9
In the 1990s, Japan’s economic decline quelled the anger across the Pacific, and the “Japan Bashing” gradually dissipated as the U.S. galloped along its own economic growth. But the tension did not end: in recent decades, China’s increasing global presence has alarmed American politicians, businessmen, and the general public alike. The COVID pandemic has incited more flagrant anti-Asian hatred and violence. Meanwhile, the Asian American population has grown from 3.7 million in 1980 to 22.9 million in 2019, compounding the century-old metaphor of “yellow peril” that sees Asians as a threat to the security, prosperity, and health of the U.S.10
Now, once again on the stage of Fen, the Japanese Businessman gives his opening speech and vanishes into the 1100-square-mile farmland worth 2,000 pounds per acre in 1983.11 Where is he off to? The play leaves us no clue. Nevertheless, is it possible for us to overcome our suspicion? To face not only the systemic exploitation of the environment, labor, and womanhood on the Fens, but also our anxiety in an increasingly competitive and globalized world, to acknowledge the past and present shadow we have cast upon the foreign bodies? Perhaps then, the trace of the Japanese Businessman would be found.
Wenke (Coco) Huang is a recent graduate from Northwestern University, having majored in Performance Studies and Art History. Born and raised in Beijing, China, she is currently based in Chicago and working as a dramaturg, an independent researcher, a scenic/costume designer, and a puppeteer. She was the Assistant Director of The Island at Court Theatre, and will join the production of The Gospel at Colonus as the Production Dramaturg. Other credits include Villette at Lookingglass Theatre (Dramaturg), The Garden of the Phoenix for Lookingglass’ 50 Wards (Puppeteer), and The Seagull at Steppenwolf Theatre (Assistant Dramaturg).
Sources:
[1] Caryl Churchill, Churchill Plays : Two (London: Bloomsbury, 1990) 145-146.
[2] Churchill 147.
[3] Churchill 170.
[4] David Dutton, British Politics Since 1945: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of Consensus, 2nd ed.(London: Blackwell, 1997).
[5] Margaret Thatcher, interviewed by Gordon Burns, Granada TV. January 27, 1978.
[6] Brian Niiya, Japanese American History: an A-to-Z reference from 1868 to the present ( New York: Facts on File, 1993) 362.
[7] T.R. Reid, “Boycott Toshiba Computers, But Don't Let Congress Force You,” Washington Post, July 13, 1987. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1987/07/13/boycott-toshiba-computers-but-dont-let-congress-force-you/a6130b8a-7be4-4737-8150-adc74e53443b/
[8] Niiya 117.
[9] Niiya 362.
[10] Abby Budiman, “Asian Americans Are the Fastest-Growing Racial or Ethnic Group in the U.S. Electorate,” Pew Research Center, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/05/07/asian-americans-are-the-fastest-growing-racial-or-ethnic-group-in-the-u-s-electorate/
[11] Churchill 147.
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Theatre & Thought was a series of discussions conducted between Fen's Production Dramaturg, Derek Matson, and a number of experts: Dr. Siân Adiseshiah, Mary Chamberlain, and Director Vanessa Stalling. In these chats, we get a glimpse into Churchill's artistic style, the history of the Fens, and the questions preceding a rehearsal process. Each of these conversations sheds light on a different facet of this production, and each of them is a useful tool to understanding one of Churchill's most ambitious works.
Below are three excerpts that (literally) set the stage for this production and, when you purchase a ticket to Fen, you will be given access to the full recording of each discussion.
After a years-long hiatus, we can't wait to join you in the Fens.
Dr. Siân Adiseshiah is a Senior Lecturer in English and Drama at Loughborough University in the UK and author of Churchill’s Socialism: Political Resistance in the Plays of Caryl Churchill. This text was then used by Derek Matson in his dramaturgy for Court's production of Fen. Below is a brief excerpt from their conversation, in which they discuss what makes Caryl Churchill such a unique theatrical voice.
Mary Chamberlain is a novelist, historian, and author of the international bestseller The Dressmaker’s War. Chamberlain’s first book, the highly acclaimed Fenwomen: A Portrait of Women in an English Village was the first to be published by Virago Press in 1975, and was an inspiration for Caryl Churchill’s award-winning play Fen. In their Theatre & Thought discussion, Derek Matson and Mary Chamberlain outline the storied history of the Fens themselves, Mary Chamberlain's personal history to this region, and the inspiration for her seminal text, Fenwomen.
Vanessa Stalling is the director of Court Theatre's production of Fen, having most recently directed Titanic: Scenes from The British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry, 1912 and Photograph 51 at Court. Here, Derek Matson and Vanessa talk through the dramaturgical scaffolding of the play, the moments that might be challenging, and the moments that are particularly exciting.
Fen runs from Feb 10, 2023 — Mar 05, 2023 and tickets are available now. Full recordings of each Theatre & Thought discussion are included with purchase.
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The songs included on this playlist won't be included in the production itself; rather, this playlist is intended to be an entry point into the world of the play and the characters within. The playlist is presented as one unit, with individual songs representing different characters. Below, each song is listed in relation to what character/theme it parallels, along with a brief discussion pointing out these similarities.
*Note: As with several of Churchill’s plays, Fen has a large cast of characters. For the purposes of this playlist, we chose to focus only on a select few, specifically those who most of the play revolves around.
Fen runs from Feb 10, 2023 — Mar 05, 2023 and tickets are available now.
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Caryl Churchill’s 1983 play, Fen, opens with an address to the audience by a Japanese businessman. He speaks to us as though we are interested investors in the “most expensive earth in England,” the Fens of East Anglia. The businessman tells us that this “efficient, flat land” belongs to a multinational corporation, which belongs to a land trust, whose ownership is shared among five other corporations. By addressing us as fellow transnationals, Churchill’s prologue positions the audience as dislocated participants in the movement of capital. We are not addressed as members of a nation or community, but of as members of a corporation within a chain of corporations. The Japanese businessman—who notably introduces himself as a member of the “Tokyo Company,” not a resident of Tokyo—articulates our shared allegiance with those “brave” and “far thinking men” who drained the Fens in 1630 despite radical opposition from the “fen people” who wanted to keep the fens and its natural resources “to live on.” While a prologue typically serves to establish the audience in both space and time, Churchill’s prologue instead delocalizes and detemporalizes our relationship to the Fens. In so doing, she delivers a sense of “space-time compression,” a noted effect of globalization and what is now referred to as neoliberalism. 1
While not yet aggregated under this term in 1983, neoliberalism is an economic policy whose popularity is attributed in large part to Thatcher and Regan. It entails the withdrawal of the state and the outsourcing of decision making to supposedly “neutral” forces and bodies, whether the free market— governed by the vague and abstract force of “competition”—or regulatory institutions like the IMF or World Bank, which presumably privilege the “market” over the agendas of nation-states. The agents of globalization are un-localized and obscure—the spread of the free market across the globe is often narrativized as the inevitable progress of history, not the consequence of decided actions by government officials, corporate bodies, or regulatory institutions. However, if power and influence is dizzyingly diffused under globalization, it is simultaneously hyper-concentrated in the individual. The individual, in this model, is fundamentally self-interested and competitive. Citizens under neoliberalism are, in words of Wendy Brown, “entrepreneurs in every aspect of life.”2
However, the terms of neoliberal subjectivity were not yet consolidated when Churchill was writing Fen. If liberal subjectivity takes up rational critical discourse as the cornerstone of political social life, neoliberal subjectivity locates citizenship in terms of strategically navigating capitalism to amplify one's personal economic gain. In other words, while liberal democratic governance assumes that subjects negotiate their differing moral, economic, and political sensibilities through political debate, elections, and participation in the public sphere, neoliberalism subsumes all moral and political ideals under an economic one. Our moral and political behaviors should be calculated exclusively in accordance with the potential for economic gain. Or in the words of Fen’s Miss Cade, who visits Tewson’s farm to convince him to sell his land and become a tenant on his family’s farm: “Think of us as yourself.” Tewson, thus alleviated from his duty to “hold this land in trust for the nation,” and for fear of going “too far in the public responsibility direction” is freed to pursue is own self-interest: “No problem getting a new tractor then.” By telling Tewson to “think of us as yourself,” Miss Cade elides a sense of connection and belonging—think of us both as the same—with an appeal to act only for oneself and forget the “nation” or the “public”—there is no “us,” only a “you.” In other words, Miss Cade invites Tewson to join a neoliberal public that is not one—rather, it is only a disaggregated set of individuals acting alone.
Churchill masterfully navigates the wobbliness between a liberal democratic and neoliberal conception of individual agency during a time when the terms of the later were being negotiated in relation to the former. In the words of performance scholar Elin Diamond, Churchill delivers “what it feels like to live…at a time when multinational capital, not political debate, destabilizes the psychic and social frameworks of human connection.”3 We not only watch Tewson negotiate his allegiance to the nation versus his allegiance to himself; Churchill also parodies of the kind of discursive negotiation of a moral, political, and economic agenda that liberal democracy upholds (and neoliberalism collapses). Frank, a tenant farmer on Tewson’s land, appeals to Tewson to raise his wages. Frank leverages the threat of joining the union or leaving to work in a factory, while Tewson argues that he and Frank are friends, even family, seeing as his dad worked for his dad. However, what might be staged as a form of liberal debate—a negotiation of economic interests, moral obligation, and social belonging—is actually Frank having a conversation with himself. The imagined encounter ends with Frank getting so worked up he punches Tewson in the face, that is, “he hits himself.”
Fen reproduces its moment in history as one of unstable political identity—between being a national versus global citizen, an individualist entrepreneur versus a member of a public, an “us” versus a “you.”
Marissa Fenley is Harper-Schmidt Fellow Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Committee on Theater and Performance Studies (TAPS). She received her PhD from the University of Chicago in 2022, and has been teaching at the University of Chicago since that same year. Marissa’s current book project begins from a rather simple observation: puppets, with varying degrees of success, replicate people. As a predominantly anthropomorphic project, American puppetry in the 20th and 21st centuries borrows from various conceptions of what a person is in order to convincingly reproduce or renegotiate these dynamics through artificial, mechanized means. Marissa is also a puppeteer and her artistic work explores how puppetry assigns degrees of agency to objectified bodies and is especially interested in producing work that investigates power dynamics and their historical sedimentation.
Sources:
[1] David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990).
[2] Wendy Brown, "Neo-liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy," Theory & Event 7, no. 1 (2003).
[3] Elin Diamond, “Caryl Churchill: Feeling Global” in A Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama, 1800-2005, ed. Mary Luckhurst (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006).
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The ending of Fen seems to come out of nowhere. Called “an explosion of the feminine pressure cooker” by Director Vanessa Stalling, at first glance, the play’s conclusion seems to be a dramatic non-sequitur. Look a little closer, however, and you see it makes complete sense. It is the combination of feminine embodied labor, the intersection of gender and economics, motherhood, and community. It is the culmination of an intricate, incisive story; a story with its roots (excuse the pun) in Mary Chamberlain’s seminal work, Fenwomen: A Portrait of Women in an English Village.
Fenwomen is an oral history of the women laborers of East Anglia, the region of the Fens. The first book to be published by the feminist press, Virago, this work chronicled the history of the land and the women who worked it. Speaking of its publication in 1975, Chamberlain explains, “Women’s history was starting to be a new field, so there were very few conventional sources that you could use; one of the ways that history could be found, of course, was in memories.” Connecting with the women of this community and giving them a chance to share their stories, their memories, and their lived experiences “was all part of the feminist project of reclaiming women’s lives and giving voice to those who’d been historically disenfranchised.”
The stories that emerged were striking. Severe economic hardship, limited opportunity, and hard labor existed alongside joy, love, intricate networks of support, and tight community ties. Just as Chamberlain shares these insights in her book, Caryl Churchill echoes identical themes in Fen. We see how the pressures of gender shape and distort personhood. We see how the exploitation of the land mirrors the exploitation of its laborers. And we see the resulting distrust of outside forces and institutions.
In the play (as in Chamberlain’s book and as in life), these are people who are dead-set on protecting their land and their community - sometimes to a fault. As dramaturg Derek Matson explains, “The community itself was described in so many of the women's accounts [in Fenwomen] as a force that can sometimes protect them when they were in moments of desperation, sometimes even starvation. They would get help from their neighbors and, on the other hand, it’s sometimes a really repressive force, this community. It surveils them and it wants to police their behavior.”
In Churchill’s Fen, this is most obvious in the character of Val. Throughout the course of the production, we understand her strong ties to the community alongside her desperate need to break free of it. For Val, as for real-life fenwomen, there’s no guarantee that life outside of the Fens will be any more satisfying or lucrative. These are women who have a very specific set of skills and a very specific network, neither of which is easily transferable to a new context. As such, the pressures keeping Val in the Fens are just as real as her reasons to leave, exposing the intersecting and compounding impacts of labor, community, and opportunity.
These impacts can feel hopeless or paralyzing, without question. However, to characterize them solely as such is doing the women of this community a disservice. It erases their agency, reduces their relentless pursuit of a better life to a fruitless exercise, when this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
To quote Mary Chamberlain: “We have to remember that people do survive, people are resilient. The resourcefulness, the camaraderie, the fact that it was these women who kept these communities going. We need to remember that, and acknowledge that…It’s women who do this, who support our society, who are the bedrock of our society. The kinds of worlds that women inhabit, create, and perpetuate - they may not be perfect, but they are perpetuating. ”
When you step into the world of Fen, you’re stepping into one of these worlds, as imperfect and beautiful as it may be. Welcome.
Mary Chamberlain is a novelist, historian, and author of the international bestseller, The Dressmaker of Dachau (UK)/ The Dressmaker’s War (US). Chamberlain’s first book, the highly acclaimed Fenwomen: A Portrait of Women in an English Village was the first to be published by Virago Press in 1975, and was an inspiration for Caryl Churchill’s award-winning play Fen. Chamberlain holds degrees from the University of Edinburgh, the London School of Economics and Royal Holloway, University of London, as well as an honorary D. Litt from the University of East Anglia. She has lived in the UK and the Caribbean, is Emeritus Professor of Caribbean History at Oxford Brookes University, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and has been a member of a range of academic, editorial and government advisory boards. She now lives in London.
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First things first: what is a fen? A fen is a wetland saturated by freshwater rivers that have passed through mineral soils. These waters carry with them decaying bits of vegetation—mosses, reeds, shrubs, and trees—which settle at the bottoms of their riverbeds and floodplains, creating layer upon layer of nutrient-rich peat. A fen is technically different from a bog, whose water source is rainfall; or a swamp, which is forested with woody vegetation; or a marsh, which does not necessarily accumulate peat.1 Each of these environments has its own unique ecosystem.
The Fens are a region on the east coast of England, about 70 miles north of London, surrounding a bay known as the Wash and straddling the counties of Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, and Lincolnshire. The Fens encompass some 1,100 square miles of territory, and these lands lie at the convergence of several important rivers, where they pour into the sea—the Great Ouse, the Nene, the Welland, and the Witham. Taken with their tributaries, these rivers collectively drain one-eighth of England’s land area2. In the not terribly flattering words of Daniel Defoe, the Fens are “the Sink of no less than thirteen counties.”3
Through the Middle Ages until the 16th century, much of the Fens consisted of “common wastes,” lands that were not earmarked for any specific purpose and which were considered to belong to everyone. Fenland inhabitants developed ingenious strategies for thriving on these communal lands and for living in tandem with the cycles of flooding that seasonally overtook their region. They navigated their way from place to place atop stilts; they farmed reeds and sedge to make thatching for rooftops; they dug up and dried out peat for selling and burning as fuel; they caught waterfowl, fish, and eels.4 Against incredible odds, they successfully cultivated a delicate balance with their natural landscape, which served them in good stead for many a century.
That all changed in 1630, when King Charles I, in need of cash, allowed himself to be persuaded that if the Crown just drained the Fens, then profits aplenty would be in the offing. Wealthy investors were champing at the bit to transform the Fens’ “wasted,” shared wetlands into “productive,” privatized farms and pastures.5 With the Crown’s blessing, Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden swooped in to rid the Fens of their pesky fens, and to generate entirely new plots of arable real estate out of tracts of land reclaimed from the waters of the Great Ouse and the North Sea. Fen cottagers and smallholders did their utmost to sabotage this profiteering takeover of their way of life, smashing sluices and silting up drainage ditches while they were still under construction. But in the end, the locals were no match for the early-modern rise of global capital and the burgeoning empire’s hunger to commandeer natural resources. The Fens indeed were drained, the newly enclosed estates were divvied up among the venture’s well-heeled backers, and the project’s completion gave rise to the map of England we know today. Writing of the episode in her recent book Fen, Bog, and Swamp, Annie Proulx laments, “It has to be the oldest story in the world—taking ‘worthless’ lands from people deemed defective and inferior.”6
From these already storied instances of their rebellion, people from the Fens earned a reputation for being fighters and agitators, known popularly as Fen Tigers. Their ongoing catalog of labor uprisings further bore out this notoriety. In the “Bread or Blood” Riots of 1816, which rocked the Fenland burgs of Littleport and Ely, laborers and their families, ravaged by inflation and unemployment after the Napoleonic Wars, busted into shops of millers and butchers in order to steal and redistribute food. During the Swing Riots of the 1830s, farm laborers protested starvation wages by setting fire to employers’ haystacks and mutilating their livestock in the night. These acts of resistance were especially frequent and ferocious in the Fens, where incidents of arson and animal maiming took place well into the 1840s, long after the Swing disturbances had been quelled in other regions.7 Between 1906 and 1908, the early branches of the National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers were established in Norfolk by labor organizer George Edwards, who rode his bicycle over 6,000 miles around the Fens enlisting new recruits to join the movement.8 (You’ll hear the character of Ivy make reference to this.)
Though these glimmers of defiance might gratify the much-vaunted legend of the Fen Tiger, the region’s socioeconomic reality has long remained mired in poverty and patterns of labor exploitation. The gangmaster system of farming, whereby landowners contract a mercenary intermediary to secure and oversee gangs of workers for temporary agricultural needs, was an invention of the 19th-century Fens, where large farms needed lots of irregular work. Gangmasters came to be common all over rural England, though, in due course, they were reviled as so unscrupulous that their use fell into disrepute. For several decades in the 20th century, gangmasters disappeared from the UK labor landscape altogether, only to return with a vengeance in the early 1980s—in, of all places, the Fens.
Writing Fen in late 1982, Caryl Churchill had so many reasons for inviting us to consider a constellation of characters rooted in these manipulated wetlands. Margaret Thatcher was soon to be at the peak of her political powers, eagerly undertaking a massive scheme to privatize state utilities, public housing, and national industries. Growing awareness of human-caused damage to the environment was sparking heated conversation about agricultural corporatization and the defiling of public lands. The reemergence of rural labor gangs, which at that time consisted mostly of women, underscored the gendered stakes in the unevenly lucrative and increasingly globalized industry of food production. Sadly, the questions of economic inequality, climate change, and the gender pay gap are no less relevant now than they were then. Fen invites us to consider how its characters’ exploited circumstances are cognate to the land’s, and how they are ghosted, quite literally, by the land’s painful histories of greed. By its conclusion, the play dares us to reimagine their situations altogether, and to consider the ecstatic possibility of what it might be like, for them and for us, to reclaim emotions and desires, and to persist in progressing forward without ever, in the words of Nell late in the play, turning back for anyone.
Derek Matson is a dramaturg and translator of theater and opera. His Chicago dramaturgy credits include Photograph 51, The Mousetrap, and Titanic: Scenes from The British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry, 1912 (Court Theatre); The Wheel (Steppenwolf); United Flight 232 (The House Theatre); and Columbinus (American Theater Company), among many others. Derek studied acting at the Cours Florent in Paris. His translations of French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, German, and Catalan have been featured on ARTE in France and at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, and Wolf Trap Opera. He’s a former recipient of a Fulbright Assistantship to France and a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship to Russia.
Sources:
[1] William J. Mitsch and James G. Gosselink, Wetlands (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2015) 34-35.
[2] Eric H. Ash, The Draining of the Fens: Projectors, Popular Politics, and State Building in Early Modern England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2017) 25.
[3] Quoted in Jacquelin Burgess, “Filming the Fens: A Visual Interpretation of Regional Character,” Valued Environments, Eds. John R. Gold and Jacquelin Burgess (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982) 44.
[4] See Ash 2-6.
[5] Ash 9.
[6] Annie Proulx, Fen, Bog, and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis (New York: Scribner, 2022) 61.
[7] John E. Archer, “Under Cover of Night: Arson and Animal Maiming,” The Unquiet Countryside, Ed. G. E. Mingay (London: Routledge, 1989) 65-79.
[8] Howard Newby, Green and Pleasant Land? Social Change in Rural England (London: Hutchinson, 1979) 140.
" ["post_date"]=> string(19) "2023-01-06 14:29:48" ["post_excerpt"]=> string(0) "" ["post_parent"]=> int(0) ["post_status"]=> string(7) "publish" ["post_title"]=> string(12) "The Fenlands" ["post_type"]=> string(4) "post" ["slug"]=> string(18) "never-turning-back" ["__type":protected]=> NULL ["_edit_lock"]=> string(13) "1676492619:16" ["_thumbnail_id"]=> string(5) "19826" ["_edit_last"]=> string(2) "16" ["_yoast_wpseo_content_score"]=> string(2) "30" ["_yoast_wpseo_estimated-reading-time-minutes"]=> string(1) "6" ["_yoast_wpseo_wordproof_timestamp"]=> string(0) "" ["add_feed"]=> string(1) "0" ["_add_feed"]=> string(19) "field_5939a562bed44" ["article_description"]=> string(180) "Production Dramaturg Derek Matson provides an overview of the history and socioeconomic context surrounding FEN, while encouraging audiences to imagine a different, brighter future" ["_article_description"]=> string(19) "field_5927045f742d7" ["article_byline"]=> string(37) "by Derek Matson, Production Dramaturg" ["_article_byline"]=> string(19) "field_592de516b020a" ["_yoast_wpseo_primary_category"]=> string(2) "14" ["_oembed_6226db780ec11fb1efa96aa417a1ad7e"]=> string(281) "" ["_oembed_time_6226db780ec11fb1efa96aa417a1ad7e"]=> string(10) "1673085312" ["_oembed_d2441dbea17b2a931651d44757c0a9ff"]=> string(272) "" ["_oembed_time_d2441dbea17b2a931651d44757c0a9ff"]=> string(10) "1673085312" ["_oembed_0b8a25555d3b8ed309bc80e993399f6b"]=> string(324) "" ["_oembed_time_0b8a25555d3b8ed309bc80e993399f6b"]=> string(10) "1673085312" ["_oembed_327b4813bb56fbb645a76c792048e051"]=> string(323) "" ["_oembed_time_327b4813bb56fbb645a76c792048e051"]=> string(10) "1673085312" ["_oembed_88825ab694fd464ff369fda66d6ab4f8"]=> string(323) "" ["_oembed_time_88825ab694fd464ff369fda66d6ab4f8"]=> string(10) "1673085312" ["post_date_gmt"]=> string(19) "2023-01-06 20:29:48" ["comment_status"]=> string(4) "open" ["ping_status"]=> string(6) "closed" ["post_password"]=> string(0) "" ["post_name"]=> string(18) "never-turning-back" ["to_ping"]=> string(0) "" ["pinged"]=> string(0) "" ["post_modified"]=> string(19) "2023-01-30 17:50:17" ["post_modified_gmt"]=> string(19) "2023-01-30 23:50:17" ["post_content_filtered"]=> string(0) "" ["guid"]=> string(37) "https://www.courttheatre.org/?p=19386" ["menu_order"]=> int(0) ["post_mime_type"]=> string(0) "" ["comment_count"]=> string(1) "0" ["filter"]=> string(3) "raw" ["status"]=> string(7) "publish" } [7]=> object(Timber\Post)#3839 (51) { ["ImageClass"]=> string(12) "Timber\Image" ["PostClass"]=> string(11) "Timber\Post" ["TermClass"]=> string(11) "Timber\Term" ["object_type"]=> string(4) "post" ["custom"]=> array(13) { ["_edit_lock"]=> string(13) "1681504201:16" ["_edit_last"]=> string(2) "16" ["add_feed"]=> string(1) "0" ["_add_feed"]=> string(19) "field_5939a562bed44" ["article_description"]=> string(106) "Get a glimpse inside Director Vanessa Stalling's hopes, goals, and inspirations for Caryl Churchill's FEN." ["_article_description"]=> string(19) "field_5927045f742d7" ["article_byline"]=> string(50) "by Camille Oswald, Associate Director of Marketing" ["_article_byline"]=> string(19) "field_592de516b020a" ["_yoast_wpseo_content_score"]=> string(2) "30" ["_yoast_wpseo_estimated-reading-time-minutes"]=> string(2) "12" ["_yoast_wpseo_wordproof_timestamp"]=> string(0) "" ["_yoast_wpseo_primary_category"]=> string(2) "14" ["_thumbnail_id"]=> string(5) "20089" } ["___content":protected]=> NULL ["_permalink":protected]=> NULL ["_next":protected]=> array(0) { } ["_prev":protected]=> array(0) { } ["_css_class":protected]=> NULL ["id"]=> int(19347) ["ID"]=> int(19347) ["post_author"]=> string(2) "16" ["post_content"]=> string(19902) "Associate Director of Marketing Camille Oswald interviewed Director Vanessa Stalling about her approach to Fen, and the resulting conversation was equal parts cerebral and creative, bouncing from socialism and bodily autonomy to magic and crayons. Read the excerpt below to learn about Stalling’s approach and the importance of dreaming - particularly in dark times.
This play has been in process for quite some time. It was originally programmed as part of Court’s 2020/21 season, but we all know how that turned out, and then there was a virtual reading of it as part of our Theatre & Thought series in 2020. Given that history, how are you feeling about staging this production now? You finally get to do it!
Right! This production was originally planned pre-pandemic, so I've been thinking about this play, and wondering, and dreaming, about this play for a long time. A lot longer than I have the opportunity to do with most plays.
You've been able to kind of luxuriate in it for a little bit.
Yeah. It’s also allowed me to really witness the play’s…I don't know if “adaptability” is the right word, maybe “transformational quality”? There was a relevance to it pre-pandemic that was drawing me, and now, there’s a whole other set of relevance.
When we were first thinking about this play, it was definitely in the air that perhaps women's agency and bodily autonomy could be even more limited, but here we are at the end of 2022, at a time where so many women do not legally have agency over their own bodies. The play now speaks to that tension in a very different way. So, if I think about the engine that’s propelling this play for me, it’s the tension that lies in possibility. Val, moment to moment, is seeking what is possible in absolutely impossible circumstances. It’s that drive of, “I deserve more. I should be able to dream, I should be able to follow my will, I should be able to follow my love.” That feels like an incredibly powerful thing.
I have to find the pillar that I’ll hang onto through all the unknowns in a creative process, and the thing that the team and I have been using is the idea that, in a system that dehumanizes, the only way to resist that is to re-humanize. Part of what that re-humanizing is, I think, is our responsibility for one another; you know, the show is very much made up of choices where the women in particular, but really everyone - every single person - is forced to make choices out of economic necessity over love.
With Frank and Val in particular, this has led us to have a really strong point of view about the ending. We see it as an act of love - by Frank, for Val. That, to us, is the most powerful act of re-humanization because it resists systems that dehumanize, so…capitalism. I had a great conversation with our intimacy and violence choreographers about the storytelling of an act of love, the storytelling in that moment. Val simply asks Frank for something. He listens to what she wants. He does what she wants. His actions say, “I see you and I hear you, and I will do what you are asking of me, even though it's incredibly hard.”
That act of love is so powerful, that it actually opens up this whole other portal of what we’re calling “the feminine pressure cooker”, which we see at the end of the play. All this incredible possibility that women are shoving down because they can't prioritize it - they're just pushing it down and ignoring it, and avoiding it - and then it's released. And when that pressure cooker is released, it’s beautiful and dark at the exact same time. You know, it's just exploding out, which can be scary! If we were able to hang around for a couple decades after the play, maybe we'd be in a pretty cool place, but at the moment that the play completes, it's just explosive!
Taking that idea of the pressure cooker: throughout the play, we’re made aware of this whole other world that exists just beyond where we currently are. As the play goes on, that line gets increasingly blurred, as evidenced by the magical and surreal elements - the songs, the ghosts - employed by Churchill. Could you share what it is about these techniques that’s interesting to you? What is it about Fen and Churchill’s writing that pulls you to her work in the first place?
Oh, so many things! There's a specificity to her work, but, at the exact same time, she leaves these huge gaps left for artists to bring her work to whatever is the next moment in time. That allows you to craft a performance that’s both super specific and also really in-depth. Like, she includes all of these moments of intense labor history, and then she also includes ghosts, girls singing, and moments of an incredible magic portal that feel very different to some of the naturalist moments that came prior to that. That challenge of grappling with such specificity, such depth, and such openness is super exciting.
Thinking about her work as an artistic challenge is, of course, really attractive to me, but even just the ideas of the play are really interesting, too. They feel so relevant when thinking about feminine agency and how our current way of working is so dehumanized. What we create, our output, our labor is so distanced from any sense of ownership, and the isolation that causes seems important to revisit.
Talking about her techniques, it was helpful for me - and I don't actually even know if this was right, she might be like, “Oh my god, that's not right at all” - but it was very helpful for me to think of expressionism because of the play’s episodic nature. It feels like it follows a structure of, We're in a pretty bad situation and it just gets worse no matter what the hell you do.
Every scene is a moment of resisting the thing that’s making life impossible. It was helpful for me to think about it structurally in that way, which then led me to thinking about how that's going to manifest in the dynamic physicality of the piece, in the tension between what feels organic and natural, and what feels like a hyper-color. These are working against each other in a way, or complimenting or contrasting each other, and creating an energy. Also the ghosts! They start to feel less magical, and more just a reality. We’re created by all of the generations that precede us, right? So their systems of working and what happened to them is in us, too. To me, it doesn't necessarily feel magical, as much as it just feels like the world. This play shows how my actions right now are going to impact someone hundreds of years from now.
You're going to be someone else's ghost.
Right, exactly. My actions will immediately impact somebody generations from now, and now suddenly I have way more responsibility when I think about my choices through the lens of generational impact. That, to me, is what's at the heart of Churchill’s socialism, this sense of responsibility that we have for one another. I have to find the active thing about a show and that, to me, feels very active. It's just inherent; the world would be a better place if we took care of each other, and through the thin layer of the ghosts, and hope, and potential, we see that change is possible. There wouldn't be a point in telling a story of our responsibility for each other if there wasn't a real, strong belief that our world could be pretty different.
I like what you said about her socialism being very active. How do you take these concepts that can be fairly lofty and academic - like socialism, capitalism, and bodily autonomy - and activate them in a text? What’s your process of identifying these big themes and then translating them into an onstage experience that’s visceral, and alive, and relatable?
It's really about the environment that the characters are in and, essentially, the circumstances that they can respond to. That's the only thing that you need to make drama interesting: somebody trying to do something. So, we have to find what it is that they're struggling to do from moment to moment. That naturally propels the action; if we just talked about the ideas of the play, we wouldn't be serving them. That struggle is what’s going to resonate with the audience. And then, as a director, returning to the idea that every moment in the play is either a choice for economic necessity or a choice for love, and that love can hold something huge from scene to scene, whether that's a dream, or a desire or the line in the play where a child simply says, “I'd like new colors.” To me, that represents dreams and agency, but also the conflict of having to admit, “You know, we can't get you new colors right now.”
You have a background as a dancer, which is a whole other means of storytelling. In a play that’s so embodied, how does the movement in this play take on new meaning to you?
I'm curious about the work that the women are doing. When I did Photograph 51, it was super important that we were constantly seeing Rosalind work, like the literal activity of the labor she was doing. She was working all the time. And the men were…not. It’s important to show the contrast of her body in space against the mens’ bodies.
There's a similar activity here: the women's bodies are at work all the time. They're also in a lower position, they're literally within the earth. So it then becomes - and we'll see if it works - a contrast. You see women working the earth, on the ground, pulling out potatoes. That’s then contrasted with the next scene, where we see Frank on a tractor, on a machine. He literally gets to be at a higher level. There’s a transition moment with Shirley (one of the characters in the play) where I want to see her kitchen get formed around her while she's packing onions, so that she literally turns around, changes from her onion apron to her domestic apron, and boom: she's at work again.
It's the second shift.
Yeah. We're watching female bodies in this position of work that is constant and at a different level, literally, from the men in the same environment. That then has to build to the question of: how are we showing the power of those women’s bodies in space? Thinking about Nell, another character, walking on stilts: how can women move through space propelled by power?
That makes me think of how communication between groups of women and femme people can be very different, very collaborative. You find new ways of moving through the world and moving through power dynamics; it’s out of necessity, for sure, but the result can be really beautiful. So, in the case of Nell, when she’s walking on stilts, she’s found a new way of moving through the Fens, a more efficient way, a way that’s more aligned with the land and the human body. There’s no removal. She’s not in a car, she’s not in a tractor.
That's absolutely right. With the Fens, we see a land that’s been forced to be something it isn't. So seeing Frank on that tractor is super important, because we see machinery and the manipulation of land, versus how the fen-folk originally crossed the lands. By walking on stilts, they were engaging with the land in an organic way.
It's making do with what you have, and finding new solutions, right? Which maps back onto our earlier discussion of bodily autonomy and possibility; just because there are setbacks, doesn’t mean you stop trying. It’s all connected! Everything relates to everything else!
Which just speaks to Churchill's brilliance! Maybe it’s because her plays are able to hold such a depth of history and social circumstance that they're able to speak to so many different generations. She shows you how the struggle that was happening, at that moment in time, is relevant to our current struggles. That’s hopefully what will be projected.
Circling back to the line in the play where the young girl says, “I want different colors,” what colors do you want? What do you hope for?
Oh. It’s interesting to think about dreaming during this time. The darker our world gets, the harder it is to find inspiration, but creative problem-solving and imagination are going to be how we make the world a better place. I will say that I want my box of crayons to be made of these like, beaming lights of inspiration and gratitude.
I mean, to be able to work at a theatre that’s excited about such artistic risks as this play, to be able to work with this incredibly talented cast, and the designers, and the creative team - I’m very thankful to be able to be at a place that is so, so supportive. Supportive of artistic risk-taking, and then also supportive of necessary storytelling. Thinking about how I need inspiration in order to keep on going, I feel very much surrounded by a team of folks who are inspiring me. They are my box of crayons, and I hope I’m a good crayon for my collaborators as well.
Fen runs from Feb 10, 2023 — Mar 05, 2023 and tickets are available now. Join us to experience the power of this tremendous story.
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With a full house and a rapt audience, opening night for The Island was a success! Attendees were captivated, and reviewers' praise was nothing short of effusive, calling this production "profoundly moving," "one of the finest anti-apartheid plays ever penned," and "courageous." We're immensely proud of this production, both for its message and for the fact that it marks Associate Artistic Director Gabrielle Randle-Bent's first solo-directed show at Court, and this is one you won't want to miss.
Join John and Winston. Fight for justice. Get your tickets to The Island today.
“One of the finest anti-apartheid plays ever penned...Ealy and Conner both dive courageously into the quotidian lives of their characters and their relationship is strong enough here to explore one of the play’s most important themes: the skill of the apartheid regime at turning one prisoner against another...The note of hope in this play, and it is rightly centered in this unpretentious and powerful production, is that the human spirit is far harder to defeat than the body. This was a prescient theme, given that this prison’s most famous resident went on to become president of a changed South Africa.”
— Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune, 3.5 out of 4 stars
"Exquisitely paced and intellectually explosive, The Island at Court Theatre is a profoundly moving work of art. From the first moment, this production (directed by Gabrielle Randle-Bent, Court’s associate artistic director) seizes the audience and thrusts them into the world of two political prisoners of apartheid and doesn’t let go, even long after the play (written by Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona) has ended...The Island is a riveting, philosophically sophisticated play that is a must-see for fans of meaty theater."
— Chicago Reader, Reader Recommended
"Brotherhood, tyranny, unjust incarceration, revolution — there’s much to unpack thematically in The Island, but Randle-Bent propels the dialogue with a clarity that shines like a knife and an urgency that can’t be denied...Creativity, solidarity and honor can endure, even in places designed to crush them. In Court’s production, that endurance is grounded in the herculean, intensely physical performances by Conner and Ealy. Movement director Jacinda Ratcliffe powers the production with grueling physicality requiring some serious athleticism. Conner and Ealy deliver it with prowess while still being wholly believable as prisoners battered within an inch of their lives."
— Chicago Sun-Times, 3.5 out of 4 stars
"Everything is top notch in this performance...The real power behind this great production was the new Associate Artistic Director Gabrielle Randle-Bent...She brings out the humanity between these two great actors. You can feel the empathy that she wanted the audience to feel. She brings the authors, John and Winston, to new heights. Athol Fugard wrote the words to the play, but John and Winston are telling the story of their life."
— Around the Town Chicago, 5 out of 5 stars
"Ronald L. Conner (Winston) and Kai A. Ealy (John) provided a masterful performance throughout, and their portrayal of Creon and Antigone was so riveting it was like seeing two plays. Conner, who is without question becoming one of Chicago's must-see male actors, is brilliant as Winston, and his South African accent, was exceptional. Kai A. Ealy was also impressive as John. The thorough [intensity] between the two men honestly had you believing you were in prison with him, battling for freedom."
— Let's Play Theatrical Reviews, Recommended
"Director Gabrielle Randle-Bent brings nuance, drawing out the resilience of humanity against violence without showing violent acts....The transformation that takes place is phenomenal....The Island asks us, as members of a society, to consider how much inhumanity we deem as tolerable. That the answer is “any” shines a light on the fact that, amid unprecedented social progress, we still have work to do."
"Throughout the production, Gabrielle Randle-Bent’s direction remained imaginative and fascinating. You’d expect a two person play to be tight and focused, but Randle-Bent’s guidance also enhanced the play’s urgency and purpose...Both actors deliver shimmering performances. Their words slash with elegant precision, creating a powerful scene of conflict between wills. Just as they do now and they did in ancient Greece, the same battles of domination and resistance have been raging for thousands of years all around the globe."
"[The Island] is receiving a sharp and impressive [re-imagining] at Court Theatre under the excellent direction of Associate Artistic Director Gabrielle Randle-Bent...I remember the scenic designer Yeaji Kim through her work at American Blues’ production of “Fences” as well as her work with Griffin Theatre. She once again shows her unbelievable imagination...The movement of the sun, the unforgiving sun, was perfected by lighting designer Jason Lynch. Michael Keith Morgan is a genius. Kai and Ronald’s South African accents were EXCELLENT! Please see The Island at Court Theatre, it’s as important now as it was 50 years ago."
"It is a testament to the courage of its creators and a reminder of resilience and humanity in the face of adversity...The real payoff comes in the final scene, a searing performance of a truncated Antigone with John's Creon forcefully laying out the state's case, and Winston's Antigone, arguably the first political activist to sacrifice herself for a cause, arguing that there is a moral authority higher than the state."
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Robben Island was a common stopping point for passing ships in the 16th and 17th centuries. After early efforts at settlement, it was made a Dutch, and then a British, penal colony. The island housed a leper colony from 1846 to 1931, and those judged "insane" were also sent there.
The island is oval shaped, two miles long north–south, and one mile wide. It’s flat and only a few meters above sea level as a result of an ancient erosion event. After fortification in 1961, the South African Apartheid government opened a maximum-security prison for political prisoners and convicted criminals, including Nelson Mandela and many other anti-Apartheid activists, until 1996 after the end of Apartheid.
In Court’s production of The Island, Winston’s and John’s cell is represented by reproductions of the standard 1973 items that would have been found within. Shown here: Sleeping mat, two blankets, a bucket to be used for water and waste, and a mug.
All prisoners' letters – received and sent – were strictly controlled by the Censor’s office. The Censor would cut or black out any content that was deemed undesirable. In 1973, prisoners could only read and receive letters written in the official languages recognized by the state – either Afrikaans or English. Communications in other regional languages were forbidden, including Xhosha, the dialect spoken by both Winston and John.
In very harsh conditions of extreme heat and eye-damaging reflective lime, prisoners were forced to perform hard labor in the island’s quarries.
This is where John was able to find materials for the Antigone costumes, including nails for Winston’s Antigone costume necklace.
The Island is on stage at Court Theatre from November 11 – December 4, 2022 → Get Tickets.
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