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Theories Around the Jack the Ripper Case in Berkoff’s Theatre: Reflective Essay
Berkoff’s theatre is commonly known as total theatre. His key conventions were physical theatre, aggressive direct address, archaic text mixed with expletives, monologues with ensemble mime, multi role and cross gender casting, surreal representation of ordinary, settings/events and elaborate transitions
With regards to physical theatre (his most well-known convention) he liked the actors becoming props and even using them to create the scenery. He also liked the actors to create sound effects and use mime. His theatre used a mixture of unison and canon and was also very high energy and tightly choreographed with very abstract and often grotesque movement and expression.
However, his relationship with the audience is also key. He liked to break the fourth wall and often had his actors facing out front to the audience even when talking to another actor on stage. This had many uses, for instance it allowed to audience to see the actor’s expression, but it was also to unsettle the audience and make them uncomfortable, to get a reaction.
Because our devised pieces are based around the work of Berkoff we had to choreograph under his conventions. This means that our piece was very tightly choreographed with over exaggerated movement, physical theatre and even moments of song and Shakespeare.
For example, in the first monologue, we start in a marketplace, there are two characters selling a product and two actors who are customers. We have used song here to create the fast pace intensity of what the markets would have been like, combined with the street actors which were incredibly popular in the 1800s when it is set.
Our devised piece is based on the theories around the Jack the Ripper case. There are a group of 4 American theorists who are debating which of their ideas is the best one to explain who Jack the Ripper was. It switches from the 4 theorists in modern day America into scenes which show the idea each one is presenting set in the 1800s in the east end of London.
Each actor multi roles across time period and gender in order to show each idea and we swap from realism in the modern day to abstract physical theatre in the theories. This allows us a clear distinction between the two main settings.
We do however break up the scenes set in 1800s by referencing back to modern pop culture and using different accents to allow the audience to see the roles have changed for each actor.
For example, in the first monologue, the actor is giving a feminist theory of jack the ripper, she talks about how she is trying to find a husband, “And I’ve hooked many a man by showing my ankle on a wet day.” and the other actors refer back to the modern day to mock the theorist and to explain to the audience what is happening. The actors then all go back into the scene straight away to carry on with the theory.
Berkoff says that East was ‘written in a mood of exaltation and frivolity. It was an experiment in playwriting and an attempt to be bold’. “It is episodic and much like the Falstaff scenes from Shakespeare’s Henry plays. The language uses London slang and verse. The motorbike scene was one of the most beautiful theatre moments ever.” – www.iainfisher.com
East, by Steven Berkoff, is set in 1970 in the east end of London. It shows 3 main characters, Mike Les and Slv fighting against boredom with sex and violent behaviour. They are frightened of ending up like other members of their family but eventually find out that they inevitably will anyway as history repeats itself.
In our piece we had to change our physicality to not only show a change of role, but also a change to time period. We also had to be aware not only of how we were moving, but where the other actors were and how we were moving the stage blocks.
For example, the first scene shows one of the Jack the rippers reading out the “Dear boss” letter. Here, we must really overemphasise what is written in the letter. For example, in the line “You will soon hear of me with my funny little games.” we create a bed with one actor lying down on it, and the other three all play the murderer. They lean across the bed on the word “games” they pull their arms back as if they are cutting up the actress. When they do this movement, the actress pulls her body upstage, in the same direction as the three have mimicked pulling her. This overemphasised movement contrasts to the 4 as American theorists as the movement is much more contained and realistic rather than abstract.
The exception to this is in the final scene. The 4 theorists are discussing which of the 4 theories they have presented is the best one and this is a very naturalistic scene as the four are standing and talking to each other and their physicality matches that of a modern man or woman. But at the end of this modern set, the feminist-based theorist claims she knows who the murderer is, and it transitions into a scene that is still set at the same time but uses the physicality from the 1800s pieces. For example, the murders are performed using slow and large arm gestures and the deaths are shown with large dramatic falls in which we see clearly how they were killed. This is to show the connection between this character and her theory.
“Steven Berkoff forged an outrageous poetry from the collision of Shakespearean rhythms and cockney slang, creating a heightened theatrical vernacular that is at once obscene, audacious, dark and beautiful.” – Posted by Alison Croggon on Witness performance discussion community
Our devised piece is set in Whitechapel in 1800s. This allows us to incorporate Berkoff’s use of cockney slang in a huge way as most our monologues are done in a cockney accent to keep accurate to the cases. However, we also have a theory that is set to the backdrop of the royal family meaning that we must make our voices the opposite of our cockney accents and make our voices incredibly posh. To do this, we worked very hard on our pronunciation and our diction to allow for the over dramatized accent we were aiming for. To practise our diction, we found that saying our lines in a way that was far too over emphasised and then going back to our neutral accents allowed us to find an accent that was both dramatic but also understandable for an audience.
We had two key differences in what our mannerisms and gestures were representing. One was modern day America: this was more naturalistic and less fixed. Here we used smaller gestures and less physical theatre to show that we had gone back to our ‘neutral characters’. If we used gestures, they were smaller more contained and were in context with a naturally set conversation. Incidentally, this was also where our speech was more aimed at each other and less at the audience and was closer to that of a show done under a naturalistic director. Our second main group of characters were the 1800s ripper victims and killers. This second category involved bigger, more melodramatic physicality and was aimed mainly at the audience rather than other actors. For example, at the end of the royalty theory, the actress at the front leaned down and pretended to kill one character by leaning to the ground and sharply moving her face upward while making a ripping noise, she then physically shook out of her 1800s character and turned around to aim her speech at the other actors. This
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