Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

Archive

Volume 2 Number 3, December 2001

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Madness and Signification in A Mouthful of Birds

 by

Laura Nutten

Through madness, a work that seems to drown in the world, to reveal there its non-sense, and to transfigure itself with the features of pathology alone, actually engages within itself the world's time, masters it, and leads it; by the madness which interrupts it, a work of art opens a void, a moment of silence, a question without answer, provokes a breach without reconciliation where the world is forced to question itself.

 - Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization

 

A Mouthful of Birds, written by Caryl Churchill and David Lan, is, to quote Helene Keyssar, "an elaborate theatrical representation of violence" (140), particularly violence enacted by women. A "pathology" of our postmodern world, violence is routinely considered a sort of contemporary "madness." However, as suggested by Foucault, such madness in art rarely functions as a simple mimesis of the world within which that art is created; rather, it serves notice to the world that it must "acknowledge responsibili­ty" for its history and ultimately its future (Keyssar 146). A Mouthful of Birds is no exception: Churchill and Lan use drama to construct a "dangerous history" of gender and gender roles (Keyssar 136), employing madness both to unsettle normative categories of identity and to explore the risks involved in playing within subversive space.

 

Madness, as Francios Boissier de Sauvages suggested in 1772, is 'a blind surrender to our desires' or 'an incapacity to control or to moderate our pas­sions" (cited in Foucault 85). Madness, in short, is an altered state of consciousness, wherein the individual becomes more mindful of his/her carnality and less attentive to restrictive social mores. As such, Foucault argues, madness threatens the Cartesian notions of reason and rationality and is the embodiment of "absolute freedom" (84).  Conversely, however, madness can also be the epitome of imprisonment, for the reality of madness, as James Glass points out, is often one of 'immense suffering, alienation, and distortion' (xv). Madness, then, is a paradox: on the one hand, it allows for a freer agency, often subverting normative cultural forces and discourse systems. On the other hand, when too 'disruptive' or 'dangerous,' madness can also mean the loss of agency, for normative cultural forces often fall back upon the mad, incarcerating it and alienating it from society.

Equally paradoxical in terms of agency is the notion of the postmodern subject. Postmodernism incessantly questions the existence of "an ahistorical transcendent self" or autonomous being (Allen 278), arguing instead for, in Derrida=s words, a subject which is an "effect of forces" outside itself (17). Some critics have adopted this postmodern position in an attempt to understand how identity is constructed by cultural practices. Monique Wittig, for example, argues that feminism should begin with the deconstruction of the "myth of woman" as submissive, sensitive, and nurturing, a myth constructed by the patriarchy and sustained by modern psychology. Moreover, for such a deconstruction to be an effective means of protest, one must make the opposition of man and woman and the construction of that myth "brutally apparent" (31), otherwise the conflict will go unnoticed and no transformation will be possible.

 

One effective means of making such gender myths conspicuous is through performance. As Judith Butler notes, "we see sex and gender denaturalized by means of a performance which avows their distinctness and dramatizes the cultural mechanism of their fabricated unity" (138). Like madness, the postmodern idea of subjectivity, especially when considered as part of a 'performance' of identities, allows for subversive play because it denies the solidity of identity and disrupts institutionally imposed boundary conditions. The potential for change lies in our ability to act new parts within the rubric of constructed identity, or, in Butler=s words, 'to locate strategies of subversive repetition enabled by those constructions, [and] to affirm the local possibilities of intervention through participating in precisely those practices of repetition that constitute identity' (147). Thus, by acting in the world, by incessantly repeating behaviors within the normative constructs which act to challenge those constructs, we can affect change.

The concept of an altogether constructed identity, however, like madness, has a debilitating contingency as well, and A Mouthful of Birds seems to explore an underlying anxiety about the implications of performativity and theatricality when teased out to their extremes. The play dramatizes Butler’s idea of the  "fabricated unity" of gender and is, therefore, a double performance: the performance of the performativity of gender. As such, it offers up the “truth” behind gender identity (that it is socially constructed); however, the play does not blindly accept the revolutionary potential of this apparent truth. Rather, as Herbert Blau suggests of theatre in general, “its reflexive mirror doubles the inadequacy of any truth . . . refusing it as a lie and endowing it with falsehood at once” (432). In other words, though on the one hand the play establishes as “truth” the socially constructed nature of gender, it also questions the possibility of escaping the prison of postmodern subjectivity, wherein the self is always already an "effect of forces" outside itself (Derrida 17). The play questions, in other words, whether altering one’s consciousness (e.g. changing one’s performance) truly is freedom.

Discussing Churchill’s work in general, Kritzer has suggested that the multidimensional nature of theatre allows Churchill to explore “both the surface of social structures and the mental territory beneath that surface” (203). Kritzer’s observation provides a useful framework for exploring Churchill and Lan’s work in A Mouthful of Birds, as well. In A Mouthful of Birds, the staging of the play is mimetic of the mental breakdowns that the character’s experience. In the original production, for example, “the play was set on two levels of a dilapidated house” (Churchill and Lan, “notes” 18). The house is open in the front, allowing us to see into the characters’ broken down living space, much like we see into their broken down mental space as the characters experience their respective possessions.  In addition, the structure of the play is symbolic of the functioning of the mind. Kritzer points out that “the form of the play frustrates audience expectations for a unified and coherent narrative . . . the performance involves the audience in a disconnected sequence of scenes and images associated with dream and madness” (Kritzer 214). For example, Part One consists of eight short scenes entitled “Skinning a rabbit,” “Telephone,” Weightlifting,” “Sleep,” “Profit,” “Angels,” “Home,” and “Excuses” (19-23). In the first scene, Lena and Roy are examining a dead white rabbit and discussing how to prepare it for a meal. Scene two pictures Marcia working a switchboard and juggling four conversations at once: one with the audience, in which she tells us she’s desperate; one with a client, whom she seems to brush off; a third with her inappropriately forward boss, “Colin,” who comments on the snug fit of her trousers; and a forth with an unnamed caller, to whom she speaks in a “West Indian Accent.” Scene three shows Derek lifting weights with another man while they discuss Derek’s difficulties in finding a job. In scene four, Yvonne performs acupuncture on a tense client who slips into baby talk as she works on him. Paul and his mother-in-law are playing chess and discussing profit and loss in scene five. In scene six, Dan and a woman discuss the ordination of women in the church and the possibility that God may not be a male. Scene seven shows conflict in Doreen and Ed’s relationship, as Doreen has sneaked away from Ed to find a little “peace and quite,” much to Ed’s chagrin. And finally, scene eight pulls all the characters together in three sub-scenes which juxtapose a series of unrelated excuses that each character gives for having to neglect his or her responsibilities and commitments, the excuses getting more absurd with each sub-scene. Though these scenes give the audience some useful insight into the social status of each of the main characters, structurally, they also suggest an exploration of “mental territories.” The scenes are all self contained, there is no traditional plot, and the character’s and their predicaments are all unrelated to each other. In short, the sequence of scenes seems to mirror a stream of consciousness, full of disconnected ideas and free associations.

 

The dimension of characterization also serves the exploration of social structures and their psychological underpinnings. In Part One, the main characters, on the whole, occupy fairly conventional social positions: Marcia is a switchboard operator, Yvonne an acupuncturist; Paul is a businessman, Dan a Vicar; Doreen is a secretary, and Lena a housewife and mother. The one exception is Derek who being unemployed is well removed from the historically powerful, white male position he would otherwise occupy. Nevertheless, all the characters in Part One are essentially "normal," by which I mean they occupy fairly mainstream positions in society and are non-subversive or threatening to the status quo.

As the play moves into Part Two, a shift in consciousness for these characters is evident as each experiences an “undefended day,” a period of time “in which there is nothing to protect you from forces inside and outside yourself” (Churchill, “Author’s Notes” 5). The characters become "possessed" by various spirits and "bacchants" and go mad; that is, they "surrender" to their desires and are unable "to control or to moderate [their] pas­sions" (Foucault 85). Lena, for example, drowns her baby girl after the SPIRIT tells her that only through the baby's death can she (Lena) "get born" (27). And Dan, the vicar, having changed into a woman, quietly "dances" three people with whom "s/he" shares a jail cell to death (41). Paul's possession is a bit less dramatic, but no less out of character for the profit-hungry businessman we met in Part One, who manipulates the meat industry for personal financial gain: he falls in love with a pig. And though he is unable to rescue it from the slaughter house, he does bring the "dead meat" home where it is joyfully reborn (46). The bacchant that takes domination over Yvonne is a bit more symbolic; she is possessed by her addiction to alcohol (a bacchanal reveler’s favorite). Her mother observes that Yvonne is "losing control of [her]self again" and insists that Yvonne is "cutting me [her mother] up bit by bit like a pig,” and though, aside from taking a drink and donning her gold party shoes (signifying her intention to carouse with WOMAN A and WOMAN B) (57), the audience never actually sees Yvonne do anything blatantly irrational, the potential impact of alcoholism on society can not be ignored.

 

Janelle Reinelt suggests that "one way to explode the old hegemony is constantly and vigilantly to practice disruptive or law-expanding behaviors" (52), and the “mad" behavior of the aforementioned characters, most notably Lena, Paul, and Dan, is clearly disruptive. These characters break not only the laws of gender (Lena, because women are "supposed" to protect their children and abstain from violence, Paul because he has a homosexual relationship with a pig, and Dan because he crosses gender boundaries by becoming a woman), but also the laws of the state (both Lena and Dan commit murder and Paul engages in bestiality). Indeed, as Kritzer observes, “the non-rational experience of possession frees each of the characters from her or his artificially constructed self and allows for the possibility of creating new selves” (214). All the characters, then, are transformed in some way, but it is through Derek and Doreen’s possessions that Churchill and Lan most openly challenge traditional gender roles and explore the limitations of madness as a means of liberation.

Though their possessions bear a striking resemblance to those of Dan and Lena earlier in the play, the transformations we see in Derek and Doreen most closely parallel Euripides' Bacchae. In Euripides' play, Dionysus takes possession of all the women of Thebes who have denied his godly descent from Zeus, including Agave, Pentheus’ mother. He "dresse[s] them up as bacchanals, in [his] own orgiastic uniform," and sends them into the mountains to learn "the rites of Bacchus" and to engage in "mad ecstatic rapture" (80 102). Pentheus, having heard of the scandal, returns from abroad only to find that all the women have indeed "left their homes" for the mountains, where they are said to "sneak off one by one to various nooks to lie down—with men" (86). It is clearly the prospect of an expressed female sexuality that infuriates Pentheus, for he refers to the spreading eroticism as "squalid rites" and vows to destroy Dionysus, that "foreign effeminate...who infects our women with a new disease [and] befouls our beds" (87 90). He is never given the chance, however, for Dionysus handily escapes from prison, takes possession of Pentheus himself, dresses him as a woman (on the premise that Pentheus will be able to join the women in their rituals and monitor their behavior), and leads him to the women's encampment where he is subsequently torn limb from limb by the impassioned group, Agave herself severing his head. Finally, after a brief celebration during which she lionizes her "prize," Agave recovers from her "madness," and comprehending her "wicked" deed, repents, begging to "make amends" to her son Pentheus (118-123).

In A Mouthful of Birds, Doreen and Derek are possessed by Agave and Pentheus respectively, and their behaviors closely parallel those of Euripides' characters. Derek, for example, "is dressed as a woman by DIONYSOS 1 and DIONYSOS 2" (58), goes to the mountain to see the women (54), and is ultimately torn to pieces by Agave and the others. Similarly, Doreen and the other women, "possessed by AGAVE and the spirits of three BACCHANTS," perform the dance of "Extreme happiness," during which they experience a "moment of severe physical pleasure" (49). And it is while performing a similar dance of "Extreme Happiness and violence" that they kill Pentheus, Doreen/Agave announcing: "I broke open his ribs. I tore off his head" (69-70).

In spite of these similarities, however, there are significant differences between the two plays. Derek, for example, is not only possessed by Pentheus and dressed as a woman, but further, under the auspices of Dionysos, merges with Herculine Barbin, a nineteenth century hermaphrodite, echoing his/her lines and ultimately assuming his/her role (51-54). Notably Derek's transformation follows the line: "He thought he wasn't a man without a job" (51), suggesting that the rigid gender codes imposed by society have somehow emasculated him. Further, in a seemingly related transformation, after Pentheus' brutal demise, Derek is reborn a woman, and his final lines are vital enough to warrant quoting at length:

My breasts aren't big but I like them. My waist isn't small but is makes me smile. My shoulders are still strong . . . My skin used to wrap me up, now it lets the world in. Was I this all the time? I've almost forgotten the man who possessed this body. I can't remember what he used to be frightened of . . . Every day when I wake up, I'm comfortable. (71).

The ease with which Derek assumes this new role suggests that the male persona acted in Part One is in no way "essential" to his being, a suggestion supported by his rhetorical question, "Was I this all the time?" Further, though Derek becomes a transsexual, it is notable that he has not adopted the stereotypical qualities of the womanly ideal (e.g. read Baywatch) which western culture has constructed: his breasts are small, his waist rather square, and most significantly he is strong. In short, he resembles a hermaphrodite, embodying qualities of both genders, thereby questioning the supposedly essential differences between them.

Janelle Reinelt suggests that "exploding the straight jacket of gender through doing the 'work' of self-inscription on stage, before an audience, is both theoretically and practically a vital, imaginative, political act" (52), and Derek's intimation that s/he is no longer "frightened" suggests that escape from historically rigid gender codes is an emancipatory act as well. Certainly Lena's final lines: "It's nice to make someone alive and it's nice to make someone dead. Either way. That power is what I like best in the world," and her declaration, "I'm not frightened" echo a similar sense of freedom (70). Further, David Lan reminds us that "possession may be an act of resistance," and Derek's and Lena's possession or "madness" has indeed functioned as a protest against fixed gender identities, both having emerged reconstructed outside such conventions.

Yet it is important to note that the characters' transformation is the result of their possession, not any deliberate action on the part of the characters themselves. In fact, throughout most of the play the characters have been powerless to resist the changes that have occurred within them and/or to them. Although Kritzer suggests that the play “reverses the meaning of powerlessness” and that “powerlessness gives the seven characters the capacity to relinquish their old selves, and in the process to change themselves” (215), Susan Bordo argues that such "pathology, as embodied protest...[is a] counterpro­ductive protest without an effective language, voice, or politics" (20). Indeed, tracing Doreen through her pathology and its eventual outcome betrays the unpredictable nature of such “powerless” rebellion. As noted, Doreen is possessed by Agave and, following Euripides' plot line, dismembers her son Pentheus. As with Lena's act of infanticide, Agave's actions subvert traditional gender stereotypes, for she not only kills her own child but acts in an unconventionally violent manner. Furthermore, rather than retreating from her act of passion with despair and returning to the "real" world to repent as Agave does in the original play, Doreen chooses to remain in this peripheral space, elsewhere to convention, announcing: "There's nothing for me there. There never was. I'm staying here," and all the women "turn back and stay" as well (70).

As Churchill herself states, "all the characters change...into new lives that develop from what happened to them while they were possessed" (5), and Reinelt suggests that such a "capacity to choose and shape a variety of subject positions reintroduces agency to the stage . . . demonstrat[ing] how novelty emerges from 'practicing' resistance in performance" (54). This very potential for change, however, also signifies the potential for limitless chaos and/or danger, and paradoxically challenges the concept of revolution by madness at the same time it seems to affirm it. Indeed, not all of the characters find themselves in more desirable positions than those in which they began, Doreen in particular. Consider her initial reaction to possession:

I don't know which bit of me it's in . . . Anywhere you touched me would hurt. And that's not even the worst. It's not so much as if I'm going to vomit but every bit of me is nauseated, my left foot wants to vomit, my blood—I'm completely full of this awful sickness. (58)

Clearly Doreen is not feeling emancipated or free from constraint, but rather miserable and diseased. And though it could be argued that such discomfort is simply the price one must pay for transforma­tion and revolution, Doreen's position at the end of the play suggests she has made no progress whatsoever:

I can find no rest. My head is filled with horrible images. I can't say I actually see them, its more that I feel them. It seems that my mouth is full of birds which I crunch between my teeth. Their feathers, their blood and broken bones are choking me. I carry on my work as a secretary. (71)

Not only has Doreen re-assumed her old job, but she feels suffocated, stifled. Significantly birds, common symbols of flight and liberty, are what smother her, intimating that signs of freedom (including madness) may not always be what they seem.

In fact, in Doreen's case possession dispels agency rather than bestows it. Doreen's opening dialog with Ed in Part One, for example, indicates that she coveted "peace and quiet," had "found it" by disappearing and leaving Ed alone on the beach, and "was happy" (22). Thus, she had established agency all on her own. And though there seems to be some threat from Ed as to the consequences of her actions: "I warned you what would happen if you ran off again," the strength and authority manifest in Doreen's lines in the following exchange suggest that Ed will be powerless to make her suffer any consequences at all: "DOREEN: What? What will happen? What? ED: Well, you had your day out all right. DOREEN: Oh I did" (22). That Doreen directly challenges Ed and ends the dialog with a bold declarative (giving her the last word), coupled with her willingness and ability to leave Ed, clearly establishes Doreen as a speaking, acting subject.

However, after her possession Doreen is acted upon, first by the mysterious illness noted above that seems to permeate her very being (58), and second by Mrs. Blair who aggravates both Doreen's illness and her need for peace and quiet by blasting her radio, leading Doreen to erupt into a fit of violence (62). And though Doreen reacts to Mrs. Blair and, as Agave, acts violently against Pentheus, she does so only as one possessed, rather than of her own volition. Doreen is, then, the classic postmodern subject, an effect of forces outside herself. There is no ahistorical, transcendent self here, which places in doubt not only Doreen’s apparent agency observed in Part One, but particularly the potential for any true agency for any of the characters.

Doreen’s  tragedy seems to suggest that madness, though it allows for change and is a means of freedom for some, is not a universal solution to oppression; in fact, psychic discourse is shown to be inherently unstable, as it is just as apt to lead to disaster (as it does for Doreen) as it is to liberation. Further, the ease with which some of the characters slide into new subject positions, particularly Derek and Lena as noted above, illustrates the inherent instability of social discourse (in the form of prescribed gender roles) as well. Consequently, no monolithic discourse will be able to undermine the status quo, for such discourse fails to account for individual dynamics (be those differences of race, class, gender, or sexuality). Thus, to return to the quote from Foucault with which I opened the paper, A Mouthful of Birds has clearly "provoke[d] a breach without reconciliation where the world is forced to question itself" (288), and the questions posed are: what now? If a monolithic struggle is not effective, then what is? Is there any hope for the postmodern subject?

A Mouthful of Birds does not offer an explicit answer to these questions; however, as Paul maintains in his final lines: "You can't tell what it's going to be . . . So I stay ready" (71), emphasizing the need to live in uncertainty and to be prepared to act when the opportunity arises. That such opportunities for reform will arise is clearly implied by the play, for all of the characters are transformed in some way, and as Butler argues, such "reconceptuali­zation of identity as an effect...opens up possibilities of 'agency' that are insidiously foreclosed by positions that take identity categories as foundational and fixed" (147). What one should do with those possibilities, however, is left ambiguous at the close of the play; indeed, to prescribe a solution would be to imply the possibility of a singular, universal means of reform, and would therefore undermine the effectiveness of the play. Rather, A Mouthful of Birds closes with the image of Dionysos dancing, an ambiguous image of freedom (for the dancing reminds us of the passionate, liberating dancing we=ve seen throughout the play) and bondage (Dionysos and the other Bacchants signify bondage to the degree that they have psychically enslaved the characters in the play).  In short, A Mouthful of Birds opens a question without a clear answer, forcing the audience, like Paul, to accept the uncertainty inherent in the play of subversion.