the pillowman - Auckland Theatre Company

THE PILLOWMAN
ATC EDUCATION UNIT TEACHERS’ PACK
August 23rd – September 15th 2007, MAIDMENT THEATRE
By MARTIN McDONAGH
Cast Craig Parker, Michael Hurst, Jonathan Hardy, Oliver Driver, Brooke Williams, Bonnie Soper
Director Simon Prast
Set Design John Verryt
Costume Design Elizabeth Whiting
Lighting Design Bryan Caldwell
Sound Design Eden Mulholland
Production Manager Mark Gosling
Technical Manager Bonnie Burrill
Lighting and Sound Operator Robert Hunte
Senior Stage Manager Aileen Robertson
Props Master Bec Ehlers
Set Construction 2CONSTRUCT
Costume Construction the Costume Studio
Wardrobe Supervisor Petra Verweij
Teachers’ Pack compiled by Lynne Cardy Education and 2econd Unit Coordinator
The Pillowman is 2 hours and 45 minutes long including a 15 minute interval
Please note The Pillowman contains frequent use of strong language and themes that may disturb
and is suitable for people over 16 only. We recommend the production for year 13 students.
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CONTENTS
SYNOPSIS............................................................................................................ 3
THEMES ............................................................................................................... 4
DIRECTOR’S APPROACH .................................................................................. 5
SET DESIGN ........................................................................................................ 7
COSTUME DESIGN ............................................................................................. 9
LIGHTING DESIGN ............................................................................................ 10
SOUND DESIGN ................................................................................................ 10
THE PLAYWRIGHT - MARTIN MCDONAGH ................................................... 11
CURRICULUM LINKS........................................................................................ 13
RESOURCES ..................................................................................................... 13
ARIEL (Michael Hurst), KATURIAN (Craig Parker) and TUPOLSKI (Jonathon Hardy)
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SYNOPSIS
‘The world of the play is the world of Katurian’s writing’ Simon Prast
ACT ONE
Scene One
When the play opens a writer, Katurian (Craig Parker), is being interviewed by interrogators; Tupolski (Jonathon
Hardy) and Ariel (Michael Hurst). Some of the short stories he has written are similar to a series of bizarre child
murders that are happening in the town. Katurian denies these allegations, stating that although his stories are
gruesome it is the job of a storyteller to tell a story The interrogators don’t belive him and not only accuse Katurian of
the murders but also threaten to hurt his intellectually disabled brother Michal (Gareth Reeves) who they are holding
in another cell.
Scene Two
Katurian tells a story called The Writer and the Writer’s Brother (which is acted out). It is the story of a boy who is
showered with love by his parents (Oliver Driver and Bonnie Soper), and who is encouraged by them to write stories,
only to discover, at the age of fourteen, that all this time they have been imprisoning and torturing another child - his
brother, in the next room. However, his parents claim that they have been playing a trick on him – making sounds of
torture to inform his dreams ands thereby affect his writing. They present him with a prize for his stories.
Years later, when the adult writer returns to his childhood home he discovers the body of his brother and realises that
his parents really were torturers.
When he finishes telling this story, Katurian reveals that this is a true story, although in reality he saved his brother
from dying and murdered his parents – suffocating them with a pillow.
ACT TWO
Scene One
After being tortured Katurian is thrown into a room with his
intellectually disabled brother Michal. Michal says that he
was the one who killed the children, and was only doing
what was in the stories because “that is what his brother
wanted him to do”. Katurian doesn’t want his brother to be
executed for something that he doesn’t really understand so
Katurian smothers Michal with a pillow.
Scene Two
Katurian tells the story of The Little Jesus, which is acted
out.
ACT THREE
Katurian confesses to the murders of the three children,
making a deal with Tupolski and Ariel that in return for his
confession they must promise not destroy his stories. When
the police find the crime scenes they realise that Katurian’s
description of them does not fit them at all. They know that
Katurian isn’t the murderer, but he is executed anyway for
killing his parents and Michal.
MOTHER (Bonnie Soper) and FATHER (Oliver Driver)
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THEMES
The Pillowman deals with a variety of themes, including:
Torture
Child abuse
Freedom of expression vs. the power of the state
And all of these themes are grounded in fairy tales; the stories that
Katurian writes and tells recall those of the Brothers Grimm. In many
fairy tales (like Hansel and Gretel or Cinderella), adults and parents –
and particularly step-parents - are cruel to the children in their care
and in The Pillowman this cruelty is pushed to its gruesome limits.
Lisa Samuels writing for the Auckland Theatre Company season
programme of The Pillowman observes that the Pied Piper is the fairytale character most present in the
play:
The Pied Piper legend also lays bare the duality of our feelings about the status of our children: his music
draws out and does away with both rats and children. Hence children are lumped together with diseasecarrying animals that appear in our homes, eat our food, and generally make a mess – instead of being
seen as our living future, an investment in the what-we-will-become
In The Pillowman, this rat attitude to children produces not only the miseries of Katurian and Michal but also
the pained cruelty of Tupolski and Ariel, who suffered from alcohol-fueled violence and parental rape in
their own childhoods. The play’s lesson is, very directly, that cruelty to children creates future child abuse
and enables a torturing police state. McDonagh has taken the currency of his own youthful observations of
suffering and turned it into social art payback. He has also linked his drama to one of the few fairy tales that
does not provide some happy escape – the children of Hamlin never come back; the only child left behind
is lame and lonely.
Martin McDonagh has written a cautionary tale – a story that serves to speak to our very real fears and to
warn us against them. By emphasising the horror of the stories he is urging us – the audience - to learn
from what we have seen and to act to make a difference in the world.
KAFKA-ESQUE
The world of The Pillowman is described as ‘Kafka-esque’ – referring to the writings of Czechoslovakian
author Franz Kafka and particularly his novel The Trial and his novella The Metamorphosis.1
The nightmarish world of Kafka’s stories, often involving protagonists caught up in a seemingly inescapable
bureaucratic situation and set in a mindless totalitarian state is strongly evoked in the opening act of the
play.
1
According to Wikipedia; “The adjective refers to anything suggestive of Kafka, especially his nightmarish type of narration, in
which characters lack a clear course of action, the ability to see beyond immediate events, and the possibility of escape. The
term's meaning has transcended the literary realm to apply to real-life occurrences and situations that are incomprehensibly
complex, bizarre, or illogical”
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DIRECTOR’S APPROACH
Simon Prast
This is my third encounter with Martin McDonagh. In 1999, I directed The
Cripple of Inishmaan. A year later; I produced The Beauty Queen of
Leenane. Both works, set on the ravaged west coast of Ireland, appalled
and appealed in equal measure. His characters, so richly drawn, were mad
or murderous or both. Most importantly, they reveled in their predicament
(perhaps a trait unique to the Irish) even as their hopes and dreams evaporated; they never lost gusto, well
and truly putting the fun back into dysfunction. The worse things got, the funnier they were to behold. This
inverse correlation is McDonagh’s signature. Anyone can do violence and invective. To have an audience
rolling in the aisles whilst viewing the same: now that’s a world-class talent at work. And that is Mr
McDonagh, arguably the leading playwright of his generation.
His latest work is vivid, visceral and hilarious. To a cast and creative team, all is provided: an ominous
world, idiosyncratically inhabited, and disturbingly littered with unspeakable implements of death and
destruction. As with Pinter or Stoppard or Albee, it is bravura writing. Nothing on the page is accidental,
incidental or without specific purpose. Precision punctuation must be rigorously honoured for the script to
make sense. Such precision also releases the script‘s vast mine of comedy, allowing it to soar and
identifying it as a modern classic.
Directing The Pillowman, I have adhered to McDonagh’s ‘road map’ as closely as I could. Blessed with a
world-class cast, the most and best I could offer was constant reference back to the script. It is all there on
the page. We learn scripts swiftly but not always accurately and can be masters of the paraphrase (when
acting, I am the guiltiest). The Pillowman is a complex and confronting tale that demands absolute accuracy
in its delivery. The cast never once cowered from the task at hand and rehearsals were a joyful workout of
mind, body and soul.
The story conjures highly disturbing images which, if we have done our job right, will not leave the audience
in a hurry. It takes no prisoners. The musicality and muscularity of its writing, its blasphemous wit, its
integrity and intelligence take us seriously as human being. In dangerous times, this ‘re-sensitization’ is the
greatest gift theatre can give an audience.
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DIRECTOR’S APPROACH (continued)
Before rehearsals began, director Simon Prast broke the five scenes of the play into five states.
He decided that events in the play happen either in real-time in real places or in Karturian’s head (his
memory or imagination):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Interrogation - Act 1, Sc1
Head - Act 1, Sc 2
Cell - Act 2, Sc1
Head - Act 2, Sc2
Interrogation/Head - Act 3
The design elements of the play (particularly in the colour of the costumes) reflect the difference between
the real time scenes and the heightened reality of the scenes in Katurian’s head.
Compare these images from:
1. Act Two, Scene One in the cell
MICHAL (Gareth Reeves) and KATURIAN (Craig
Parker)
And;
1. Act Two, Scene Two – in Katurian’s head:
CHILD (Brooke Williams), ARIEL (Michael Hurst)
and KATURIAN (Craig Parker)
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SET DESIGN
John Verryt
“I'm so happy to be designing The Pillowman. This completes a circle for me, having
designed the sets for McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane with Johnathan
Hardy directing and The Cripple of Innishmaan with Simon Prast, all with Auckland
Theatre Company. All three are fantastic scripts with wonderful characters talking
about the 'Big Issues' of life in such an accessible style. Of course the whole thing for
me has become about violence, corpses and crucifying an actor which is remarkable
fun and I hope quite disturbing to witness!”
In the early design meetings John Verryt came up with a black, very dark set which suggested the torture and
nightmarish aspects of the play. John says that initially ‘the torture was all there in the set’.
Director Simon Prast realised, however, that the graphic images in the writing needed a different canvas to play
upon. John then changed the design:
•
The set is a white, clean space with a stainless steel corridor suggested upstage.
•
A free-standing column made of stainless steel turns around to reveal torture
•
A stainless steel crucifix is used for the crucifixion scene.
Set Model by John Verryt - showing the stainless steel column.
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The crucifix
The clean white ‘canvas’ of the set serves a variety of locations; a cell, an interrogation room, a child’s
bedroom and the use of stainless steel could suggest an abattoir or a kitchen or a butcher’s shop.
CHILD (Brooke Williams)
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COSTUME DESIGN
Elizabeth Whiting
“The costume design for The Pillowman developed in discussion with Simon Prast, John Verryt and Brian Caldwell.
We first explored a Kafkaesque world. This was rejected as it informed the audience too quickly of the journey they
were to undertake. Simon felt a neutral world, neither time nor country specific, suited the nature of the piece better.
In terms of costume design, I had always visualized a fairly generic look for the main protagonists, in muted grays
and fawns, referencing our neutral world. I was interested,
however, in developing the characters in the stories in some way
which would separate them from the “now” of the piece. In
discussion with the team we felt that a heightened reality would
serve the play well. We wanted to create a Norman Rockwell
type of surrealism in which a sense of time remembered played
a part. While we saw these scenes as brighter in terms of colour
than the ‘now’ scenes we were also aware that the two colours
scripted in the play, red and green needed to be the most
dominant. The nature of the play calls for graphic violence. The
great challenge for the design team has been to make the
violence totally realistic so that the audience cannot avoid
confronting the issues it raises. A wonderfully adult play and a
pleasure to design.”
Costume sketch (above) for ARIEL (Michael Hurst) by Elizabeth Whiting
ARIEL (Michael Hurst) onstage
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LIGHTING DESIGN
Bryan Caldwell
“The lighting design for The Pillowman is a shadow design – there is a bogey man
lurking, found by a glimpse of a shift in the outline of the darkest corners of the room.
Try not to blink while you strain your eyes into the shifty black.”
KATURIAN (Craig Parker)
SOUND DESIGN
Eden Mulholland
“The sound design is meant to be
carefully insidious. Because the script is so strong the
score needs to creep up on you like a well planned bump in the night – not so much a horror soundtrack as
an ode to Stanley Kubrick2. Sparse and deceptive with a strong core motif, the sound punctuates the
dramatic peaks and troughs. The dialogue and subject matter needs only subtle enhancement”
Director Simon Prast was interested in using songs and tunes that the audience would recognise but would
hear in a different way in The Pillowman, hence the recurring theme of the seemingly innocuous children’s
song ‘Inchworm’ treated in a nightmarish way throughout the play.
2
Stanley Kubrick (1928 –1999) was an influential and acclaimed American film director and producer considered among the
greatest of the 20th Century. He directed a number of highly acclaimed and sometimes controversial films, including 2001: A
Space Odyssey, Paths of Glory, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying
and Love the Bomb.
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THE PLAYWRIGHT - MARTIN
MCDONAGH
All of McDonagh’s theatre works were first written in a nine-month burst of creativity
in the middle 90s, which took him from the dole queue to literary stardom.
Five of his plays are set in rural Ireland where his parents were born, but McDonagh
was born and raised in London. When he was twenty-four, his elder brother left to study screenwriting in Southern
California. Their parents had returned to Ireland two years earlier. Left on his own for the first time, living in the family
home, McDonagh turned to a number of unpublished stories he had been writing since his teens and fashioned them
into a play about an unsuccessful writer of short stories.
Later he found himself writing in the voice of Ireland’s Aran Islands – his father’s birthplace and the destination for
summer holidays when McDonagh was a child. His two trilogies of Irish plays were widely rejected until the Druid
Theatre in Galway took a punt on McDonagh’s unnerving mix of comedy and cruelty in The Beauty Queen of
Leenane. The play was an instant and international success, quickly transferring to London’s Royal Court Theatre
and later to Broadway.
The playwright found himself feted in both London and New York as the latest enfant terrible of theatre, a role which
unsettled him. “You think it’s what you want then of course it’s nothing like you expect.” he would tell the Guardian
newspaper years later.
More lasting fame was assured by 1997 when four McDonagh plays were playing at once in London, a feat
accomplished by only one other playwright – Shakespeare.
What drew audiences to the Irish plays also disturbed some critics: McDonagh’s bleakly comic vision of a dark world
populated by cruel and semi-grotesque characters. “I suppose I walk that line between comedy and cruelty”
McDonagh has said “because I think one illuminates the other. We’re all cruel, aren’t we? We’re all extreme in one
way or another at times and that’s what drama, since the Greeks, has dealt with. I hope the overall view isn’t just that
though, or I’ve failed in my writing. There have to be moments when you glimpse something decent, something lifeaffirming even in the most twisted character. That’s where the real art lies.”
In 2001, McDonagh returned to his long-neglected first play, The Pillowman. His rewritten version premiered at the
Royal National Theatre in London in 2003, featuring Jim Broadbent and David Tennant (currently the tenth
incarnation of television’s Doctor Who). The play won that year’s Olivier Award for Best New Play and moved to
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Broadway where it received a Tony Nomination for Best Play, losing out to John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt. An
American critic hailed McDonagh as “the first great twenty-first century dramatist”.
Despite all this, McDonagh has often expressed his disdain for theatre, claiming that he only wrote plays because he
was too naïve to know it wouldn’t help him get hired to write movies. He cites Sam Shepard’s True West and David
Mamet’s American Buffalo amongst a handful of plays he has actually enjoyed. “Mostly the whole theatre thing just
makes me intensely uncomfortable… I react just like my parents – you know, ‘Theatre’s not for the likes of us’”.
Alongside the raw rock of Nirvana, The Sex Pistols and The Pogues, McDonagh’s formative influences included the
films of Martin Scorsese, Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone. In 2005, McDonagh himself became an Academy
Award-winning film director, picking up the Oscar for his first short film Six Shooter. And in 2006 he told The New
Yorker Magazine that he had no intention of writing any more plays. “I think I’ve said enough as a young dramatist.
Until I’ve lived a little more and experienced a lot more things and I have more to say that I haven’t said already, it will
just feel like repeating the old tricks… I just want to write for the love of it. And also grow up, because all the plays
have the sensibility of a young man”. McDonagh’s first feature film In Bruges is scheduled for release in 2008.
“We’re all cruel, aren’t we? We’re all extreme in one way or another at times and
that’s what drama, since the Greeks, has dealt with. I hope the overall view isn’t just
that though, or I’ve failed in my writing. There have to be moments when you
glimpse something decent, something life-affirming even in the most twisted
character. That’s where the real art lies.” Martin McDonagh
MICHAL (Gareth Reeves) and KATURIAN (Craig Parker)
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CURRICULUM LINKS
The following links relate to the Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum:
• All Levels of NCEA Drama require students to respond to live theatre experiences in the external
examinations (1.6. AS90011; 2.6 AS90304; 3.6. AS90612)
•
The work reflects features of a specific theatre form with the evocative potential for developing a
production concept as either director or designer (Questions 1 and 2 of the external examination
3.4.AS90610 )
RESOURCES
Martin McDonagh has written six other plays which comprise two trilogies, including The Cripple of
Inishmaan and The Beauty Queen of Leenane produced by Auckland Theatre Company in 1999 and 2000
(respectively).
• Plays in the LEENANE Trilogy include: The Beauty Queen of Leenane, A Skull in Connemara
and The Lonesome West
• Plays in the ARAN ISLANDS trilogy include: The Cripple of Inishmaan, The Lieutenant of
Inishmore and The Banshees of Inisheer
BOOKS
The Cripple of Inishmaan, Martin McDonagh, Published 1998 Dramatists Play Service
The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Martin McDonagh, Published 1998 Dramatists Play Service
The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Martin McDonagh, Published 2003 Dramatists Play Service
REVIEWS
Press reviews for the Auckland Theatre Company production are published regularly on the website:
www.atc.co.nz
AWARDS
The Pillowman has won the following awards:
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