Linda Griffiths on Thought Speak
Age of Arousal Playwright on Innovative Scripting Technique
As corseted New Victorian women unbutton their sexual libido, inner thoughts climax in this sexy new play from one of Canada's most progressive female playwrights.
Linda Griffiths' play Age of Arousal is all about the Age of Temptation. A woman "ought never to be so happy as when she is looking after her home." Well, that's codswallop to Miss Mary Barfoot and Miss Rhoda Nunn, who run a progressive school for secretaries complete with bookcase on the Woman's Question. They are going to make it after all!
In Part Two of this interview series, Linda Griffiths reveals a little more about Mary and Rhoda, the musicality of Age of Arousal and "thought speak" – a writing technique she has used before, but never recognized, until actress Claire Coulter pointed it out.
What is Mary Barfoot's back story? She is played by Clare Coulter for the Toronto production.
"Clare Coulter is going to be so amazing in this role. We did a workshop of the play and she just blew me away. Mary’s back story... she would have been a middle-class woman who got involved in the very radical front of the suffrage movement. She has done the hunger strikes, been force fed, did a little arson, went beyond picketing and marching. She is someone who left that radical front in order to get practical and open a school for secretaries."
And isn't the character of Rhoda Nunn played by Sarah Dodd somewhat conflicted?
"She is conflicted, but it is as if the play starts with a change and then change occurs all the way through to the end. At the beginning you see a glimpse of Rhoda as not conflicted, as in a very good relationship with her mentor and then somewhere in the middle of the scene, it’s one of those things where all a sudden the two of them look at each other and go – oh oh! – something just changed."
A young fellow aptly named Everard comes into this female mix … an unusual name… also from the book?
"All the names are from Gissing’s book, The Odd Women. I just kept them. I had no reason to change them. The subtitle of the play is inspired by Gissing’s The Odd Women, so I felt no need to pretend to use other names when I was taking a lot of the basic situation as well."
What is “thought speak”? This reminds me of a Caryl Churchill device where characters' dialogue overlaps, but one step removed.
"I have used this before and it was actually Clare Coulter that pointed it out to me, that I have had this as an element since Maggie and Pierre. I just didn’t call it anything. I didn’t annotate it in italics but you often have the characters bursting out with inner feelings in contrast to what they say. The first time I used it when it was annotated and in italics, was in a play called The Darling Family, which is actually the most produced of anything that I have written."
The main character in The Darling Family has a crisis of conscience?
"Yes, there are two characters and an unplanned pregnancy – all the things that they can’t say to each other, so it is a situation in which the subtext is so strong that I want the characters to speak it, but they never speak it all the time. There is subtext that isn’t spoken and some that is."
Like Annie Hall – saying one thing and thinking another...
"That’s right. I am just writing the notes to Age of Arousal which are copious and the "thought speak" is a long topic. But it’s instantaneous on the stage, and the audience gets it very quickly and really enjoys it. To explain, it takes much longer than it does to actually do."
For an actor following the script that would be crazy...
"It is crazy to begin with and then so much fun at the end. They go through a nasty period, no question, and then it starts to happen. Where do I look? Can I react? No, you can’t. So there are different kinds of "thought speak" in Age of Arousal. There is a kind of area or “chorus” where the characters speak on top of each other about a subject and then there’s "thought speak" that comes out within a scene which usually contradicts what’s being said."
So it becomes quite musical in tonality like Edward Albee?
"Yes it is. I hate to say it though because it always sounds so “arty” when you say that because Albee doesn’t come out arty. But there is a musical quality to the language.
So more like David Mamet?
"I’d rather think Mamet just because he keeps things moving. It’s not like we stop for a bit of poetry. There’s a very forward thrust to the play that’s very modern."
