Output details

Mother of Him

Rationale for grouping short items:

Group comprises the play in published and broadcast versions.

Research content/process:

Written for the stage (Courtyard Theatre, London, 2010), with a rehearsed reading at the Tarragon Theatre in Canada (where the play is set), translated into Hebrew for production in Israel (Beit Lessin Theatre, Tel Aviv, 2011), published in English, and then adapted for BBC radio 3 (December 2013), the research has involved solving problems encountered in translation from one medium, culture, and language to another. It raises the question as to when, if ever, a play is ‘done’.

Placey’s play challenges conventional play form by using the ‘single view-point’ mode. Brenda appears in every scene, including those between other characters, so that access to these scenes is supplied purely through her. By telling the story from her perspective, and not answering the question “Why did you do it?” that she asks her rapist son, the audience share both her incomprehension and her love and loyalty. The productions successfully realized Placey’s stage directions, imbuing sets—and in the case of the radio, soundscape—with a sense of confinement and of being in Brenda’s mental space.

The main research problem in cutting and translating the play for radio was how to communicate the emotional effects previously conveyed through the subtext of what characters were not saying. Initial attempts to introduce surreal elements to convey Brenda’s emotional state were rejected as confusing without visuals. Placey introduced more overt dialogue, coupled with flashbacks to reinforce the sense of being in Brenda’s head in ways impossible on stage. Challenge was to try to create a radio play where the listener feels forced to stop multi-tasking and sit down to listen actively. Solution was to try to create an uncomfortably naturalistic form that never allows the listener a break from the tension.