Tales from the East End: Dialogic and Confessional Storytelling as Therapy (?) in the Plays of Philip Ridley

Badham, Cath

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-39427-1_12

Cath Badham²

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2 Citations

Abstract

Storytelling is an enduring trope in Philip Ridley’s plays, but its form and emphasis changes throughout his work. Starting with Ken Urban and Andrew Wyllie’s ideas that the nostalgic storytelling in Ridley’s plays is either a sickness or a therapy, respectively, Badham argues that both the dialogic and confessional styles of storytelling that Ridley utilizes offer opportunities for therapy, confession and catharsis. The question is how do these two styles of storytelling impact the possibilities for healing or recuperation? Whilst the traditional dialogic form used in Vincent River (2000) lends itself to a traditional Aristotelian resolution, the direct address of Dark Vanilla Jungle (2013) and Tonight with Donny Stixx (2015) results in a more problematic ending for both protagonist and audience.

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Notes

1.
See Ken Urban, “Ghosts from an Imperfect Place: Philip Ridley’s Nostalgia,” Modern Drama, 50, no. 3 (2007): 325–345; and Andrew Wyllie, “Philip Ridley and Memory,” Studies in Theatre and Performance, 3, no. 2 (2013): 65–75.
2.
Sigmund Freud, “The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis” in The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 21, no. 2 (1910): 184; see also Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud, Studies in Hysteria, ed. James Strachey and Anna Freud (Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1974).
3.
Freud, “The Origin,” 184.
4.
Freud, “Psychotherapy of Hysteria” in Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud, Studies in Hysteria, 351.
5.
John McLeod, Narrative and Psychotherapy (London: Sage Publications, 1997), 14.
6.
Ibid., 2.
7.
Ibid., 7.
8.
Ibid., 2.
9.
Stephen Halliwell, Aristotle’s Poetics, 2nd ed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 198.
10.
Urban, “Ghosts,” 325.
11.
Ibid., 328–329.
12.
Wyllie, “Philip Ridley,” 74.
13.
Fred Miller Robinson, Rooms in Dramatic Realism (New York; Routledge, 2016), 27.
14.
Philip Ridley, Vincent River, in Plays: 2 (London: Methuen Drama, 2009), 11.
15.
Kristin. M. Langellier and Eric. E. Peterson, Storytelling in Daily Life (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004), 1; Joanna Thornborrow & Jennifer Coates (eds), The Sociolinguistics of Narrative (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2005), 4.
16.
Ridley, Vincent River, 63.
17.
Aristotle, Poetics, ed. and trans. Michelle Zerba & David Gorman (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc), 10.
18.
Ibid., 46.
19.
Ridley, Vincent River, 69.
20.
Ibid., 69–70.
21.
Halliwell, Aristotle’s Poetics, 200.
22.
Aristotle, Poetics, 48; and Thornborrow & Coates, The Sociolinguistics of Narrative, 3–5.
23.
Sharon Hymer, “Therapeutic and Redemptive Aspects of Religious Confession,” Journal of Religion and Health 34, no. 1 (1995): 50.
24.
Ibid., 50.
25.
McLeod, Narrative and Psychotherapy, 3.
26.
Ibid., 7. Original italics.
27.
Ibid., 7–8.
28.
Hymer, “Therapeutic and Redemptive Aspects,” 50–51.
29.
I saw productions of Dark Vanilla Jungle at the Royal Exchange Theatre Studio, Manchester on July 27, 2013, and at the Soho Theatre, London on April 6, 2014.
30.
Philip Ridley, Dark Vanilla Jungle (London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2014), 3.
31.
McLeod, Narrative and Psychotherapy, 37.
32.
Ridley, Dark Vanilla Jungle, 3.
33.
Ibid., 10.
34.
Ibid., 5. Original italics.
35.
Ibid., 9.
36.
Sigmund Freud, Case Histories 1, ed. Angela Richards (London: Penguin Books, 1977), 46, 47.
37.
Ridley, Dark Vanilla Jungle, 25. Original italics.
38.
Ibid., 26.
39.
Ibid., 35.
40.
Ibid., 36–37.
41.
https://www.comedy.co.uk/tv/an_audience_with/episodes/ (accessed June 17, 2018).
42.
Philip Ridley, Tonight with Donny Stixx (London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2016), 5. Original italics.
43.
As with DVJ the heckles are imagined by the theatre audience but the protagonist reacts as if they have actually been shouted out.
44.
Ridley, Tonight with Donny Stixx, 5–6. Original italics/emphasis.
45.
Just a quick Google search reveals several articles on demanding behavior and exacting riders. The Guardian website has an interesting article on the changing nature of celebrity riders (https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/feb/11/rock-stars-riders-jack-white-guacamole-square-melons), whilst thesmokinggun.com (http://www.thesmokinggun.com) has a whole section devoted to the riders and demands of the rich and famous. Iggy Pop’s is particularly entertaining. However, having been a stage manager for 25 years, I’m pleased to reassure you I’ve rarely come across such behavior and reports of it are often blown out of all proportion.
46.
The Jeremy Kyle Show was shown at 9:25 a.m. on weekdays on ITV. Presented by Jeremy Kyle it was a talk show in which people were encouraged to discuss and resolve their issues often using technology such as lie detector tests. It was regularly confrontational. https://www.itv.com/jeremykyle. It ran from 2005 and was cancelled in May 2019 after the revelation that a guest on the show had committed suicide prior to the airing of the episode in which they had appeared. See also D.W. Hill, “Class, Trust and Confessional Media in Austerity Britain,” Media, Culture and Society 37, no. 4 (2015): 566–580. The Jerry Springer Show ran from 1991 to 2018. Predating The Jeremy Kyle Show it used many of the same techniques. The episode titles were often provocative in themselves. See Hill, op cit., and https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/jun/19/farewell-to-the-jerry-springer-show-27-years-of-fights-bleeps-and-outrage (accessed June 29, 2018).
47.
Hill, “Class, Trust,” 567. See also Sean Redmond, “The Star and Celebrity Confessional,” Social Semiotics, 18, no. 2 (2008): 109–114.
48.
Redmond, 110.
49.
Ridley, Tonight with Donny Stixx, 7.
50.
McLeod, Narrative and Psychotherapy, 8.
51.
Ridley, Tonight with Donny Stixx, 32. Original italics.
52.
Ibid., 34. Original emphasis.
53.
Ibid., 35. Original emphasis.
54.
Jennifer L. Murray, “Mass Media Reporting and Enabling of Mass Shootings,” Critical Studies – Critical Methodologies 17, no. 2 (2017): 114. See also Adam Lankford, “Fame Seeking Rampage Shooters: Initial Findings and Empirical Predictions,” Aggression and Violent Behavior 27 (2016): 122–129.
55.
Ridley, Tonight with Donny Stixx, 40.
56.
Ibid., 40.
57.
Ibid., 40.
58.
Ibid., 11–12.

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University of Derby, Derby, UK
Cath Badham

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Rollins College, Winter Park, FL, USA
William C. Boles

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Badham, C. (2020). Tales from the East End: Dialogic and Confessional Storytelling as Therapy (?) in the Plays of Philip Ridley. In: Boles, W. (eds) After In-Yer-Face Theatre. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39427-1_12

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39427-1_12
Published: 30 April 2020
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