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Basic Ideas

‘Women Without Men’

External Woman (tries to be a strong feminist)

Internal Voice (Voice of reason, still wants men, fantasist)

Bechdel Test

Internal singing

Internal flirting etc

- Create a google form to ask people about gender balance/ how women would cope without men etc.
- Aim at a student demographic
- Send to both genders to see the difference in answers

- Use what we find from this as Verbatim dialogue within the script.

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What are the aims and objectives of the project? (max 300 w)

To present the differences between the internal and external voice of the modern-day woman.

To explore the Bechdel Test to understand how narratives include men in women’s storylines.

To create a storyline showing the research that we have discovered throughout the process.

To develop our own understanding of producing a narrative surrounding one character.

To work on characterisation for two actors playing one character.

How will the project attempt to achieve the aims and objectives listed above? (max 300 w)

Creating a show

Talk about engagement with audience/audience reaction?

Do audience ‘testers’ like in friends

Interviews with members of the public

How people our age feel about their relationship to men

Surveying popular narratives/drama and conducting the bechdel test on them

Potentially then working our findings into the dialogue [what is that kind of theatre called? Blended storyline and addressing the audience/factual vibe]

How do we find the divide between external and internal

Characterisation, what will our workshops be here? Or do we mention that in the lower down section?

Actively do the bechdel test during the performance “go on you want to say his name-” “ah well now you’ve done it.” “We all knew you were thinking about him”

Contrasting characteristics of the internal and external whilst keeping them the ‘same’ person; mannerisms, behaviours, familiarity, recognition of behaviours

Combined sources

​​Bechdel,A. 1985. The Rule. [Online] [Accessed 15 February 2022] available from: https://www.bechdeltheatre.com/about

This comic strip came from Bechdel’s collection Dykes to Watch Out For and is the basis for what became known as the Bechdel test which we will be analysing and using extensively in our piece. The aforementioned rule states this “I only go to a movie if it satisfies three basic requirements. One, it has to have at least two women in it who, two, talk to each other about, three, something besides a man.” (1985)

Butcher, J. Lucas, A. 2018. Sparks. London: Methuen Drama.

A two-hander musical about one woman navigating love and grief, the script comprising the dialogue intended to be performed by one individual that is interspersed with original music, performed by another. This communicating the more internal, expressive feelings of the protagonist. This piece is what inspired us to go down this route of narration, with two individuals performing the internal and external dialogue of the same individual.

Woolf, V. 2004. A Room of One’s Own. London: Penguin Books.

Woolf’s metaphor of a fish bowl explains her most essential point “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” (1935: 5). This essay observes about the literature of her time what the Bechdel test highlights in more recent fiction, “It was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen’s, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex”.

‘The Female Eunuch’ Germaine Greer

‘The Whole Woman’ Germaine Greer

Wilkins, H. 2020. The Bechdel Test Using a Script Breakdown. Studiobinder. [online] [Accessd 10 February 2022] Available from:

https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/the-bechdel-test/

An article on how emerging content can use the Bechdel Test to test the gender imbalance in their work to rise to the ongoing challenge of inclusivity and equal representation

Durr, A. 2018. The disposable male - the ultimate emancipation of females? BMC Biology. 16(106). Available from: https://bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12915-018-0574-8

This journal article discusses the purpose of men and whether it is fully down to their reproductive capacity, and in a world that now has the ability to artificially create sperm - do we need men? And are women better off without them? This we will fully explore in our piece.

Gold, T. 2009. ‘Would a world without men really be so bad?’. The Guardian. [Online]. [Accessed 14 February]. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/jul/09/women-men-better-off-without

An article of Tanya Gold’s misanthropic fantasy that outlines men versus women in different sections of society, particularly favourably discussing women as she imagines if the world would be better without men. This could be a comical avenue to use in our development of narrative.

Watt, N. 2009. Envisioning a World Without Men. [Online] [Accessed 16 February 2022] Available from: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4725121&page=1

​​This is a news article explaining that scientifically the world could, in the distant future, end up as a world without men. This will be important to our narrative as it looks at the focus that we could physically have to survive without men, so one day it will be possible not to think about them.

Agarwal,A, Zheng, J, Kamath,S, Balasubramanian,S, Dey,S. 2015. Key Female Characters in Film Have More to Talk About Besides Men: Automating the Bechdel Test. [Online] 1. Pp.830-840

This further explores the Bechdel test and gives examples of how to go about each of the tests whilst also giving examples to popular television and film. This surprisingly shows us how many of our favourite shows and films contain so little focus on women without the mention of a man, a key point we are exploring throughout our piece.

Inside Out. 2015. [Film] Pete Docter. USA: Walt Disney Pictures.

The five core emotions are explored within this popular film, from an internal dialogue within the brain. These emotions battle each other to come to the external conclusion of the character. Despite all characters/emotions being a part of the same person, they all have different characteristics and emotions to distinguish themselves from one another.

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Bechdel Test
Initial ideas
Plays

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Questions

1. Do you think that women would be able to survive in a world without men?

2. Do you think that men would be able to survive in a world without women?

3. Do you find yourself branding all men under the same category?

4. Do you find yourself branding all women under the same category?

EXPLANATION OF BECHDEL TEST (3 FACTORS)

1. Give us a film that you think tells the story of a strong female character. If this film fails the Bechdel test do you think differently about it?

2. Should the Bechdel test not solely focus on the gender divide but focus on how often the storyline has to involve love and relationships?

3. Is it a bad thing if two female characters have a conversation about a man?

4. Do you always say out loud what you’re thinking in your head?

5. How often do you stop yourself from saying what you’re actually thinking?

6.  Do you think your internal thoughts are often the same as someone else’s internal thoughts?

Link to form:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdfottZoT2Vnxlz6xoWIByY8emA2-0aYnZnxAAHClWaieqTbA/viewform?usp=sf_link

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Writing research - Germaine Greer

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Jessica Butcher and Anoushka Lucas on Sparks | Edinburgh Fringe Festival

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Sparks is a story about one woman's response to grief.

It is a two-hander musical, the two performers playing both the same woman - the inspiration for this piece - one of them tells the story through dialogue, the other through song.

"All of us contain these different parts of our brains, and want different things, say different things, act in different ways"
- just as we aim to communicate/portray in our story

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The use of alter-egos as the internal.
Played by separate actors "who articulate their private anxieties"

"What you see is a once-confident woman whose life is destroyed by doubt. When her alter ego buoyantly declares that James's affair gave their marriage a shot in the arm, Wanamaker mutters "That's not right", as if her bullshit-detector is on full alert.

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t's a well-known fact that Peter Nichols's play, which first appeared in 1981, forms part of an unofficial trinity of dramas about infidelity: it came after Pinter's Betrayal (1978) and before Stoppard's The Real Thing (1982). But what the three plays have in common, apart from their technical ingenuity, is that they all dwell on the anguish of adultery; and it is when Nichols's play pushes the pain into prominence that it comes most alive.

For the first half of David Leveaux's revival I was no more than mildly diverted. I appreciated the quiet skill with which Nichols sets up the situation. James, a picture restorer, and Eleanor, an enthusiastic amateur chorister, find their 25-year-long marriage disrupted by his affair with the youthful Kate.

Nichols also doubles the couple's dilemma by giving them alter egos, Jim and Nell, who articulate their private anxieties. But Kate emerges as little more than a heartless predator in silk lingerie.

Nichols's rancid comedy, which allows James to dismiss the art of photography by saying "give a chimpanzee a camera for a few hours", also gets muffled; and that matters because James's remark is not only provocative but a way of deflecting his antsy interest in the artsy Kate.

After the interval, however, the play enters another dimension. That's partly because Nichols ups the ante to show the corrosive consequences of betrayal, partly because I found it impossible to take my eyes off Zoë Wanamaker's Eleanor. What you see is a once-confident woman whose life is destroyed by doubt. When her alter ego buoyantly declares that James's affair gave their marriage a shot in the arm, Wanamaker mutters "That's not right", as if her bullshit-detector is on full alert.

The more James blusters, the more Wanamaker disintegrates: urged to forget her errant spouse, she cries "he's half my life" as if it's too late to withdraw her emotional investment. Wanamaker has the expressive features of a natural comic. Here, however, her eyes acquire a hollow vacancy and her face resembles a once-illuminated city suddenly plunged into darkness as she gives us a riveting portrait of the ravages of deception.

It helps that she has Samantha Bond as her other self. At times Bond acts as a counterpoise to Wanamaker's despair; at other times, as when she voices Eleanor's escalating insecurities, she brings her own tragic intensity to the role. The dual-performance reminds one, in fact, that Nichols's play is weighted very heavily on the side of the wronged wife. Owen Teale and Oliver Cotton as James/Jim do their level best to show that the husband has his share of suffering but, with his multiple justifications for adultery and his glib dismissal of Christian iconography, which seems unusual in a picture restorer, he can't help seeming a bit of a jerk.

If the play still works, it is because it reinforces the point made by Pinter in his own infidelity play: that betrayal doesn't stop in the bedroom. And, even if this production could do with a few more first-half laughs to set up the tonal contrast, it is elegantly designed by Hildegard Bechtler and gets good supporting performances from Annabel Scholey as the under-written Kate and Siân Thomas as another wronged wife seeking vindictive triumph. But it's Wanamaker who gives the evening its distinction by showing, with vivid particularity, how loss of trust in one's partner numbs the sense of self.

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t's a well-known fact that Peter Nichols's play, which first appeared in 1981, forms part of an unofficial trinity of dramas about infidelity: it came after Pinter's Betrayal (1978) and before Stoppard's The Real Thing (1982).

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Main Set of Research Collected

1.Do you think that men would survive in a world without women? Why?
- No - Women are essential for reproduction and therefore survival of a species
- No, genuinely women are the bedrock of society. It sounds silly but male pride is so dominant that it would be hard to establish a society in which men may have to take on roles that they are not normally used to.
-No, I think that the differences between men and women complement eachother very well. So without women, men may lack the occasional voice of reason that is essential for survival.

2.Do you think that women would survive in a world without men? Why?
-I would love to say yes, but I do feel conflicted about this. I think that women may thrive much more in an environment without men but at the same time it may be difficult in some lengths finding that normality after centuries of male domination and female oppression. I do think women can definitely survive in a world without men however and the difference would be extremely interesting.
-No - physical strength (controversial)
-Yes bc women are a lot more rational and communicative than men.

3.Do you find yourself branding ALL men under the same category?
-No as I have worked with many different men from alpha males to homosexual men. Heterosexual men with very different attitudes to family life and women.
-yeah I do, I think most men are inherently misogynistic even if they don’t consciously think they are.
-Absolutely not. I do put people under ‘umbrella’ category’s in my head though. Like grouping people that I think are similar.

4.Do you find yourself branding ALL women under the same category?
-Not really but occasionally I’ll make unfair assumptions . For example physical appearance may unfairly lead to a stereotype if that make sense.
-No never.
-More so than men actually. Not sure why! You’ve just bought that to my attention now I had to think about it.

5.Give us the name of a film that you believe tells the story of a strong female character. If this fails the Bechdel Test would you think differently of it?
-Ladybird. Absolutely, if it failed the Bechdel test I would see the film in a completely different light and it would change the entirety of its content.
-Legally blonde- yes.
-Brave, no it can still be empowering to woman.

6.Should the Bechdel test not solely focus on the gender divide but instead focus on how often the storyline has to involve love and relationships?
-Perhaps in our society in which gender is something that is becoming much more fluid then yes - as it is happening less and less that the binary nature of gender is so prevalent.
-yes, i think the bechdel test should focus more on whether the only women in the story are one dimensional love interests for male protagonists
-No the test should not go into love and and relationships, this will then not make the test generalised and will instead focus on specifics

7.Is it necessarily a bad thing if two female characters have a conversation about a man?
-No, but I think from a creative point of view in something like film it can normalise an expectation and therefore uphold expected stereotypes.
-Not inherently, no.
-No! I think it’s more important to value a characters purpose and impact. In my opinioni, t’s more important That female characters are pushing gender norms and/or aren’t portrayed as cooking, cleaning, sex objects. Talking about a man doesn’t necessarily change if they’re a powerful female role model.

8. Do you always say out loud what you’re thinking in your head?
-Most of the time but not always if it could get me in a rough situation.
-Partially sometimes the situation dictates that I do not say what’s in my head out loud.
- Yes.

9. How often do you stop yourself from saying what you’re actually thinking?
- I try not to, especially when I notice it’s an environment that is dominated by men so I will allow myself to say what I feel. However depending on the situation sometimes I feel that it is best to just stop myself at times.
- Sometimes - probably not enough - I think it’s better to be real with people rather than regret not saying something or being fake.
- Most the time, if I’m not as comfortable with a person or think my thoughts are going to unnecessarily going to hurt/provoke them. I also don’t really give my opinion unless something specifically asks or the conversation is open to people offering up their viewpoint on a topic.

10.  Do you think your internal thoughts are often the same as someone else’s internal thoughts?
- yes.
- I think they often are the same as others’ but others might not want to admit that that’s what they’re thinking

- Yes definitely. Like when you make eye contact with someone across the room because you know they’ll be thinking what you’re thinking about a situation and you can communicate that without any words. I can do that a lot with particular people. Generally people I know very well and talk to frequently so understand their values and thought processes and knowing how they align with my own.

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The narrative of our External not knowing where she stands with feminism.

I want her to show how easy it is to fall into the traps of the apparent 'rules' of feminism that women are required to follow to be able to label themselves as appropriately feminist.

Fleabag is a phenomenon for the writing and feminist world.

Practically a several generations were in raptures about the two series and how it presented a truthful insight into a woman's head which is also what I aim to do this this script, whilst taking the piss out of wanting to be in the legacy of Fleabag.

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The actress and writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge has spoken about her conflicting feelings towards feminism.

She told BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour presenter Jenni Murray about the inspiration behind some of the feminist jokes in the hit TV series.

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Phoebe Waller-Bridge on Fleabag and feminism

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The actress and writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge has spoken about her conflicting feelings towards feminism. She told BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour presenter Jenni Murray about the inspiration behind some of the feminist jokes in the hit TV series.

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Fleabag shows an insight to a woman's mind, doing so through her making asides to the camera that viewers see but the people in her world do not

We try and communicate something similar but by splitting one character into the internal and external, showing how what is said by the External conflicts with what's being said by the Internal

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The original draft of Part 6: I hate that I love men.

The arrangement of it changed quite drastically.

Part 6 ended up being the ending whereas in my original storyboard it was quite central. I believed it had more impact with the new draft of it concluding the piece as it stands.

Although this version does have interesting concepts and phrases that I would like to explore in future editing of the script.

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This is an earlier draft of part two in the script, 'I am a feminist'.

After a later trial with audience I edited the script as it was fed back that the assumptions of the audience's levels of engagement with feminism didn't match up with the script.

"Ooh- I just felt some of you cringe."

It is our peers who will be watching and reacting to the script, and they are of a more liberal inclination (luckily).

So for the current version of the script that we will be performing, the dialogue has changed for the beginning of this section to parallel more with our expected audience.

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Notes from our audience

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Look up Cop in the Head

Current situation with Angela Rayner

Another woman

Fleabag reference

Irony

Tampons, how to use them

Visceral reactions good and bad
Adapt script to suit the audience being our peers but be aware that not all reactions to the things we are saying could be positive

We have permission to say what we want, however horrible
Weren't sure what the limits were
Liv is the honest truth, the internal in the head
The unfiltered truth
Want to explore this more, potentially even beyond this assessment

Elaborate on the hitchhiker boyfriend section

Make sure uber bit isn't a throw away remark as it is a real issue for many people

Do something/make a decision that makes it real
This will come from stronger formation of the start

"You have a penis you’ll be okay"

"He’s the perfect boyfriend because he’s not a dick"

"When the bar's on the floor you’ve got to lie on the floor"

Maybe include how I got patted on the stomach at work

Overheard someone saying "I bet he never deigned a petition in his life"
Quite funny, maybe include that somehow?

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A completed scene that I decided to remove from the draft we are performing.

It could be used for further development of the storyline and script in the future.

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Boal, A., & Epstein, S. 1990. The Cop in the Head: Three Hypotheses. TDR. 34(3)

The theatre of the oppressed.

Women as oppressed --> theatre about women.

"The theatre of the oppressed emphasises theatre as a language that must be spoken, not a discourse that must be listened to [...] The theatre of the oppressed goes beyond the ordinary boundaries of theatre because it asserts the oppressed are the subjects rather than the objects of theatrical activity." (35)

Cop in the head as a framework for internalised oppressions

"The cops are in their heads, but the headquarters of these cops are in the external reality" (35)
- our two characters; the Enternal (I) and External (E)
- the External filters through what the Internal is really thinking
- who is mediating who therefore?

As the Internal says, we are trying to show our audience what is happening inside a woman's head. Validating feelings of women in the audience and potentially educating our male peers who watch.

The fundamental principles of the theatre of the oppressed:
1) to help the spectator become a protagonist of the dramatic action so the s/he can
2) apply those actions s/he has practice in the theatre to real life

(1990: 36)

The smallest cells of the social organisation
(eg. the couple, the family, the neighbourhood, the school, the office, the factory etc) (36)

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Link to Full Script