Deconstructive Techniques and Spectral Technologies in Katie Mitchell’s Attempts on Her Life

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Notes

1. Cited in Benoît Peeters, Derrida: A Biography, trans. by Andrew Brown (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013), p. 77.

2. Ibid.

3. See, for example: Vicky Angelaki, The Plays of Martin Crimp: Making Theatre Strange (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Mary Luckhurst, ‘Political Point-Scoring: Martin Crimp’s Attempts on Her Life’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 13 (February 2003), 47–60; Aleks Sierz, The Theatre of Martin Crimp (London: Methuen, 2006); Heiner Zimmermann, ‘Images of Woman in Martin Crimp’s Attempts on her Life’, European Journal of English Studies, 7 (Spring 2003), 69–85; Zimmermann, ‘Martin Crimp, Attempts on her Life: Postdramatic, Postmodern, Satiric?’, in (Dis)Continuities: Trends and Traditions in Contemporary Theatre and Drama in English, ed. by Margarete Rubik and Elke Mettinger-Schartmann (Trier: Wissenschaftflicher Verlag Trier, 2002), pp. 106–24.

4. Jonas Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1981); Nicholas Ridout, Stage Fright, Animals, and Other Theatrical Problems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

5. Martin Crimp, The City (London: Faber and Faber, 2008), p. 62.

6. Martin Crimp, In the Republic of Happiness (London: Faber and Faber, 2012), p. 19.

7. John O’Mahony, ‘Writer’s Crimp’, Guardian, 20 April 1993, p. 24.

8. Attempts on Her Life premiered in 1997 in a Royal Court production directed by Tim Albery.

9. The City Podcast Interview by Ola Animashawun with Martin Crimp, Katie Mitchell, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Hattie Morahan, 20 May 2008, <http://www.royalcourttheatre.com/news/podcasts/the-city/> [accessed 19 December 2013].

10.  Alice Jones, interview with Katie Mitchell, Independent, 17 April 2008, <http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/katie-mitchell-id-hate-to-hang-around-making-theatre-when-theyre-tired-of-it-810224.html> [accessed 19 December 2013].

11. Dan Rebellato, ‘Katie Mitchell: Learning from Europe’, in Contemporary European Theatre Directors, ed. by Maria Delgado and Dan Rebellato (London: Routledge, 2010), pp. 317–38 (p. 331).

12. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, trans. by Peggy Kamuf (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 46.

13. Ibid., p. 65.

14. Ibid., p. 226.

15. Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (London: Fontana Press, 1988), pp. 144–45.

16. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical and Democratic Politics (London: Verso, 1985 (1st ed.), 2001 (2nd ed. pbk), 2013 (2nd ed. hbk), 2014 (ebk)), p. 126.

17. Ibid., p. 128. Emphasis in original.

18. Ibid., p 129.

19. Derrida, Specters of Marx, p. 65.

20. Ibid., p. 67.

21. Clara Escoda Agustí, ‘“Short Circuits of Desire”: Language and Power in Martin Crimp’s Attempts on her Life’, ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, 36 (July–October 2005), 103–26 (p. 106). The author’s name is cited as given in the original publication.

22. Crimp cited in Sierz, The Theatre of Martin Crimp, p. 102.

23. ‘Martin Crimp’ [interview], in Harriet Devine, Looking Back: Playwrights at the Royal Court, 1956–2006 (London: Faber, 2006), 81–90 (p. 86).

24. Angelaki, The Plays of Martin Crimp, pp. 58–59.

25. Mitchell cited in Sierz, The Theatre of Martin Crimp, p. 198.

26. Martin Crimp, Attempts on Her Life, in Plays Two (London: Faber and Faber, 2005), pp. 197–284 (p. 224).

27. Kate Bassett, Review of Attempts on Her Life, Independent, 18 March 2007, reprinted in Theatre Record, 27.6 (2007), 311.

28. Michael Billington, State of the Nation: British Theatre since 1945 (London: Faber and Faber, 2007), p. 405.

29. Neil Blackadder ‘Waves, and Attempts on Her Life (review)’, Theatre Journal, 60 (March 2008), 139–41 (p. 41).

30. Rebellato, ‘Katie Mitchell’, p. 335.

31. Katie Mitchell, Platform Interview with Dan Rebellato, National Theatre, 1 May 2007. Author’s transcription.

32. Nick Kaye, Multi-Media: Video – Installation – Performance (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 9.

33. Derrida, Specters of Marx, p. 67.

34. Steve Dixon, Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007), p. 335.

35. Mitchell, Platform Interview with Dan Rebellato.

36. Paul Taylor, ‘The World According to Crimp’, Independent, 10 May 2000, p. 11.

37. Crimp, Attempts on Her Life in Plays Two, pp. 210–11.

38. Crimp cited in Devine, Looking Back, p. 86.

39. Crimp, Attempts on Her Life in Plays Two, p. 227; p. 230.

40. Ibid., p. 236.

41. Paul Rae, Theatre & Human Rights (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 35.

42. Ibid., p. 36.

43. Katie Mitchell, The Director’s Craft: A Handbook for the Theatre (London: Routledge, 2009), p. 46.

44. Angelaki, The Plays of Martin Crimp, pp. 58–59.

45. This stage direction is from the original published text: Martin Crimp, Attempts on Her Life (London: Faber and Faber, 1997), n. p. According to Sierz in The Theatre of Martin Crimp, it was omitted in subsequent versions – such as the text referred to above, in Plays Two – in order ‘to discourage versions which too obviously underline the play’s irony’ (p. 50), rather than because Crimp had entirely retracted the play’s use of irony.