“Blood Relations and Other Plays” by Sharon Pollock

A highlight of the spring of 1982 was the presentation, in Winnipeg, of the prestigious Governor General’s Awards for Literary Excellence. This year marked the first time ever that an award has been made for drama and the recipient was Sharon Pollock, a playwright who presently resides in Calgary, Alberta. Coincidentally, several months prior to this auspicious occasion, the Manitoba Theatre Centre announced that it would be producing Blood Relations, the play which garnered the award for Pollock, as part of the MTC twenty-fifth anniversary celebrations in the 1982/83 season. A better choice could not have been made by either body.

Sharon Pollock started her theatre career as an actress and her experience on the stage has been of immeasurable value to her work as a playwright. The expertise acquired by Pollock, the actress, is evident in the work of Pollock, the dramatist. She understands how to develop a relationship with her audience and how to incorporate that relationship into the thematic structure of her material. Pollock is aware of the practical realities of the contemporary stage and knows which particular theatrical conventions are most appropriate to it. She has a firm grasp of the fundamental energies which drive the invisible engine of a stage play and she does not back away from utilizing the vital element of conflict to its fullest effect.

In a more technical sense, Pollock’s experience as an actress has taught her when it is necessary to give stage directions and when it is necessary to refrain from employing them. This seemingly insignificant skill, is, in fact, essential to effectively communicating to performers exactly what the playwright wishes.

Blood Relations is the most complex of the three plays and assaults the intellect on several levels simultaneously. The play is a richly textured work of many layers built upon a fascinating premise.

The plot concerns Lizzie Borden — the famous axe murderer. One of the first things pointed out to us is that though Lizzie Borden was charged and placed on trial for the gruesome murders of her Father and Step-Mother, she was subsequently acquitted and spent the rest of her life living quietly in the very house where the murders occurred. Pollock’s play picks up the thread of Lizzie’s life ten years after the event. It is late afternoon and Lizzie is entertaining an actress friend who remains known to us only as that. Though a sexual liaison between the two women is very broadly hinted at, verification is not forthcoming and we can only speculate: gather through nuance and guess at the truth. This is consistent with the style of the piece, and, in fact, goes so far as to reflect a thematic point. The actress is curious about Lizzie. The neighbours are curious about Lizzie. “Did you. …?” the actress asks Lizzie, and we ask with her. Pollock has cleverly implicated us in the action from the outset of the play. There is little doubt that the story of Lizzie Borden bears a certain morbid fascination. We want to know. We are involved as voyeurs. Since Pollock is primarily concerned with the individual railing against a repressive society, the seduction of the audience into the role of meddling neighbour, with a pronounced taste for lurid intrigue and sensationalism, becomes all the more meaningful. The role of the spectator comes full circle and we end up seeing ourselves. When Lizzie finally tires of the actress’s attempts to coax or tease the truth out of her, she suggests they play a ‘game. This is where the play becomes most interesting. The game is straightforward. The actress will play Lizzie (Actress/Lizzie) and Lizzie will play the Borden maid of ten years ago (Lizzie/Bridget). From this point of departure, the two women become absorbed in acting out the macabre tale of how the murders came to occur as the two of them weave a tapestry of past events and conjure up ghosts to perform in the “dream play”. We are drawn like flies to honey, and descend effortlessly into the psyche of Lizzie Borden.

In one stroke, Pollock has accomplished several things. First, she has employed a standard stage convention, as well as an innovative one, in order to create a highly imaginative effect. By employing the standard convention of a “play within a play”, Pollock has acknowledged the audience’s awareness that it is observing actors playing roles upon a stage within a theatre. Audiences are not fooled by attempts to “create a reality”. What Pollock has achieved by pointing up the “theatricality” of the event is, paradoxically, to involve her audience more intensely and personally than might otherwise have been possible through alienating it.

Pollock has also secured our attention through the transmutation of the two women, which is a rather more innovative stage convention. When the actress assumes the role of Lizzie and “acts” as Lizzie might have ten years previously, the spectator is permitted to view the unfolding story not as a function of Lizzie’s mind, or memories, or even her experience, but as the direct experience of a whole other being who has been submerged by osmosis into a personal variation of the mental landscape of Lizzie Borden. This is likely to elicit a greater empathy from the observer as the experience is being shared one-person-removed from the tainted axe murderer. Lizzie/ Bridget feeds the actress information naturalistically as an aspect of character and situation rather than in the expository manner employed in many plays. This is yet another example of Pollock’s expertise. By providing background information essential to an understanding of the story as a function of Lizzie/ Bridget’s attempts to enlighten Actress/ Lizzie, Pollock has succeeded in building the information into the play as an event. Words have become actions.

Lizzie Borden is a woman bristling with intelligence and smouldering with unspent fury. In the Borden house, Lizzie occupies a position of acute paralysis. She is regarded by those around her as little more than a difficult child who must not be told what is going on lest she become unduly aggravated. At thirty-four years of age, Lizzie may often be difficult and petulant; she is hardly a child.

The sources of her frustration are many and varied: Lizzie is convinced that her Step-Mother, whom she despises and distrusts, is manipulating Mr. Borden into signing over all his material possessions. No one takes Lizzie seriously or views her as having an iota of intelligence or common sense. The family would like to see her safely married off to a widower with three sons, a fate Lizzie is hardly willing to accept. Yet, her pleas for independence, work of her own, and a responsible position in the community, are ignored by the family and she is in no position to implement such a thing by herself. Lizzie is an honest, direct human being trapped in a social milieu which prides itself in its ability to control through circumspection. Thus events appear to conspire against Lizzie Borden. She is helpless. Impotent. Frustrated. Repressed. and finally, wrathful. Rage cleanses Lizzie as she slowly yields to the seduction of cold fury. We are left to ponder the outcome and, we discover, it is not as we had expected. The play is brilliant.

In Blood Relations, Sharon Pollock has fully exploited the alchemical power of the stage, conjuring up ghosts and transmuting personalities and energies. The play passes into another dimension and Pollock has realized the role of the playwright as architect, sorcerer, and priest.

A final word about Blood Relations. It is a pleasure to read something which, in a discussion of a woman’s role in her society, manages to resist both feminist and chauvinist cliches about what men have done to women — or would like to; but still provokes in the reader a number of questions about the woman’s “role” and the predominantly male values which have governed our institutions for so long. Though Blood Relations has steadfastly refused to adopt or follow any sexual political party line, it is a stimulating examination of repression based largely on gender.

One Tiger To A Hill, the second play in this collection, is, like Blood Relations, based on a true life event. A few years ago, two inmates at the B.C. pen in New Westminster took several hostages. Among the hostages was Mary Steinhauser, a prison rehabilitation officer. When prison guards stormed the area, Steinhauser was shot to death by one of the guards, under what remain questionable circumstances. Thus the play has an inherent dramatic element which provides its own momentum. The situation is tense. The environment is charged with an electric conflict so powerful it can almost be seen sparking off the characters.

Pollock has wisely chosen to allow the events to unfold of their own volition. She treats her subject fairly and each character is permitted to speak in his/ her own voice — each of which seems honest and forthright. Pollock is able to illustrate the complexity of the issues through presenting opposing points of view, at the same time that she pulls all of these views together in a manner which confirms her premise. One Tiger To A Hill is twice as effective for its lack of didacticism.

And again, in this play, Sharon Pollock touches significantly on the effects of socially ingrained sexism without resorting to hysterical gender-bashing. The woman rehabilitation officer in the play (Dede Walker) has managed, in the face of all odds, to develop a healthy and constructive relationship with a prison inmate (Tommy Paul). Paul has been uncharacteristically keeping his nose clean. Because this excellent rapport occurs between a male inmate and a female rehabilitation officer, the institution’s staff (including Dede’s co-worker and friend — Frank) automatically assumes that Dede must be providing Tommy Paul with sexual favours. This is a serious charge which is never formally laid because it is based on speculation. Pollock does not concern herself with whether or not these charges are true. Her point is that they are based on hearsay. An interesting effect of Pollock’s having taken this tack is that the spectator is never entirely sure what to think about the relationship between this man and woman.

When a friend of Tommy Paul’s dies in solitary confinement under dubious circumstances, the already existing hostility and resentment are escalated. Paul and another inmate take hostages — among them Dede Walker. A negotiator is brought in and here again, Pollock employs a standard stage convention in order to further implicate the audience in the proceedings, as well as to paradoxically involve and alienate the audience. Chalmers, the negotiator, speaks directly to the audience in a prologue and then he makes his first exit through the audience. He thus becomes one of us, a member of our society. We are involved and implicated in these events.

One Tiger To A Hill is an examination of the frustrations of living and working in an antiquated prison system which is ineffective, and ultimately destructive.

The play drives relentlessly to its conclusion. The rhythms of the play move swiftly and deftly, betraying the underlying obsession — the ruthless significance of these events and the inevitability of their outcome. As the action of the play accelerates, we are left breathless. The spectator begins to wonder: perhaps there has been some mistake, some misunderstanding that might be put right if only we could back up a step or two. But it is too late for all that. The events have acquired their own awful momentum and once put into motion expand to nightmarish proportions. As in Blood Relations, we witness an intense frustration born in repression, released in cold fury, and driving towards an inevitability which only serves to underscore the helplessness of even the strongest individuals to effect meaningful change.

The accuracy with which Pollock captures the dreary monotony, the repression and despair, the deadening and alienating effects of prison life, is revealed in a simple scene at the outset of the play where Hanzuk, the prison guard, orders Tommy Paul to wash the same spot on the floor over and over again. As one character so aptly puts it: “… and we’re all servin’ time, the guards, the prisoners, everyone!”

Generations, the last play in the volume is stylistically and thematically different from the other two. The play is more naturalistic than the other two in that Pollock does not employ such alienating devices as the play within a play or the prologue/epilogue. There is more humour in Generations and while the other two plays drive relentlessly to their awful and inevitable conclusions, the pace of Generations seems more relaxed — less strident. While Blood Relations and One Tiger To A Hill are explicit examinations of particular moments of high tension isolated in time and almost aberrant — magnified out of proportion by a density of action — Generations is about the passage of time and its effect on three generations of the same family. There is not as much animosity or raw emotion in this play. The tensions in it are the more usual tensions of people discovering they no longer have much in common. The play has a softer focus. The years have conspired against the family farm and the struggle is not that of individuals with nerves flayed raw but of those whose struggle is with the soil. It is a struggle born of love, land and family.

Yet Pollock’s work inevitably addresses certain social issues. In this case, it is the apparent insensitivity and indifference of government to the plight of the Canadian farmer. Pollock, in fact, neatly defines an entrenched element of western alienation in this country.

But, in spite of all that, this play is the most optimistic of the three and even betrays an obvious pride in the prairies. Where Blood Relations and One Tiger To A Hill are bleak visions of frustration and despair as well as merciless indictments of a callous society, Generations offers hope.

It is possible to make some general statements about Pollock’s themes at this point. Her concern for the individual is paramount. All three plays echo this central theme — the dilemma of the individual struggling against an oppressive system until driven to some desperate measure, whether it be an axe murder, hostage-taking, crop burning, or livestock slaughter. Pollock is concerned about the cumulative effects of long-term frustrations and helplessness, inevitably leading to the eruption of apparently senseless violence. When there are enough such individuals in a single place, they become an army. These are the seeds of revolution. But Pollock’s major focus is on society conspiring against its individuals, and on the repressed psyche of a strong individual trapped in a small-minded society breeding violence.

As a postscript let me submit a maxim of the theatre: What reads well on paper will not always work on the stage, and what works well on the stage will not always read well on the page. A play is written to be performed live before an audience and publication is very much an afterthought. But Sharon Pollock is a dramatist of the first rank. The plays are well worth reading. I highly suspect Blood Relations will be well worth seeing.

William Horrocks’ play, St. Peter’s Asylum, will be performed at Prairie Theatre Exchange in April, 1983.