#playtexts

(SPOILER ALERT!)

Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping and Fucking takes a look at a world where everything can be bought but one that is also disposable. The play is often humorous but also shocking, which is part of its nature as an ‘in-yer-face’ theatre piece. ‘In-yer face theatre’ is an experimental theatrical movement that was first developed in the 90’s which involves shocking audiences with extreme language and images in order to unsettle them. The purpose of this is to try and get audiences to question themselves and the world around them by showing them graphic and normally taboo content on stage in order to provoke a reaction. Ravenhill was central to this movement, and Shopping and Fucking is a perfect example of an ‘in-yer-face” piece. The play follows the four central characters; Robbie, Mark, Lulu and Gary whom Ravenhill named after the members of the popular 90’s boyband Take That and the singer songwriter Lulu who collaborated on the single ‘Relight my Fire’. In the play we see the characters face their own desperate struggles in a consumerist world full of sex, drugs and violence. The characters’ lives have been reduced to transactions, especially Mark the recovering drug addict who’s looking for a physical connection and willing to pay any price.

When the play first opened to mixed reviews in the Royal Court Theatre In London 1996, the title itself was heavily censored, with the promotional material edited to change the name of the play to “Shopping and F******” But despite the quite grotesque and graphic content within the play itself (e.g. the rape of Gary at the end of the play), it didn’t deter audiences from coming to the theatre and if anything it helped it build a cult following. The theatre was filled with young 20-somethings and boasted a strong gay presence, which meant that more people were starting to talk about more taboo topics such as pornography, prostitution, drugs and sexuality.

(SPOILER ALERT!)

Spring Awakening was written by Frank Wedekind in the early 1890’s, but was first performed in 1906. The play criticises the sexually oppressive culture and attitudes in Germany during the 19th century. Wedekind does this through exploring the lives and relationships of the children in the play; Wendla, Melchior, Moritz, Hanschen and Ernst. The play discusses the difficulty of growing up which is present in the themes found within the three act play; sexuality, death, religion, relationships and violence. The majority of the play itself feels quite dark and it’s hard to find any lighter happier moments within it, the concept of death is foreshadowed early on in the playtext with Wendla saying in Act 1, Scene 1; “Who knows – perhaps I won’t be anything anymore.” The play goes on to include more dark and quite taboo topics such as rape and suicide which caused controversy when it was first staged. This controversy means that the play has often been censored or banned completely, and during its first English staging in New York in 1917, the production was threatened with closure.

In the play we see how clueless the children really are about sex and their own personal sexuality due to their upbringing and the attitudes of the previous generation who are repressed in their outlook on sexuality, choosing to hide the truth from their children instead of discussing the things they need to know about sex. We see today in our society that the opposite is now the problem when it comes to children/teenagers learning about sex. Due to the increasing use of technology and the fact that children are able to access the internet at a younger age - with 7/10 twelve to fifteen year olds having a social media profile according to Ofcom (2015) - they are often seeing things that could be considered inappropriate for them such as pornography. It is these unrealistic portrayals of sex and relationships that can have a negative impact on them and the way they view themselves and also potential sexual relationships. The play is able to bring about conversations about sex that otherwise might not have happened despite the fact it was written over a hundred years ago.