by It is a Thursday evening in front of the Harold Pinter Theater in the West End of London, and a long series of people Saiting for the performance of the Smash hit game The Years, which was nominated for five Olivier Awards. The atmosphere is charged with excessible concern. A young woman in her early twenties explains “abortion!” In a shock -dramatic way in front of your friends. Two older American men smile ironic. “Let’s see how many people will end up in the end,” says one.
It is fair to say that not everyone was. As in the years, which was directed and adapted by the French writer Annie Ernaux, Les Années, the performance was stopped after 45 minutes. An audience had become sick in a scene in which Romola Garai Annie 3 (the five-member occupation of five-strong women plays in different phases of their lives, from 1941 to 2006). Garai plays Annie at the beginning of the 1960s, a time when medical abortion in France was still illegal. At first, your character tries in vain to break off the fetus with a knitting needle, and then attend a nurse of the back street and miscarriage at home.
In this case, the interruption occurred within seconds after Garai described the process in detail and was on her back and cried in pain. In other appearances, people are either fainted or asked to walk, at which Garai gets up, blood smeared over their legs and hold their hands out in a breathing arrest, as if he were to call up the broken fetus.
Someone was affected during the majority; The Guardian also reported that the majority of open men are, although the theater says that this is not the case. The Ushers received additional training to cope with the answers from the audience and the theater used a doctor on site.
The scene is undeniably stressful, although it is not particularly graphic either: an audience described it to me as “almost relaxed”. But many who have seen the show wonder why it has such a great influence. “I don’t understand why people who are squeamish buy tickets,” the woman murmured next to me. She was amazed that the show stopped when she had it. “People reacted before something happened.”
As now, the British audience will receive a trigger warning for the years when you buy online tickets, in this case aware of “blood” and “a graphic representation of the abortion”. There are also some discrete warnings for posters in the foyers of the theater. But when production was carried out in the Netherlands, there were no such warnings and very few fainting. “My experience is that there are more reactions than if they don’t have them,” Arbo told the Financial Times. “It is the way of being an apology for yourself, but then she [the audience] are so aware that it improves the feeling of inconvenience. “
A study by British Psychological Society showed that not only warnings were triggered, but also a “negligible influence on emotional reactions”, but it was also more likely that they demanded “an antipyranic reaction” in humans. “I had the feeling that I would be prepared to react,” said a woman after the show. “I’ve always wondered which actress it will be? ‘In a way, it took away the story.”
Anyone with whom I spoke for this piece defended Trigger warnings as a necessary protection for those they need. Arbo also defends it. However, some people ignore them. A man who saw it in the west end had no idea that the show was routinely stopped and the triggers had not looked at warnings. When it happened, he first assumed that someone got sick for a completely different reason. “I was not afraid for the scene and no visceral reaction,” he says. Does he have a look at why other men may be affected? “I can only speculate, but it could be that some men may have never had the chance to see what [an abortion] Means for women. “
It is certainly still rare that the gynecological experience of women is dramatized and emphasized both in the years. “We are very not used to see Uterus blood in our culture,” argues another woman who has also seen production in the west end. “It’s not that long ago [in 2017] These manufacturers of sanitary towel began in their ads red liquid instead of blue. “Abortions and periods, she says, remain a cultural taboo.
Pottery is hardly a new phenomenon in the theater – the audience passed out in their droves on the Blood Splatter 2012 Titus Andronicus des Globe and recently during the west end production of a little life. Pottery is also good for the business: During the 19th century, Grand Guignol Theater in Paris would bring out the rumor that people were regularly passed on during shows, which in turn contributed to bringing people in.
But the years do not easily fit into the standard roast of blood, blood and violence that tend to tap the audience over the edge. According to an appropriate standard, the amount of view is relatively low. Many of the people I talked to mentioned that they had seen far more cruel events in other productions, especially in the West End production of a little life. “It was much more difficult to observe because the violence was not inflicted on it itself,” said a woman.
In addition, the Almeida organized Beth Steeles Families Epic the House of Shades in 2022, which contained painful abortion, in which Anne-Marie Duff’s character Constance compulsively brought a Zinterlück to her late pregnant daughter Laura (Emma Shipipp). The scene contained a scream from the broken fetus that Constance had stuffed into a bucket – I saw him horrified and never forgot. The production had standard trigger warnings. A spokesman for Almeida confirms that no fainting was reported.
Compare this with the years that get to the point where the expectation of the audience is built into the experience of reputation. “It is as if the audience sees the beginning of the scene and their expectations [of what’s about to take place] Push them over the edge and not about everything they actually see, ”said an English teacher. “To be honest, it reminded me of the melting pot,” she adds, referring to the Arthur Miller game for the Salem Hexen processes from the 17th century, in which a group of young girls are obsessed with a form of mob hysteria.
Professor Simon Wessely, a consultant psychiatrist at King’s College Hospital, points out that there is a distinction between mass hysteria, which is now known as “sociogenic mass disease”, and “collective behavior”. “MSI is contagious and spreads, while the collective behavior tends to be expected and is indeed awaited … in the audience, just as it can happen in a charismatic church,” he says. “It can look very scary to the uninitiated, but actually it is actually not at all, and in the end both the person who has experienced abnormal behavior and the community feels better for experience.” Of course, this is not so unlike the cathartic purpose of the ancient Greek tragedy, which arouses “terror and pity” as a means of rinsing such emotions in the audience.
Apart from the fact that many spectators have found the disturbance of years of annoying nerves. “People go because of sensationalism now and if so, if so, is that what is now their lived experience for many women in the USA in view of the overturning of abortion rights?” says a woman.
Others even wondered if the Fainters are plants. A woman also asked if Usher’s react too quickly to the smallest reaction of the audience. A spokesman for the Harold Pinter Theater denies that this is the case and tells me that the impotence “slower, with more productions taking place without incidents”.
Of course, nobody can explain the subjective reaction of a certain audience – many women have experienced abortion or miscarriage. Both are experiences that are usually discussed a lot in public. “I never think of my ectopes [pregnancy]But if you brought back this scene back, she brought back, ”said a woman. She didn’t feel weak, but can understand why it could do a lot. “The scene is about profound loss. [But on the other hand]People’s reactions to their own experiences and that of others are not always logical. “
The years last until April 19. Atgtickets.com
