Saturday, May 10, 2025
Blog Page 950

Richard Burton’s well trodden boards

Daniel Curtis
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Richard Burton’s well trodden boards

The Burton Taylor studio is an integral part of Oxford drama. A place where budding Oxford actors make their mark and start their careers. Yet while we regularly pass it, enjoy art in it and perhaps even perform in it, we rarely realise why it stands there.

While Elizabeth Taylor has no explicit links to the university, Richard Burton most certainly does. Both his father and elder brother saw education as Burton’s route out of his turbulent childhood, so Oxford became the end goal for him, the first member of his family to ever go to secondary school. As part of a six-month RAF scholarship scheme that combined his studies in aviation with work in English and Italian, he entered Exeter College after excelling at his exams.

Burton had already shown himself to have a knack for performance as a child, he truly discovered his talent on the stage at Exeter.

In 1944, before an audience packed full of West End heavyweights, he played a complex, sexually tortured Angelo in Measure for Measure. By all accounts, Burton commanded the stage. His acting peer and friend Robert Hardy described it, “There were moments when he totally commanded the audience by this stillness. And the voice which would sing like a violin and with a bass that could shake the floor.” He received a standing ovation.

Whispers abounded among the stars present about employing Burton as a professional actor should he seek it as a career after finishing his work with the RAF. Happily for the history of stage and screen, he did.

Two decades later, he kept a promise to his tutor: one day he would return a star. He and Taylor, who was at that time the highest paid actor in the world, starred in an OUDS production of Doctor Faustus, directed by his former tutor Coghill, at the Oxford Playhouse.

Then, in 1966, Burton directed money toward the Burton rooms, a space where actors could read and rehearse in (relative) comfort. Soon, these rooms began to be used more and more for both rehearsing and full blown productions, transforming them in to the Burton Taylor studio: the launch pad it is today. The name was given in honour of the working class Welsh lad who wrote his name into the annals of the history of the stage and whose theatrical presence stunned Oxford into silence.

Liberalism is dead—now it’s time for action

Lael Hines
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Liberalism is dead—now it’s time for action
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Conjuring some museum magic

Altair Brandon-Salmon
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Conjuring some museum magic

An eighteenth century “Hand of Fatima”, made in Hyderabab, encrusted with rubies, diamonds, and pearls, is a symbol of the Prophet Muhammad’s daughter and is one of the most ubiquitous amulets in the Islamic world, meant to ward off an Evil Eye. Is it a devotional object, like the Cross of Christ in Christianity, or a superstitious talisman which exists in parallel to strict theology? In truth, it is both, and the intersection of religious and supernatural beliefs is at the core of the Ashmolean’s new exhibition, Power and Protection.

As such, the exhibition tries to trace links between Islam and supernatural beliefs diachronically and geographically, ranging from Turkey and Egypt to India and China, attesting to the diversity of cultures in the Muslim world. Split into three sections, “Interpreting Signs”, “The Power of the Word”, and “Amulets and Talismans”, it attempts to off er an overview of the ways Islamic cultures made sense of the world: astrology, geomancy, bibliomancy, practices also familiar to European cultures.

Astrolabes, illuminated manuscripts, astrological charts, and more are covered. The exquisite artistry, the manipulation of material by the finest craftsmen from continents united only by a shared religion (but not necessarily branch—the divide of Sunni and Shia Muslims is acknowledged but not tackled), is frequently astonishing and fascinating. The Perfect Calender by Yusuf ibn Hasan al-Husayni and the charts of Iskander Mirza’s workshop fuse astronomy and astrology together, taking Ptolemy’s Almagest and combining it with Arabic astronomical findings, so that religion and science cannot be separated.

The exhibition stresses that such a dichotomy, similar to the Islamic versus supernatural divide posed in its title, is a false one. Instead, the mystical and the religious cohabit and intermingle, influencing Persian, Egyptian and Indian societies, bearing fruit in objects like magical-come-medicinal bowls, which span continents but have clear formal structural and symbolic similarities. We really see both the global nature of Islam and its local manifestations on display here, in only two small rooms.

However, the way Islam intersects with other cultures, such as its dialogue with Christian Europe, is neglected. The Seal of Solomon, which appears in an eighteenth century Turkish collection of passages from the Qur’an, with its long association with Judaism, could have offered a way into exploring the overlap between Abrahamic cultures and the importance they attach to objects with “supernatural powers”. Power and Protection also virtually ignores the role of these talismans in contemporary Muslim society. It is impossible to go to Jordan or Tunisia or Egypt without seeing the Hand of Fatima or decorated Qur’ans. A small display of fridge magnets, CDs and key rings, meant to bring good luck or protection to their owner, show a line from the past to the present which could perhaps off er insight into the modern world. Yet due to constraints on the exhibition’s size and purview, it only glances at this potential avenue.

If the scope of the exhibition can at times be frustratingly restrictive, then what is on display is of unimpeachable interest and quality. The “Power of the Word” section is probably the most enthralling, as it roots the supernatural powers of the written word in Islamic theology. As Power and Protection explains, one strain of thought in Islam is that ‘the universe is thought of as an immense book waiting to be read and deciphered’, and as such, there is a tangible power ascribed to words. Islamic metaphysics, resting on a religion where a text, the Qu’ran, has central authority over all people, is thus translated into items of practicality. Holy words are inscribed on tunics, swords and banners to protect those in battle. A particularly well preserved set of twelfth century Persian armour demonstrates the life and death power granted to text. Calligrams (images made of words) dominate in the final room, where talismans and language become one and the same. One calligram, from 1866, is of a ship with the Dutch flag, as it was made in Indonesia, a colony at the time. It raises a whole raft of unanswered questions: did these talismans undergo a change during the colonial era, and if so, in what ways? Instead, the exhibition only ruefully recognises this crucial aspect of Islamic history and moves on.

It is true that Power and Protection often raises more problems than it solves; we are left wanting more by the huge scope of the exhibition, a desire which can never feasibly be satisfied. Indeed, maybe it is no bad thing that it might send some of its audience into the library to read further on the many cultures which subscribe to Islam, and the wealth of beautiful, intriguing objects on display is a testament to the skill and talent pervasive in Middle Eastern and Asian cultures, expertise all too often bundled into “oriental anthropology”. It is a major exhibition and worth seeing, even if we should be alert to the areas it does not, and cannot, cover.

Review: It Felt Empty

Amaris Proctor
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Review: It Felt Empty

Despite the metatheatrical apology near the beginning of It Felt Empty where the protagonist declares she’s sorry we must see such disturbing sights, I’m certainly not sorry I did. Even though it completely warrants the trigger warning attached to it, this play is in equal measures distressing, compelling and raucously funny—it is definitely one to watch.

The play centres on Dijana, a 22 year-old Croatian woman negotiating the complex and devastating psychological effects of sex-trafficking. Its treatment of the commodification of women, which involves one being reduced to the worth of “two-and–a-half iPhones”, could not be more traumatically topical than it is this week. It lays bare how America’s election of Trump, whose wealth and status legitimises his rampant sexual abuse of women, reveals systematic apathy towards the dehumanisation of female flesh. Yet, however bleak this piece of student theatre is, in the capable hands of the director Lauren Jackson, it doubles as activism itself. All proceeds are going to the charity Clean Break, which seeks to help women who have been through the criminal justice system, or who are at risk.

Jackson’s occupation and cultivation of the Pilch studio is the most striking aspect of the production. Its stark, nondescript blackness encapsulates the play’s feeling of liminality and heightens the viewer’s awareness that the women depicted have fallen through cracks in society. The set’s plainness allows it to be amorphous, flitting between locations in a spiralling and distorting manner and to mimic the instability and confusion experienced by the tonally fractured protagonist. Despite the plethora of allusions to specific and recognisable settings, including Canary Wharf, Dalston, Shoreditch, and Brighton, the narrative seems to occur in a void. The whole piece seems to consciously tug at the pit in your stomach, the stifling, oppressive heat of the enclosed space providing a taste of structures of female imprisonment and oppression. This production plays on the desolate tradition of female confinement in domestic spheres, which has haunted the works of women writers such as Charlotte Brontë, Emma Donoghue, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The complex pain of this is revealed by the eclectic works of art strung from the ceiling; the sweep of images range from vitriolic, blotchy reds against white paper, displaced masks, and used plastic, to feminine, floral pictures, filled with vulnerability and pathos.

Jackson tries to make the play immersive: the audience is sprawled primarily across the floor, and encouraged to move freely amongst the actresses and props. Although emotionally difficult the audience interaction emphasises the claustrophobia and intimacy of the production and instills in the viewer a chilling sense of implication. This is exacerbated by the complete physical absence of men in the play, the perpetrators of Dijana’s torment always remaining invisible. There is a sense that the person to blame for these atrocities could be the person who serves you at the supermarket, or someone sitting in the audience with you.

The stamina and physicality of Natalie Lauren and Shannon Haye, who play Dijana and Gloria, is extremely potent. The depth of irony in Dijana’s lament that she’s not an Oxford University student, considering the diversity of options we have, anticipated my apprehensions about how the subject matter would translate in student theatre. A phoney refraction of Kirkwood’s nuanced treatment of sex-trafficking, by actors who were clearly out of touch with the issue, would have been hard to stomach. Fortunately, the actors evidently approached the text with a well of emotional intelligence. The feverish, child-like delusion, hope, and despair of Dijana were emotively articulated by the captivating lilt of Lauren’s accent.it-felt-empty-review-image-2

Although the immobilised way sexuality and violence is shown is gut-wrenching, both actors avoid dipping into sentimentality: they maintain a subtlety and ambivalence which is far more profound. This is especially marked in how they deal with the audaciously dissonant humour of the play. Just as Gloria must signal to the traumatised Dijana when to laugh, the audience remains in a constant state of uncertainty. The way their performances lurch between funny and just too jarring is uncomfortable but thought-provoking. If I had one critique for the piece, it is that the unstable portrayal of time means the uncertain pacing may be draining for some viewers. Fundamentally, however, the actors manage to make their characters as textured as the troubling tale necessitates, in a way that holds your gaze.

Ultimately, as a massive admirer of Lucy Kirkwood’s work, the idea of a piece of her writing shifting into the world of student theatre was both tantalising and anxiety-inducing. After viewing it, I’m convinced that it was in the hands of people with the emotional capacity to explore such meaty issues in a frank and constructive way.

Trump: the future of American politics

Fred Dimbleby
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Trump: the future of American politics

In the early hours of Wednesday morning I experienced an all too familiar feeling. I experienced it on the night of the 2015 election, I experienced it on the night of Brexit and I experienced it on the night of the 2016 US election. Something had gone terribly wrong. Those assumptions and sureties, that we had all made, were wrong. Trump had defied the polls, he had defied the pundits, he had defied members of his own party and the history of conventional wisdom and had pulled off a shock victory in the Electoral College.

In my first article for Cherwell I said, naively, that Trump was almost certainly going to lose this election, and I thought the same thing right up until about 3am last night. Of course, I was nervous and had the dark spectre of the Brexit vote in the back of my mind. But, as I told a friend who raised the issue of the Brexit shock with me, the polling in the UK is so much worse than US polling – the same surprise won’t happen there. Look how wrong I was, and I was not alone. In fact, only one polling model, LA Times, consistently showed Trump ahead in this race and most others completely misjudged the result.

So why did this happen and what will it mean for our future? Well the ‘why’ is surprisingly simple. Trump spoke to a core demographic who felt politically and culturally left behind. In this election, white people (and especially white men) voted en bloc for Donald Trump. This is a group that feels that they are losing their influence upon US politics because of the increasing size of present minority ethnic groups such as Hispanic and Asian Americans. It will soon be the case that no one racial group makes up a majority of the US population. They were angry, they were upset and they turned to Trump in their millions to show that.

Trump also managed to get the traditional Republican voters on side, dismissing the fears that many had before the election of a switch in support to Clinton or to third party candidates like Evan McMullin or Gary Johnson. Clinton, on the other hand, could barely get her core voters out on the day. The primaries and her various scandals weakened her candidacy from the outset. Millennial voters never really fell in behind her with some, for reasons I am sure they now regret, voting for Jill Stein. She couldn’t even mobilise voters who had been so greatly discriminated against by Trump. Hispanic voters actually gave more of their vote to Trump than they gave to Romney in 2012, despite his continuous attacks on this group. Ultimately, Trump motivated his voters whilst Clinton did not.

In all honesty, there seem to be few positive outcomes from this electoral result. It looks certain that Clinton will win the popular vote at least meaning that half of the US voters rejected Trump’s vision of America. Similarly, the closing gap in states like Arizona and Texas should give some joy to Democrats already thinking about the next elections in 2018 and 2020. But even these small consolations do not hide the terrifying implications that this result will have. Trump is coming into the oval office with both houses of Congress under his control and an empty place, and several rather elderly justices, on the Supreme Court. He is going to have very few checks upon his power.

When Republicans last had this type of opportunity they voted to go to war in Iraq, introduced new powers of surveillance in the PATRIOT Act, and restricted abortions heavily. That was with George Bush in the driving seat and it was terrifying enough for liberals around the world. Now imagine that situation with someone who makes Bush look almost sensible, Trump. Trump has clear policy initiatives: building the wall, placing extensive checks on immigration and overturning Obamacare. I see no reason why these cannot, and will not, go ahead. It is true that the Democrats have enough votes in the Senate to apply a filibuster and stop any legislation passing though the houses of Congress. But can they really justify doing this with every bill that they see when they have to think about another election in 2018? I think not. So, we are stuck. We are really stuck.

I am no longer hopeful about politics, I no longer see any type of rationality in the political system and I will never again trust conventional wisdoms or polling companies. Cynicism and despair are the only reactions that I can have at the moment. Yes, at some point in the future we should think about what on earth we are going to do next but, for the moment, we should just mourn the death of rational politics. Good people no longer win; good people are no longer welcome in politics.

We should all prepare ourselves for more unpleasant guttural feelings in the upcoming weeks, months and years when we have the terrifying misfortune of seeing that seat in the oval office, a seat that has been used by so many great and strong leaders, occupied, not by the first woman to smash through the highest glass ceiling and win the White House, but by a man who has lied his way into office and who has gained power by attacking the weaker members of the US society. Trump will never unite America, he will continue to divide and, in my opinion, he will continue to win by dividing. That is the terrifying message of this terrifying election. I, for one, am scared.

Wednesday Weltanschauung: Global Empathy

James Aung
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Wednesday Weltanschauung: Global Empathy

There’s an old phrase: charity begins at home. The intention behind it is kind and benevolent. But it doesn’t make sense anymore.

Back long ago, when some wise person first uttered the phrase, the world looked really quite different. Before the industrial revolution, people rarely ventured further out than their local community. The latest in high-speed transport was a cart and horse, and to travel across water was lengthy and perilous. To be able to send a letter to someone in America was unheard of. We didn’t even know America existed. But today we have Boeing 747s and cars, and the ability to send a GIF to anyone anywhere in the world instantly.

“Charity begins at home” makes sense. We owe things to the people who support us and to those who are in easy reach. If you saw a toddler drowning in a swimming pool, you’d wade in to save it. Our obligations are clear, and they go beyond age, race, or nationality.

Today we live in a more interconnected world than ever before, where physical distance is disregarded. You may not know the person who lives 4 meters above you in your apartment block, but you are reliant on people across the globe for everything from the food you eat to the clothes you wear to the smartphone you’re reading this article on.

So then ask yourself this: why do we stop caring about people when they are far away?

You may not believe it but it’s true. You don’t believe it because it doesn’t make any sense. Why should distance play any part in how much we care about someone? But the sad truth is that millions are killed every year due to the very fact that they live far away from you.

Their suffering is hidden. But nevertheless:

  • 760,000 children die of diarrhoea each year.[1] That’s 10,000 school buses filled with children driving off a cliff.
  • 1,200,000,000 (that’s 8 zeros) people live on up to $1 a day. Most live on less than that.[2]
  • 793,000,000 people don’t have enough food to eat.[3] That’s 1.5 million loaded jumbo-jets of people who are chronically undernourished.

We have the money, the resources, and the know-how to end all this. Every one of us can save the lives of others who are drowning in these pools of starvation, disease, and poverty. We can save their lives at a small cost to ourselves: a watch, new shirt, a dinner out. Oral re-hydration therapy to treat diarrhoea costs just 10 cents[4]. More money is always needed.

Back in the days of “charity begins at home” we couldn’t help distant people. Space presented an impassable barrier. So we helped those closest to us. But things have changed.

Planes, trains, ships, telephones, data, expert observers, aid agencies. These things have given us long arms. Turn around and you can touch someone 6,700 miles away. We now have the reach to solve problems wherever they are in the world.

But now we have the arms to reach them, isn’t it wrong that we discriminate against them? If we accept the principles of equality and impartiality, it is a crime to discriminate on the basis of distance and borders.

As rich individuals it is our moral obligation to give more to the world’s poorest. But the amount the developed world spends is laughable compared with its wealth; in the UK the sum is only 0.7% of GDP[5]. Compared with the rest of the world we are rich, we are the one percent (if you don’t believe it, see this footnote[6]). The size of the injustice beggars belief and if we are to call ourselves ‘good people’ it is unacceptable that we don’t do more.

When Socrates was questioned where he was from he said “I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world”. The word he used was ‘Cosmopolitan’ [kosmos – world, polites – citizen]. Let us all be Cosmopolitans and let our concern for others transcend national boundaries. Let us love our neighbours in the new Global Village.

James Aung is a member of Giving What We Can, and has pledged to live on 90% of his income to give 10% to those who need it the most.

[1] http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs330/en/

[2] http://www.who.int/hdp/poverty/en/

[3] http://www.fao.org/hunger/en/

[4] http://rehydrate.org/ors/

[5] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34176846

[6] https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/get-involved/how-rich-am-i/

Do not go gentle into that good night

Brian Wong
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Do not go gentle into that good night

Donald J. Trump has won the 2016 Presidential Election. Hillary Clinton lost, but she’s not the only one. For we have all lost. Not just the election, not just the House, the Senate, the Presidency. We have lost the political decency that has shaped our institutions and norms: those that once governed the USA, and are now receding throughout the Western World.

This is a time for mourning. But in a way, it feels like mourning Trump’s victory at this very hour is comparable to watching a slowly approaching meteor, and feigning a cry of absolute shock and horror as it slams into Earth. We should have mourned Trump’s campaign long before he won – mourned it for the ignorant and dangerous views he perpetuated against religious and ethnic minorities, the mother waiting for abortion, the victim of sexual assault, the trans individual waiting for minimally decent treatment, the Mexican immigrant being told that they belonged in the gutter, the Asian-American accused of stealing the jobs of the average American. But instead, too often we took to Trump as fish to water: the media glorified and romanticised his words; newspapers framed his speech as acts of bravery and macho. We found Trump funny; he found us a joke.

This is a time for reflection: not just the glib lip-service that we pay by quoting “political disenfranchisement” and “economic disempowerment”, academic jargon trying to explain the decline of the political community in America. There is a need for us to reflect upon the political culture that we have perpetuated and contributed towards: a culture that has locked out individuals who – in despair and anger – turn to xenophobic, toxic imagery.

It is tempting for us to simply blame others: to blame the ‘uneducated’, sexists, racists, homophobes, and bigots. But let us not forget that many of these individuals have incurred grievances through decades of being shut out from the political system we champion as fair, accessible, and equal. The rise of populist politics in the USA should not have come as a surprise: we’ve seen it with Syriza in Greece, France’s French National Front, and here in the UK embodied in Brexit. These are signs that there is something seriously wrong with our politics: not just the “Establishment”, not just the way we govern, but the fact that we have embraced an individualism that has dissolved communities. We have created the political space and opportunities for populists like Trump to exploit for their personal, political gains.

Deep introspection must go hand-in-hand with action. This is a time for us to keep fighting the good fight. For with a diabolical populist assuming the leadership of the Free World, there is an ever-pressing imperative for us to fight on for values that we hold dear to our democracies; to fight on, for the possibility of reconciliation – however slim it may be; to fight on, by choosing to participate with decency and integrity, pressing on with what is praiseworthy in our democracies – rebuilding those communities we have lost.

“Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.” – Dylan Thomas

Oxford reacts as Trump elected President

Tony Diver
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Oxford reacts as Trump elected President

Believed to have more than the necessary 270 electoral college votes, Donald Trump has been elected the next President of the United States.

It was billed to be an incredibly close contest and, as expected, the result proved tricky to predict as polls rolled in from across the States. In Oxford, JCRs were packed with students waiting up to see who would take up residence in the White House in 2017.

Trump’s success became more likely as the night wore on, with the New York Times declaring him the probable winner as early as 0230 GMT, and bookies’ odds suggesting a 70% chance of victory by 0400. The backdrop to political alerts about the states’ results was concerning news from the world’s stock markets, with Dow Futures – which indicate the opening position of the Dow Jones overnight – plunging by 750 points.

Trump also proved dominant in key battlegrounds such as North Carolina, New Hampshire and Wisconsin, and took Ohio, which has voted for the winning candidate in every presidential election since 1960.

Meanwhile, the most nail-biting state remained Florida, which took until around 0500 to declare its support for Trump, on a 49.1%-47.7% split.

In congressional elections, the Republicans have retained a majority in both the Senate and the House, with a few seats still to be called.

Cherwell’s team of student reporters across Oxford sent back the latest updates on student reaction to the election, from JCRs, the Union and Lola Lo’s. On Twitter, we interviewed, posted and polled to bring you the news in Oxford as it happened.

Student opinion seemed largely in favour of Hillary and in dismay at the result, although pockets of Trump supporters were uncovered, both on the ground and online.

Students were, like pundits, shocked that we were unable to predict the scale of Trump’s success. Pembroke JCR’s prediction of 304 Electoral College votes for Clinton proved more than a little wide of the mark, while Univ JCR’s commentary, provided by Sir Ivor Crewe, noted that “This looks like a similar situation to Brexit: A revolt against the establishment.”

Louis McEvoy, a second-year historian at Christ Church, said, “I have no words right now. One can only imagine how Latinos, African-Americans and Muslims in the US are feeling. Racism is what progressives must now focus on fighting above all else. This is like an evil, racist Joey Essex becoming PM”.

Not all were dismayed, however. Harry Forbes, a Trump supporter and Magdalen fresher, said, “History is being made before our eyes”.

Calum Jones, a second-year historian at Somerville, said, “The result has come as a huge shock, and I do not think I am alone in saying that this has been an extremely disappointing night. We can only hope that Donald Trump moves away from the nasty rhetoric his campaign once he takes up office.”

“This is horrifying and terrifying. Trump is a bigoted proto-fascist with the temper of two year-old being given control of the world’s largest nuclear arsenal”, Daniel Villar told Cherwell. 

Olivia Bradley, a fresher at Christ Church, said, “Trump is certainly a fascist; he represents a step back in the history of American politics”.

Thomas Zagoria told Cherwell, “To be honest, I’ve been emotionally braced for this for weeks, but I just hope that Democratic senators have the physical stamina for four years of filibustering.”

At St Anne’s, Dan Radigan asked our reporter: “How many disillusioned voters does it take to change a country?”

Additional reporting by Maxim Parr-Reid, Theo Davis-Lewis, Carlo Attubato, Charlie Gillow, Ben Ray, Dan Curtis, Esme Ash, Jack Hunter, Josh McStay, Marianna Spring, Olivia Webster, Philip Pope, Katherine Pye.

 

Preview: It Felt Empty

Miriam Nemmaoui
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Preview: It Felt Empty

It felt empty when the heart went at first but it is alright now is a sprawling title for an incredibly well-crafted play about sex trafficking, showing in the Pilch Studio this week. Despite my initial reservations about a student production dealing with such heavy subject matter, the quality of performance, combined with the tightness of the script, makes It Felt Empty a play which is difficult to describe without resorting to superlatives.

The play, which has a cast of just two actors, tells the tragic story of Dijana (Natalie Lauren), a young woman comes to Britain and is forced into prostitution by her invisible ‘boyfriend’ Babac. The audience meanders through a nonlinear plot, directed by Dijana’s confused monologues, witnessing her abuse, her time in Babac’s house, and her imprisonment in a detention centre with Gloria (Shannon Hayes). The extent of Dijana’s mental illness (she seems to have symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) becomes evident as the play unfolds, with her narrative providing inconsistencies in place, time, and reality.

What struck me most about this play was its ability to demand attention without sensationalising the subject matter. It deftly avoids the dangers of portraying heavy themes too flippantly, or else indulging in gruesome detail for gratification. It Felt Empty is able to do this because it is about so much more than just victimhood. Gloria’s gallows humour is testament to her resilience and generosity, and Dijana’s comment that it is ‘so weird that you can live in the same place as someone and not know what they do’ is simultaneously a comment on her own life and on the isolating state of modern society.

The staging of the play will be ambitious. I asked director Lauren Jackson how she planned to stage a play in which so much of the action takes place inside one character’s head; she tells me that it will be in promenade, allowing the audience even more access to Dijana’s mind as we are placed within the liminal space of the play. I imagine this will heighten the disorientation which we feel as we watch Dijana’s constantly fluctuating mood and timeline.

I come, at last, to what promises to be the real highlight of this production – the cast. The main challenge with putting on a play like It Felt Empty, which is mostly made up of a monologue by one character, is finding an actor capable of doing it justice. Luckily, the casting is perfect. Natalie Lauren’s performance as Dijana is breath-taking; I had goose bumps as I watched her transform a brightly lit room in Teddy Hall into a stormy emotional landscape. Lauren captures the visceral details of the psychosis episodes, as well as the Croatian accent, with gritty brilliance. The peaks and falls of emotion and energy keep the audience captivated by her long, wandering speeches. Shannon Hayes as Gloria is also a delight to watch—she has perfected a balancing act which leaves us unable to judge Gloria’s character, as her displays of warmth towards Dijana are broken by violent shouting, and dark stories of severed tongues.

Although it deals with horrific social issues, It Felt Empty does not preach at the audience. It is, first and foremost, a highly personal story, which allows us to connect with a woman who might otherwise become a statistic to us. It Felt Empty could be one of the most important things you see this term.

St Anne’s responds to Teddy Hall rugby team smashing toilet and holding “topless brawl”

Tony Diver
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St Anne’s responds to Teddy Hall rugby team smashing toilet and holding “topless brawl”

The Domestic Bursar of St Anne’s College, Jim Meridew, has assured St Anne’s students in an email that the college is pursuing damages and an apology from the culprits of the smashing of a disabled toilet and what was described by an onlooker as a “topless brawl” on the quad on Saturday of Second Week.

His email explains that there has been “slow progress” in dealing with the incident after Teddy Hall students have been “slow to own up” to causing damage to the bar, following a 10-2 loss of the Teddy Hall darts team to their hosts, St Anne’s.

The message also revealed that Professor Porcelli, the St Anne’s Dean, “has been negotiating with his opposite number at Teddy Hall” this week.

“We are expecting as a minimum financial recompense for the damage caused and an apology to the Dean, myself and the JCR President”, he said.

“I’d like to reassure you that we will not let this drop.”

Tom Dyer, the Teddy Hall JCR President, told Cherwell that he had nothing to add to his original statement, in which he apologised to St Anne’s for the behaviour of Teddy Hall students at their college.

“The actions at St Anne’s bar are in no way acceptable and are not something which we want any student or society of Teddy Hall to be associated with”, he said.

Although Dyer originally told Cherwell that “the Teddy Hall dean will be working to ensure that appropriate action is taken against those responsible”, Meridew’s email to St Anne’s students suggests that students not owning up may have made this more difficult than anticipated.

Pranay Shah, the St Anne’s JCR President, said, “Following the progress update from St Anne’s to all of its students, I agree with the college that the slow response from Teddy Hall is disappointing, due to the nature of the actions they carried out.

“I also agree with the minimum expectation from the College in terms of financial compensation and apologies and hope that cooperation from Teddy Hall will eventually result in this incident being resolved.”

 

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