'Save the Meaning': The Idea of Performativity in Simon Stone's 2017 Production of Yerma

Sam Pout

7 Jan 2022

Performativity is notoriously a hard concept to define, in terms of this essay, I use the term to mean the production’s awareness of its audience. For example, one of the most performative genres would be Pantomime; its scenography and clear narrative designed to keep audiences in awe alongside the show’s constant innuendo helps facilitate the enjoyment of older audiences. The production exists to marry accessible narratives with contemporary satire, employed on account of the production’s awareness of its audience spanning generations. Thus, I define a production’s performativity in reference to its meta-theatrics and how it responds to being witnessed; what initially struck me of Yerma was its lack of performativity. I also later argue how this lack of performativity in Yerma allows a heightened naturalism in performance, creating a thoroughly provocative example of how challenging theatrical styles can be. 

Simon Stone creates a production naive of its audience which doesn’t seem to actively reach for a cathartic response, however a narrative which interestingly still engages us through spectacular scenography and stellar performance. Stone adapts Federico Garcia Lorca’s mythic story into a beautifully orchestrated production, employing a uniquely engaging brutishness towards traditional British theatricality. Encapsulated within a glass box, the narrative radically interchanges between time and place with the glass dictating the audience’s voyeuristic position. The box acts as a terrarium with minimalist domestic settings morphing into muddied festival fields within a matter of seconds. This effect causes the production to become a quasi-peep show as the audience observe  fleeting moments of the character’s lives and with a lack of exposition, the production demands the audience to keep up with its narrative offering no hands to hold. 

The ‘everywoman’ character named Her, thrillingly performed by Billie Piper, is an honest and ferocious performance, shattering the glass barrier. Piper helps establish the original text’s relevance for a contemporary society by depicting a typically unfortunate dilemma of the 21st century female archetype having to face a choice between career or children. While it is obviously possible to achieve both, the difficulty Piper’s Her faces is strongly resonant due to this exclusive choice society seems to encourage women to choose between. Brendan Cowell represents the husband’s experience, a middle aged man with misogynistic attitudes, exemplifying how pressures of normativity originate from the home swell as wider society. Nonetheless Cowell also portrays a heartbroken soul as the product of Her’s damaging and arguably selfish quest to fulfil what she believes is her sole purpose to bear children.

The breadth of Stone’s narrative covers several years within a short space of time, whilst renouncing a coherent cause and effect narrative structure. Each scene, or episode, starts media res forcing the audience to work for context from the moment lights are up. If one attends the show in hope of an emotionally turbulent and traditionally ‘well made play’, then Stone offers the turbulence but not the naturalistically smooth narrative. His production keeps us at an objective distance by dropping the audience into scenes and removes us before they seem to end, creating a defamiliarising but rapidly energetic production. According to Hans Thies-Lehmann’s manifesto on Post-Dramatic theatre, such an episodic structure appears to have an effect on how the actors approach performance embellishing the complexity of their performance:

The above explains what Stone achieves with his cast; the lack of performativity from the performers adds to the play’s spontaneity and ironically its theatricality by creating a dualism between naturalism and the post-dramatic. Stone adopts Lehmann’s idea of ‘liveness’ by telling his actors to ‘make mistakes and then have to save the meaning, not the performance.’ (Park Avenue Armoury, YouTube). In other words, his advice is stay true to the idea, form and characterisation whilst letting spontaneity challenge the performer’s presence on stage, encouraging them to decipher the specific meaning of each performance on account of the performer’s awarded freedom. This achieves the lack of performativity previously argued as the audience’s presence is not at the fore of the ensemble’s attention, but actually the shared meaning they forge together each night. It’s exciting, fresh and engaging for all as we witness the energy that liveness brings, it contributes to the communal experience of theatre as the cast and audience share in the ephemerality of the moment, reinforcing the production’s theatricality. This synergy contributes to the rapid pace through Her’s life to create a ‘liturgical rhythm’ (Clapp, 2016), echoing the poetry of Lorca’s work. Ann Bogart comments that through Stone’s directorial practice, the production becomes about ‘who [the actors] are.’ (Park Avenue Armoury, YouTube); the performers embody themselves as well as the characters which in turn creates an intricately complex production, something that challenges the conventional viewing of a naturalistic play. 

Ironically, this awareness of the actor as present mimics the essence of Meisner’s Repetition exercise, the actors become invested in each other and seem to be unaware of an auditorium of people watching them. Thus, nulling the idea of performance and heightening the naturalism of performance, this is rarely seen in theatre and so is a very special moment to witness live. Piper won her Olivier for her portrayal in this production and rightly so, it was a stunning performance which when seeing it, challenged my own ideas of what performance can achieve. Additionally, if anyone is considering adapting an extant text, look no further into researching how to; Stone not only allowed Lorca’s text to resonate with the present but also further tested London’s understanding of how to understand conventional narrative earning him the Olivier for Best Revival. Although this is now production several years old, it should be noted as one of the best productions at the Young Vic to date, and best adaptations to be revered and observed for any creative team taking on the brave task of adapting. 

Works Cited 

Clapp, S. (2016). Yerma five-star review – Billie Piper is earth-quaking as Lorca's heroine. Available at www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/aug/07/yerma-review-young-vic-billie-piper-simon-stone. (Accessed 4 January 2021). 

Fox, D. (2018). Simon Stone’s Yerma and the Problem with Critics. Available at https://recliningstandards.com/2018/04/19/review-simon-stones-yerma-and-the-problem-with-critics/. (Accessed 4 January 2021). 

Lehmann, H.-T., trans. Jürs-Munby, K., 2006. Postdramatic Theatre, Routledge.

Park Avenue Armory [YouTube] (2018). “Artist Talk: Yerma.”. Available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qficpne0ITo&t=1911s. (Accessed: 4 January 2021).

Turney, E. (2016). Review: Yerma at the Young Vic. Available at http://exeuntmagazine.com/reviews/review-yerma-young-vic/. (Accessed 4 January 2021).