A Mouthful of Birds

by Caryl Churchill and David Lan

This play is based on Euripides' Bacchae and concentrates on themes of possession, violence
and transforma on. Caryl Churchill reacts against the stereotype of the nonviolent female
and claims that 'there is a danger of polarizing men and women into what becomes again
the tradi onal view that men are naturally more violent and so have no reason to change.'
She seems more interested in the way society tries to oppress and deform women than in
their nature, issues more of gender than of sex. The parts of the women in this play seem
par cularly developed, and one can easily say this is typical of Churchill's oeuvre; here we
find varia ons of Top Girls. There is even more interest here than in Euripides' play in how
Dionysus affects women.

David Lan, on the other hand, as a South African anthropologist with research conducted in
Zimbabwe, was par cularly interested in the phenomenon of possession. His earlier plays
deal with imperialism, and the conflict between invading occupiers and indigenous
occupied. Here, too, is the ques on of imperialism: Who is possessed by whom, and what
does one take from the possessor?

Churchill and Lan created A Mouthful of Birds for the Joint Stock Theatre Group in 1986. This
was a group dedicated to maintaining originality and joint efforts of crea on, besides
offering an alterna ve to stereotypical riskless London fare. Les Waters, who was one of the
original directors, also directed this produc on in La Jolla. It incorporates dance to convey
nonverbal messages. The original choreography was by Ian Spink.

The story is of seven people whose lives unfold in three sec ons: an introduc on, an
'undefended' day, and the a ermath. Each of the characters in some ways performs
'mainstream' roles, but each shows an undercurrent of violence that is revealed during the
'undefended' day. In the introduc on people fit prescribed roles; by the end they become
outsiders to fit themselves more than society. The idea of an undefended day is a me when
the body can be possessed by a spirit, or indeed, it can be possessed by an addic on, a love,
or intense desire.

Lena is a mother who kills her own child to free herself from an oppressive husband. His
banality is one of his most oppressive tools. His violence is revealed in freeway compe on,
and in domina ng his wife. She thinks she will escape from a spirit that says nega ve things
about her and her husband, if only she will kill her child. She kills the child, but is not free
from the spirit. It is her permanent demon. We see her taking care of old people in the end,
realizing her capacity to nurture or kill. Here we have Churchill and Lan showing us a woman
in search of self, both a vic m and perpetrator of violence. She is a mother and touches on
fears of women as nurturers and destroyers, something we might call the Medea syndrome.
This syndrome was well illustrated by Bob Wilson in his Deafman Glance, based on
Euripides' Medea: a mother brings her child a glass of milk, and then kills him with a knife.
Marcia is a recep onist, originally from Trinidad, who becomes a medium in her undefended
day. She is possessed by Sybil (aptly named a er her classical predecessor), a 'spirit from the
white upper-middle classes,' but also acts as the conduit for a spirit called Baron Sunday.
Marcia loses her power at the end and Sybil takes over. At the end she is on a boat and
hopes she'll 'never wake to see the sky without a star.' This could be a paradigm of
imperialism and the outsider. The white occupier takes over and the na ve is suppressed;
she imitates the oppressor as she did in the introduc on, taking on the 'imperial' accent.
Finally she is released to a place on the ocean where she belongs and does not belong. She
floats and adapts. She is the outsider who finds a place, but never a sta c one.

Derek is unemployed, so he works out; his concern with the body is clear. He is possessed by
Pentheus, and threatens violence against Dionysus. He is also possessed by Herculine Barbin,
a French hermaphrodite from the nineteenth century. He experiences a sex change. He is
also dismembered as Pentheus by Doreen who has become Agave. His transforma on leads
to daily sa sfac on, the comfort of being 'in love with a lion-tamer from Kabul.' Contrary to
the original Pentheus, who was dismembered and died, he has been dismembered to gain a
body and live.

Yvonne is an acupuncturist who is possessed by her addic on to alcohol. She becomes a

butcher and couples her need for violence with a talent for iden fying body parts. In the
introductory episode we saw her violence when a pa ent of hers fell asleep, rather than
paying a en on to her ministra ons. Perhaps the animal vic m sa sfies her drive for
control, and the needle is well exchanged for a knife. She also escapes the gender stereotype
saying, 'Many people are surprised to see a woman behind this counter.'

Paul, a business man, falls in love with a pig he is not able to save from his own
slaughterhouse. But when he rescues the 'corpse,' he peels off its wrapper, and it rises to
dance with him. This is magic realism with charming kinkiness. At the end Paul is shown as
alcoholic and wai ng for a poten al love. His fable has ended with loss; he has only dreams
and con nual possession by his addic on. Possession in this play can be good and bad.

Dan, a minister, is another of the ambivalent characters. When he is arrested the police
cannot tell whether he is male or female. He dances people to death, choreographing for
them their private joy. He is a serial killer using pleasure as his murder weapon. (Could this
be some veiled commentary on organized religion?) For a while, Dan is aptly Dionysus. At
the end we see him with his garden. He talks about it being green now, whereas barren
before. Earlier a prison guard seems to be quo ng a confession: 'My plan was that they
should all be good deaths...To die of pleasure, like a young boy slipping through the mirror of
a mountain stream [i.e., Narcissus?]. These are the deaths the earth needs to grow strong.'
By the end, Dan's garden is growing very well.

Doreen is a secretary who is known for escaping the mundane: she spent a night sleeping on
the grass by a canal. In her undefended day she slashes a neighbor's face. She is possessed
by the spirit of Agave, and willingly dismembers Pentheus. At one point she develops
telekinesis, able to make objects fly and bounce a person off walls. She is s ll seething with
restlessness at the end. She is the one for whom the play was named, 'It seems that my
mouth is full of birds which I crunch between my teeth. Their feathers, their blood and
broken bones are choking me. I carry on my work as a secretary.' She has accepted herself,
but she is restless for expression. This is the secretary from hell.

The play begins and ends with a dance performed by Dionysus. It is a dance that seduces the
audience into a sensual experience. There are other dances, for instance the Fruit Ballet, in
which imaginary fruit is wrenched apart and consumed. We saw Dan dance people to death.
Dionysus 1 and Dionysus 2 clothe Pentheus, preparing him for a sacrifice, and dance a
preview of his ecsta c death. Pentheus, as a priest, has his robes put on him, but in this case
he will be the sacrificial vic m rather than the sacrificing priest. The pig also dances with
Paul. There is another dance called 'Extreme Happiness.' The day of possession ends in
ecstasy.

Good actors and actresses are essen al for this play, and the La Jolla produc on had them.
David Barrera was haun ng as Dan, also as a spirit, and as Dionysus. His dance had
insinua ng charm. Adrianne Krstansky as Doreen and Agave brought a seething
unpredictable violence to her performance. Meg MacCary as Yvonne had a steely undertone
to her voice that sliced the audience like the needles of the acupuncturist or the knife she
used as a butcher. Sevanne Kassarjian as Lena was a convincing mother and murderess,
combining the benign with the dangerous in her performance.

Where does this produc on depart from Euripides' Bacchae? Obviously these are different
stories. In A Mouthful of Birds there is also fulfillment in most of the transforma ons,
whereas the end of the Bacchae is tragic. In the modern play the main tragedy is the
businessman's, an apt Marxist aside. It is no accident that a pig is his love (pigs were sacred
to Aphrodite in ancient Greece, and perhaps Churchill/Lan used the pig with this resonance
in mind). There is also the element of the absurd in Mouthful. One is reminded of Ionesco,
perhaps Genet, and at mes we observe Becke 's bleak humor. Pinter also comes to mind in
the various ritual transforma ons.

Churchill's women are allowed to be violent, and use their violence for fulfilling professional
lives. Men can be women, and women men. Dionysus is a facilitator for self-discovery. The
psychological lines are clear, whereas Euripides was telling us that story, and a story very
much about the abuse of power. The ancient poet concentrated more on plot than
character, although the plot certainly revealed character. Pentheus, refusing to recognize the
god in the city, and himself, is violently punished. In A Mouthful of Birds the characters go
through violence as if it were a tunnel for self-discovery. We see op ons facilitated. Doors
are opened rather than closed; Euripides' Dionysus slammed the doors on Pentheus, Agave
and her father Cadmus (a character who does not appear in Mouthful of Birds).
The Bacchae has been simplified and used as a parable in the midst of terrifying Aesopean
fables. The supernatural elements are more a feature of Mouthful, and there are more
elements of the absurd (a pig coming to life and dancing).
There is an obvious reference to Nietzsche's concept of Apollo and Dionysus in The Birth of
Tragedy, as an essen al component for understanding hidden reality. Nietzsche followed his
tle with 'Out of the Spirit of Music,' realizing how music was Apollo's par cular vehicle.
Apollo links with Dionysus, and in Mouthful of Birds uses music with dance to convey
Dionysus' violent and seduc ve power, the god who is most fierce (deinotatos) and also
most mild (epiotatos Bacchae 861).

Both the world of Mouthful of Birds and the world of the Bacchae seem stable at the
beginning. They are undone by the visita on of Dionysus in his various forms. In
the Bacchae specific vic ms were chosen. In the Churchill/Lan play, no one is immune. This
is par cularly clear in the case of Marcia. Did she put on his knowledge and his power before
the indifferent beak could let her drop? In both plays we have the theme of gender fluidity:
Dionysus is mocked by Pentheus for his feminine quali es, but Pentheus is transformed by
Dionysus at the end of the play into the female role he mocked. In Mouthful of Birds a
physical opera on secures the transforma on. Feminine quali es in a man are not mocked
in the obvious way they were in the Bacchae, and the transforma on is fulfilling rather than
a tragedy.

Churchill, rather than extending Euripides' analysis of the difference between men and
women, collapses both into one general category: men and women alike have poten al for
violence; society normally represses it; when it breaks out they learn about themselves;
then they have to apply their own peculiar controls, or channel it into sa sfying func ons.
Churchill brilliantly achieves the recogni on for her characters which Aristotle demands of
great tragedy: they suffer a change of fortune (peripeteia) through their lapse into violence
but thereby they learn who they are (anagnorisis).

The Bacchae follows Aristotelian rules of closure; it has an end. A Mouthful of Birds does not
end, although it has precise form; it provides a new beginning. Dionysus began and ended
with a dance which goes on for eternity; the structure is circular. The older play shows us
death and reminds us of our mortality; the new one implies endless possibili es in life. It is
primarily a parable about women and violence, women and their escapes, women and self-
discovery. Agave the tragic vic m becomes Agave the sorceress.

One might say that the two plays show the two aspects of Dionysus, one in his primarily
nega ve form (Bacchae) and the other in his posi ve (Mouthful of Birds). In the former he is
more destruc ve than crea ve; in the la er he is the source of crea on for mankind. In both
we see the god at work. In the la er we see him dance and we join him in spirit. In a
successful performance, like this one, Dan's dance is performed for us. We die unto Dionysus
so that we may live.