How does Lee Hall encourage and create a sympathetic relationship between Spoonface and the audience?

Spoonface Steinberg Coursework

Question

Plan

Introduction- Play is written in first person, monologue, why its an unusual choice for centre character to have a disability, how people view others with disabilities in our society.

Paragraph 1- Creation of Spoonface, like of opera music (what it symbolises for her) Her numbers

Paragraph 2- Situations Spoonface is placed in- has autism and cancer, parents are splitting up, and her mother is an alcoholic. Why Hall does this and how it makes us feel.

Paragraph 3- People around Spoonface and how they react to Spoonface- Mother turns to alcohol, Father runs off with a younger woman, Mrs Spud telling Spoonface she is special, How each of these relationships make us feel.

Paragraph 4- Spoonface and the concentration camps- how Spoonface feels about them, why Hall includes this information, Why we feel sympathy towards Spoonface at this time.

Paragraph 5- Spoonface and death- how she figures out the meaning of life, relationship with God, why Hall does all this.

Paragraph 6- Film version of play and my own production of a section from the play. How the film and my version differed from the original version and why, What certain things in the film version were meant to symbolise.

Conclusion – What Lee Hall wants to make us realise, why he chose this way to do it. How Hall actually creates a sympathetic relationship between Spoonface and the audience.

The play Spoonface Steinberg is written in first person and in a stream of consciousness. This is that it seems as if it is written from someone’s mind as soon as the person thinks of it. The play is a monologue and Hall chooses a very unusual character to be the main character in this type of play. Hall chose a young girl with autism and this is an unusual choice because people suffering from autism generally have difficulty in communicating their feelings and especially since the character is only a child this would seem to make it much more difficult. This is also unusual because there are not many other films and play productions that centre on a disabled person. Some people believe that people with disabilities are second class citizens and many people with a handicap suffer abuse whilst trying to live their lives.

Lee Hall encourages and creates a sympathetic relationship between Spoonface and the audience in many different ways. One of these ways is the creation of Spoonfaces character.

Spoonface likes opera music and this is very important to her and it is a major theme, which runs throughout the play. It is played immediately at the beginning of the play as Spoonface starts to speak this instantly gives us the connection with her interest. Opera music is played between the different sections of the play; Lee Hall does this to provide a break from listening to one voice and to evoke emotion. For Spoonface opera music symbolises death and dying beautifully as she says when talking about opera singers, ‘and everyone would be looking and they would cry and in their hearts they would weep for the poor lady – the poor lady who dies so well.’ This also shows Spoonface’s perception of someone dying in an opera and this makes Spoonface see beauty in death.

Spoonface does not like popular music such as Take That. She shows this when she is talking about a little girl in coma and is deliberately humorous when she says, ‘Take That made her a tape which said ‘Hello this is Robbie’ and she still wasn’t better – and I said this was no surprise on account of the tape.’

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Many autistic people have a savant and Lee Hall has created Spoonface to be a savant in numbers and dates. I think Lee Hall created Spoonface to have a special area of expertise to show that autistic people are very intelligent and find something very easy that many people without disabilities would find extremely difficult. Spoonface has speech impediments and we know this because Spoonface says ‘I do very bad writing and that I can’t speak proper,’ However this is not Spoonfaces view of herself but what she has heard others saying about her. Sometimes in Spoonfaces writings there is evidence of speech impediments as she says ‘and stuff’ and ‘and that’ very often.

We feel sympathy towards Spoonface as Lee Hall has created Spoonface not to understand the juxta position. Spoonface shows this when she is telling us about a horrific car accident and she says ‘even if the poor man was smashed on the road – and so it was better not to be worried about it – so I said I wasn’t worried and we had fish fingers for tea.’

Spoonface is also created to see people as different from her and not her from them. Spoonface also acknowledges that difference between people is good as she says ‘but at least it means we’re all different.’

We also feel sympathy for Spoonface as we see the situations she is in. Lee Hall exploits us into feeling sympathy with these situations. Spoonfaces parents are going through a rough time and her father is having an affair. We feel sympathy towards Spoonface at this time because she says ‘Mam said she phoned the meeting and he was off with the office doing a floozie.’ This is dramatic irony but is also comic. Spoonfaces mother is an alcoholic. Spoonface does not realise that this is anything bad, and she believes her mother had to drink the vodka as she says, ‘and then she had to drink the vodka.’ Spoonface has autism so we generally feel sympathy for people suffering from disabilities but Spoonface is also a child so we feel even more sympathy towards her. And as if Spoonfaces autism is not bad enough Lee Hall decides to make the character find out she has cancer and have all the treatment but to no avail. Spoonface now has a death sentence hanging over her. This is what makes us feel the most sympathy towards Spoonface. Lee Hall also makes us wait until we have developed a relationship and sense of feeling towards the character before he tells us that Spoonface is going to die. He is looking to get a real reaction out of us. Hall also puts a musical interlude after Spoonface says she is going to die and the next section. Hall does this to make sure he gets a reaction because we are probably shocked by the news that Spoonface is going to die and the sad opera music makes us feel more emotion.

Certain people around Spoonface and their relationship with her make us compassion for her especially the relationship with her mother as she has to live with her. Spoonfaces mother appears not to be maternal and also has an inability to cope with her daughter’s condition and has a mental breakdown because of this. We see this when Spoonface says, ‘and then she had to take the tablets off the Doctor and would stop the vodka at the same time – except one time she had the pills and the vodka.’ Spoonfaces father copes with Spoonfaces autism by having affairs and running off with a younger woman. However her father soon returns to see Spoonface and her mother when hearing that Spoonface has cancer is going to die. He does not come back and live with them straight away but he is back in their lives. The father is shown as the weakest character in this play as he runs off with another woman and he shakes Spoonface when he is drunk.

There is only one person in this play with whom Spoonface has a special, loving relationship with and that is Mrs Spud. Spoonface mainly talks about Mrs Spud after talking about a bad experience or after talking about people saying things about her. Spoonface talks about her not being able to go to an ordinary school because of her condition and then says ‘but I am quite a special little girl, though – that’s what Mrs Spud says.’ Mrs Spud seems to be the person in the play who helps Spoonface to understand that being different isn’t bad. Mrs Spud also helps Spoonface in understanding the meaning of life and death by telling her about her husband who had died. Spoonface talks about this conversation in a nice way and says that she is sure she would meet Mr Spud in heaven. We feel compassion for Spoonface because even though she is dying she still manages to feel sorry for others. She feels sorry for Mrs Spud because ‘she had three hungry mouths to feed.’ Spoonface makes Mrs Spud a card saying ‘I Love You Mrs Spud!’ This is the only time in the play that Spoonface says she loves someone.

In the play there is a section about the concentration camps. Lee Hall includes this information to show how strong the Jewish people were when they were staring death in the face. He does this also so we realise that Spoonface is in the same position as the Jewish people were- that is that they had no hope of survival but that their spirit survived. Spoonface uses childlike language to describe things in the concentration camps such as ‘their Mammies and Daddies would be bashed.’ We feel sympathy towards Spoonface in these passages because she shows compassion for others and she sympathises with people who have already died. Lee Hall makes you feel upset and morose as he chose to play an opera song under the voice of Spoonface as she is talking about the children in the concentration camps.

Lee Hall makes us feel sympathy toward Spoonface in the final part of the play where she manages to figure out the meaning of life. We also see Spoonfaces intelligence here as she manages to do something that not many other people ever do. Spoonface does not have a religious upbringing and gets her knowledge from a book that Doctor Bernstein gave her. Her mother reads the book to her even though her own opinion of God is that he is a bastard. Spoonface talks about the different ways in which different people pray and this again shows us the importance of being different. Spoonface tries to make sense of God and her relationship with him. There is a dramatic effect when Spoonface is talking about death because it happens to everyone. Spoonface says ‘ so everything is in the middle – even if it was at the middle of an end – it didn’t matter because I’m in it.’ This show Spoonface believes in life after death.

When Spoonface thinks about death she knows that everything will still be here even when she is not. Her situation does not stop her from seeing the good in things as she says ‘and I would see the cloud for all the silver there was in it.’

At the end of the play Spoonface manages to make sense of death. Even though the play ends with ‘The Kaddish’ which is a Jewish funeral prayer Spoonface does not die on stage.

The film version of Spoonface Steinberg has been adapted and is very different to the play script. The film showed all the different characters in the play. Some of their voices were heard but very quietly for example the mother was saying ‘Spoonface, Spoonface’ but couldn’t really be heard. The film shows the mother drinking before it is mentioned by the voice of Spoonface. During the film version there are lots of everyday things happening but I think some have hidden meanings. Spoonface plays with a ball which has toy spiders trapped inside, this could symbolise Spoonfaces feelings and emotions trapped inside or because many people see spiders as things to be fearful of, it could represent her cancer. Spoonface is getting ready to go out and her mother buttons her coat up but Spoonface keeps unbuttoning it, her mother seems to be getting annoyed and sees this as an act of defiance. This shows how Spoonfaces mother does not understand her daughter’s condition is misunderstood. When Spoonface and her mother are driving down a road when a go sign turns to stop. This could signify Spoonfaces life after she finds out she has cancer. A window cleaner is cleaning the windows, which could indicate things being made clear for Spoonface. As the film version goes on Spoonface is getting more and more isolated and is emphasised as being different.

When doing a dramatic performance of a passage from Spoonface Steinberg in a group we had many difficulties in making a play for one voice into something in which all six members of our group could participate. We decided to act out the final end of the play. We had one person sitting at a table playing jenga and reading script as Spoonface. The jenga was to signify Spoonface figuring out the meaning of life piecing it all together. The other members held up pictures of the things that Spoonface talked about at the end of the play.

Lee Hall wants us to realise that autistic people or anyone with a disability can still be intelligent and have special areas of expertise. Hall wants us to realise that everyone is different and difference is a good thing. Lee Hall chose this way to make us realise all these things because it is an unusual way to relay this type of information to us. It is also an interesting way and it keeps our attention.

Lee Hall encourages and creates a sympathetic relationship between Spoonface and the audience by making Spoonface known to us and then springing all these different, shocking incidents that are happening to Spoonface. Hall uses every possible chance and every possible situation to make us feel sympathy towards Spoonface. He places the character in a broken home, her father running off with another woman leaving Spoonface with her non-maternal mother who does not understand Spoonfaces condition. Hall however does create one person in this play who shows love towards Spoonface and that is in the shape of the cleaning lady Mrs Spud. The character provides solace for the audience with them knowing that at least one person is looking after and understanding Spoonface and her autism. I think Hall chooses a cleaning lady to be the loving person in this play because he likes to be different and doesn’t use the stereotypical view of cleaners, it also makes the whole play much more interesting and enjoyable.