Statement of INTENTION

In my performance I used aspects from theatre of cruelty. I decided to use this certain type of theatre because I found it really worked in well with my peace. The way in which I wanted to portray my character and the particular parts of her life I wanted to show my audience. For example I wished to convey the time in Susan Atkins life before meeting Manson, when she was a stripper and first got into drugs. I choose to show this by the use of breath, the building of the breath getting louder and louder, harsher and harsher. At the very start of my piece I walk up and down the stage dragging the chair with me everywhere I go showing that I can not get away from my problems. I am trying to escape the chair and only when taking the drugs can I escape the ‘chair’ which later in the devised piece begins to represent Charlie (her problems).The audio playing in the back ground is an interview of Susan Atkins twenty years later describing the murder. I show that where ever I go my problems are still with me, weather or not I ‘love’ or ‘hate’ them (e.g. I love Charlie and yet I hate my abusive father) but in the end they both cause my destruction. I choose to strip not only because of Susan’s background of being a topless dance but also to portray how vulnerable drugs can make you. MY intention for my devised piece was to show the audience the dangers of drug use. Not the physical or mental dangers but the psychological dangers which make you vulnerable to, in my case the control by Charles Manson. I then go into mirroring Charlie’s hand movements to portray him taking control of me physically and mentally by repeating his words and his commands. As this goes on I start off by being unsure but believing him more and more and becoming more confident as time passes. I then finally taking the last command, ‘kill everyone’. At this point I kick the chair away representing I have passed the point of no return, I have no problems, I have no past, I am a new person, I am Charlie’s girl. I then write ‘PIG’ on the wall because this is what Susan Atkins had written on the walls of her victims houses in their own blood. This symbolized the kill, I then begin to cry hysterically but as I turn to the audience it is reveled that I am actually laughing. I wanted to do this to portray how different Susan was portrayed in the media after the murders. She came across to the media as ‘curious’, ‘sweet’, and ‘child like’ however she was a cold blooded killer with no remorse. I decided to end it with a quote from Susan “you know you really have to love someone to kill them.” and finally “I have X’ed myself from your world.” This is significant because during the trial all of the Manson family carved X’s into the foreheads to represent that they are dead already.