Staging Violence in God of Carnage

Yazmina Reza's God Of Carnage is the story of two middle class families whose children have gotten into a violent altercation. Both couples are miserable but affecting a happy relationship. The first couple, Michael and Veronica, whose son’s teeth were knocked out in the fight, hate each other. Michael sees his marriage and children as ruining his life and Veronica feels misunderstood and unsupported. The second couple, Alan and Annette, seem less discontent at first, but Alan is absorbed with work and Annette's frustration with her husband's priorities slowly bubbles to the surface. Both men are quite casually misogynistic, and the women are a mess. The play follows their meeting to discuss the incident, which slowly degenerates over ninety minutes of stage time.

I arrive to my first rehearsal on February 7th about 15 minutes early to find the four actors running through the usual slew of raucous warmups. The director, Heather Davies, has invited SODA professor Megan Quinn, who teaches movement and acting, to come in and help the actors choreograph some movement and fight sequences, and enhance characterization in those moments. The first scene they are working on is a moment where Veronica, in a rage, attacks her husband. The breakdown of movement is that Veronica knocks Michael to the ground and, in the words of the script, “beats on him”, until Alan intervenes.

There are several challenges in choreographing moments like this. Every moment in this sequence has to be carefully determined and practiced so it can be done safely. Rebecca Lashmar, playing Veronica, is wearing heels, and Conor Murphy, playing Michael, has an elbow injury that must be worked around. The set for God Of Carnage includes stairs on the edge of the stage, which must also be maneuvered around – though they aren’t yet rehearsing on stage, the stairs are demarcated with floor tape. The action has to feel both natural and motivated. I am, at first, a little worried, because the direction of the action seems to be comedic, which is rarely a good thing to see in scenes of domestic violence (though it’s unfortunately common). However, Davies soon steps in and asks them to tone down the comedy. There are comedic elements in the play, but this shouldn’t be one of them. They choreograph three other moments, some of which include those aforementioned comedic elements, but none of them are of serious domestic violence, so I am put at ease by that.

This rehearsal gave me the opportunity to see a lot of wonderful character work and get an inside view of how blocking is choreographed. So much intent and practice goes into the actions on stage and determining what works and doesn’t work for the characters. The actors are very in touch with their characters and relationships—crucial in such an intense, character-driven piece—so both come out feeling quite natural. I’m interested in seeing how their expressions of character evolve over the coming weeks of rehearsal, and how they negotiate the fine line between comedy and drama, stillness and explosiveness, so fundamental to this play.

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