Phenomenology In Sondra Fraleigh's Consciousness Matters

‘Phenomenology is a method for studying experience’ (Fraleigh 2000). This quote from Sondra Fraleigh’s book ‘Consciousness Matters’ is just one brief understanding of Phenomenology. It deals with experience, emotions, gut feelings, and essences, as well as the study of phenomena. It come from a ‘first person’ point of view, how you feel, what you relate it to in everyday life. Personal opinions and feelings are key factor of phenomenology, every human being is different and will feel and experience things in different ways. Some may say it’s using your own experiences as a source of information. When reading a performance through phenomenology it is important to talk about how you feel as an individual, everyone’s reading will be different
I mostly see this through the role of Filch the prison guard. Because of this reading I am going to bracket off the initial readings of the historical references and re read this particular scene using vulnerability as a starting point. After doing this I have found three main aspects that I feel communicate vulnerability. First of all empathy, as a spectator I felt empathy towards Filch. While watching I could see that filch was being ‘led astray’ by Macheath. With the relationship that both characters have I think that filch took comfort in him by listening to what he was saying and the advice he was giving. It made him a little more relaxed within the situation, even if Macheath’s intentions were not in any way to help Filch. I also started to feel sorry for him because as a spectator I could predict what Macheath’s intentions were and this started to frustrate me. Filch is very easily lead, in some ways you could take the reading that he trusts people very easily. Another point that I found from the scene was education. The whole scene is based around the noose not being tied correctly. Macheath teaches Filch how to re-tie to knot so that it won’t come loose when the hanging takes place. Macheath acts like he is doing him a favour, whilst he’s really ‘covering his own back’ and doing himself a favour in the long run. In some ways Macheath could be identified as the teacher and Filch
These things all add to a personal phenomenological response that I experienced within the piece. One aspect of this scene I reacted to was a sound of a timer playing through a section of the scene. This timer highlighted the time in which the hanging was to take place. “A gut feeling—or a hunch—is a sensation that appears quickly in consciousness (…) without us being fully aware of the underlying reasons for its occurrence.” (Cholle, 2011) Even though there was no timer present to look at, the sound gave me cause for concern. It gave the scene a certain time frame to work to. As an audience member I felt that the scene was getting tenser and tenser because of this. With the dialogue that was taking place and the main theme of the scene I wanted the characters to speed up what they were doing so that the scene could be over. The anticipation of seeing someone being hung made me want to look away or hide behind hands so I didn’t have to see what was happening. I had a very strong gut feeling that got increasingly worse throughout the scene. It made me feel very on edge. ‘Phenomenology begins when, not content to ‘live’ or ‘relive’, we interrupt live experience in order to signify it’ (Ricoeur, 1983: 116) As the timer ended and the moment arrived where hanging would happen you could hear other audience members mumbling things in disbelief, ‘No!’, ‘Don’t listen to