Speaking on the occasion of a British Film Institute focus on the Welsh playwright, actor, and director Jane Arden in 2023, Natasha Morgan shared a poem with the audience. Titled “Notes from Underneath,” it was written in May and June of 1971 from an inn in Wales while Morgan, who was then a young actor known as Jenny Moss, was starring in The Other Side of the Underneath (1973), Arden’s feminist film about a woman who society has labelled as “mad.” This profoundly radical document of counter-cultural thinking pushed the limits of participatory art-making and authentic interpersonal connection, by involving a group of young women in gruelling psychotherapeutic-style scenes overseen by Arden in the role of director and therapist. Virtually the only fiction-feature film to have been solely directed by a woman in 1970s Britain, The Other Side of the Underneath stands as a unique work of feminist experimental film-making. Morgan’s poem, which she has kindly allowed us to repost here, opens a small window into that experience.
Natasha Morgan studied at Oxford University where she became involved in the theatre. She was active in the early Women’s Liberation Movement as a member of the Spare Rib collective and through her involvement in consciousness-raising groups and political campaigns including the Women’s Liberation Workshop and the Night Cleaner’s Campaign. Morgan appears in Sue Crockford’s documentary A Woman’s Place (Liberation Films, 1971) talking about feminist issues, and several of her pieces for Spare Rib were reprinted in Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock’s Framing Feminism: Art and the Women’s Movement, 1970-85. Morgan worked with experimental theatre companies such as Phantom Captain and The People Show, and went on to set up her own theatre company, That’s Not It. Some of her theatrical works include Room (which transferred to the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs), Mother’s Arms, An Independent Woman, Ariadne’s Afternoon and By George. Morgan starred in Jane Arden’s The Other Side of the Underneath (1973) and Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth (1977). She now works as a psychotherapist.
Natasha Morgan (credited as Jenny Moss) is sixth from the left.
NOTES FROM UNDERNEATH: POEM
You will find us at The Inn.
Don’t worry – there’s no point.
You cannot yet know clearly
what your worries really are,
but given time, I’m sure we’ll find
you are deserving care.
Come in – in to The Inn.
You’ll have to wait a while
You’ll have to wipe that smile off –
why do you smile?
This is a serious operation.
You are not here for fun.
There will be time to smile
when it’s all done.
I’ll take a trip with you one day,
just you and I.
Why do you cry?
Are you up now?
You’ll soon come down.
Find a role:
witch, prophet, clown.
No, don’t disturb – the Surgeon’s sleeping.
I dreamed I was you, and I woke crying.
For there’s no holding on,
and there’s no holding in.
To dare the nightmare’s why we’ve come.
Chose the game – it’s all the same –
And even the marks of sleep remain
to show where you have been.
And if everything confuses you
you can choose to have nothing.
You can even choose to have others choose
but that’s a gamble you may lose,
unless you give up everything,
and that includes the right to win.
The Surgeon is a little drunk,
She says she wants to know
what you will pay for comfort
and how far you will go.
The price for comfort is your life.
She’ll watch you as you twist the knife.
She’s really very kind, and so
think kindly of her as you go.
Treatment’s over. Treatment’s failed.
You must admit you had the choice.
You could have moved or raised your voice.
You were submissive till the end.
The Surgeon’s pale. Her pulse is frail.
And it is all to no avail.
She waits again behind the door.
Someone will enter as before.
The Surgeon bleeds.
The patient weeps.
The blood goes curling down the streets.
They meet it, as they climb the hill,
The flawed, the ugly and the ill,
And those shamed to be beautiful.
Written May/June 1971.
Natasha Morgan speaking at the BFI for Jane Arden: Explode the Language (9 September 2023).
WFTHN 