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Based on a Panel Discussion Organized by the Faction and Media and the Inner World
This introduction provides a context for the transcript of the panel discussion on The Faction's production of The Talented Mr. Ripley that took place at London's New Diorama Theatre in February 2015.1 The event was organized jointly by The Faction and Caroline Bainbridge and Candida Yates, Directors of the Media and Inner World research network. The network was first set up and funded by the AHRC in 2009 with the aim to create a dialogue between academics, media practitioners and creative and psychoanalysts and psychotherapists to explore the role of emotion and unconscious processes in the spheres of both practice and representation within media and culture. Caroline Bainbridge and I have worked with The Faction on a number of occasions, and, in the case of The Talented Mr. Ripley, we also worked with the cast in rehearsals as consultants. This involved focusing on the psychoanalytic themes of the text whilst also using a process consultancy method to explore the relational and affective themes that emerged within rehearsals themselves.
The staging of the play in 2015 marked the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of Patricia Highsmith's 1955 novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley, which was the first book in the ‘Ripliad’, a series of five books about Ripley published between 1955-91.2 (See MacRury, forthcoming). On the night of this performance and discussion panel, we were fortunate enough to have in the audience Highsmith's literary agent and friend, Tanja