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So, the play is done. Now what? I’ve been shuffling around since even before the play ended trying to figure out what to do next. I’m still shuffling. I feel like someone who’s kicked a bad habit: an alcoholic trying to keep his mind off booze, a dieter trying to do anything around the house but dig into a bag of chips. I am both drawn to “the room” where I keep all my materials and am avoiding it like mad. It’s tough to write. Tough to start, tough to keep it running, tough to edit the schlock; tough all around: and I’m avoiding it.

Reading has always been a way to get wound up about something. So, that’s where I’ve started. Over the last several nights I’ve read an article by William I. Oliver entitled “Between Absurdity and the Playwright.”

The article was originally published in 1963 in Educational Theatre Journal, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Oct., 1963), pp. 224-235, but I found it in a volume entitled Modern Drama: Essays in Criticism. The article is eye-opening to me, as I have been somewhat influenced by absurdist drama of late, and have even flirted with expressionism; yet Mr. Oliver is no fan of this form—or at least, he has some harsh things to say about it.

For instance, I’ll begin with this quote:

“If I’m not mistaken, Mr. Kopit meant Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad to be something of a parody of absurdist drama. Upon close inspection I find this play every bit as sound as many seriously recognized pieces in the absurdist field. Like jazz, or any other extreme artistic expression, absurdist drama will not bear parody, for the parodies often appear as good as the work parodied. I have also been amused by the ease with which my beginning playwriting students can ingeniously concoct plots that would pass for a good absurdist action. The plain truth of the matter is that writing an acceptable absurdist play is not difficult at all.” 231

Ouch. Makes me feel bad for struggling.

On another note, I have found the article to be important to me, if for no other reason than defining absurdist drama a bit differently than I have heard it defined, in drawing a critical eye to not only what it’s doing, but how it’s doing it, and perhaps giving me a broader perspective on how absurdist elements should function in any work I do in the future.

As a start, Oliver defines absurdist drama, and the definition is so absolutely fantastic that I couldn’t help but quote the whole of it, begging your indulgence:

The absurdist playwrights believe that our existence is absurd because we are born without asking to be born, we die without seeking death, we live between birth and death trapped within our body and our reason, unable to conceive of a time in which we were not, or a time in which we will not be–for nothingness is very much like the concept of infinity: something we perceive only in so far as we cannot experience it. Thrust into life, armed with our senses, will and reason, we feel ourselves to be potent beings. Yet our senses give the lie to our thought and our thought defies our senses. We never perceive anything completely. We are permitted to entertain committedly only one perspective of any object, fact, or situation: our own. We labor to achieve distinction and permanence only to find that our assessments are perspectively incomplete and therefore never wholly effective. All of our creations are doomed to decay as we ourselves are doomed to death. We create in order to identify ourselves in some semblance of permanence, but our creations become autonomous facts the instant we have created them and do not identify us except in so far as we pretend what they do. Therefore, the more we strive for definition and permanent distinction, the more absurd we are. Yet, the only value we can affirm with certainty is a self-defeating complex that we do not understand: our life. If we despair of definition, of ever achieving a sense of permanence, and we contemplate suicide, we are put in the absurd situation of sacrificing our only concrete value, life, for a dream of power and permanence that no man on this earth has ever experienced. On the other hand, if in despair we turn to religion or illusion of any sort we betray and deny our only means of perception: our reason. If, in a transport of ecstasy, be it mystical or sensuous, we feel at one with power and permanence we are forced to admit the illusionistic aspect of this transport and we must confess that our sense of power, permanence and definition is achieved at the sacrifice of our reason. If it is impossible for us to act with complete efficacy, to perceive with complete accuracy, to create anything definite and lasting that expresses exactly our intentions, we must also remember that it is impossible for us to cease acting as long as we live. This then is the condition of man that we of the twentieth century call “absurd.” 225

A beautiful definition. Oliver goes on to state that the only escape is if man were to “become a God or an unreflective beast.” I think by reading the mere statement that Oliver makes has in many ways proven to be a catharsis of sorts for me. It has, in some ways, freed me by drawing concrete attention to something I always half-suspected and mistakenly thought was just unique to me: that is, my own reflexive sense of my own silliness. And he has further, with one stroke, laid an axe to my tree of eternal life: the silly (again) notion that somehow I can achieve something lasting and important—something of “distinction and permanence.”

Oliver’s next step is surprising—as is his conclusion, which I’ll get to. His next step is to assert that all the playwrights of all time have dealt with the question of man’s absurdity. There is nothing novel in the ideas put forth by the absurdist dramatists. Oliver points to Oedipus and Hamlet and but two examples and with allusions to many more in between and remarks that absurdity “defines the condition of man, today, in the past, and into the future.” 226 He then looks at both tragedy and farce and sees them as “the double masks of absurdity.” The only distinction with modern dramatists being that they tend to mix the two together rather than leaving them as separate vehicles. Traditionally, that is, tragedy was a vehicle to evoke sympathy and tears; farce “frees our cruelty.” Mixing them together is a pretty realistic definition of what is occurring in an absurdist play, which evokes both at the same time.

Next, Oliver dissects absurdist playwrights: “Of necessity, an absurdist playwright is one who is predominantly thematic in his dramaturgy. That is to say, these are dramatists of a philosophical bent who place the greatest value on their thematic statement.” 226
Specifically, and I have broken them out into bullets:

• Plays call attention to their intellectual content
• Works are more “presentational” as they are concerned with universals
• Are extreme in their desire to be intellectual, ideological, objective, and cerebral—and want their audiences to come along for the ride
• Can be compared to Medieval allegory
• Proclaim their independence from the traditional “neo-Aristotelian” structures of imitation and representationalism

Further, “to achieve a level of abstraction sufficiently pronounced to evince such a response from their audiences, the absurdists have resorted to various devices, none of which are new to the theatre.”

• Every conceivable symbolical device employed in allegory and dramatic expressionism
• Some have discarded psychology as a control action
• To demonstrate symbolically the ideas of the playwright and create the “dramatic temperature” necessary to maintain the interest of the audience
• Author’s thought is expressed symbolically through action
• Are “not afraid of obscurity in art since they employ it as a direct symbol of the obscurity they find in life.” 227
• They distrust language: “defining the gulf of misunderstanding that exists between our desire and our definition of it, between our expression of ourselves and its apprehension by others. This certainly is a dramatic concern, but the absurdist expresses the problem by forcing his language to nonsense.” 228

Oliver then launches one of his chief criticisms, (two actually) which is that the “nonsense” in the language (or language games) and the “obscure” symbols used by absurdist dramatists make it virtually impossible for their audiences to understand or comprehend them. Furthermore, the actual message, were it understood clearly, would be so patently offensive to audiences that they would not return to the theatre: “Their [absurdists] picture of the human condition, reasonable though it is, is not a very popular view. If it was clearly put in readily identifiable language, the majority of their audience would find the absurdist’s view to be nihilistic. They would simply say, “Oh no! How dreary! That’s all wrong!” and then make a mental note never to see another play by that horrible author!” 229

Thus, according to Oliver, absurdist dramatists “bury the message” to hide what they’re really saying from direct view: “How then to administer this view to an audience optimistically rooted in the certainty of faith-be it in God, or culture, or even in the potency of their own individuality? The answer is simple: pretend to give them something else. Make the play as amusing and sensational and surprising as possible but bury the message in symbols. Get the audience to swallow the comedy-coated pill of absurdity by letting them believe it is all harmless comedy or sensationalism.” 229

Oliver has a much more appreciative view of Albee and Pinter, whom he says, use both realist elements and absurdist elements. Obviously, writers such as Sheppard do this as well. This mix, Oliver suggests, allows the audience to appreciate the flow of plot and the psychology of character, while at the same time giving a context and meaning to the absurdity of the plight of the characters and thus making the absurdism more relevant. Oliver, here, also points to O’Neill, Sartre, Brecht, Camus, and Ghelderode.

There are other items that Oliver discusses, including the limitations and even failures of some of the absurdists and specific plays: The Chairs, for instance.

I think what is most interesting, though, is Oliver’s sort of “get over it” attitude toward absurdism, and this is what I mentioned earlier as his surprising conclusion: namely,

“Granted, one’s realization of absurdity is a terrible thing, but if this realization doesn’t shock us into suicide we do go on living. We write plays, we build bridges, we run for public office, we fall in love, we raise families, we may even become religious! Granted, no action we take after this confrontation or realization will be enacted with naive and implicit faith in its existential rewards of definition and permanence. The realization of absurdity makes ironists of all of us who undergo it and continue to live in action–but note that it is enlightened action in the sense that the action of Oedipus is enlightened once he has blinded himself to the optimistic vanities of man. One may even love God through disillusion! It was Unamuno who believed that the true saint was the man tortured by his inability to believe in God.” 232-3

Thus, Oliver concludes, “Absurdity is, ironically enough, the only ground upon which man’s reason can stand secure.” 234

In conclusion, Oliver defines his ideal absurdist dramatist. He defines this person three ways:

• Absurdist as thinker—one who points out absurdity to others, to the audience, but, per the above, does so more altruistically to draw attention to the “ground upon which man’s reason can stand secure;”
• Absurdist as a social force—“He must present his audience with the need to confront the absurdity of their own existence in order that they may no longer be unnecessarily vulnerable to the vicissitudes of life. He must eventually show them the reasonable advantages of absurd living in order that they may be induced to leave their nests of dogma, illusion and superstition.”
• Absurdist as a technician—“the absurdist playwright will seek a form and style which, first of all, act as a disguise of his assertions rather than a direct and compatible expression of them. Yet this stylistic and structural disguise must never be so complete as to make it unnecesarily difficult for the audience to chance upon the proper perspective of interpretation that will reveal the true contour of the playwright’s thought.”

I have another of Oliver’s articles on Absurdism. I think I’ll read that next!

Take Me Out is a play by Richard Greenberg and is the story of the baseball team the New York Empires, but specifically about the coming out of star player Darren Lemming.

At Dobama, Lemming was very ably played by local actor Michael May. May is a fairly big–read strong–African-American man and my mind was invariably drawn to Barry Bonds as a model for the star-power incumbent in the character of Lemming (do lemmings really commit suicide?). Lemming is encouraged to come out by his close friend from the rival baseball team the Satellites, Davey Battle (played by Jimmie Woody), even though Davey doesn’t know at the time that’s what he’s encouraging Lemming to do. Davey is a Christian, God-fearing man who has a wife and three kids.

Lemming’s coming out is poison to the Empire clubhouse a fact that is discussed immediately in the play by Lemming and Narrator slash Shortstop Kippy Sunderstrom (played strongly by Phil Carroll) Just how much the clubhouse is poisoned is made very clear right off the bat (no put intended) by a series of short encounters with the Empire roster: when Lemming encounters Martinez (played by Javar Parker) and Rodriguez (played by Vincent Martinez) neither one will talk or even acknowledge him; Jason (played by Shaphan David Seiders) the awe-struck catcher who is confused about Lemming’s sexuality; and then there’s Toddy (played by Joe Gennaro) who comes right out and calls a spade a spade–saying that he knows Lemming is looking at his ass when he showers. The trouble in the clubhouse infects the team’s play and their many-game lead in the division goes on a downward slide to a half-game–taking the morale of the team right along with it. The coming out has personal implications for Lemming as well, as his accountant drops him and so do many of the sponsors for his endorsement packages. This results in Lemming getting a new financial manager, Mason Marzac (played extremely well by Caleb J. Sekeres), who is not only awe struck by the famous baseball star, but quickly learns the game and develops an inspired passion for it. With the morale plummeting, the only thing that stops the Empire’s slide is the hardly believable addition of a closing pitcher from class AA. This pitcher, Shane Mungitt (played with remarkable character by Baldwin-Wallace theatre major Fred Mauer) not only stops the slide, but if you believe the playwright provides the team with wins as well. The only drawback? Well, Shane is a thinly-veiled version of the Rocket, John Rocker, whose famous tirade about riding the 7-train in New York ran thus: its like ‘you’re riding through Beirut next to some kid with purple hair, next to some queer with AIDS, right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time, right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It’s depressing.’ Only the character of Shane ends by saying, ‘taking a shower with a faggot.’ This new level of tension takes care of what was missed by Lemming’s coming out–that is, it alienates everyone in the clubhouse. Shane is suspended, but how long can you suspend a winning closer? Not long apparently, and after a few games suspension and a stuttering, heartfelt, soft-in-the-head apology (written, as we find out later, by Kippy), Shane is right back where he was: closing games. The quick re-instatement doesn’t sit well with Lemming who feels that he was the biggest target of Shane’s racially and homophobically fueled tirade, and leads to a scene between Lemming and the manager, Skippy, (played by Gregory K. White) that I felt was forced, ironic, and insincere–namely, Lemming charging that Shane is a disruption to the clubhouse. The tension rises to climax when Davey comes into the clubhouse before a game and has it out with Lemming about his being ‘perverted,’ to which Lemming responds, ˜drop dead.’ A fateful comment. The anger over the falling out with his so-called best friend leads Lemming to force himself onto Shane in a menacing shower scene–an action by Lemming whose sole intent is to revolt and scare Shane. The unpredictable event that transpires from this is that Shane, in a fit of homophobic rage, when he finally gets in to do some relief work, throws his first pitch right at Davey’s head and kills him–recalling the fate of Ray ‘Chappy’ Chapman the Cleveland Indian shortstop who is the only baseball player ever killed during a game–and that by a New York Yankee’s pitcher (Carl Mays). Chapman is buried in Lake View Cemetery. Enough on the history lesson though, as the fateful death of Davey is believed to have been the murderous intentional act by Shane; and believed by Lemming to be the result of his own action of grabbing Shane in the shower. The death, of course, falls hard on Lemming, who hours before the event told Davey to ˜drop dead.’ And Lemming turns to phone conversations with Mason for consolation and support; in contrast to Kippy, whom Lemming has moved away from (if he was ever close to him to begin with). After the smoke clears, Kippy and Lemming go and talk to Shane, presumably at a police station where he is being questioned about the intent behind his pitch. Much is revealed: the actions by Lemming in the shower; Kippy’s role in ˜coaching’ Shane’s letter; and that Shane is in-fact, a homophobic racist through and through. The revelation of Kippy’s role in Shane’s apology drives a wedge between Kippy and Lemming that appears to be a trenchant break. The Empires go on to win the World Series, driven presumably by their hatred of each other and fueled by an obsession to forget the season’s mess. And in the final scene, Lemming invites Mason, the financial manager with whom he has been talking long into the night, to go to the World Series party with him¦and they kiss. Presumably all has gone to hell, but Lemming has finally found something that he can stand behind and someone to love.

The most talked about feature of this play is undoubtedly the spectacle of flopping penises. After all, a majority of the play’s action takes place inside a locker room: and what to athletes do in there? I have heard and read much debate regarding the point of the showers and the shower scenes: i.e. is a working shower just spectacle? Is it too much realism? Does the shower distract from the play, that is, do audience-goers say ‘oh, wow, wonder how they got that set up?’ and stop concentrating on the action of the play? Are those naked men really necessary? Personally, I’m going to have to come down on the side of ˜yes,’ it is necessary. And here’s why: first, during a highly charged exchange that starts between Kippy and Toddy (in the shower, of course) Kippy remarks that in the shower they are now all overly conscious of their nakedness, they have conversations during which they make very sure that they make eyecontact and when they aren’t talking, no one even looks at another person. They are so afraid of being labeled gay that they are ashamed, self-conscious, and modest. It think this comment by Kippy taps the audience feeling as well, and reflects, indeed, makes the connection between the effect on the locker room that Lemming’s coming out had and the audience’s own queasiness with seeing all the naked men. The showers are necessary because, frankly, seeing naked men mime a shower would be very odd. Regardless, the decision was a good one.

Speaking of which, time for kudos. Take Me Out was directed by Scott Plate, who many of you may have seen in Dobama’s production of Thom Pain: based on nothing. It would be hard to argue that Plate didn’t to a fantastic job in that role and fundamentally changed the perception of Eno’s character. Here, Plate does a solid job of directing. The set design, which presumably he had some say in, was very well done; the choreography of all the field events; of course, the shower scenes; and the management of the actors in a large space that clearly required more strength of voice and stage presence than a smaller venue would have required. The tension builds where it should and is released were it should. The pace of the play is good and well-managed, as there are some perilous points where the play could have dragged to a halt if not managed correctly. The stage itself, designed by Jeff Herrmann, was a marvel. Yes, it was a baseball diamond made from white tape; but there is something viscerally satisfying about a baseball diamond, as Mason remarks at a passionate point in the play. What is perhaps amazing on both Plate and Herrmann’s part is the ease with which the stage design they used allows for movement between a space conceived as a locker room and space conceived as a baseball diamond for play. It reminds me of the almost ethereal set in Death of a Salesman, the manner in which reality and fantasy blend together. And indeed, the movement through time, memory, past and present are enhanced by this set and this approach to the play. The lighting was handled by Jeff Lockshine and worked very well to set the moods of vibrancy, when required, or the solemn blue of sorrowful remembrance. The baseball outfits were handled ably by Aimee Kluiber and the sounds of balls hitting bats, phone calls, and other elements by Richard Ingraham.

In terms of the play itself, Take Me Out is an issue play. Mostly, of course, an issues play about gays in sports and sports as a microcosm of America. There are more issues than this, of course: personal isolation, God and religion, our responsibility to the most vulnerable among us, etc. And in this regard it works in a pretty standard pattern of pairings: this character’s for this, this character’s against it, the characters have it out; tensions build over time and eventually abate or resolve, etc. Structurally, the play is a three act play with each act ending on a high note, or with a ˜hook.’ This may or may not serve the purpose of bringing people back from smoking outside. Although, I think the play was good and of sufficient strength that people should have come back. The main formal functional device for the play is Kippy as narrator (and Phil Carroll’s handling of it reminded me terribly of Matthew Broderick); and I’m not sure how I feel about the narrator as a device. I actually have two concerns with it: first, I don’t trust Kippy as a character, which makes me distrust him as a narrator; second, I don’t know if I like the narrator in a play period. The narrator sets a very odd tone in the dynamic with the audience–is the narrator a person with his own set of ideas, is it the author talking to me, what’s the real angle here?

The shining moments, are those when Mason is on stage, and I began to think that the character Mason was transparently channeling Greenberg, who is gushing about baseball. Mason gushes about the true democracy of the game (the leveling of everyman and yet everyman gets his shot, his moment at the plate, as well as the strict enforcement of the rules for everyone); the symmetry and numerology in the game (the perfect diamond, the pattern of 3 and its square and cube). These moments are truly beautiful, in my opinion and are shining testaments to baseball. There are truly inspired words here about baseball invoking for me a love of the game and the deep place it holds in our country’s life and history. The not so shining moments are the crude portrayals of some players, especially those who seem uncomfortable personally or morally with homosexuality. These people are portrayed as willfully loud bible thumpers or morons or outright racist homophobes. At its worst I would suspect the playwright of unabashedly associating all that is good with those who are gay or support gay people and all that is bad or stupid with those who are heterosexual. If one wished, one could examine the characterization of each player in Greenberg’s line-up to see how this all falls in line. Of course, the play is more complex than this, and the many other characters show the diversity of not only modern baseball, but, by implication, the complexity of veiwpoints in America today.

I could expand the tarp I’ve just thrown a bit and suggest that Greenberg goes hard on most all sports players (or, at least, baseball players). Now I’m quite certain that sports have their unique allotment of morons, but the portrayal here was often ridiculous. I found it equally interesting that the player chosen to be most representative of this brand of idiocy was the catcher portrayed as Jeff Spicoli-esque (for you young folks–or old–that’s a reference to Fast Times at Ridgemont High, bud!). The catcher position being quite possibly the most intellectual of all positions on the field: after all, the catcher must be intimately familiar with each batter and know pitch counts, direct the pitch choices, know weaknesses, pitch patterns, dissemble for the umpire, call signals for defensive alignments, and act as a psychologist to wound-up pitchers (pun intentional). Instead, Greenberg’s catcher is a moron and the shortstop (Kippy) is the genius. Except, Kippy’s presumptive arrogance is his undoing: he takes it upon himself to ‘interview’ Shane, the upstart AA pitcher (who pulls a closer from double-A anyway?); to presume to know his heart and provide him with the apology he doesn’t believe; to assume that he can plumb the depths of Lemming, much like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern attempt to play on Hamlet as a pipe.

Ultimately, I think I’m going through a phase and find that I’m looking for experiences in both my own writing and in that of others–or in performances as the case may be–that are less obvious in their meaning. That is not meant to be a put down or to say that plays that are driven and intentionally meaningful are bad or to be frowned upon, but most of my own first plays were heavily guided by this principle and were plot driven, intensely polarized in that characters squared-off and met on an ideological battlefield and truth was arrived at somewhere in between the two sides. Issue plays. Tension here, a little laughter here to lighten it up, something profound here–almost like making a soup: a dash of pepper, a bit of salt, some meat. But I’m trying to step away from recipes and move, perhaps, straining the metaphor, moving into grazing–or would it be a buffet?–you know, just try this over here, and then move along over to here and see what comes up, see what it all tastes like, hopefully it doesn’t poison me or make me too sick. I directly blame Mike Geither for this, blame being a lighthearted term in this case, as the encouragement to seek deeper waters and to really let things flow (from my unconscious and from my pen–fingertips–keyboard) came from him. Too many of my plays were driven to an end; this is not to say that there was no room for exploring the worlds that were created, but the end result is still pretty common and recognizable, as is the feel of the piece itself. It *feels* theatrical, put on, poised and purposeful; not spontaneous or energized: vital.

In the end, I think Take Me Out is a good play and I would recommend it. I don’t feel that it is a must see play–one that demands your viewing it; but it is a solid play with some very fine moments.