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Just read the play. Haven’t seen it, so I’ll caveat it.  There’s more to a play than reading, an issue that I’ve discussed before.

A timely read for me as I have written a couple of blog entries on morality and art—or maybe I’ve written one and have just been thinking about the issue so long that I think I’ve written more about it.  This play is a very sarcastic response to the whole NEA flap of a few years back.  One is keyed into this fact almost immediately, as the dedication to the play is to Jesse Helms and Pat Robertson: two pillars standing as ass-backward heroes on the plains of our modern moral landscape. Wellman makes this point very clear toward the end of the play where Dot says:

These photos are art, Dot
says, the other Dot that is,
art funded by a public
agency and performed by
artists in his own state.

The plot is simple: seven photographs are delivered to a Republican Senator’s office in Washington, DC.  The rest of the play is the reaction to the photos by the Senator, his staff, and a televangelist. It took me two reads to get the gist of this thing, but its meaning, I think, lies in the fact that the pictures are art pieces, very like the Robert Mapplethorpe photos that kicked off a shit storm in 1990 in Cincinnati, whose artistic nature is overlooked in favor of a sexually explicit interpretation by those who position themselves to all of society as having thoughts as clean as the newly driven snow.  Plainly, these people who are supposed to be pure of thought and mind and chaste of conscience and brimming with positivistic notions for all mankind are pitched into a frothy sexual stew by some art pictures.

As the Reverend Tom states:

“…even though, in these
photos the things are not
in actual contact with the
other things, and therefore
the 7 blowjobs are seven
unconsummated blowjobs
but they suggest the worst,
worse than the actual act
would have done did…”

The ultimate point here being that art corrupts by what it leads people to think (and to crave):

Dot:         It’s
only a picture. A picture can’t
torture and rape you…a picture….

Eileen: A picture can too torture and
rape your mind, Dot, I mean
can’t you imagine that, being
bend and wiggled and so
forth…like that…

 Wellman’s work is a different way of approaching what LaBute does in The Shape of Things, where the corruptive power of art is posited by the external manipulation of the physical body of a young man by a malicious female art student.  Nevertheless, the ironical point made by both pieces argues the well-documented position by conservative politicians and religious leaders that art has a corruptive influence on the minds and souls of those who observe it; as we are clearly incapable of making informed decisions on our own behalf.  Like children, we need guidance through the confusing night landscape of our lives.

Despite some of the absurdist elements of the play, which work well, Wellman goes a bit overboard such that the absurdity takes on an all too clearly cynical message—for instance, when the reveal is made that Senator So-and-So passed on the pictures to Senator Bob (after he died) that he himself was going to use to distract his constituents from the part he played in a parking scandal—the implication, of course, being that all politicians are conviction-less thieves who only wish to defraud the public by posturing one way and behaving another.  While true for some, and perhaps more true than I’d like to think, I cannot bring myself to paint with such a broad brush all representatives in the Congress.  Hypocrisy for sure exists and should be beaten down wherever it is found: especially amongst those representative pushing homophobic agendas only to disclose, albeit accidentally, their own predilections in that direction.  As I’ve said before, when a piece of art takes on too much of a political message, I think it borders more on journalism or essay and wanders too far astray from a pure experience.  It is fair to say that the whole of Wellman’s piece can be interpreted as a cynical slap at conservatives in Congress and can be too overt for my tastes:

…Surveillance
that watches out for stuff
just like this, bad stuff,
meant to injure the mind
and screw up public morals.

But, that being what it is, it has some very entertaining moments:

Reverend Tom. You make the
people think religious thoughts
tending to the re-election of the
saved and eternal damnation
for the published poets…

And:

Look at Bruce, Dot, look at
his eyes, how empty and ill
they are, like an animal who
has seen too much of human
life ever to be an animal again.

And:

Senator: That is not a blowjob.  That is the Pope.

And several instances where the first thing seen in the photo is a small dog:

Eileen: No, Senator, that’s not the
blowjob.  That is a borzoi dog…

Or:

…this is it, this is the
fatal blowjob, the blowjob in question.

One of the inherent tensions in the piece is that between “the real thing” and a representation of what is real: hence the photographs and again the argument of what art is or means—as a representation of something or the thought of the artist.  Constantly, throughout the play, one character or another looks at pictures and interprets the content as being “the real thing.”  Added to this is the contrast between the acts portrayed in the photographs and judgments regarding what is “normal;” the senator and staff and religious representatives, again, positing themselves as the examples of what is normal.  Early in the play, Eileen, the senator’s administrative assistant comes close to seeing the “reality” of the photos, only to have it knocked away by Dot:

Eileen:
Do you think that is what
it actually looks like? Or,
how else do you explain
what it really is, if that’s
not right? I mean, well,
if what we are seeing is
photos—of stuff—say…

Dot: The real thing, I would say.

Or later:

Tom here is deacon of the Television
Church of the Tachistical Wonder
of Jesus Christ, Autodidact. Ain’t
it that, Tom? A real TV Church.

Or charges against Eileen that she isn’t a real conservative:

…Dot and me
know you’re faking it
when you write those speeches
…your heart’s not in it, Eileen.
Face it, you’re an imitation.

Further, even in moments when the possibility that the photographs are meant to spark the imagination of the viewer occurs to one of the characters, this possibility becomes lost in some equally confounding interpretation:

Bruce: …Can you not
please use your imagination?
This is a possible evidence.

So, imagination can only be conjured for a more imposing practical explanation for the photographs—that is, they aren’t just really about sex, they have to be hyperreally about a crime: evidence of something… but what?  The senator and his staff would point to evidence of a “smear” or an indiscretion or a crime or a moral failing.  But could it be that the evidence is of some other mode of existence?  Thus, late in the play we find Reverend Tom again, in full rant, saying:

“That blowjob, being a
child of Satan still in
his or her heart would
leer, and say: “Tom,
GO TO HELL! MIND YOUR
OWN BEESWAX BECAUSE
I AM HAVING A GOOD TIME
THANK YOU!” Thus the fate
of that blowjob would be
sealed, in the full horror
and knowledge of sin, and
photos of unnatural acts,
photos of unnatural acts
capable of rendering a
full-grown man, happy!

So not only is there another possibility for how one can live (and enjoy) life, but there is documented evidence of it.  What is perhaps of greater dismay to those involved is the effect it has on them: Bruce drools, Dot gets leveled, and Eileen gets wiggly.  All this because of the “real stuff” they are getting a look at.  Wellman, here, is at his best in showing how the reactions to art by some conservative personages are nothing more than a juvenile misinterpretation: the deviant projections of sexually stunted minds.  In fact, in many places the language and attitudes of the senator, staff, and reverend devolve into a sort of adolescent logic representing a dimwitted primitivism.

A constant mistrust runs though Wellman’s play as well.  He represents in these Republicans a deep mistrust of everything, a mistrust that I think points more broadly to a theme in government today period: that no one can really trust what is said or believe that something is sincere.  Dot expresses this well:

…I have seen all this
before, back in Oil City,
Pennsylvania…
I knew such things happened
because it was a fact they
were not talked about, and
you can be sure that when an
activity is not being talked
about, it is going on.  It is
definitely going on when it
is not being talked about…

Or, as both Bob Junior and BobBob Junior state:

I know you don’t believe
me, Dad.  You never believe
me, Dad.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around why the play is written in verse. Obviously, for the person in the audience this would make little difference, unless the slight pauses between each turn are perceptible even in memorization and would cause enough pause at each line to be noted.  But even then, often as not the line breaks don’t fall on any word or word after or phrase that is noteworthy.

Wellman spends a lot of time putting malapropisms into the mouths of his characters too (no Freudian metaphor intended); no character is immune.  Here’s a sample: obsquatulated; (of the photo) it’s hypoallergenic; I was being euphuistic; Dot is circumscribed; sado-momo-statistical drive; a case of sado-botomy; foul pismire that is the human heart; horripilation; and one nice rant by Reverend Tom toward the end that I won’t type out, but which includes the nice phrase, “pan-psycho-super-maniacal-dodo-gomorrahmy…”; apocalyptoplectic attack;

Further, the characters often have lot of incomplete thoughts and an inability to adequately express themselves—a failure of words, again, almost adolescent-like in a failure to grasp a mature understanding and express oneself appropriately, fully—again, stunted.

Other features:

Naivety (again, almost immature):

wiggly (for sexual excitement);

“I think you are
a liberal underneath your
clothes and underwear, all
women are”;

God intended, when he placed
it, modestly, where it is, back
inside, nestled like a little
pink wildflower.  Inside,
nestled like a little, pink
wildflower on the woodsy…thing
there.  In the soft, woodsy part.

Sexism underlies much of the interactions: men are reduced to “making claims” about their sexual escapades and women are reduced to traditional roles:

Bruce: Women get wiggly when they look
at the real thing.  We men do
not, having been hardened by
the war experience and hardship.
…you don’t know how bad
a place the world is, having
been a girl at some, I bet
Ivy League place…

“I think you are
a liberal underneath your
clothes and underwear, all
women are”;

Furthermore, Eileen and Dot become interchangeable in terms of “secretarial” tasks: fetching drinks, or other menial tasks for the men; a fact which Eileen resents, even as her resentment is ignored.

Eileen: Dot is the secretary, I am the
Administrative Assistant, why
must I get Bruce the glass of
water, it really bothers me…
really, really, really, really

Or, as Reverend Tom praises Eileen:

…you can resist the cloven
hoof on the forehead of your…
wom…wom…womanliness

There’s also some good old homophobia:

Senator:
He was another pecker-watcher.
He was a confirmed pecker-watcher.

In fact, everyone the senator has issues with or of whom he disapproves is a “fag:” the play ending with a long listing of all the men who are fags according to him.

Wellman uses the repetition of phrases throughout his play to great effect: demonstrating the sort of circular logic (or illogic) that fuels much of the shallow thinking that feeds the arguments about the “immorality of art” in our “culture wars;” and a great many other things as well.

A smattering of anti-Catholic rhetoric:

Tom: It couldn’t be the Pope.  He’s
still a Christian gentleman—
even if he is fullblown antichrist.

Wellman waxes philosophical (comically so), as Reverend Tom struggles with the fact that the human soul can be connected to this human body, and even goes into a bit of Hamlet:

…this human soul…
is attached to a human body…
by a thing, by a thing like
that…and there’s the rub,
and that rub is where the
trouble starts…because
if you rub a thing like that,
a thing like this thing here,
up jumps the devil and the
devil is a creature of rubbing,
touching, stretching and all the
damned contortions the human
body is heir to.

I read this play for two reasons: 1) convergence put it up a few years back and I want to familiarize myself with the plays in their oeuvre; and 2) I am looking to other writers for guidance in experimentation with form.  Wellman’s play goes a bit beyond what I expected—not so much in the dramatic events that occur on the stage as in the features of the writing itself: the verse form, the repetition of phrases, concepts, words; the cyclical nature of the arguments; the bright colors used to paint the character types; the interspersion of malapropisms and almost intelligible babbling; and, in general, the free word play that he allows in all the characters in this play.  For the reasons immediately above, I like it very much.

I went to see [amazon_link id=”0822220644″ target=”_blank” ]The God of Hell[/amazon_link] at Bang and Clatter on Saturday. The place was packed and thanks to the easy-going nature of Sean Derry I was allowed to stand in the tech booth (it was literally standing room) with Kristen, a woman who actually worked on the Ingenuity Festival this year and did one of my pieces.

Pluto is the God of Hell and is they Eponymous name for the title. It comes up during a discussion between the mysterious scientist character, Haynes (John Busser) and Emma (Jen Klika) about Plutonium, which presumably is the McGuffin for this play’s action.

I’m still trying to get my head around all of it, but what I will say struck me about this play is the return to themes in many of Shepard’s earlier plays as well as the strong absurdist techniques which were not present, or at least, not present in as strong a way, in his family plays and his more “realistic” plays.

Like those plays, however, the action begins on a farm in the “heartland.” Whenever this is the setting, Shepard has something serious to say about the state of America. The “heartland” was the setting of his Pulitzer Prize winning [amazon_link id=”0307274977″ target=”_blank” ]Buried Child[/amazon_link] (coming soon to convergence-continuum!) and begins with a homecoming of sorts, as does Buried Child (BC)—as well much of the action of God of Hell (GH) occurs in the kitchen/family room. Similar, also, to [amazon_link id=”0553346113″ target=”_blank” ]Curse of the Starving Class[/amazon_link] (SC), we see a “kitchen” drama that takes place on a farm. In contrast, startlingly so, both BC and SC begin in dilapidated environs. The setting of GH is very nearly idyllic, as noted by several characters in the play, and includes a very homey kitchen with amenities that are of an earlier America—circa 1950’s perhaps. This setting of course is not accidental. True West (TW), the last of the “family trilogy” also begins in a pleasant middle-class kitchen/breakfast nook in California, but the setting is less intentionally idyllic that of a type. The setting here shows us a “heartland” that is reminiscent of the past: a time in America that was good and wholesome and strong. The whole is infused with a sense of strong values and morals, American goodness: farming, hearth, family, Currier and Ives, etc. It is clear what target Shepard has in his sights.

The homecoming in GH is that of the scientist, Haynes, who is reuniting with an old friend, the farmer, Frank (Joe Milan, often at CPT). In place of the lack of recognition in BC, or overt hostility and competition in TW, we see mystery and suspicion. Frank hasn’t seen his friend in years and doesn’t really know what he does and Frank’s wife, Emma is suspicious. All we are told is that Frank suspects Haynes was tortured or that something happened that made him overly sensitive and nervous. Frank leaves to go and feed his “heifers” and we are left with the wife, who is making bacon and obsessively watering the house plants. The wife is nervous and a bit jumpy herself and a bit suspicious of the friend in the basement; but her concerns in this regard is supplanted quickly by the arrival of a salesman. The salesman, Welch (Daniel McElhaney) begins by offering a sugar cookie in the shape of a flag with icing to make the flag an American Flag. His attempt to sell the cookie fails, but he succeeds at getting in the house. While Frank’s wife doesn’t know what quite to make of Welch, she learns quickly that he is not the “usual” salesman and, in fact, is a bit frightening. The revelations come slowly via odd questions (not much of a patriotic display in the house, the empty flag pole out front), then intrusive questions (how many rooms in the house, anyone else in the house), to the frightening ‘over-personal’ nature of his behavior (including the fact that he knows her first name and continues to call her by it). Thoroughly flummoxed, Emma orders Welch to leave, which he does. Emma then rings a bell for her husband (this is how they communicate from the house to the barn), who returns after several nerve-wracking minutes. Emma relates her story, but her husband doesn’t think much of it. Frank then opens the basement door and yells for Haynes to get up and the two farmers continue discussing Welch. Finally, Haynes makes his entrance: disheveled and in a bath robe. He is very nervous. He formally introduces himself to Emma (he arrived late at night) and shocks her when they shake hands. This zap of electricity continues through much of the rest of the play as an indicator that something is off with Haynes. Frank heads back to the barn leaving Haynes and Emma alone. Emma talks to Haynes hesitantly but honestly, eliciting some reactions from Haynes, including his denial that he is a scientist or was tortured and that her husband told her things he shouldn’t have—that Haynes didn’t want anyone to know. This of course adds to our, and Emma’s, suspicion of Haynes, and reveals, at least, that he has something to hide.

Scene One blacks out and opens in the same place on Scene Two, all we are left to ponder is that, presumably, it is a new day and in the same place. This time Emma and Haynes are talking much more openly (Frank is down at the barn with the heifers), though Haynes continues to exhibit his nervous behavior. The conversation reveals that Emma was born, literally, in the house and that many generations have lived there. It reveals some more traditional themes in the [amazon_link id=”0553346113″ target=”_blank” ]Shepard oeuvre[/amazon_link], including a sense of the land and place, a gross sense of distrust for Agribusiness and corporate farms, the sense that the farm has been displaced by the government and corporations to the detriment of our national soul. The conversation touches upon Welch, which visibly frightens Haynes, who makes Emma complicit by ensuring that she tells no one he is there in the basement. The timing couldn’t be better, as who should return? Haynes panics and rushes to the basement. Welch essentially forces his way in, confronting Emma. He bullies her and relentlessly questions her until by accident she reveals that someone is in the basement. She flees the kitchen to get her husband and in her absence Welch bullies and berates Haynes out of the basement and confronts him. As they “talk”, Welch takes out red, white, and blue bunting and begins stapling it to the cabinets and stapling other forms of bunting to the doors, sticking American flags in the plants, and placing decorative magnets on the refrigerator. He reminds Haynes of his duty, of the torture that was used before, and the fact that the torment will have to start all over for programming purposes. As the scene ends Welch is directing Haynes into the basement and talking of a group meeting on “Tuesday” where decisions will be made about what to do.

The final scene opens with Emma in the kitchen and Frank entering in the same suit that Welch has been wearing throughout. Again, thematically this is a technique that Shepard uses often: in Curse, Wesley dresses up as Weston at the end, showing the symbolically the pattern of genetic inheritance continues; in Rock Garden, Shepard again uses this technique to symbolically identify the genetic inheritance from father to son. Here it is not used in a familial context, but nonetheless demonstrates that Frank has become like Welch. As well, we learn that Frank has sold all the heifers and now has a suitcase filled with money. Emma is shocked and protests that Frank loved the heifers and what was he going to do now? Frank has no answer. Again, Shepard is revealing his lifelong outrage at the commercialization of the American land and way of life. Curiously, though Frank is now dressed like Welch, he is more of a mixed breed; for we note that he is a bit nervous, too: showing signs similar to those of Haynes. This is confirmed as Frank shocks Emma, then he begins grabbing his crotch demonstrating physical discomfort: a discomfort that is soon clarified as we hear Haynes screaming in the basement. Soon Welch emerges from the basement bearing a long cable and a control button. When he pushes the button, Haynes screams in the basement. When Haynes emerges we see the cable is attached to his penis and his head is covered in a black hood. The obvious representation here of the incidents at Abu Ghraib cannot be ignored. Emma attempts to stop the proceedings as Haynes is forced through torture to say the things that Welch wishes to hear. She wins a battle, for a moment, getting Frank to ask for the heifers back (who were supposed to be going off to a glorious use). Welch laughs and Haynes reveals that the heifers were not sold for a glorious purpose, but for a grisly, dirty, pointless fate (much like the soldiers have been treated in the war in Iraq). Frank demands the heifers be returned, dumping the money; but he is no match for Welch, who soon has Frank back in line (with a thinly veiled threat), much to Emma’s sorrow. Soon, Frank is repeating those same things and, through ‘his own’ initiative is even indicting his own ‘friend’ for having lapsed from his ‘programming.’ Through torture Welch forces Haynes to march and soon Frank voluntarily joins in. Welch marches them both out the door while Emma pleads with Frank not to go. The play ends with Welch mocking Emma and asking her rhetorically if she really believed that she could live the life she has been living in America with no sacrifice—without giving up something? He leaves as Emma runs out the door and rings the bell, to no avail.

Shepard isn’t known for his happy endings, of course. And this certainly is no exception. The outlook is bleak for the American people who (maybe) stood up for themselves once upon a time. And once-upon-a-time is important to this play: one of its major dialogs being between what is and what ought to be; what never was, but what we dreamed would be.

In my MNO class last night [amazon_link id=”0253214106″ target=”_blank” ]Professor David Hammack[/amazon_link] noted that non-profit groups did not exist in the colonies because they were essentially illegal. Illegal in the sense that only the church provided the sorts of services that non-profits provide today; and in the colonies, you had to be a church or a preacher to practice and you had to be approved of the Church of England and specifically by the Bishop of London: that there were stiff penalties for violating this. He noted, for instance, that many Quakers in early America where hanged by the neck until dead for speaking their minds; and it was illegal to be a Catholic in the colonies. The American Revolution was truly more than a political revolution, but sadly, even after the Revolution these practices continued, with the table turning. Many members of the Church of England were driven from the north of America to Canada, where they live to this day in Catholic Quebec. Professor Hammack commented that many of these details are left out of the history books we get in our elementary schools because the truth is too painful. He then remarked, “and of course, we don’t teach history in high school anymore.” This is, of course, somewhat facetious, but none-the-less proves an important point: many of us grow up with myth and fantasy as our understanding of our American heritage, not the hard-boiled practical reality of how people lived. Professor Hammack, in commenting on Queen Elizabeth I, noted that she had the head of her half-sister, Mary Queen of Scots; else Mary Queen of Scots would have done the same to her. He remarked, “in those days, they played for keeps.” Knowing the practical realities of a situation is important. Living in a fantasy world is not good. Too many Americans live in such a world—either by choice or because the realities have been intentionally withheld. Shepard’s play, I think draws this parallel in stark terms, but makes it clear that just because practical realities exist and are hard is no reason that our ideals should be sacrificed–which is the outcome of much of the abuse of power practices of the Bush administration demonstrate. That is, in a time of war democracy is superfluous or icing (which is, of course, absurd). There is no doubt that we need to “play for keeps” but we must be careful that we do not destroy the very things that make us great. It is a fine line, to be sure, but behaving recklessly only exacerbates the potential that the fragile balance will break the wrong way; and as Shepard’s play also demonstrates, as has American history, people who are afraid are often all too willing to abrogate the important rights that make this country what it is. It takes courage to stand up for what is important and a self-confidence that is grounded firmly in your soul.

Directed by Chris Johnston, [amazon_link id=”0822220644″ target=”_blank” ]The God of Hell[/amazon_link] was an excellently done theater piece which moved at a fast clip, rippled with absurd events, and yet, of course, per the best of Shepard, revealed a nightmarish reality.