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I just finished reading Mac Wellman’s 1978 play about angry people doing harmful things: really angry people living in a world where the landscape reflects or projects their inner turmoil.

The landscape that Wellman creates which stands out for me most is Scene Three:

A nightmarish hillside. Dim fires and explosions in the distance. There are three tall poles, or posts, on top of which are mounted wagon wheel. BY WAY OF BEING HIDDEN and two dummies are strapped respectively atop each of these.

The setting is apocalyptic. Getting all filled up on zombie shows: Fear the Walking Dead, and Z Nation (on Netflix), as well as what I’ll repeat, again, is one of the best pieces of social satire I’ve seen in a long time (Zombies of Mass Destruction). Regardless, I’m sort of in a place where I can easily picture total destruction and the haunted backdrop of the destroyed American landscape. Wellman seems to flick his pen to conjure this.

I was reminded of Caryl Churchill whilst reading this. Especially, Far Away.

Just as much as the setting/landscape, the characters are bombed out, devastated people. There’s not too much of humanity left in them and things are pretty bleak. SANTOUCHE, our through line in this fairytale, is an ignorant piece-of-shit killer on the run. He’s on the run for shooting MOTHER who shot her young son (CHILD) because he wouldn’t eat his Wonderbreaded American sandwich. In all fairness, Child did have a nasty mouth of his own alongside an antagonistic attitude. The shit goes down in an “alley between darkened tenements.” Santouche is there with his acquaintance, FISHEYE, whom Santouche verbally abuses like Walter abuses Donny in The Big Lebowsky. Fisheye tells Santouche he better beat it as people have seen the killing. On stage these people are THE CHORUS who also play instruments throughout: “a fiddle, a drum, and a flute or trumpet.”

I appreciate the use of a Chorus more and more now every time I see it utilized. It’s flexible and ambiguous. Convenient and practical. It also adds a bit of spectacle alongside the Brechtian wall-breaking that it provides. In this case, it adds character flavor and music, which is always fucking nice.

Santouche runs off to his special lady ISLE OF MERCY, which is what Santouche must believe a woman is—maybe a special lady or maybe just a lady friend, who knows. This interaction is the first in which Santouche displays his astonishing ignorance of himself and argumentative logic. It’s like watching Bugs Bunny flip an argument on Daffy Duck: “Duck Season.” “Rabbit season.” “Duck season.” “Rabbit season.” “Rabbit Season.” “Duck Season.” Santouche needs something to sell. Isle of Mercy agrees to sell a broken watch and meet up with Santouche later, at a fair across the river, to give him the proceeds.

In Scene Three, besides the startling landscape I described at the outset, Santouche encounters BY WAY OF BEING HIDDEN, who is a gender bent, non-specific Man / Woman. Whilst trying to get Santouche to get him/her down from the wagon wheel pole, BW says:

“Look, I’ll do good by you, you’ll see./
You let me down and I’ll even it up, /
Don’t you worry about that, a man like me /
You can trust, I swear.”

Only to create startling mystery at the end of the scene when BW entices Santouche up to help by stating:

“I’m a girl.”

I was also astonished by the “a man like me / you can trust, I swear.” I’ve been thinking quite a bit about this line: the act of presuming to say it to a complete stranger and, for the stranger hearing it, how to comprehend the naivety expected on the part of the speaker. There is implicit irony in the statement itself, as if there are two completely different people inside of BW: one of who is vouching for the other. Compounding this, of course, is the irony that the man swearing about his trustworthiness claims, a page later, to be not a man at all.

The interaction between BW and Santouche also touches on the problems of trust and willingness that this play relentlessly pounds. Each character is motivated, for the most part, by selfishness. Each wants what he wants. This creates a problem for each character, as, when he finds himself in a tough spot, he must rely on other characters that have no sense of empathy whatsoever. Inclination to help must be bought or traded. There is no trust. Everyone is lying. Everyone is hiding something and trying to get around on someone else.

There is a texture that feels like the old west to this play. A sense of Wellman critiquing the American psyche: the confident self-reliance in situations that are, as often as not, created by some ignorant action to begin with. That, and everyone is packing a gun.

To be continued….

The first event I attended here at DG Con was a conversation with Christopher Durang, whose play Why Torture is Wrong and the People Who Love Them was at CPT not too long ago.

Durang was a highly engaging story-teller and was fabulous to listen to. For some strange reason, or perhaps not so strange, I was reminded of John Bellairs–perhaps it is the Catholic upbringing and the way it manifests itself in the work.

What follows below are the notes that I took as I listened. I have expanded on some things as I was inspired to do so:

One of the opening questions posed to Durang by host Jim Price was what is it that leads to the mix of serious and the strange in his writing. Durang talked about early influences, including: how to succeed in business w/o even trying; and I Love Lucy. Durang said that he was always attracted to quick paced performances and is not a fan of the real-time nature of drama in the 50s.

Durang wrote his first play @ age 8; and it revolved around the I Love Lucy episode when Lucy has a baby… the family and friends practice… it’s time… then panic when it happens… he loved that.

Durang says that he came from a family that was open to the arts
memoir of johnny durang…? He had his first production in 2nd grade… and he discovered that it was fun.

early musical banned in boston, etc. 13th birthday gypsy… his mother was like gypsy because she would tell everyone about his plays…

The 1st audition process he was involved in included girls from other schools; he was at an all-boys Catholic school; he recalls that the nuns were not happy that the girl (in the show) had to drop a shoulder strap at the end; the show ended w/4 weddings (it was very shakespearean).

Durang attended Delbarton 7 -12; had to work hard at math, not very good at it. Durang remarked that his mother’s divorce lawyer suggested he attend Harvard, where he goes. There he goes through a bout of depression from fresh – junior; not much theater during that time. Part of the depression he attributes the discovery/realization that what he learned during his Catholic upbringing, with regard to God and the universe, is not true.

At Harvard he creates the greatest musical ever sung for which Al Franken auditioned. (mad magazine style spoof of “real” songs)
Gospels in musical comedy terms. “everything’s coming up moses”
He lived in Dunster House. al gore and tommy lee jones were there at the time. The show included 9 apostles (5 women) couldn’t get 12. 2 weekends; good reviews; later uproar… offensive to Catholics…
“pigs trampling in a sanctuary” quote… included this statement in his Yale application.

yale
albert? irish nuns (repressive) vs. italian (violent)
a lot of cabaret stuff
howard stein
william blake/thomas gray met in glass menagerie
& eleanor and franklin roosevelt
2 weekends
graduate newspaper (wrote their own review under a pseudonym — did not give themselves a rave)
life story of mitsy gaynor? gloria steinem…

Durang remarked that from one of his shows there were lines cut … And Durang had to go to whomever cut them–professor, faculty–and say, essentially, sorry, our name is on it, not yours… I don’t remember the context; fully. But this goes to the Holding Our Tongue DG conference in Cleveland, where I first met Gary Garrison; and the issues surrounding the forms that censorship take.

new york
sigorney weaver
so hard to make a living…
wendy wasserstein
taught acting even though he didn’t act
typist at Yale Medical — had to write rejection letters for people’s “donated” bodies because they had too many
got $8K grant from yale
cbs playwriitng?
titanic… (sigorny weaver)
idiots karamozov
lustintania (another ship that sank) das lustintania songer spiel…
sister mary ignatious
vanities — 11pm slot $5 per performance
brecht — eva perone the demon first lady of buenas aires (a ‘fib’ they created)

With regard to the playwriting business today, Durang remarked that he has found the movement to be toward development versus production;
caveat being that he doesn’t know as much now about what’s going on…
teaching with Marsha Norman. Durang finds the atmosphere troublesome
in that, as he recalls when he started out in ’75-’76; there was alot of $ for production of plays (new american plays); now it’s “workshops”; and that if 5 theaters have an interest in a writer all five theaters will do readings of his/her work; the playwright doesn’t get a production and each theater will dramaturge the play and make suggestions and “playwrights lose their play” that way.

Further, Durang finds that dramaturgs tend to subscribe to rules when there are, in fact, no dramaturgy rules. For instance, one dramaturg told him that you “can’t open a play w/ a :30 minute monolog”.

Advice to writers: if you see something you love, try to figure out what it is about it that you love and how you can write something similar to it; additionally, it is important to find people who will give you feedback about the play that YOU want to write.

find your voice:
have them write from “their own stuff”
best plays come from when you’re writing “your stuff”
wrote from a feeling he had (sister marry ignatious) had no idea it would be successful

how long can you not produce before people forget about you: agent: 2 years (laugh)
mother was dying of cancer
the actor’s nightmare… (another play)

don’t hold on to just one play… be prolific…

question: self-censorship (sister mary)
wasn’t mad when he wrote it
did he ever not want to put some stuff in the play–want to hold back
thought everyone would agree with him
rules didn’t make sense to him
no idea people would find it funny
adults performing something children wrote (as funny)
especially with their understanding of the story
jesus crucified, but for children replacing it with a blonde-haired doll, etc.

sex and longing was tough for him because it was so badly received
hasn’t even read the reviews yet
difficult because he couldn’t fix it.

difficulty getting into expository writing classes at Harvard
was having a difficult time at that point in his life
didn’t feel brave enough to go to NY on his own
teacher encouragement was very important

write intuitively, spur of the moment, and when he feels like it/enjoys it

found it important to schedule time and force himself to write and stick with stuff even when he didn’t want to

business of life and laziness keep him from writing…

daniel goldfarb in his class…

betty’s summer vacation
writes improvisationally–so a serial killer appears…

friendliest plays–beyond therapy
best received

depressed to discover that the things he learned in Catholic school weren’t true (part of his depression)
cognitive therapy — positive frame of mind will generate positivity, etc.