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When I first finished Bleed Rail I hated it. Even now, thinking about it, I don’t like it very much. I will apologize in advance, for I have to admit to only reading it, and not studying it the way I usually study a play–so, I will go back and give it more attention and this entry may be subject to modification. Regardless, this fact certainly plays a part in my opinion of this piece and will certainly lead to some interesting speculation (by that I mean ‘ignorant’) on some parts of or themes in the play.

However, even in reflection I find some things to admire, and I will probably focus more of my attention on those, as my mother always told me that if I didn’t have anything nice to say then–hopefully I can keep with this motto.

I will say that Mickey Birnbaum has created an atmosphere that is terrible. It is as pervasive and depressing and disgusting and hideous a creation as I have ever encountered. The level accuracy portraying these pointless lives and the dreariness of their material surroundings and the general sense of ennui and emptiness is overwhelming. For that alone the playwright is due great credit: he has created a pungent atmosphere that permeates everything and makes it stink like a carcass.

I found the two main characters (Ryan and Keith), if I can call them that, flat and two dimensional. That was upsetting. I found them less interesting than two of the supporting characters (Jewel and Jim the Hanger). In fact, based on the conclusion, I found that Ryan was the protagonist and discovered as well that I had absolutely no interest whatsoever in him or his heroic final act. The reversal of the bleed rail and the re-creation of the cows was touching and I found that a very interesting idea; possibly the most resilient image of the whole piece. The conversation and expression of the two main characters was sad and pathetic and while I know that is the effect that Mickey was going for I almost found it too much–that is, even though it was intentional, it almost trivialized the whole thing for me.

Again, the biggest thing about the play experience is seeing the play versus reading the play; which should be no surprise really, considering that is how plays are intended to be experienced. This really held up for me as I read Bleed Rail, as I didn’t think until after reading it, how Mickey had the set designed to be the slaughterhouse. That is, seeing that whole play take place inside a slaughterhouse with red-stained walls, etc, the ominous metallic and mechanical nature of it, that would loom depressingly–heavily, over the whole of the action on the stage. More so than what is conveyed on the page by the words and descriptions of actions alone.

But back to what I did find admirable: (and I can hardly find the appropriate words to describe it) the sense of modern desolation, emptiness; the [amazon_link id=”B002ZCXTM2″ target=”_blank” ]T.S. Eliot[/amazon_link]-like nature of the thing:

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

The lives of these people are as meaningless as wind in dry grass and nothing can save them. Period. The example of the unbearable meaninglessness that most drives the point home for me is the exchange between Keith and Ryan at the opening where suddenly the conversation shifts from a ‘beef bowl’ to ‘Did your dad die yet?’ The futility of a life discarded this way amongst the greasy atmosphere of a fast food joint is truly misanthropic. Unfortunately, I think I can see the playwright’s misanthropical nature at work here more than that of the characters. The character of Keith, who delivers the terrible line, is, to me, somewhat of a stereotype. When he is talking I can almost hear Randal from the movie . I’m not quite convinced that Ryan’s act in Iraq was enough. (In fact, his placement and death in the war seems too contrived and I must wonder if the playwright bailed and found an ‘easy’ conclusion…or one, at least, that worked.) The image that works and would make the lives of the characters meaningful is the reversal of the bleed rail. That is a strong image. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work in the ‘real’ world (that is, you can’t reverse the rail that way), and I don’t think the characters are strong enough to change the world to make something similar to the rail reversal happen. I know there is the parallel drawn between the reversal of the bleed rail and the sacrifice that Ryan makes and his refusal to be a ‘walker’ in the afterlife; but for me it is not enough to save any of the characters from the vicious portrait that Mickey draws. I think his cynicism is too great.

I found the DVD ending contrived. Worse. It is very obvious exposition. It is way too long. It is not interesting. I wish it would go away forever. Have you ever been to a party where it is sort of late and everyone is a bit drunk and perhaps tired and someone turns the t.v. on and suddenly everyone is drunk and tired and watching t.v. and all of a sudden you become conscious of the fact that you’re at a party (where you in theory socialize with people) but now you’re all slack-jawed staring at this stupid box with light coming out of it? That is what that scene reminds me of. If I was in the theatre, the last thing I would want to do is watch actors watching t.v. Especially for what is crucial exposition to the play. I don’t care if it is a part of the mise-en-scene that Mickey is going for to draw our attention to these utterly meaningless lives (our own?).

I found the stilted conversations, the ones that the playwright goes to such pains to discuss at the beginning in the ‘Note on language,’ to be contrived; stupid; boring; and annoying. I had to translate what these morons were saying and I didn’t even give a shit about what they had to say in the first place. I think that is a bad combination for a playwright to stuff onto an audience: make them work to understand something they could care less about. And again, I don’t feel that the play is justified or saved in any way by the fact that the playwright was intentionally doing this. Further, in his notes on ‘Setting’ I took issue with the ‘iconic Midwestern town of heavy industry and strip malls. Plenty of nothing to do.’ Either the fact that I found the atmosphere of the play so horrifying speaks volumes to the fact that I recognized it and am just a sore sport when it comes to acknowledging the accuracy of the shot; or this is a truly condescending, shitty thing to say. For instance, the portrait that Mickey paints in this play is not specific enough to characterize one region of the country. That is, this play could just as easily be happening in Los Angeles as in Chicago or Cleveland. I’m sure there are slaughterhouses out west, and I know there are stupid people watching big t.v.s in dumpy little apartments. Scores of them. I think the Setting note would be better if it just said, ‘Somewhere in America,’ or worse, ‘Anywhere in America,” or worse still, “Right next door to you.”

I think there are some strong points to this play: again, the atmosphere, the stage setting and the way it would hang over the whole piece, and the strong three-dimensional nature of two of the characters, as well as the final vision of the reversal of the bleed rail. Otherwise, I am not too jazzed about this play and what I believe to be some major and fatal tears in its fabric. I think if Mickey took the characters of Jewel and Jim the Hanger and made a play–well, that would be something worth seeing!

[amazon_link id=”0822220768″ target=”_blank” ]Thom Pain (based on nothing)[/amazon_link]as seen at Dobama Theatre on 4 February 2007.

I think the biggest thing of interest to me about seeing Will Eno’s Thom Pain, as opposed to reading it, was the interpretation made in the presentation; or, using the more cliche lingo, the "choices" that were made.

In the post performance discussion, Scott Plate said that he and Joel Hammer had made decisions regarding the character that were different from the New York show. This was based on descriptions provided by Tony Brown, who apparently saw the original show in New York. Brown said that the character/interpretation was somewhat vicious in his incarnation and distant. The performance was menacing and left the audience with a distinct and pervasive feeling of having been ravaged.

The performance I witnessed was that of a more neurotic character, a man who was decidedly in mental chaos: clear and articulate, piercing and insightful; then muddy and worried and uncertain. I found the character, as presented at Dobama, to be worthy of empathy and concern: a human character worthy of compassion.

In seeing the performance, as again opposed to reading the script, I was surprised at how clearly the "spine" of the work became clear: the failure to connect with the family, the loss of the dog, the failure to connect with society, the loss of the lover. These points of the play stood out very well, in my mind–where in the text they were somewhat more difficult to discern. In seeing the piece I found it highly compelling. Additionally, the intentionally theatrical moments of the performance: where the character addresses and interacts with the audience, were very real and had a tantalizing influence on me as a spectator: even though I knew they were coming. In fact, I found this the most peculiar part of the experience: knowing full well something was coming and the nature of that something and yet still being affected by it.

I also noted that one of my favorite lines was botched; but I gained a completely new appreciation for one line that still haunts me, and likely always will. The line that was botched was: "And somewhere in the same night another youth bleeds between her legs, wondering what for, sure she’s done something wrong, unsure whom to tell." I was very disappointed because I thought it so profound. It was either botched or cut. I found it profound and disturbing all at once, along with the line that has become my favorite: "What a surprise to have a body." I am not sure why these two lines resonate so deeply with me, but I will try to put a finger on it. I think it is Eno’s very precise association of bodily events with the mind’s judgment of the self. The mind searches the universe incessantly to make connections between things. That is what makes great artists and inventors and businessmen and–well, any great person–great–is their ability to connect things that are unconnected. It is the true act of creativity in the world. A person can do something or create something or write something never being sure that it hasn’t been thought or written or created by someone else before. But the connection of two disparate things: two things that have not been connected is an original act; unique in that it creates something larger than itself and releases a new energy into the world. The mind is always trying to connect things: connect, connect, connect, connect–what does this mean, how does this relate to this other thing–why me? What have I done? And that is what is haunting about Eno’s lines. The mind judges. Bleeding is bad. Bleeding from your “secret parts” (to use the Medieval phrasing) is very bad. There is no reason for it. The mind is magical. The mind connects unrelated things to create meaning. That is magic. That is why science will always loose to the superstitious mind. We are hard wired to believe, to our souls, things that are refutable: but to the mind as hard as scientific fact will ever be. To the primitive mind, a yellow bird pressed against the skin will take the yellow evil of jaundice away with it out the window. It makes perfect sense. If it doesn’t work, then it is not a reflection on the concept, but on the recipient. The girl lying in the dark will associate this bad thing happening to her with some act that she must have committed. Somewhere a brooding justice falls on her for what she has thought, or may have done, or may have thought, once, of doing. Blood doesn’t just happen. There is a reason. And in the illogical darkness: the murk of the primitive jungle in our unconscious: judgment. Taboo.

I know this feeling. Who doesn’t? And I am moved, wrenched to think of that girl in that darkness fearing that she has done something wrong when the body is just doing what it does to advance the species. Oh, how science takes the magic from us. How clinical and removed it is. Cut off your arm and it becomes a thing. The sensation it has provided you is gone; the utility of movement is lost. Science. Of science, as Yeats says, more poetically than I can ever dare imagine:

[amazon_link id=”B002W2V0TY” target=”_blank” ]from The Song of the Happy Shepherd[/amazon_link]

"… Seek, then,
No learning from the starry men,
Who follow with the optic glass
The whirling ways of stars that pass –
Seek, then, for this is also sooth,
No word of theirs – the cold star-bane
Has cloven and rent their hearts in twain,
And dead is all their human truth."

I find that I am strangely drawn to this play. I enjoy it. The more I think about it the more I find myself discovering. These are excellent qualities in anything. But I also don’t like that I am drawn to it. My mind rebels against these postmodern plays, or these post post modern absurdist plays. The plays that all the "hot" writers write; the "up-and-coming" writers. They seem to me hyperpersonal. It is as if each is vomiting his or her neuroses. I feel at once like quoting a Neil LaBute character and a character of [amazon_link id=”B002ZCXTLI” target=”_blank” ]F. Scott Fitzgerald[/amazon_link]. There’s an odd combination. In The Shape of Things, Adam says, outraged at the end,

I’ve completely missed the point here, and somehow puking up…all your own shitty little neuroses all over people’s laps is actually art–

Nick Carraway, at the beginning of [amazon_link id=”0743273567″ target=”_blank” ]The Great Gatsby[/amazon_link] remarks,

I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accuses of being a politician, because I was so privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought-frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon…

I feel often that I am somewhere in between these poles when it comes to "new" theatre. I am pulled constantly between the poles of expressing myself and hoping that my own little, neurotic experience is universal enough that it connects with people; or expressing myself through attempts at displaying universal, epic themes, and flinching away from the postmodern accusation that you cannot generalize anymore–that horse is dead and beaten and buried.

I am clearly moving into a new phase in my own writing. I know this. I can feel it, and feel the urge to explore. This is good. I just wonder if it will lead me to a clearing in the jungle that no one wants to visit. A place that is not only unremarkable, but perhaps, repulsive.

That is to say, to sort of crystallize this, what is theatre today? What is the point of it, what is the goal of it, what should it be? I am torn between my traditional expectations of the [amazon_link id=”0472061666″ target=”_blank” ]Aristotelian model[/amazon_link]: the proud and noble character who experiences a reversal, fails, repents, and is destroyed in front of everyone; to the now post, postmodern offerings of completely destroyed personalities offering up their dreadful experiences as something universal. One could argue that it is a reversal of what is right (or is it just beginning at a different point?). I am reminded of Nietzsche’s [amazon_link id=”0199537089″ target=”_blank” ] On the Genealogy of Morals[/amazon_link]:

The slave revolt in morality begins when the resentment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values: the resentment of those beings who are prevented from a genuinely active reaction and who compensate for that with a merely imaginary vengeance. While all noble morality grows out of a triumphant self-affirmation, slave morality from the start says No to what is “outside,” “other,” “a non-self”. And this No is its creative act. This transformation of the glance which confers value–this necessary projection towards what is outer instead of back into itself–that is inherent in resentment. In order to arise, slave morality always requires first an opposing world, a world outside itself. Psychologically speaking, it needs external stimuli in order to act at all. Its action is basically reaction.

That is, what has been viewed as good, right, and moral is viewed by those who are disaffected as evil, wrong, and immoral. Hence, the inversion begins. I am torn by this and think often that what I am seeing in modern theatre is nothing more than the utter dissolution of anything noble or (hating to use the loaded word) moral. And I don’t know that I mean that in a religious judgmental sort of way, but a more humanistic way: that we elevate what is debased and dismiss what attempts to lift.

Well, there is no easy way to wrap this commentary up. So, it will be left as it is, with that flat and petered-out ending. These are my thoughts, though, on the 19th of February, 2007. Where they shall lead me on the 20th, and 21st, and all days after I must wait, like everyone else, to see!