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I managed to get to four of the plays in Little Box this year, which is excellent for me considering the year I was in Little Box I only made it to one other than my own (K. was due with Henry virtually any day at that point). I’ll say right at the outset that the thing that characterizes the works that I say, almost universally, was their length.  My God do they need cut.  And mine did too.  So, I realize that there is an element of Karma involved here, as I was repaid for what I made others sit through two years prior.

I felt that all of the works that I saw were strong works.  So, I guess I should probably mention the ones that I went to see: Projecting, You Can See the World from Cleveland, Flock of Seagulls, and Waves.  I will talk about them each in turn, reflecting back, as I am working from memory now.

Projecting, by Rachel Baird, Directed by Jaime Bouvier, Featuring Faye Hargate.  Rachel is a classmate and, I felt, did a very fine job with this piece.  It is, I think, early in the development of it, but Projecting did some very interesting things with space and audience.  Perhaps the most transgressive action that I have ever seen in a theater occurred in this play when the lone character took a Polaroid of one of the audience members and then integrated it into the piece.  This action, along with its inclusion in the play, was perhaps the signature event of the piece, in that it dramatically re-shaped the meaning of the play almost instantaneously, as the lone character recalled the Polaroid photograph as a record of an event that happened substantially in the past (i.e. years before) when, in fact, the audience just witnessed the act of the photograph–thus throwing very much into doubt the sanity of the character on stage.  Baird describes Projecting thus:

Photographs are a way of telling stories, of tracking and keeping human histories on an intensely personal level. They are often the only real proof that a life has happened. Projection is a method of sharing these images; it is also a method of separating the self from the self, of hiding personal realities safely away in plain sight. Projecting is the story of one woman through photographs.

There are several points in this description that become interesting in light of the Polaroid.  For one, that the photographs are “the only real proof that a life has happened” of course begs the question, proof of what life?

The one that we really experience or the one that we imagined we experienced?  And is there a difference between the two?  No matter what your answer, the question is certainly raised by this play.  It is interesting, as well, that Baird notes that the “self can be separated from the self” using projection and of course this is precisely the reality that we as an audience encounter.  It is interesting, as well, to consider the term “Projecting” and its psychological implications in describing the state of ascribing to others the feelings that one has.  This state is usually a defensive posture and used to protect oneself, and the lone character in this play is clearly in a defensive state and has been, in some way, harmed: though how is unclear.  In the play, the more obvious use of projecting is the images that are shot onto the wall for the audience to consider, but clearly this form of projecting is deceptive, as the projection is actually moving the opposite direction, and thus makes for a very intriguing experience.

The use of props in this piece is equally startling, but not for their use in and of themselves, but rather what they represent as artifacts of the character’s life; and their representation of things that have passed by and gone to the great beyond.  I am, perhaps, more sensitized to this with the recent death of my grandmother and the even more recent death of my wife’s grandmother last Saturday.  This history of how we relate to each other and, especially, to those we love most in the world–and how we deceive ourselves is very much on display in this piece.

Jaime Bouvier does an excellent job of staging a play that could quickly run into the danger of boring the audience by its rather conventional format and approach: that is, one woman standing and directly addressing the audience.  But through various props and interactions with the audience, (including the distribution of small photographs of a stop light in various stages of its process: red, yellow, and green; with accompanying comments for meditation), this piece comes alive quite nicely and, but for a few long-winded points, is fresh and funny and very interesting.

The next piece on the menu this first evening I attended Little Box was You Can See the World from Cleveland Written by and Featuring Aaron Calafato. This one man show is a reflection on Calafato’s time as a struggling actor in New York City and the sort of Look Homeward Angel effect that this time had on his desires, ambitions, and ultimately decision to return to Ohio.  This piece was great fun and was, in fact, quite touching at times.  It was way too long, and at points I was simply lost as the title led me to believe the piece was about something that was simply not in the action itself: i.e. I’m watching a play about how I can see the world from Cleveland and yet all the action is taking place in New York, and is this a sad commentary on how we should view Cleveland.  The point of this action, however, becomes clear by the end of the piece, when he decides to return to Northeast Ohio, but there needs to be some attention to this ambiguous story line early on in the action to let the audience know where they are.  Calafato is very talented and very good at creating vibrant characters that are distinctly drawn.  There were moments, however, when it felt as if he was too aware of this gift and the characters were on stage just for the sake of his ability to go into them, rather than serving any purpose in the story.

Next on the list, and a week later in real-world time, was Flock of Seagulls by Stuart Hoffman.  I reflected, as I watched with a smile, on the fact that Stuart was the narrator in my staged reading at Little Box almost two years earlier.  Hoffman’s play was written by an actor who clearly would like to, as a character, sock the playwright in the eye.  This play was very much a meta-play reflecting on the relationship between character and action and plot and the relationship between the character and the audience and theatrical space. The play can, at times, be mind-bending as you try to sort out the relationship between the characters, the script, and the writer; and the awareness of the characters of the script, the writer, and the ways they can influence events.  Perhaps the funniest moment for me was the inexplicable repetition of an exchange between the characters who then realize that one of the pages in the script was actually a duplicate.  The moment of déjà vu that occurs is thus quickly and comically dissipated.  Other moments invoke the godlike nature of the writer, such as the crumpling of pages, the throwing of the script, etc.

When the play was over I asked Hoffman where he was going with the piece but he said he wasn’t sure.  I’d like to see more come of it than just some of the more slap-sticky happenings, as the subject offers some interesting potentialities for writers and actors to consider.

The final piece that I’ll discuss is Waves by Jaclyn Villano.  Directed by NEOMFA Playwright Michael Parsons and ably acted by Marla Williams, this piece explores grief as seen through the story of a mother who just lost her school-age daughter.

There is a rhythm to the piece which reflects the title, and there is a definite ebbing and flowing of energy from the script itself.  The whole is very ably written and emotionally engaging (and draining) and has an outlook that ruminates and then chooses life in the face of what I can only imagine as being the darkest moment in the life of a parent.

I have discussed with both the playwright and the director some of the issues that I have with the form of the piece, but that is only my opinion and the form seemed to work well-enough for most of the audience.  Three of the four plays I saw at Little Box took the form of direct audience address, which for some reason I find disconcerting.  I’ve discussed this elsewhere.

I’m not going to go into a detailed analysis of this play as it really would serve no purpose except to be as long an effort as the original to which it refers.  And this is where the point should be soundly made, as much to my own consciousness and to anyone else, that writing is a process and that, for the playwright, what is on stage early in the process is rarely what the audience sees as a finished product and that the process is long and hard and repetitive and that I myself put an audience full of people through a grinder several years back–all on the way to creating a better play, which I’m sure will be the case for all of these pieces in Little Box.

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!