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Designated Mourner @ CPT

[amazon_link id=”1608460967″ target=”_blank” ]Wallace Shawn[/amazon_link] may be more familiar to you as an actor than as a playwright. His appearance in films such as [amazon_link id=”0792846109″ target=”_blank” ]Manhattan[/amazon_link][amazon_link id=”B001WLMOLE” target=”_blank” ]My Dinner with Andre[/amazon_link], [amazon_link id=”B000TJBNHG” target=”_blank” ]The Princess Bride[/amazon_link], [amazon_link id=”B0001V6ZJI” target=”_blank” ]Prick Up Your Ears[/amazon_link], and [amazon_link id=”B0054QTWJK” target=”_blank” ]Vanya On 42^nd Street[/amazon_link], as well as more popular television forms such as [amazon_link id=”B0006N2EZA” target=”_blank” ]Murphy Brown[/amazon_link] and [amazon_link id=”B000TGURZ8″ target=”_blank” ]Ally McBeal[/amazon_link] make him an almost ubiquitous character actor on the screen.

Unless you’re a hardcore theatre buff, his work as a playwright is likely less known to you. Plays by Shawn include The Hospital Play, [amazon_link id=”0802151035″ target=”_blank” ]Aunt Dan and Lemon[/amazon_link], [amazon_link id=”080214070X” target=”_blank” ]The Fever[/amazon_link], and of course [amazon_link id=”1559363622″ target=”_blank” ]The Designated Mourner[/amazon_link].

In his book [amazon_link id=”1566395178″ target=”_blank” ]Writing Wrongs[/amazon_link], W. D. King describes Shawn in terms of an A and B personality. The primary personality, the A personality, is the intellectual, the playwright, the self-described liberal prince (son of [amazon_link id=”B001O2SCKI” target=”_blank” ]The New Yorker[/amazon_link] editor [amazon_link id=”1582431108″ target=”_blank” ]William Shawn[/amazon_link]): striving to be an artist and striving to right society’s wrongs. The secondary personality, the B personality, is the actor, the persona that most of society recognizes: the angry little balding man with the funny face and high-pitched voice. But don’t confuse the two: in his plays the little balding man with the funny face is gone, replaced by a complex voice that is not afraid to fix the view of an audience on things which are most uncomfortable to look at.

In his play [amazon_link id=”0802151035″ target=”_blank” ]Aunt Dan and Lemon[/amazon_link], Shawn’s main character, Lenora (Lemon), opens the play by praising Nazis and proceeds to reflect on her life and upbringing, closing the play by again praising Nazi efficiency and asking the audience to thank the killers. Shawn writes:

“A perfectly decent person can turn into a monster perfectly easily–the difference between a perfectly decent person and a monster is just a few thoughts. The perfectly decent person who follows a certain chain of reasoning, ever so slightly and subtly incorrect, becomes a perfect monster at the end of the chain.”

The irony for the audience is that at the end of the play one is supposed to give applause. But how do you applaud Nazi efficiency and a request to thank the killers? Shawn loves to fix an audience on the end of a pin, and this is only one example.

Perhaps a more notable example is [amazon_link id=”080214070X” target=”_blank” ]The Fever[/amazon_link], a play told by an unknown narrator who is sick in a foreign country. The play is a brutal self-flagellation that some suggest is a case of liberal guilt, but is nonetheless a ruthless indictment of our inability or lack of desire to help the impoverished and miserable of the world. Shawn intended the play to be “performed in homes and apartments, for groups of ten or twelve,” and has admitted his interest in seeing the audience react as much as anything. This last piece of information is significant, as it demonstrates Shawn’s desire to change the theater fundamentally. In the case described, the audience has become the “thing” to watch, not the reverse.

In fact, the most notable aspect of Shawn’s work is the seeming lack of structure or, at least, lack of well-drawn plot. Shawn himself has said, “It’s laughable, in a way, that someone who has no sense of character or plot would become a playwright.” His plays are, in a way, excavations of character, psychology, and motivation: why does person X become person X? Or, to use the words of Howard in [amazon_link id=”1559363622″ target=”_blank” ]The Designated Mourner[/amazon_link], “Wouldn’t it be more valuable to try to understand various things?”for example, to understand what circumstances in the world or in a person’s life might lead them to behave the way Martin behaved?”

In [amazon_link id=”1559363223″ target=”_blank” ]Our Late Night[/amazon_link], a couple’s relationship is excavated and analyzed as the two lie in bed on the edge of wakefulness and sleep. In [amazon_link id=”B001WLMOLE” target=”_blank” ]My Dinner with Andre[/amazon_link], both characters analyze their motivations for seeking, or not seeking, spiritual and creative awakening”the character Andre examining in excruciating detail his life experience. In Aunt Dan and Lemon, the character Lemon opens the play saying that she admires Nazis for their “refreshing” lack of hypocrisy”and Shawn wants to show you how she’s come to that admiration. In The Fever, the narrator torments himself seeking the solution to how he should act in the world and why he doesn’t. In [amazon_link id=”1559363622″ target=”_blank” ]The Designated Mourner[/amazon_link] the character Jack disassociates himself with his wife and father-in-law, managing to avoid a political execution, and we witness his transformation and disassociation in excruciating detail.

Shawn’s plays often border on the edge of the abstract, that is, they nearly become expressionist pieces that can focus solely on the image of something or of creating the image of something to impress upon your mind a certain sensation. [amazon_link id=”1559363622″ target=”_blank” ]The Designated Mourner[/amazon_link] is no exception. Don’t be fooled early on by the conversational tone of the piece, the virtual nonchalance of the way characters address you. Shawn’s plays are largely conversational, involving lengthy monologues delivered by characters to you as audience: you as hearer becoming, in effect, a confidant for the character. Shawn places you in the position of sifting through the actions, motivations, and statements of a character to discover the moral righteousness or unrighteousness of the action, motivation, or statement: that is, Shawn places you in a position of judgment.

As Shawn himself notes, “Most of the people who go to the theatre are simply looking for a certain kind of soothing experience that will take their mind off their troubles. So if that’s why a person has come to the theatre, I feel like an idiot grabbing him by the throat and trying to get him to worry about the things that are bothering me. My style as a human being is to indulge people who need to escape. Yet I insist on confronting them as a playwright. It’s quite embarrassing, it’s quite unpleasant, it’s quite awkward.”

In [amazon_link id=”1559363622″ target=”_blank” ]The Designated Mourner[/amazon_link] Shawn posits a future that may be, a future where the intellectual, the philosopher, the person concerned with more profoundly human things is driven out of existence: a future, perhaps, of purely animal joys and experiences. Shawn takes aim at a society strangely familiar, one in which high standards have disappeared, morality is vanishing, ethics and good taste are buried. As if this weren’t enough, you get to watch the main character, Jack, dismantle himself, change himself, to be less like the hunted, and more like the mob. As the character Judy remarks, “Human motivation is not complex, or it’s complex only in the same sense that the motivation of a fly is complex. In other words, if you try to swat a fly, it moves out of the way. And humans are the same. They step aside when they sense something coming, about to hit them in the face.”

In [amazon_link id=”1559363622″ target=”_blank” ]The Designated Mourner[/amazon_link] Shawn opens up a frightening landscape so that you may peer into it as though it were a crystal ball. I hope you’re ready for him to grab your throat.

The play [amazon_link id=”0879102055″ target=”_blank” ]Chicago[/amazon_link], while not assigned to the class is one that I thought I would talk about and review, as I am still on a serious [amazon_link id=”0553346113″ target=”_blank” ]Sam Shepard[/amazon_link] kick and this play has influenced my consideration of the play I’m writing right now.

There are many aspects of this play that draw my attention, but to go from the most influential to the least is probably the best process. By far the most interesting came from an essay I read on Shepard and the play in which Shepard himself, in an interview, says:

Instead of the idea of a whole ‘character’ with logical motives behind his behavior which the actor submerges himself into, he should consider instead a fractured whole with bits and pieces of character flying off the central theme. In other words, more in terms of collage construction or jazz improvisation.

Up to this point, I have written plays in which I have gone to great pains to exhume the entirety of each character from the buried depths of my mind in order to examine his or her actions, choices, reactions, and behavior. This approach to plays creates a certain sort of play. At the very least, one that lacks spontaneity or a sense that anything is possible. Or, perhaps, my techniques for creating characters have never gone far enough, and this notion of exploring a fractured whole is something I should examine far more often. That is, focus small and go deep; rather than focusing wide and going shallow.

The play [amazon_link id=”0879102055″ target=”_blank” ]Chicago[/amazon_link] opens strangely, with a policeman coming from behind a closed curtain, beating the curtain, and then walking up the center aisle and beating a chair at the back of the house 3 times. This is followed by the Gettysburg Address being read until the curtains and lights come up revealing the character Stu sitting in a bathtub up center on an otherwise empty stage. I have yet to find any adequate explanation for this, and can only suggest that it came from some exercise similar to those we have done in class. The cop I guess I could make an argument about: he moves off the stage, so he blends the world of the audience and the stage in a sort of metatheatrical way. He beats the chair at the back to focus the audience to the whole theatre as opposed to the stage area. He represents a force of authority in society so that may intimidate some people or make them more self-aware. The use of the Gettysburg Address is altogether different. I have tried having it read as I imagined the play moving. I have tried reading it myself while thinking the play moving; all to sort of time it out and see if any words or phrases align with any particular event on or off stage. I have looked at themes in the address to see if they are relevant. All for naught. The most that I can come up with is that it is a major speech in US history and everyone is familiar with it. So, perhaps it has something to do with re-enforcing shared experience or sort of countering the policeman and alienating people while at the same time providing them with shared experience. Who knows? The play itself seems to deal with two issues: 1) avoidance of uncomfortable discussions or topics; 2) overweening introspection or self-involvement and breaking out of it–I think; depending on how you read the ending. Regardless, both of these experiences should be common to an audience and very like the beginning material: the policeman and the address, should parallel both the alienation and the shared experience felt by the main character Stu.

At the open, Stu is babbling in a bathtub:

And ya’ look all around through the town fer yer dog. Your dog Brown. He’s yellow but ya’ call him Brown anyhow.’

That is to say, he’s playing a sort of word game with himself. You find out soon that his soon-to-be ex-lover (Joy is about to leave Stu for a job in another city) is in the ‘apartment’ as she calls to him from off stage to come and eat biscuits. So, though he’s present with someone else, he’s babbling to himself. Through an essay by Lynda Hart, and the study of the play, it is clear that Sheppard is showing a character (Stu) who is so internally focused and self-involved that his ability or inclination to communicate is seriously impaired. Soon after this opening, Joy throws a towel to Stu, who is in the tub in his jeans and sneakers, and Stu throws the towel over his head and begins acting like an old woman. Based on what Hart says, it is clear that Stu will only talk directly to Joy about how he’s feeling through this old woman character. Further, even when he does speak to her, what he says is couched in obscure references that are overtly hostile and perhaps misogynistic in nature. That is, as Hart points out, Stu is giving voice to his repressed emotions toward Joy through the character of the old woman. Joy soon enters the tub, causing Stu to shout You can’t get in here!’ further doing justice to Hart’s theory that the tub is the limited pervue of Stu’s consciousness.

The whole play is filled with a sort of game playing that reflects and expands on other similar styles in early Shepard plays: Cowboys #2 for instance, where the two cowboys each take turns walking down stage and entering a new persona–until those personas bleed over into their ‘real’ characters. In fact, I find myself very drawn to Shepard due to what I am more and more convinced as being his allowance of the subconscious to enter plays through imagistic characters: characters in unexpected clothing, with unexpected props, with unique styles of expression and action–the young man dressed as a cheerleader in The Unseen Hand for instance, who delivers a high-strung monologue defending the hometown he loves–and unbelievable tics of personality.

As the game playing continues, we see the contents of the games and the verbal desultory bleed out into the action of the other characters on the stage–very like Cowboys #2 mentioned briefly above. Here, though, as Hart points out, the bleeding of images represents the fantasy world of Stu invading or encompassing the real world that Joy occupies. That is, we are seeing that Stu is less capable of dealing with the reality as it is, and more interested in filling it with his own wishes and desires.

I used [amazon_link id=”0879102055″ target=”_blank” ]Chicago[/amazon_link] as a guide for me in the following way. I went through the play and carefully marked transitions: either French scenes or changes in subject of Stu’s rants, or any time a game stopped or a new game began. Based on this, I traced images and themes that appeared early and followed the strands as they drove through to the conclusion, noting any changes in use or morphing of meaning. By doing this, I hoped to gain some insight into 1) what Shepard was saying; 2) how Shepard constructed the play, that is, united Stu’s seemingly unrelated rants by common or shared themes or images. This process, and Hart’s article, were invaluable in making this experience worthwhile. As Hart notes, there is no readily accessible conflict in this play. That is, there is no traditional ‘squaring off’ between people. So, to understand the tension (that is felt) and to understand what that tension is about and what it means, you have to clue in on Stu and how his interior comes out throughout the piece. The only clue you are given as to the tension in the play is a phone call that Joy receives where she says: ‘Yes. I got the job. Yes, it’s final,’ and that she’s leaving, ‘The sooner the better;’ as well as fragments of offstage conversation. All else is implied by the action: for instance, the four friends who come over throughout the play to see Joy off all bringing suitcases. All else in the play is delivered by Stu.

Themes/Images in the play (somewhat in order of appearance, but not entirely)

The play shuffles through a sort of stream of consciousness tangential to the concerns that Stu has: first denial (babbling); then the transformation of Stu into the old woman and the accompanying warning to Joy that she will be eaten; then Stu talks with the fish and tells them to go away that they will be eaten and finally that they are hung up, as are the fisherman trying to catch them; Stu next imagines Joy’s trip on the train, which devolves from adventurous to fairly disgusting, ending with one of Joy’s friends saying ‘good morning’ to Stu, who acts as if he has spent a night on the train; morning finds sun on the water and the prospect of happiness, but again Stu becomes the old woman, this time chastising Joy and her friends in a fantasy that quickly devolves into boatloads of sailors coming ashore and screwing everything they can find until a new society is created–a society that ends in violence and a return to the sea (the unconscious); eventually Joy comes on in a red dress pulling a wagon filled with suitcases–she is leaving or has left and becomes a figment in Stu’s imagination as Joy’s friends wave and celebrate and then begin fishing off the stage; Stu’s last terrible imagining sees the water drifting out and leaving him swollen and stuck in the night, stinking and burning milk-like water and a loss of orientation; finally, Stu is out of the tub and running and breathing ‘fine/good air,’ hopefully a new independence, but it is not entirely certain.

I like the freedom of the piece and the other pieces by Shepard that I have read, and the willingness that Shepard has to explore areas of his own mind and the characters that represent them: his willingness to allow images and themes to float up and move the play in any direction that may be dictated by the unconscious, not so much by the conscious mind. The play ends in uncertainty, though with less constriction than the way it started (i.e. in a tub), and I believe positively; though it is open for consideration–that is, it is not a definite ending, which to my mind equates with contrived. That is, Shepard made no attempt to wrap it up neatly for the audience.

The physical nature of the play is important, too. That is, the props or actions that are distinct: the policeman at the beginning; the [amazon_link id=”1439188963″ target=”_blank” ]Gettysburg Address[/amazon_link] over the PA; the bathtub; the biscuits; using the towel as hair to create an old woman; the telephone and offstage conversations; the use of fishing poles to signal the bleeding of the interior of Stu into his exterior reality; the suitcases; the friends who show up: women dressed in fur coats with black sunglasses; the men in suits with black sunglasses–that is, the representative nature of their foreignness to Stu, even their menacing nature; the wagon and red dress; the fishing off the stage; the breathing exercise. All of theses elements combine to create a very real, grounded experience and are integral to the spoken elements: giving reality to the subjective interior of Stu.

This exercise or approach has sent me back to my play to excavate and examine my own images and themes, their use and (hopefully) evolution. I anticipate that this will help me tie segments generated at different times and in different moods together in a more comprehensive way. To examine where I’ve been and where I’m going and hopefully pull a solid play out of what has been a very useful, helpful, and deeply meaningful process for me this semester.

References:

Hart, Lynda. ‘The Play’s the Thing’: Metaphorical Stages.’ Sam Shepard’s [amazon_link id=”0313253730″ target=”_blank” ]Sam Shepard’s Metaphorical Stages: (Contributions in Drama and Theatre Studies)[/amazon_link], Number 22. Westport: Greenwood, 1987.32-36.

Shepard, Sam. [amazon_link id=”0879102047″ target=”_blank” ]The Unseen Hand and Other Plays[/amazon_link]. New York: Vintage Books, 1996.