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Have been wrestling with a play of mine, listening to Jonah Knight’s show Theatrically Speaking (http://www.jonahofthesea.com/) and reading, reading, reading.

I just finished Shepard’s [amazon_link id=”0879102047″ target=”_blank” ]The Unseen Hand[/amazon_link] again and have been trying to synthesize all of the elements. Primarily, however, I’ve been focused on three things: 1) the overall meaning of the play, 2) the transitions from what I’ll refer to as French scene to French scene–that is, what keeps it moving forward, and 3) the theatricality of it.

In terms of overall meaning, my opinion is that the play is a pretty serious indictment of modern American society. What greater symbol can there be than the hulking corpse of a 1951 Chevy convertible decomposing at center stage? That said, I think the reach of it is bigger than that. The ‘unseen hand’ is a metaphor for the way each of us indoctrinated by our cultural surroundings–or our societal constructs: ethics, mores, beliefs, values, and so on.

Willie: Whenever I think beyond a certain circumference of a certain circle there’s a hand that squeezes my brain.
Blue: What Hand?
Willie: It’s burned in. You can’t see it now. All you can see is the scar.

The ‘unseen hand’ is that which prohibits us from thinking beyond what we have been taught to think; limiting our vision of the future; restricting us from all our possibilities to the dull, thud of a life we often find ourselves living. Every day we dream a thousand possible futures for ourselves and yet are restricted by a ten thousand reasons why we can’t do what we dream. It is as [amazon_link id=”0060926171″ target=”_blank” ]Joseph Campbell[/amazon_link] says, our dragon:

“Dragons represent greed, typically. The European dragon guards things in his cave — heaps of gold and virgins. He can’t make use of either of them. He just guards. There is no vitality of experience of either the gold or the females. Psychologically, the dragon is the binding of oneself to ones own ego. Killing the dragon is breaking away from the ego to open the realm of relationship. The real dragon is in you. The dragon is your ego holding you in.”

But, I don’t think Shepard’s aim is that deep. I think it is more at the societal constructs that keep us limited; so, Shepard creates a pretty elaborate “dark universe” to house this: Nogoland. Literally, No Go Land the land where you don’t go anywhere or do anything. You rot.

Actually read an interesting article by Ron Mottram from [amazon_link id=”082620452X” target=”_blank” ]Inner Landscapes: The Theater of Sam Shepard[/amazon_link] in which he states, “In a description that both parallels and parodies the process of evolution, Willie tells Blue how he is descended from a race of ‘fierce baboons that were forced into human form by the magic of the Nogo,’ a word that puns on the Greek and Christian uses of the term Logos, the controlling principle or divine word that is the primal creative force in the universe. Having evolved beyond the capacities of their controllers, they have been put under the domination of the Unseen Hand.” pp70

You don’t live. Or what living you do is for corporations: we are baboons groomed solely to sort diamonds for the Silent Ones. The [amazon_link id=”6305154481″ target=”_blank” ]PBS show I saw on Shepard[/amazon_link] talks about his experience growing up in a California wasteland very like that at the beginning of the play: “All around is garbage, tin cans, cardboard boxes, Coca-Cola bottles and other junk.” The underbelly of America. The wreckage of a consumer society, a society that thrives on its gilded surface: seen most clearly in [amazon_link id=”0879102047″ target=”_blank” ]The Unseen Hand and Other Plays[/amazon_link] in the Kid’s monologue. It is also seen in later plays, such as True West, where each character bemoans the stifling, suburbia that dominates the American landscape. The ennui of Nogoland is best demonstrated by Sycamore’s fate: his desire to fit in and do nothing and his becoming what Blue was at the outset of the play: old, tired, content to sit in an abandoned car under an overpass. Who are the other characters that populate Nogoland? The sorcerers, the high commission, prisoners of the diamond cult, the lagoon baboons? Hard to tell, in my opinion. But there is much in the play that hints at strong suspicion of the government: history changed, use of nerve gases, and the strong, Orwellian bureaucratic structure of Nogoland society–which strangely resembles our own. It is worth noting that Blue, Cisco, and Sycamore are just as out of place in the “new” America as Willie is.

Character:

Strong sense of character through dialog/language. Strong sense of theatre through action.

Absurdity:

The stuff that Blue takes from the backseat of the car. The seemingly endless stream of stuff in the car.
The High Commission
The Brand
The Sorcerers
Secret of the Nogo (No go — i.e. no movement)
Prisoners of the Diamond Cults
Nogoland
Bring back from the grave
Conversation surrounding the 51 Chevy
Blue is 120 (modern medicine)
Radio station on the moon (Moon Channel)

Theatrics:

• Right off we see a world dominated by junk — 51 Chevy beat to hell; garbage cans; tin cans; etc. The oppressive, endless repetition of the diesel truck: the light, the noise.
• The tape/light loop of the trucks
• The radio
• Blue and his appearance
• Willie and his appearance
• The kid and his appearance
• Willie freaking out
• The temporal rearrangement
• The youth returning to Blue
• The appearance and behavior of Sycamore.
• Lights on the stage as the map is drawn.
• Kid with his pants down.
• Uses rock chords to back-up the Kid’s speech
• Willie’s Trance (Kid’s words in reverse)
• Gun shots.
• Day-glo painted ping-pong balls/paper
• Sycamore: Ancient voice. Guitar with closing speech.

Themes:

Mistrust of Government; pp6;
The Past: “used to be”¦ settle w/a six gun”¦ now it’s all secret”
“no good old boys these days”¦chips on their shoulders”
pp7
Authenticity: “the real people”¦ the people people”
Azusa (A to Z in the USA): Azusa as representative of America.
Cowboy: “car’s like a good horse”
Attitude generally: independence, defiance, iconoclastic American self-sufficiency.
Suspicion: Willie’s motives/person
Unseen Hand: a muscle contracting syndrome hooked up to the will of the Silent Ones.
Science/Technology: awe of, uncertain understanding of it, strange uses we put it toExposition is well-woven

Movements (French Scenes):

Scene 1:
Blue Morphan talks to himself.

Scene 2:
Willie enters.
Movements (Conversational)
Blue thinks Willie is a vagrant who will beg.
Blue thinks Willie is a robber who will steal.
Change: Willie knows Blue
Blue denies
Willie pursues
Blue — “you’re crazy”
Willie — moves into Expo: high commission, etc.
Blue — act of kindness (blanket)
Willie in the driver seat
–Willie talks of driving
–talks of deer hunting
Willie provides the history and exposition (maintain control over its psychosomatic functions)

Scene 3: Cisco enters.
What questions are raised (and directly asked) by this scene? How does Shepard handle this scene?
Cisco is very emotional and open. Blue is defensive.
Obvious joke (Blue throws the whiskey away/holds up rifle)
Cisco comments on personality (remembered), rusty rifle.
Blue (it can still shoot)
**A lot of domain relevant knowledge is interspersed in jargony, flashy ways here (greased enough, let a gun go to rustin’ like that”¦)**
Cisco volunteers to show a scar for proof (as well as exposition about the event)
Blue lowers the gun (he protests that he saw them both die)
Cisco tells that Sycamore should be coming.
**Shepard then draws the action back to Willie on the ground
Cisco and Blue review what is known so far. (expo)
Cisco asks for food.
**Runs close on anachronisms””some language.
Predictable stuff with discussion of what’s a highway patrolman, what’s a car, what’s a”¦ etc.
Humorous set of transactions surround these things”¦
Blue and Cisco talk and the conversation is comic in that Blue tries to explain modern inventions to Cisco but from his own unique perspective and understanding.
**Shepard ties it in though as the speculation about prisoners on the moon comes back to Willie saying he came from outer space.**
Like old times: robbin’, rapin’ and killin’

Scene 4: Druken Kid
First thing I notice here is the use of profanity. It is extreme. Especially when compared to the “outlaw” Morphan brothers””who don’t at all.
Kid addresses a rival school.
Kid threatens Blue and Cisco. (empty threats–a society of ‘big talkers’)
Cisco pulls a gun.
Kid cries and explains.
Kid goes away.

Scene 5: Willie wakes up
Blue talks to Cisco about how things have changed.
Recognize the Kennedy thing, a bit of historical subjectivism on the other stuff.
Willie wakes up.
“brains eaten out” pp20
Theatrics of the “temporal rearrangement”
How they handle the age transformation”¦
Rock around the Clock

Scene 6: Sycamore
Sycamore adds a tension just in his manner: dress, style, etc..
By the time Sycamore arrives the whole notion of raising the dead is common-place, so no more is wasted on that. However, there is a shift in tone to Blue and Cisco being seen as boyish while Sycamore is seen as the control, the brains, the will, and the plan. His line is taking the other two to task on what they have not done, laziness, etc.
Can’t believe there are no trains.
Trains are then used as a part of the plan.
Lots of exposition in the planning.
Kid offers his ideas. (commentary on the difference between bandit gangs and guerrilla armies) Why have the Kid know all this? 1. unexpected; 2. makes you take a comic character a bit more seriously;
Kid gets the gun and does his speech.
Willie undoes everything by reversing the speech. (Black Sabbath–idea of the Catholic Mass in reverse)

By undoing everything Shepard is stating that we all have the power to revoke the Unseen Hand and control our own lives and destinies by simply revoking the power that our “American” middle class, materialistic needs/desires exercise over us. I.e. we all work shitty jobs that we hate because we have to have our iPods, computers, cars, houses, clothes, etc., and that this mass consumerism effectively operates by controlling us as an unseen hand–the “master of the puppets.”

Alaman left, Zane Grey, Desert Gold (songs of the cattle trail)
Willie is free from the Unseen Hand (restrictions)
He departs and tells them that he has a world to change; they can do what they want with theirs. (optimism for him; pessimism for the audience)

Scene 7:
They don’t know what to do.
Blue and Cisco decide they gotta get out. Gotta beat it. Cisco pleads to leave with Blue very much like later with True West.
They leave. Sycamore stays.

Scene 8:
Sycamore alone.
He speaks in an ancient voice.
Seems to become as Blue was at the beginning.
Crawls into back seat of the Chevy.

Plot:

Willie comes seeking Blue and his brothers
Willie can’t think beyond a certain point
Willie and the Sorcerers/Unseen Hand
Raising the Dead (Cisco and Sycamore)
Tension over whether to help or not; finally they decide to.
Agreement to help/planning.
Incident with the Kid.
Willie talks backwards and undoes the Unseen Hand; He’s free.
Blue and Cisco go off (into the sunset?) somewhere else
Sycamore stays and turns into Blue. (comment on society)

Names:

Blue Morphan — Morph (form, change from)
Cisco
Sycamore
Morphan Brothers
Willie

Closing Thoughts

In terms of Shepard’s oeuvre, themes that dominate his later work are here apparent, though handled with a bit more comedy: the illusion of the old West; the residue of that dream in American life and culture; the disillusionment of what America has become as the pioneer, individualistic spirit has given way to rapcious greed; and the absurdity of this culture’s (or any culture’s) operations when looked at ‘objectively.’ The characters of Blue, Cisco, and Sycamore are representative of other characters as well: the two cowboys in [amazon_link id=”0879102047″ target=”_blank” ]Cowboys #2[/amazon_link], Dodge in [amazon_link id=”0307274977″ target=”_blank” ]Buried Child[/amazon_link], and the sibling relationships present in [amazon_link id=”0553346113″ target=”_blank” ]True West[/amazon_link].

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.