Show and Tell The American Dream!

After reading Detroit and hearing everybody talk about the Americna Dream, I figured no play would serve better as Show and Tell Post #2 than Edward Albee’s The American Dream. This play, in almost every embodiment I’ve seen it performed…was terrible. I designed for it...and it was terrible. I think, just maybe, that I’ve figured out why they were all terrible. The answer may be for once that the play is not terrible, but we just actually aren’t deep enough to understand it. Ready for this plot?

In The American Dream, Daddy and Mommy live in a house with Grandma. No, I’m not joking...thats the names. They are visited by Mrs. Barker, who after almost immediately stripping down to sexy lingerie, begins to talk to them about a problem they’ve been having, but nobody can remember it. Grandma begins to pile up boxes all around her chair, and she gets yelled at for taking up space. The family bickers about for a little longer before spilling the beans. They want a child, and Mrs. Barker is supposed to get one for them. She got one for them before (they all just forgot it until the end of the play), but it got mutilated and then died because it was a bad kid. So Mrs. Barker gives them the American Dream, Grandma moves out with all her stuff in boxes (even her room is packed into a box, somehow), and the play ends on a happy bump.

Whut? I’m still confused too, don’t worry. I think the big thing here is to try and make sense of this play, because every time I read it I FEEL like it is awesome. But every time I see it, I feel disappointed. I really can feel the potential when I read The American Dream. Please forgive that slightly ironically funny representation of the plot, because while it is a zany show, it definitely tackles some big things about how American is becoming a giant façade, and how the modern family dynamic isn’t really a family anymore. This show has some big issues, and really can show them off beautifully. This is due to a few key choices by Albee.

The first, obviously, is the use of expressionism. Characters in this play are named by what they are or what they do. Realism is so far from the goal here that it becomes kind of comical to try and imagine this as a straight play. In fact, using the lack of realism gives the play room to talk about serious issues like America essentially ruining itself behind this fake screen of corporations, material goods, and popular garbage. It could not make the bold nation-wide statements it pushes forward if it had been a realistic play. Either people would grow angry at the play, and turn off the idea of being affected, or they would push away the ideas as “more boring political dribble,” and file it away to never be used again. By keeping the audience on their toes, little bitty nuggets of delicious information sneak on in there, like how the American Dream, as a character, is a hollowed shell. There is not real wall separating that message. The American Dream is a hollow shell of its former self. I don’t think we could’ve said it that plainly if we hadn’t just spent half an hour or more readjusting our audiences perceptions of this reality.

This makes the second relevant dramaturgical choice to be the motif of forgetfulness. People in this play are forgetting where they put things, what other people are saying to them, why they invited Mrs. Barker to their house, the previous services she has done for them, and even the rules of society. When in doubt, they feel free to invent an answer. This choice has the brilliant effect of making every answer suspect. Again, it works in a similar vein to the zaniness of expressionism. If we don’t trust anything that is said or happens, then we’ll really use our brain to deduce our own truths. We may accidentally think for a while on the message of the play, which is the destruction of our country from within, much like this family did to itself.

So, give the play a shot. I don’t know how well it is to be staged, but I can imagine in my head a very zippy, zany, almost comical play on this script that would be very effective, especially when it slowed down and sobered up to really deliver the messages of the play. It is definitely worth reading. Just maybe not worth watching as much…

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Detroit, Detroit

Detroit.

When I think of Detroit, two things come to mind: America and Fire. Not Detroit the play, but Detroit the city. I think, in many ways, this is why Lisa has titled her play that way. The play is, in many ways, about the American Dream. People who want that fancy life you see in magazines, who want to move up and get a new coffee table just because they can. A few cities in America seem to embody this idea more than others. San Francisco, New York, and Chicago are the ones that really say it to me. Maybe Los Angeles. These big cities where dreams can come true and millionaires can be made out of nothing. But that’s just one aspect. These cities all embody the American Dream, and D’Amour could’ve named her play after any of them.

That’s what the fire is for.

Chicago is famous for its fires. The city burned down in the early 1900s, and fire has been a big thing ever since. Some cities are Apples. Some are giant Hollywood signs. Chicago is fires. And boy are fires important here. Campfires, Tables on fire, lighters. We see a plethora of fire references for everybody to enjoy, and that is kind of what pegs down Chicago as the “city to be” for the show.

Indeed. A play about the American Dream, that has lots of fire in it physically, as well as metaphorically? I can see a strong reason why you might title such a show, Detroit.

Give Me Bucketfuls of Water By the Spoonful!

Water By the Spoonful is good. I mean really good. It has that intense situation kind of aspect with the comfort of humor throughout. And the humor doesn’t detract from the serious nature. Often it magnifies, in a way that I find outrageously satisfying. I can’t really place a finger on it, probably because I haven’t seen a play do this before. This fusion of online and reality, with people speaking their IMs and telling what they are typing. The abstract arrangement of the people makes it easier for me to accept the humor while still waiting for the tension to resolve. And I’m crazy for it.

Take Scene Eight for example. Orangutan and Chutes&Ladders are talking online. The subject is that C&L is going to call his son, trying to repair his relationship. That’s a pretty serious moment. He’s nervous, and he’s using the internet to cope. He’s having Orangutan feed him inspiration and kind of police him. So this internet world is influencing quite directly the real world. Orangutan forces him to make the call, and then he chickens out, and Orangutan refuses to let him quit. But not by saying “No, you owe that boy, call him.” Orangutan actually opens with “How’s little Trebeky doing?”

It is a completely different tactic. Because on the internet we are more humorous, everything is a joke, and it would be very easy to just make his serious situation a joke and move on. But because the play is showing us the real world, and how C&L is struggling with this phone call, physicalizing this event on the other side of the screen, the play forces you to simultaneously consider both. Take in that humor, which gives you space to look a few inches to the left and see C&L hang up on his son as soon as he answers. It is a tiny moment, but it is profound, and there are many like in the play that fuse these two worlds to make something very magical, to me at least.

Burying Buried Child

I don’t exactly know how to define Buried Child, but realism is definitely NOT the label I would use.

Buried Child introduces a number of confusing and overall just weird elements. Each one has a very specific purpose to the play, but to treat them as if they were realistic would just be wrong. The first of these is the backyard. The magical backyard that grows things but has been barren for years, but has a baby in it, but is a wonderful paradise. We hear the backyard called so many things during the play, and none of the characters ever seem to agree on a concrete description.  Since we never see the backyard, this isn’t exactly a derivation from realism (I.e. we don’t know if any of them are correct), but the simple idea that you can live in this house for years and not know what your own back yard looks like is not illusionistic. An audience cannot readily accept that fact, unless the script is written to make us accept it. This one is not.

Another piece that “breaks” the realism is the reaction people have to certain events. Dodge dies. On the floor. Just dies. And nobody panics. Nobody goes to call an ambulance. Hardly anyone even moves to cover him up. This is not realistic. Again, it is not a ghost flying through the room, but I can’t buy that we are aiming for realism with responses like that. The sane thing to do would be to react in some way, to feel horror or glee or indignation. We also have to think of the manner of his parting. He just dies. He isn’t shot, or even hits his head somewhere. He just dies. Like he decided it was time. I never got the impression that he was too extremely old, so I don’t think natural causes took him. He just decided “yea, I’m done.” And popped off.

This play. Is not. Realism. 

Noise About Noises Off

“You Just Do It.”

Without doubt, this is the spine of the show. This entire production is just one giant train wreck, interspersed with smaller train wrecks both in the production and in the lives of the characters. Whether its actors getting married or divorced, people falling down stairs, forgetting props or lines, or any number of other things, the show must go on. Even when it seems they are terribly unready to perform, they do it anyway. A sensible show would’ve called off the production a long time ago. They would’ve postponed opening or even canceled once they realized they needed more time to rehearse. But this show isn’t quite about being sensible or holding off on things. It is about the insanity of just doing it, regardless of that means to you, or your love life, or your alcohol addiction.

The play does a great job of tying this in through several motifs, but my favorite would probably be Closing Things. Literally, just closing or ending things. Doors, curtains, relationships, literally everything in this play gets closed. A can of sardines and a bottle of whiskey. The play is definitely trying to say something about just closing things off. Sometimes it is used as relief. The moment the door or curtain is closed, the character is free to express a thought or to just get away from the craziness. Sometimes things close reactively. Close the alcohol so that your alcoholic actor can’t drink it. Sometimes they are pre-emptive, like closing a door early to try and screw up your fellow actor, and sometimes it is a little late, like dragging down the curtain when you end the act. Closing things seems to tie in with a lot of the characters on stage, and their overall objectives for each other and the show. 

Scribe-ing for a Glass of Water

In Glass of Water, the focus on who the protagonist is seems pretty equally divided. However, due to the dramatic form the script takes, I have to side with Bolingbroke as the play’s “protagonist.” As we’ve defined several times in class, a protagonist is the person who moves the plot along. The person who strives for a goal and intends to see it through, which causes the play to move as a result. Throughout the course of the play, Bolingbroke manipulates the other characters in the play in order to climb closer to his super-objective of protecting his country and improving it, and most times this is what spurs their actions and interactions to take place. Masham and Abigail’s plots would have ground to a halt without Bolingbroke moving them around and forcing them to run into each other. In that way, Bolingbroke contributes more to the plot’s advancement than any other character.

If you think about it as an integral protagonist/antagonist relationship, Bolingbroke wins there too. Unlike Abigail or Masham, who are often regarded equally as “protagonists,” there are surprisingly few things standing in their way, and they accomplish their goals with relative ease. Bolingbroke, however, has to constantly juggle all the other characters in the play in order to guarantee his plans will succeed. In a way, every character functions as his antagonist, which gives more credence to his idea of being the protagonist.

The only facet which works against him, according to the prompt, is who Scribe wants us to root for, because that seems pretty solidly Abigail. But in class we talked about how protagonists don’t have to be likeable. You don’t have to want them to succeed. They merely have to advance the plot. So boo on you, wishy-washy people who can’t decide. Bolingbroke is very clearly our protagonist here!

I Cannot Show You "The Glory Days" I Can Only Tell You About Them

Tell Me About Those Glory Days

A Cory Vincent Column

For my show and tell, I decided to do one of my current favorite musicals, The Glory Days. The Glory Days was written by James Gardiner with music and lyrics by Nick Blaemire. It mostly was performed Off-Broadway, but it did get the green light to perform on Broadway, closing after exactly ONE performance on Broadway. I don't see why, because to me, this script is fantastic. If you’d like to read the musical, you can get it right here:

http://www.playscripts.com/play.php3?playid=2040

It follows four friends: Jack, Andy, Skip, and the protagonist Will. All of these guys have just completed their first year of college, and in the summer between semesters, they all get together to catch up and just have a good time. The problems begin to arise when the boys find out that they aren’t quite the same as they used to be. Skip went off to an ivy league school, and holds some unconscious resentment against his friends who didn’t do as well in school as him. Jack took a month off of school and just went backpacking across the country…where he discovered he was Gay. Andy is a giant homophobe, and this sets him off, which makes Skip mad that he is such a low-brow bigot, and the friends threaten to separate and never see each other again. Which leaves it all to Will, who may or may not secretly be in love in Jack, to try and put them back together. Will he succeed? Find out! Read the musical! It’s awesome!

There are several dramaturgical choices that made this play great, but some carry more weight than others. The first is that the four boys are 100% of the characters we see. Throughout the show they mention girlfriends, bullies, parents, lovers, sisters, friends, and a whole plethora of people we see as reference only. We never see them, hear them, or have any contact with these people. The effect it has is to narrow the play’s worldview. This world only cares about how these four friends interact WITH EACH OTHER. The other tangential relationships just provide further input. They may color the way a person ultimately feels on an issue, but it’s all about what the four friends are doing in this tight knit group that builds the action of the play.

For the second big dramaturgical choice I have to terminology from Hornby and mention a Motif. Throughout the play, we keep hearing about the popular kids and the football team. How they kept shutting them down, and the friends found “their own way” to deal with things. This works beautifully as a mirror, because when the put downs came from the popular jocks and the cheerleaders, our character could brush it off and deal with it because they had each other. That was their way. When the put-downs started coming from within the clique, that’s when they had a problem. They had no safety to come back to and help pick them back up, and so each one started falling off into this strange despair. Every time the play mentions the football team, it is almost always followed by how they either overcame a challenge in the past, or them failing to overcome a problem in the present.

And that’s it! That’s all I have to say about The Glory Days. It is cute and quaint, and more importantly, this play is about us. About me, a lot of the time. I’ve never been “popular” or a super athlete, and I had this exact kind of oddball support structure. I’ve also been where Will is, when the oddball structure breaks down and nobody wants to exert the effort needed to pick up the pieces. So it speaks to me on a lot of levels, but on a broader level, as theatre kids WE have this structure. People think we are weird or queer or crazy, and we don’t let it hurt us because we have our theatre friends to pick us back up. So this is you guys too, and definitely worth a read.

Hornby, Hornby, Hornby

Hornby, Hornby, Hornby
A Cory Vincent Column

Richard Hornby has a number of thoughts about what good drama should be doing. Some of his ideas merely state what he thinks of when getting ready to perform a play. Some of them are useful, others I wholly disagree with. One of the nuggets I actually do enjoy to a large degree is his focus on “motifs.” When studied correctly, motifs can help us understand the way a play-world works. It allows us to gain insight we might have missed, and makes use of things we might have thought were “boring” “repetitive” or “gimmicky.”

Take How I Learned to Drive for instance. Vogel’s play centers on, as the title suggests, driving. Throughout the play, characters continually make references to the idea of driving. Whether the chorus shouts that Lil’ Bit needs to be a defensive driver, to telling her to shift it into reverse, the (slightly corny) driving puns help to do a number of things in the context of the play. First, they set up foreshadowing. Almost every corny driving pun foreshadows some incident. If they say she’s got to step on the gas, then we are about to jump forward in time. Putting it in reverse does the opposite. It also, however, gives us a frame to judge the play in. When a person is driving, there is a lot of control involve. There are a number of elements that could go wrong, and each one requires your full attention simultaneously. One wrong move, and you are toast. The same could be said of the relationship between Lil Bit and Uncle Peck. They each had to try and stay in control, lest they crash and burn and turn into something ugly and resentful.

Motifs find themselves in places other than plays too. Take the TV Show Supernatural. Supernatural is all about hunting down creatures that go bump in the night. It’s all about these two brothers and their trials and tribulations. And it’s about demons. Demons everywhere. Sometimes the demons are literal demons, trying to kill you. These demons function as mirrors. Each time the brothers see a demon, they judge themselves, and sometimes re-assess where they stand in life. Sometimes it strengthens their resolve, and sometimes it breaks it. This was the most enlightening part of the show for me, because I was baffled at why they would suddenly change viewpoints like emotional pendulums every other episode. It was only when looking at the show through a motif did I realize that the demons were both literal and metaphorical. The bigger and more important the demon, the bigger the issue tackled. All of the best brother to brother fights happen at the end, after the Demon is slain. Having stared at a real demon the whole episode, the brothers are able to confront the smaller demons in their own lives.

Personally, I don’t think its any different. Motifs may be easier to build into a TV show than a script, since you can write out exactly how things should look, move, and feel in a TV Script, but they are not different. Both serve the same purpose, and both are just as effective.

Learning About How I Learned to Drive

Learning About How I Learned to Drive
A Cory Vincent Column

How I Learned to Drive is the quintessential play about perspective and boundaries. Vogel gives us this picture of a girl and her uncle, supported by a near-faceless “Greek” chorus. Like a lot of things in her plays, Vogel desires to tell us about boundaries using this false chorus. By separating Uncle Peck and Lil Bit from the rest of the world, she gives us this idea that their love exists in a vacuum. If they were left to their own devices, it seems like this love would be no problem to anyone. If society and its rules would just leave them alone, they would have no conflict whatsoever. It is only when the world intervenes that the problems truly arise. The Chorus is designed to illustrate this separation, among many other tiny moments in the play.

As for what does and does not make sense, for me it was all about separating Lil’ Bit and Uncle Peck themselves. For me, the Chorus was serving that function, to separate them from the world, so I was puzzled by why she would choose to separate them from each other. As I read and re-read, I might have an answer to that question, but it is shaky in its foundation. To me, separation of the two lovers until the very is done as a product of the order in which the story is told. We aren’t being given the story in any linear fashion, but instead almost as just a series of remembrances. The girl we see talking to us has already experienced these memories, and has moved past them (we are told Uncle Peck stops speaking to her eventually). Thus, she is, literally, separated from them. We can also see it as an emotional distance. Lil’ Bit, now older and more mature, can really take the time the look at the relationship she had with Uncle Peck. She can “pull it apart” and analyze the function of that union. I think that the re-uniting of the two in the final scene is then extremely important. She has chosen, as she says near the end of the play, that she doesn’t judge or remember this as something she should lock down or put away. She simply remembers driving with her uncle.

Conducting the Conduct of Life

Conducting The Conduct of Life
A Cory Vincent Column

The Conduct of Life does a lot of focusing on the things left unsaid or the sights left unseen. This is a powerful dramatic choice, as it creates tension based on what the audience thinks is happening or expects to happen. The playwright can never be wrong because it is imagination which shapes the reaction, so the scenes that play out in the imagination are ever varying.

A more potent dramatic choice, however, involves the times in which Fornes doesn’t use dialogue at all. There are entire scenes in the play where the stage direction is the driving force. Fornes tells the character exactly where to go, when to kneel, and when to touch somebody’s face. During this time very little is said, so the direction in this way is necessary to convey certain key points. The effect it has, again, is building upon that tension. When there are no words, you watch every twitch, every half step, every faltering breath for a signal as to what the characters might be thinking.

Which introduces another very powerful point: Fornes almost never tells you what the characters are thinking. Even in monologues she keeps it all a bit vague, again inspiring the audience to come up for themselves what the characters might be thinking. Personally, I think that Fornes titled the show The Conduct of Life because this clipped style of interaction is how we live. We don’t get to see everybody’s inner lives and the way they conduct themselves. We only get to see temporary snippets of what they do. Then we leave their sphere of life and move on. That means we only have these surface judgemnts to go off of.  I feel like this play replicates this idea perfectly.

Trifling Over Trifles

Trifling Over Trifles

A Cory Vincent Column

Looking at Trifles, one might assume that there is no way the play can be done in anything but a naturalistic or realistic setting. The play focuses on such sharp and contrasting details and clues that to think of doing it without the immense number of props involved seems impossible. Yet I argue this is exactly what can be done to create a very powerful performance.

The language of Trifles is vast. They spend much time describing the quality of that dead bird, and that quilt pattern. They talk about how she was in that chair, just staring at him, all dead-like as he was. This language isn’t by accident. This language allows there to be a lack of sensory information. A blank white blanket can suddenly transform into a powerful quilt. An empty can now be filled with a bird who has been murdered. In fact, performing the play in this way is possibly even more powerful than it would be if all the details were presented. For starters, each discovery would happen at the same time for the performers as it would for the audience. If the quilt and the cage were there from the beginning, then the audience might spy it out long before the characters do. Then some of that surprise is gone. But if they can’t know the answer before then, it is suddenly much more powerful. Another key fact to consider is that sharing these discoveries would help the audience get more on board with the women. They would get wrapped up in the “hat will they find next?” kind of aspect, instead of “what will happen next in the play?” That subtle shift means all the difference sometimes.

However, doing a production in this bare bones structure will take away some of the super-sleuthing elements of the production. Having all those things there means you CAN figure out the answer before the play gives it to you. It is an extremely rewarding feeling to solve the “crime” before the characters tell you the answer. Without those objects, you remove that ability from your audience, which may be detrimental to some. Still, the chance of anybody figuring out the mystery is an outside possibility, so in my opinion, the play doesn’t lose very much.