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!