For me theater is at it’s best when it most clearly reflects the social consciousness of our times. Put another way, it’s the antidote for being brainwashed. And by “brainwashed” I don’t mean “Manchurian Candidate” or water-boarding or torture generally. I mean social conditioning — all those assumptions, articulated or un-articulated, that govern our behavior. The formalities we observe when we talk, walk, acquire the trappings of fashion, the rules that govern how we react to each other.
Watching Capstage’s production of Jordan Harrison’s “Maple and Vine” is like seeing a mashup of “Ozzie and Harriet” and “The Matrix” with a little bit of “The Handmaid’s Tale” to round it out. The work has a comedy to it, but a very distinctly dark and sinister side as well. It’s hard to escape the fatalism of the play; but it is delivered with enough humor to soften it up a bit. An opportunity for a little bit of brain drying.
Wayne Lee and Stephanie Gularte deliver a well-timed series of viewpoints into the lives of a married couple (Katha and Ryu) that are slogging through life — “just trying to get through the day” as one of them says. The play reveals them to be overworked, frustrated by information overload, and suffering from that most common of existential dilemmas: leading lives of un-quiet desperation.
They meet Ellen and Dean (Shannon Mahoney and Jason Heil), a formidable team of proselytizers for the “Society of Dynamic Obsolescence.” They are selling membership into a retro-culture cult — which stops time at 1955. Nothing beyond that is allowed. The promise is nostalgic happiness. Ellen and Dean are pleasantly smarmy cartoon like characters whose happiness might require inoculation if the exposure goes on long enough. Katha and Ryu decide the kool-aide is worth a sip.
Everyone has to acquire multiple identities during the play — it’s the nature of the script as well as the required social facade of 1955. Ryan Synder provides a wonderful counterpoint to Jason Heil’s social salesman. Synder’s shift between racist bully and vulnerable lover is well done. Heil goes from self-professed angel of happiness to tortured soul — several times. Wayne Lee switches between 2014 every-man and a racial stereotype (an odd idea these days, isn’t it? or is it?) Stephanie Gularte gives up the “I have it all” attitude to become a June Cleaver wannabe. Shannon Mahoney reveals an elegantly sorrowful character with moments of depth and heartbreak.
The play is at it’s best when the characters shed their thick identities and reveal themselves to be in the present — suffering, afraid, and full of desire. All the actors have their moments of intensity and they deliver well against the emotional dynamics of the script. I was particularly taken by a moment near the end when Shannon Mahoney is required to drop the cheerleader-Betty-Crocker facade and crash head-first into a wall of pain and shame. A full-stop no-way-round kind of moment.
What I took away from the play wasn’t perhaps what was intended — it’s easy enough for all of us to agree that 1955 came with a set of unacceptably rigid, and arbitrarily harmful social constructs — but what about today’s social constructs? How is 2014 so different from 1955?
Did the author beg the question? Or was that the point after all?
The Water We Swim In: From Jesus to Miley and Back Again
Last week I went to see the KOLT production of “My Own Stranger.” Among other comments I wrote that love and redemption were the two great themes of Western Civilization. These two themes have emerged in the last two thousand years as part of the greater Christian heritage.
Now “Christian heritage” may seem a bit much for those who claim no religion, or for those who happen to be dedicated to a different faith. As a response I would say that we are all swimming in the same water. Like or not.
There’s a great line in the move “The Devil Wears Prada” delivered by Meryl Streep. She tells her protege (Anne Hathaway) that the color of any given sweater isn’t an individual choice — there are thousands of hours of research, decisions, marketing and campaigning that drive the process of what gets produced. We are, she says, to a very large extent, programmed to accept certain ideas about fashion — or anything else. So we think we make “individual” decisions, but really we’re responding to a sea of stimulus that influences our sense of decision. We are all subject to various shades of seduction. Like or or not.
One of the things that I found interesting in Sexton’s dilemma — which is to say her struggle to find a definition of sanity she could live with — was that it seemed to be totally devoid of sexuality. Well in reality that isn’t so at all: she was “wife” and “mother.” But the sterility of the language in that one regard is rather striking. Of course the play was 80 minutes of solid dialog, so I may have missed it. But I doubt it. My glands are still in good working order.
The idea of “repression” seems so archaic these days; everything has been so sexualized it’s rather startling to think anyone lacks the opportunity for expression or satisfaction. But there is that nagging “Love” theme again — how does that relate to sexuality?
In Sexton’s case maybe nothing. She may have been so preoccupied with her struggle that sexuality didn’t mean much. But that element of repression is there.
But how, exactly, did we get from Jesus to Miley? I doubt we were ever far from it. Because, in spite of the preponderance of patriarchal determination, Jesus represents a rather startling amalgamation of spiritual and sexual. His approach to life had a strong sensual quality. He seemed to have no dilemma regarding sex — he forgave the adulteress. He had a reputation for associating with whores. He was vital, not at all “sterile.”
And furthermore I would assert that Jesus is the most feminine of heroes. His manliness was tempered by a feminine reverence for women and children, widows, lepers, and those subject to injustice. He wasn’t less of a man for being womanly, he was stronger for it. Not the kind of person who is repressed.
A tacit acknowledgement that we are all swim in the water of of creation and pro-creation.
Sexton seems to me to represent the last remnants of that social order that needed to repress women — and therefore sexuality (which is to say “choice”.) Of course in the greater scheme of things what was happening was that women were being denied power. What we call “Feminism” provided some antidote. I think the argument against feminism is that it is really libertine by another name. I don’t buy that argument, not one bit of it. In any case that was the water Sexton was swimming in.
We are seduced by a sea of ideas — or not. “Seduction” is another way of saying “delusion.” Theater is seduction, insofar as we chose to suspend our disbelief. Sexton’s lack of sexuality may have been part of the greater seduction she was subject too. Or perhaps she simply rejected the idea that she was “wife” and “mother” and nothing else. An identity crisis so troubling to her that she took her own life.
The people around her might have been sterile as well, insofar as they did not (apparently) offer the love she needed. In any case she found no redemption. Which is another way of saying she could not find any way to forgive herself for being human — imperfect.
We are indoctrinated with “Love” and “Redemption” and then terrorized, seduced and thwarted by various images of physical perfection, sexuality, and definitions of who has power and who doesn’t.
I suppose fear of women is a natural phenomenon. I confess I feel that way myself on occasion. Too often I suppose. Perhaps it will subside. In the meantime, finally, in a moment of capitulation, in what I hope is a surrender of small proportion but probably isn’t, I “googled” the word “twerk.” Of course this means I am totally not “cool.” Ah well. Pity.