What’s “shocking” in theatre?

 

Albee’s Zoo Story.  Or Sylvia, or The Goat.  Or Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for that matter.  Profanity certainly isn’t shocking anymore; more appalling in excess.  Nudity always has some appeal but it doesn’t really “shock” in this day and age.  And of course there are a handful of truly taboo subjects… and a few dozen flimsy, politically incorrect, expressions that substitute for the truly taboo.

Our current production could be (let’s face, most likely someone will be) called shocking.  In a recent interview, Albee became insulted when the reporter suggested that he was intentionally shocking in his work.  Albee replied that he “put it in there because that’s what was happening.”  It was the logical extension, expression of the character's given circumstance, psychologically. 

In writing A Beautiful Home for the Incurable, a play about an agoraphobic man, I became concerned that as a comedy it would either be considered offensive or un-funny.  I spoke with a friend who suffered from agoraphobia, and she said that if I just wrote the truth it wouldn’t be offensive, but it would be funny.  There wasn't any humor in the experience of mental illness, but its expression was often quite funny. That’s how I feel about the idea of shocking.  As a tool for engaging the audience, shock tactics are trash, manipulation of the worst kind.  The truth can be plenty shocking on its own.  In The Disappearance of Mary Rosemary the shocking elements are a natural extension of the characters; in my mind, they are the only outcome, the only choice that made logical sense.  Perhaps people would be less shocked if I had fully explored things in a more literary fashion, from a distance, but that would also lack truth.  One doesn’t have to “explore” a glass of water being knocked over; it simply happens.  And the glass does get knocked over.

UPDATE 10/10/13:  I predicted that this production would be called shocking, but it wasn't until it happened that I recognized what polite "finger-pointing" looks like in this  day and sensibility.  People, especially those that want to considered educated and liberal, don't like to appear "shocked" by anything that might reveal them to be narrow minded.  Instead, they devise euphemisms to convey their dismay, while portraying themselves as "unshocked."  A reviewer, after being wholly distracted by the fact that the play wasn't a Woman in Black clone (a play they felt we produced exceedingly well in 2009), remarked that the ending was "VC Andrews" but not in a good way.  Which is the polite way of saying it shocked her sensibilities, but she didn't want to admit it.  The problem-- besides wanting the play to be something it wasn't designed to be-- is that being shocked means being thoughtless, unreflective, taking one's own preconceptions and values as universal without examining what the text may be conveying.  The problem with "shocked" is that it is entirely self-satisfied.

The Origins of a Play

A play idea is a gossamer thing. It begins, deformed, in the primordial darkness of one’s subconscious, awaiting a spark from above. A new idea to ignite in the heavens and dive down below, creating a chemical reaction. For a play idea is never one idea, it’s an interconnected set of molecular ideas that bind to each and create their own energy. Old ideas are fomenting beneath the surface of consciousness; and finally a new idea—the right new idea—brings them to life.

Beneath my surface in primordial darkness sat ideas about intimacy, about whether truth was necessary for intimacy or if lies could produce the same bond. About language, which can hold both truth and lies, power and weakness. About the damage that can come from compromising one’s integrity. What these ideas needed was a spark.

About a year ago my fiancée, who’s a bit of a history buff, reminded me that Truman only had a high school education. He’d attended a semester or so of college, but that’s all. And I was struck by two things: first, how a farmer’s boy managed to become president of the United States without higher education; and second how a president just three months in office could have made the decision to drop an atomic bomb. The weight of that decision. I realized I had many preconceptions about this, but no real knowledge of the event.

My favorite question as a playwright is “how did we get here?” I often see the end of my plays very clearly—before anything else is in place. Then the beginning appears; it’s the middle that’s murky. I knew Truman’s beginning, of course, and I knew how the story ended. I had strong feelings about them already. An important rule of playwriting is to never write plays about things you have black and white feelings for. The work comes out lopsided, lacking dramatic energy because there’s no real opposing force, and you’re inclined to preach. It’s a rule almost as important as always write plays about things you have black and white feelings for. Not that all plays should fit into that category, but if you feel that way about something you should write about it. If it’s that clear, that simple in your mind, you haven’t explored it and you don’t understand it. Getting to know characters I find distasteful is some of the most rewarding writing I’ve done, and some of my best. Characters who stand for things I don’t like will always have clearly independent rhythms in their speech; I have to find the truth about their viewpoint, what is honest and sincere. I grow, and their characters are often more richly three-dimensional. Writing about characters you deeply admire is a rather sickly experience in comparison.

The Truman I knew from history books was beloved for ending the war, for always speaking plainly, and for keeping the interest of the average working man at heart. I had my doubts about the first point; during the course of my research I developed a new appreciation for the second point, his tendency to “speak his mind.”

In order to do his character, and that moment in time, justice, I realized I had to get some distance on it. In doing so, the characters of Will and Mel arrived. Truman became Harry. Harry could be more human, less constrained by our predetermined expectations of him; he could symbolize more than himself. The Harry of my play isn’t supposed to be an exact replica, a precise personification of Truman. I don’t think that’s possible; there were only a handful of people who ever really knew the complete man because he was a complex and somewhat guarded fellow. His biographers might claim that they knew him by his deeds and actions, but in the 1990s our knowledge of those deeds began to shift with the release of declassified documents. It raised questions about the events, and thus the man. I became fascinated by those questions, and they became one of the focal points of the play.

But the play is equally about Mel and Will (who never leaves the stage). They bring forth the older questions about intimacy, truth, language, and integrity. In the end, they became the heart of the play, a passionate, violent, and lyrical organ within the framework of history.

Applying Table Work to the Play

Four days into rehearsals we've wrapped up our table work analysis of The Woman in Black. Today's entry is a small glimpse into how table analysis brings out the complexity of character relationships, even within a narrative as straightforward as a ghost story. Photos by Sorta Lim, with a little help from Richard Enriquez.

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