“The entire play moves toward the Forest…”
I found myself speaking this sentence aloud in a recent design meeting, and it has stuck with me.
Whenever one begins work on a play that addresses controversial, historical or political material, one is immediately confronted with the question of how it will be handled. With respect, certainly – to the witnesses and their stories. This is of paramount importance. With honesty, naturally – else why are we in the Theatre? These are cardinal rules of the craft and we strive to make them manifest in all that we do.
But what does this commitment mean when these ideals are put in the context of a fairly recent and very dark chapter of history? A string of events from which there are still living witnesses who may justifiably be called “survivors”?
As a rule, I don’t like political plays. Which is not to say that I avoid texts relevant to the current political or social climate – to the contrary. In fact, Idle Muse Theatre Company is defined by its interest in plays which explore the relationship between the individual and a larger world. But plays that are built around the goal of expressing a particular social agenda, rather than a human story, often run the risk of becoming reductivist. They can be difficult for the audience to engage with and sometimes feel like a really long set-up for a kind of “punchline” ending, in which the punchline is a particular manifesto or political soundbite.
The Monument is not such a play.
When I begin work on a new production, I naturally frame it mentally as a sort of journey. “Process” is a word theatre folk commonly use, and with good reason. The creation of a theatrical work involves a large amount of exploration and collaboration that can only be accomplished over extended time and in the company of others. It’s not something that can (or should) be accomplished all at once, and it continues to evolve until the last curtain call. Who was it that said great works are never completed, they are only abandoned?
Theatre artists undertake this effort because we find meaning in that journey. We seek out the opportunity to wrestle with big ideas, strut and fret, fart, groan, laugh – and above all discover – in the name of connecting a story to full house of strangers and loved ones. And when it’s all over we mourn the end but find ourselves the better for it.
We truly enjoy it.
But The Monument’s journey is different. This is a journey to the Forest. Capital F. A thing beyond the archetypical, fairy tale woods signifying the dark places of the psyche and the monsters that dwell therein. This is something far worse.
From the play’s very first scene, we learn that the Forest, with all its attendant fears and associations, is a place of horrible inhumanity. The crimes committed there were of a nature so heinous, that by necessity, all the action that follows must move toward their unmasking.
The Monument might be a different sort of experience from what audiences have come to expect from Idle Muse. Rest assured that we will approach it with the same commitment to delivering unflinching honesty within a transporting experience that we always do. I can promise you that. But this time that journey might be a little bit darker, and it might even make you a little bit uncomfortable on the way…
On some level, as a culture, we are undeniably drawn to these kinds of stories. Police and procedural dramas have dominated prime time television unchallenged for about as long as I can remember. Jungian analysts would tell you here that the act of “solving” the murders portrayed in these programs is a mythic archetype; a way of ordering and addressing the greater human questions surrounding Death. In this way, uncovering the mundane and brutal details of how someone died can be an analogue for confronting perhaps the greatest questions of our existence.
I originally chose this play because I felt it was asking questions found in the aftermath of a political war of attrition. The question of how to move forward as a people after we become so polarized and so extreme that there seems no way back…well that was a question that was both timely and worthy of chasing for months of my life.
It’s also humbling.
I’ve begun to realize that when you start down this line of thinking, it becomes impossible to hide behind the big questions and avoid the personalization. I have only to engage in my morning ritual of reading internet news and the parallels come rushing in. In recent weeks, I have discovered that I am now also on a journey into a world where women have to fight for control of what happens to their bodies, where dissension from the group is punishable by violence, where it’s okay to kill someone because of their race and the garment they are wearing. This is a Forest that just seems to get darker and deeper the farther in you get.
I don’t know for certain that I’m ready for it. I’m already dreading the “bleed effect” that always seems to happen while I’m in production. You spend so much time in a play’s imaginary world that it starts to get into your body and your moods. To feel these feelings and think these thoughts for months at a time…
And what’s that journey going to be like now? Like I said, we participate in this art form because it’s something we enjoy. How do you justify laughing and reveling in the process in this context? What does it mean if you’re taking pleasure in telling a story about war crimes?
I’m not even going to pretend I know the answers to these questions. I do know that the questions posed by The Monument, both thematically and personally, are undeniably important. I know that choosing to face them will tell me something about what it means to be a human being right now.
So…
I’m beginning this production blog by inviting you to undertake this journey to the Forest with us. To be perfectly frank, we can’t do it without your help. It may not always be easy – and it may stop in some dark places along the way, where horrible monsters make their home…but these are questions that are worth facing.
These are questions about us.
