On the Power of Language

I continue to reflect on the amazingly powerful production of A Long Day's Journey Into Night at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. (Previous post 1 and post 2.)

As I said in those earlier posts the power of a great American stage play needs the power of the actors to make it believable, of course. Stiff or poor acting would get in the way of the intensity and emotion of the drama. The audience has to accept that his is not just a play- but that it is reality being acted out for them. We know that the people on stage are not really the characters, but you sure have a tough time convincing your brain of that in a great production like the Guthrie's of O'Neill's Pulitzer Prize winning play.

As I continued my reflection's this past week, another item struck me. This has to do with Eugene O'Neill's amazing ability with words. The play was originally written in the 1940s and not produced until the 1950s about a day in 1912.. In many ways that was a really different time, even in drama. The acceptance and use of "vulgarity" was quite low. Thus the language that O'Neill had at his disposal was very different than if he were writing today. For reality's sake today that play would include a lot of strong language, i.e. the F-bomb. We have seen that in movies and stage plays quite regularly. It makes the language more "realistic" and the settings seem more contemporary. We may also hear that to use these strong words would help get the intensity of emotion across.

That wasn't acceptable in O'Neill's time, or even perhaps in the family at the time the action is supposed to be taking place. So O'Neill had to do something remarkable- he had to get that intense feeling across in his non-obscene dialogue. The characters had to let us know the amazing depth of their feelings and the devastating intensity of their lives with how they spoke, interacted, reacted and described their feelings. Instead of saying they felt like ----, they had to explain it so we would know how they felt, and allow it to penetrate us. O'Neill, like any great playwright mastered that and then some. Which is why he won four Pulitzer Prizes for drama!

But, again, to give the Guthrie crew their due, if these actors couldn't bring those characters to life, we would have walked out of the theater with a feeling or two, but not so wrung out by what we had just seen. The actors needed us to know those feelings and express them in inflection, actions, body posture, stage movement, etc. They were not just going through the motions- they were living them.

I don't know how they do it, actually. They have to walk off that stage and back into their own lives- and then get ready to do it again that evening or the next day. What class and motivation.

Thank you for an amazing experience.

Here are two videos of scenes:





And a video interview from Twin Cities Live with the two actors who play the brothers: LINK

When Addiction Was Always Fatal

At least, a time when there was no treatment for it in any way, shape, or form.

That was the other reaction I had to the Guthrie Theater's production of Eugene O'Neill's A Long Day's Journey Into Night. The play is based on O'Neill's own family history, taking place on one day in August 1912. In that day we see the father and two sons of the Tyrone family drink as their own way of coping with the wife/mother's morphine addiction take control after some time of sobriety that they hoped would be more permanent. Everyone is caught up in the devastation of addiction.

Hope? None! It is tragedy at it's worst. King Lear and Macbeth on the coast of Connecticut in 1912.

In 1912 addiction had no treatment available. It was a death sentence which everyone felt was a matter of choice. They could stop if they wanted to, was the standard thinking. It was an issue of morals and will-power and wanting it badly enough. In August 1912 Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson was only 16 years old.

Hope? Nope!

O'Neill's own family history shows the destructive power of alcoholism and addiction. He older brother and two sons died of alcoholism/addiction.

Today we live in a fortunately better time. We have a little better understanding of some of the underlying issues that have made addiction so difficult. We have seen the development of neuroscience giving us insight into the brain chemistry that is the possible cause and likely result of alcoholism and addiction. There are millions of recovering addicts today. They can live with a sense of hope that Eugene O'Neill and his family would never have known.

We are only at the early stages of our awareness. There is still so much we don't know and so many people who still don't get into recovery and stay there. Relapses occur at a frustrating frequency and we can't predict who will relapse and who won't.

But today we do have hope. It is not a 100% fatal disease. People do make it into recovery and stay there. The odds are better than in 1912 when O'Neill and his family stood in the midst of a multi-generational story of loss and pain. We have made a start and we can offer possibilities for the future so other families can liv with a sense of optimism.

You Know It's Great Acting....

....When the audience is pulled into the play and can't get out.

“I made mistakes in drama. I thought drama was when actors cried. But drama is when the audience cries.”
Frank Capra

Just had a great experience of this last weekend at The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. They are currently running what is arguably the greatest American drama- A Long Day's Journey Into Night. In brief it is the story of addiction and alcoholism written in the 1940s by Eugene O'Neill and based on his own life. It is a remarkable, Pulitzer Prize winning play. It is relentless in its intensity, with unbeatable dialogue that takes the audience many places they had no idea they could go. This is drama in the league of Shakespeare's King Lear or Macbeth.

Add to O'Neill's play the actors from The Guthrie and you are in something you can't get out of. You are pulled into the reality of addiction in ways that you never knew possible. You feel every ounce of pain. You want to look away in embarrassment. You don't want the play to go where you know it is going- headlong in one day's journey toward the dark.

As a season-ticket holder at The Guthrie, I am very familiar with their top-quality acting. I take it for granted. As a fan of stage drama since college (where we studied A Long Day's Journey), I am familiar with the power of great plays to turn you upside down. It is what I look for when I go to a play.

I was surprised though when friends and colleagues who were also at the performance reacted so strongly to it. They used terms like "painful" to describe the feeling of watching the Tyrone family on stage. They wanted to turn away. They had incredible visceral reactions.

We are people who live and work with addiction every day. Nothing in the play surprised any of us. Yet we all walked out exhausted, overwhelmed by the emotions flooding from O'Neill's words and the acting of the Guthrie cast.

That's great acting!

Let's Get Some Culture

The Reduced Shakespeare Company does some amazing work with The Bard. In order to give this blog some real culture, here is one of their videos...

The Othello Rap:

A Wonderful Stay-cation

We had one of the best vacations this past week or so. We stayed home. I guess they call that a "stay-cation" in today's language. Since I usually report on my vacations, I thought I would start by simply reflecting on being at home doing nothing.

We've done this before, but this time the weather and the stars and all the karma of the universe (at least in SE Minnesota) fell together to make it special.

We saw two movies in daytime matinees. One Inception, I already mentioned. The other was the relationship flick, The Kids Are All Right. That review will be coming up.

We did three "road trips." First we went to Minneapolis for a tour of Target Field. I have been to some games, but I really wanted my wife to see it. We were both royally impressed and even got to sit in the dugouts. We ended the day with supper at a really good Mexican restaurant in Eagan, El Parian, with our daughter and her significant other.

Trip #2 was to the Mississippi River for an Eco Cruise out of La Crosse and a visit to the replicas of Columbus's ships the Nina and the Pinta at Winona. Pictures and commentary on each of those will be up later. An inspiring day. This was our longest road trip- about 160 miles total.

And Trip #3 was to the Root River area around Lanesboro and Whalen, MN. At Lanesboro we went to see a play at the Commonweal Theatre, Steve Martin's Picasso at the Lapin Agile. A funny play that may also get its own post in the days ahead. We then HAD, absolutely HAD to go to the Aroma Pie Shop in nearby Whalen.

Earlier in the vacation we also had gone to the Rochester Repertory Theater for their Evening to Hang Your Hat On, a series of 8 ten-minute plays.

In between I took a couple of naps, started my running training for the Duathlon at the end of the month and read and rode my bike. In short, it is what a vacation is supposed to be. I didn't even check my work email until I got to work this morning. I am proud of myself for that one.

Vacations, or holidays as some places call them, are true times of renewal and refreshment. They are essential to ongoing mental health I am convinced. Sometimes we do deeply engaging things in travel and sometimes we just kick back and discover what is already right at hand in our own backyard.

Which, naturally, reminds me of a story, this one being an old Hasidic parable found in many variations. This one is from Martin Buber's Tales of the Hasidim. (link.)

Rabbi Bunam used to tell young men who came to him for the first time the story of Rabbi Eisik, son of Rabbi Yekel in Cracow. After many years of great poverty which had never shaken his faith in God, he dreamed someone bade him look for a treasure in Prague, under the bridge which leads to the king's palace. When the dream recurred a third time, Rabbi Eisik prepared for the journey and set out for Prague. But the bridge was guarded day and night and he did not dare to start digging. Nevertheless he went to the bridge every morning and kept walking around it until evening.

Finally the captain of the guards, who had been watching him, asked in a kindly way whether he was looking for something or waiting for somebody. Rabbi Eisik told him of the dream which had brought him here from a faraway country. The captain laughed: "And so to please the dream, you poor fellow wore out your shoes to come here! As for having faith in dreams, if I had had it, I should have had to get going when a dream once told me to go to Cracow and dig for treasure under the stove in the room of a Jew—Eisik, son of Yekel, that was the name! Eisik, son of Yekel! I can just imagine what it would be like, how I should have to try every house over there, where one half of the Jews are named Eisik,and the other Yekel!" And he laughed again. Rabbi Eisik bowed, traveled home, dug up the treasure from under the stove, and built the House of Prayer which is called "Reb Eisik's Shul."

So now I am home where the treasure is. It was fun not having to leave to discover it.

Surprise Endings

Last weekend we went to the Guthrie Theater for a modern rewrite of Ibsen's classic play, A Doll's House. Dollhouse by Rebecca Gilman uses Ibsen as the starting point for a 2004 interpretation of issues of materialism, truth, and living happily ever after.

Nora seems to have it all: a successful husband, three adorable children and a beautiful home in Lincoln Park. What looks like the picture perfect life, outfitted in the latest from Pottery Barn, is actually a complicated trap of secrets and lies, from which there is no easy bailout.
--Guthrie Theater

We were alerted by the Playbill that the ending would be as controversial as Ibsen's original where Nora, to the horror of a previous culture, left her children behind to seek her "self." What would this Nora do? How would she be as audacious as Ibsen's Nora? At intermission my wife and I pondered the possibilities. We challenged each other with controversy.

But as usual controversy often comes from what you don't expect, not what you can guess. I will not spoil the plot to say anymore specifically, but as the play ended we both found ourselves going, "Oh! That does make us stop and think. Hmmm." We each even found ourselves pondering it that evening and at different times during the week.

The power of drama to grab us and pull us into its own universe never fails to amaze me. Even when I try to out-think the playwright the "black swans" of quality writers will still make me stretch my horizons, whether I agree with the conclusion or not.

I guess that is what life is like as well.

On Entertainment

Yesterday was a day of entertainment. First I was entertained and then I helped provide entertainment. Both are activities which can feed the soul.

First we went to the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis for their production of Shakespeare's Macbeth. I find it impossible to say bad things about the productions at the Guthrie- and this one, directed by uber-director Joe Dowling, is no exception. Shakespeare remains the epitome of timeless drama, of course. Macbeth is among the top class of the plays. It is a relentless play. From the opening death to the final one, it is a play that is impaled on humanity's greed, power-lust, and incredible tendency toward murder. Dowling and cast bring that to such a raw edge that one walks out as if torn apart themselves. What an achievement.

I guess entertainment in the "pop" sense of the word wouldn't apply to Macbeth. Of course, as WordNet defines it, entertainment is "an activity that is diverting and that holds the attention." Macbeth is sure that! Riveting is a good description. Thought-provoking and as contemporary as the latest news from just about anywhere in the world. Good drama that shakes your soul is entertainment in the fullest and most important sense of the word.

In the evening the Rochester Big Band played for a Valentine's Dance in nearby Pine Island. I play trumpet and am the announcer for the group and had a great evening playing the swing and big band hits while people danced, visited, and had a good time together. There was a wide range of ages, and all enjoyed jumping and dancing- fast or slow, swing, waltz, or hugging close to their partner.

It was obviously a lot lighter and more relaxing to be at a fun dance than being challenged by Shakespeare to examine my own human frailties. That also allowed me to decompress from the other experience (which also included getting a parking ticket at lunch. But that's another story.) I wasn't seeking to avoid- entertainment doesn't have to be that. I was seeking to let it settle in so that I could get the needed distance for the meaning to sink in.

Life is made up of all these different things. All work and no play makes one dull, said old Ben Franklin. But all play and no depth can make one quite frivolous. Balance in life needs both. I was glad to be "entertained" and to help provide it for others yesterday.

Shakespearean Controversy

[Screenwriter guru] Robert McKee says, “Curiosity is the intellectual need to answer questions and close open patterns. Story plays to this universal desire by doing the opposite, posing questions and opening situations.
--quoted in Made to Stick, p. 83.

We went to the Guthrie last evening for their first Shakespearean production in their new facility. It was arguably Shakespeare’s most controversial play, The Merchant of Venice. The quote on story above which I then read this morning hit like a brick. It may be one of the reasons why Shakespeare is still so popular and so widely produced all these years after he first wrote. The Merchant of Venice may be one of the best examples of the posing of questions and opening of situations.

Was old Wil an anti-Semite? Or is Shylock meant to challenge anti-Semitism and the whole English culture built around it? When one remembers that this is a comedy, does that mean we shouldn’t take Shylock as a serious character? Yet he has such great lines:

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? (Act III, Scene 1)

Yet it is Portia as a doctor of law that speaks eloquently of mercy raining down, mercy overcoming the law through use of the law.

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. (Act IV, Scene 1)

Is it basically a Christian-Jewish morality play of its era?

Well, what else can we expect of Wil? He was a man of his time, yet he managed in so many ways to also transcend into all time. Did the audience at the Globe hiss and boo at Shylock? Probably. Did these great words that come from his mouth bring derision? Most likely. Yet, there is the amazing ability of Shakespeare to put together a great play that stops us in our tracks for its over-the-top portrayal and so clearly prejudiced a view and entrances us hundreds of years later. Maybe the only way he could conceive of challenging these views is through a comedy that pulls you from one extreme to another with a simple scene change.

Maybe Shakespeare was willing to put his own prejudices out there to be seen in the harsh light of day. In doing so he raises questions and open situations as very few playwrights have been able to do so eloquently and with such challenge.

Yes, mercy (grace) is greater and can use even the law for its own benefits of mercy. But then the legalist is also a human who can bleed. A seed is planted, situations left open, and more questions given than answered.

Storytelling Done Live
We went to the Guthrie Theater again on Thursday for the second of our plays for this year- another top quality production. This was Tennessee William's The Glass Menagerie. It was William's first big hit and brought him the fame that he so well deserved.

It is not a comedy. It fulfills all the emotional requirements of tragedy, done with enough humor to keep you from being overwhelmed. Williams presents this difficult family in difficult times with difficult issues. The son who wants to be out on his own. The daughter who has a physical disability and needs a "suitor." The mother. Oh, yes, the mother. Control personified. Guilt-inducing in the flesh. Fear and anger gushing from every pore.

To watch this play is to be on a roller coaster of emotions. You are drained at the end. You can sometimes identify some of the characters as people from your own life, perhaps you own. You blush and get angry and feel empathy and sympathy. You see life exposed for all to see in front of your eyes. You leave the theater feeling as if you have been touched by life in all its hope and fear and hopefully with a different understanding of your own.

Like movies, a younger cousin of the stage, live drama or comedy is, of course, storytelling. It is entertainment in its broadest sense, but it is also a peek inside the human soul and psyche. With real people standing there in front of you, live and in the flesh, you have to work a little harder than in a movie to turn it into reality, but it is worth the effort and the opportunity. There, in the dark, you will probably discover new things about youself.

It is worth the journey.