DramaLit Blog 1.0: BU School of Theatre

I always browse yahoo news when checking my e-mail, especially if something catches my eye. It's not the best source of news, I know, but if there's a huge earthquake or tornado somewhere I usually know about it. Sometimes I'm disgusted by what I see (reporting on fashion trends over revolutions for example), sometimes terrified (earthquakes, suicide bombings, etc.), but rarely am I inspired. A few days ago however, I was first intrigued, then shocked, then incredibly moved by an article that I read. In Zanesville, Ohio, Terry Thompson killed himself after setting all of his many exotic animals free. Some speculated that it was "an f-you to his neighbors" who had never much liked him and often complained about his menagerie of a backyard. Others were unsure of his motives, no one seemed to know him too well. Police made the decision to shoot the freed animals on site to protect the terrified community. They were afraid that if they simply used tranquilizers the animals would run off before they took effect and wake up in an unknown location. Several bears, lions, and tigers were shot, including many Bengal tigers, an endangered species. Some citizens were relieved to hear of the deaths, others saddened. "At a nearby Moose Lodge, Bill Weiser said: "It's breaking my heart, them shooting those animals.""
I found this article fascinating. Usually news of suicide makes me sad, but this one made me creatively inspired. What an interesting and bizarre story! What a great play this would make! Who was Terry Thompson? Mean and grumpy or misunderstood? Why did he feel the need to keep exotic creatures in his backyard? Terry had previously been charged with animal abuse. But his final gesture was to set them free! Was it really to scorn his neighbors, or was it a metaphorical liberation, which he followed by freeing himself from this world? It is tragic that the animals gained their freedom only to be shot dead. Also, there is still one monkey unaccounted for. Where has it escaped to? My attraction to this story got me thinking about what makes an exciting play, what are interesting elements of storytelling. This is a very strange story that happens in a very 'normal' place. granted I've never been to Zanesville, but it is a small Ohio town, not somewhere I'd expect exotic beasts to be kept. In my improv class we were talking about how people find things funny when there is a normal person in a strange location, or a strange person in a normal location. In my Anthropology class Sophomore year, we discussed how we think things are gross when they are out of place, especially when the private happens in the public sphere, or vis a versa. Could it be that we also find this incongruency funny? Captivating? Terry's story has the magnitude of a greek tragedy or a durang comedy depending on how you look at it. Either way, it is an extreme story in which an outrageous event occurs with plenty of room to project our own images/feeling/beliefs onto. The more specific the event, the better canvas it is for the actors and audience to paint on. This story, though strange, is incredibly daring and specific. Now all I need to do is write the play!

Last week I saw Boston University’s production of Lady Hamlet by Sarah Schulman, directed by Ilana Brownstein. The play is a farcical examination of gender roles via the lives of two actresses who both want to play the role of Hamlet on Broadway. One Actress, Margot Stayden Burns, believes that Hamlet is a woman, merely donning man’s clothes in order to have the ability to express her-self free from female patriarchal gender norms. Her Inspiration, an older actress Helene de Montpelier finds this idea repulsive and instead believes that Hamlet is a man, which any woman should have the right to play just as young people can play old people, peaceful people can play murderers, etc. The two battle it out for the role at first with sly plots then with words, then swords. In the end it is Helene’s lover that gets the role of Hamlet, the two changed divas turn it over to her when she says that her dream Hamlet would be not a man, not a woman, but a person. Hamlet would be simply Hamlet, a human being.
I found the play both hysterically funny and incredibly interesting. The play discusses how we universalize to the white male norm. The default western person is a white man, or at least a man. Now that we have a black president has the race changed? I don’t think so, but possibly. As a female playwright, I find that I am able to write men sometimes better than women, interesting given the fact that I am a woman myself. Is this because I am used to seeing male protagonists? Being forced to empathize and personalize to men? These are some of the questions that the play provoked in me. A ‘human’ Hamlet we could surely all identify with, man and woman. Or could none of us identify with them? Could we believe and relate to a genderless character? Would we constantly be trying to label them because we weren’t given their identity? I don’t know. It is an interesting question. Could I write genderless characters? There are certainly many people that identify as gender queer, as both genders or as neither. I myself believe that gender is a societal construct that is not necessarily tied to sex. I believe that there are masculine and feminine energies, which combine and balance in different ways within each individual. So why do I feel the need to label the characters that I write one way or the other? Am I taking for granted societal norms with which I don’t necessarily agree and thereby re-enforcing them? I think I write gendered characters in part because our perceived gender makes up so much of our experience. If I were to not label a character as a gender, I would be leaving out a vast part of their back-story, of how they are viewed and brought up in the world. Or if I didn’t give them a gender it would be a huge choice that the audience would attach significance to. If they have no gender that gives them a whole different back-story of not belonging in our culture. Perhaps this only applies to realism however. Or maybe I could write a play in which none of the characters have gender, thereby setting that reality as a part of the world, the scene on which action can happen, rather than having the whole play be about gender. Do our notions of gender make us identify with one sex or the other and not with the human experience? Would there be less violence and misunderstanding between the genders if we were all forced to identify with a human norm? What would that look like? I feel that these are interesting and on-going questions.