Hi,

I’ve loved reading entries from our friends with Frontier College. Please keep it coming.

I’m in Toronto. I was in a play called ‘Oh the Humanity and Other Good Intentions.’ The production was a sort of KTS ‘best of’ experience. The cast and crew consisted exclusively of King’s alumni and affiliates - even our high-school aged stage-manager will be FYP this fall. Co-directors were Mitch Cushman and Simon Bloom. Mitch’s triplet-sister Chloe whose artwork was featured on the cover of The Watch for almost two years straight did the graphics for our promotional post-cards. It was a six-person cast: Alex Derry played the Coach and in real life he played Andrew Morris before any of us went to King’s. I played the Spokeswoman and in real life I am easily distracted, which is why this blog entry is late. A girl called Amy who is not from King’s but dates Mitch so that counts had her scene with Sebastian Heinz who now goes to NTS but used to go to King’s. Maddie Cohen who directed Eurydice had a scene with Paul Beer who did the humanities program at Concordia and blended in perfectly. The point is that even though we were working in a studio at Ryerson University, the experience was familiar: we could have been rehearsing in the Pit, it could have been the middle of a Maritime winter.

Unfortunately, because the play consists of four distinct scenes that have no narrative connection, there was very little reason for us to rehearse together. This means that I spent most of my time alone with Simon, who directed two scenes while Mitch directed the other two. The play is dialogue heavy and demands almost no movement. Because of time constraints, we did none of the theatre play and game-style rehearsing that I like doing. Instead, we launched right into script analysis and runs. Because there was so little movement, Simon spent the majority of the time directing my line-deliveries. My section of the play runs about ten to fifteen minutes long and I was given a direction for absolutely every sentence. As you can imagine, this was often bothersome. Simon and I got quite good at telling each other to fuck off without using those or any words: he would tell me how much he appreciated my pregnant sighs, I would ask if I could go get a drink of water. But for the most part we got along and I appreciate the direction he gave me. Acting means letting people tell you what to do sometimes: that is part of collaboration, but I’m usually too stubborn to submit to it.

Anyway, about the play: it is by Will Eno, a New York playwright who was nominated for a Pulitzer some years back. Some reviewer somewhere called him Samuel Beckett for the Jon Stewart generation. Our production was the first time that “Oh the Humanity” was ever performed in Canada. The play actually consists of four (five actually, but we only performed four) monologue-length plays. Each one is poignant and funny. The writing is fantastic and dense, much more like prose than drama. I play the spokeswoman for an airline company reporting that a plane has crashed and that there are no survivors. In order to get this point across, however, I compare the passengers’ death to the death of my father, I remind the audience that time is the only thing that stands between them and nothingness, and finally try to convince them that they should regard the death of their loved ones with awe and wonder, that they should “feel giddy” that the “plane stayed up as long as it did.”

I like Will Eno’s writing but I like Will Eno the Man because he is alive, not too famous, and wants to be in contact with everyone who performs his plays. In an email to Mitch, he gave crucial insight into his work: “what unites [the disparate plays] is that all the characters more or less charge straight into the almost-terror of a particular moment, keep going, and then find something beautiful or worth affirming, late in the charge. I think there's also a movement from the inside to the outside, that exists in all the plays.”

Though there is no explicit link between them, the plays are correlated by these themes: empathy, humanity, and mortality. But I mean, aren’t these the themes of any good piece of writing? Of any good anything?

Here are some lines from the play:

“We’ll try to move forward, with time, taking hard comfort in the fact that, with or without us, time is moving forward, too”

“I don’t have any patience for things that take a long time. Although, it should be said, I’m usually very deeply juts waiting. Bugs fly into my mouth sometimes, because I’m just standing there, full of want, full of open-mouthed wonder. I stay like that long enough to give them time to fly out, because, although unknowing, I am not unkind.”

And for all you Levinas fans: “the human face is a call for help”

What I like best about my monologue is that it remains ambiguous whether or not my character is being callous or kind. I make an attempt to relate to the bereaved, while simultaneously acknowledging that it is impossible to experience someone else’s trauma. After claiming to understand their sorrow and confusion, I ask the audience whether “these things, or any sad things can ever even be compared.” Then add: “Is it insulting to you if I think they can.” This theme is more extensively taken up in the final scene of the play. Maddie and Paul point a camera at the audience and force them to participate in the recreation of a photograph they have never seen. Paul’s character asks the audience to really imagine “a serious day or a night, in someone else’s life”: “Cuts and scratches, actual dirty socks; serious doubts and homesickness. Someone else’s. A splinter, an unheld hand. A war. Feel that. Look at a picture and feel that.”

As I continue to think about what Paul’s character has asked the audience to do, the more I realize that I don’t know what empathy means. Is the purpose of theatre is to have the audience empathize with the actor on stage, and with humans more generally? Later in the same scene Paul says off-handedly that it is “easy to feel sorry for people in a photograph, to think you understand. It’s easy to look at a picture, wince, keep looking, and say you can’t look anymore.” He is referring to photography specifically but I think this is true of literature, theatre and any form of representational art, since these forms have traditionally been used to inspire a human connection with the viewer. I don’t know if the same can be said of music or more abstract forms of visual art.

I don’t know…I like empathy. I like feeling it and I like thinking that there is a way for us to, I don’t know, bump singular human experiences (or whatever), to touch and move each other. Is this fantasy? I don’t know. Is this important? If I want to make a career of theatre then yes, I think it is.

What do you all think?

Anyway, in terms of the actual performances, things went pretty well. The house was very small (about 50 people) and we had five very full nights. In keeping with the tradition of KTS shows, the audience consisted mostly of King’s alumni and parents who paid to watch because they are duty-bound and “very proud of us”. That’s okay, that’s nice. I have no problems with that familiar audience. They’re all I’ve ever known and they are very supportive. The show ran smoother every night. We did not use very many technical tricks but it took us a while to get things figured out. Also, everyone had to adjust to the audience’s sense of humor, which changed every night. The play is funny, but dark. Its hard to know what people will laugh at. Eno is a master of juxtaposition: he turns the script in an instant, breaking dramatic tension with slapstick comedy and vice-versa. I took a page from Paul’s book and tried to play both comedic and dramatic moments with the same sincerity and almost-detachment. I wanted to remain deadpan and earnest while the audience had a good laugh at humanity’s expense.

The best line in the play happens at the end. Paul’s character stares into the audience and says: “Be more tragic. More forgiving. More unknowing. More mortal. Try to be more mortal. As much as you can stand.” I think the line is so touching, but the audience lost their shit every night. After that, Maddie says “perfect” and the camera flashes and she has captured the audience on camera.

In this last scene, the audience and the stage are equally lit and the final image of the show is one in which actors and viewers are equal participants. The space we were performing in was so small that there was no fourth wall to break. Had there been, we would have broken it.

Anyway, I think I am going to ‘pursue’ theatre for a while. Don’t ask me what that means. Step one is to familiarize myself with all the greatest plays ever written. As with anything, you want to know the tradition that you are stepping into, elongating and almost, but never deviating from. So I will be reading a lot of plays. I will be compiling a list and then hopefully reading a play a day. Hopefully reading a play a day with friends. So when I come back to Halifax (tomorrow) I will have some plays, and whoever is willing and around can come to read a play every day.

See you soon, best of luck, and all my love, ELLA