Adaptable

I didn't know what to expect when beginning to read Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice, but I certainly did not expect it to be what it was.

I tend to avoid surreal plays and arts. I usually adhere to as much realism as I can, whether I am writing a story or play, or drawing a picture. I think that capturing a stylized representation of reality can enhance a play. However, while this play did not follow reality, I found it fascinating and really wanted to watch it. The surrealism fits with the story so well, and it's lack of reality is so consistent, that it could actually work (I felt a bit like this about Skin of Our Teeth also, which might be the only other truly surreal play I've seen). The use of the surreal in Eurydice made me think about the concepts surrounding it, especially death, music, and love. The surreal actions of the characters also showed their experiences of these emotions and events is such a new way, that parts might be more powerful than watching their realistic counterparts. An example is Orpheus trying to send Eurydice the Complete Works of Shakespeare by tying a string around it and sending it through the ground. It shows his desperation, love, uncertainty all at once, in an image that is certainly not conventional.

One of the moments that struck me the most was Orpheus's second attempt at his first letter for Eurydice. The entire scene stands thus:

ORPHEUS: Dear Eurydice,
I miss you. No--that's not nearly enough.
he crumples up the letter. He writes a new letter. He thinks. He writes:
ORPHEUS: Dear Eurydice,
a pause. Music. He conducts.
Love, Orpheus
he drops the letter as though through a mail slot

I could just feel that. The thought of sending all of the emotion he must have been experiencing in a letter, through music, is a brilliant idea for the stage. If performed right, I could see this being a favorite scene.

Beyond the surrealism, I was also struck by the amount of time allotted to action without any dialogue. I could see how this could make the audience uncomfortable at first (silence on stage often does). However, I think that the play between silence, words, and music could be what would make the performance strong. I was wondering if they have an score or recording of the music for those who stage the play. I'd love to hear the intended music for some of these parts. However, the interpretation could change so much with what music and sounds are used. It's such an interesting concept to think about.

Ruhl's Eurydice as an adaptation shows many neat points as well. The idea of looking into the "other" in a story has always been a great idea to me. Seeing what the side character, the villain, or even another main character, is really thinking or doing when they are no accounted for by the scrip or story can show so many facets of the same story in a revealing way. Even if it is not exactly aligned with the original, the ideas presented can spark new ideas for both versions. Using what portions fit with her new interpretation, Ruhl can keep whichever parts of the original idea best say what she wants to say. An adaptation can create a new meaning that can compliment or contradict the first work, but will always ad another depth to it.

Between You and Me: Dialogue

First lesson: Monologues pull out of plays much easier than dialogue does. Dialogue really builds on itself. In normal conversation or in theater, the words, concepts, and meanings keep popping up later, either in the same conversation, or at a different time. Dialogue tends to rely on past experience and knowledge. In theater, though, dialogue needs to portray that experience and knowledge that is important for the audience to know. So, it can be difficult to follow a scene out of context.

Having said that, there is still a lot to learn from dialogue scenes, even if they are pulled out of their respective plays. In all of them, the dialogue does build off of the previous lines. It seems incredibly basic, but one of the most important things in dialogue seems to be believability. The actor needs to say something that can convince the audience that it would actually be said in reply to the previous line (or after a thought process by the character, even if we don't hear their train of thought). Whether or not the response would actually happen is not as important as the audience's perception that it would.

Besides actually seeming believable within the context of the play, (which will vary drastically from Shakespeare to Arthur Miller) dialogue needs to maintain interest and achieve a purpose, usually forwarding plot or character. In many of the snippets I read, much of the dialogue would pass fairly quickly, or at least with short sentences between people, until a more significant moment of revelation or plot took place. Then a single character would get a more developed line. This does follow a logical form of conversation: the participants chat around until one of them finds something more important or in depth to say. Similarly, in the script, the characters can have less impactful conversation (which ideally still builds character or plot) that links more key points.

As important as these key points are, at times it is more important that the characters know what they are talking about than that the audience know right out. An example from The Shape of Things (I know that's in the reading for Thursday, but I read it and it has the perfect example) shows the effect of keeping the audience guessing:

EVELYN: And I whispered back to you, I said...
ADAM: I remember.
EVELYN: I meant that. I did.
ADAM: Yeah?
EVELYN: Yes.
ADAM: ...oh.

In this exchange, the characters know exactly what they are talking about. It doesn't seem like they are referring to something that the audience would know about from earlier in the play, so if this is the case, then the audience is left to determine the meaning of their exchange, which could be influenced by the actor's interpretations as well (this still works for the single scene out of context, even if this is referenced explicitly earlier in the full play). Angels in America also uses a similar technique for the majority of the first scene in the excerpt. Harper has a question for Joe, but neither acknowledge what that question is until the last few lines of the scene, drawing the tension out while still conveying character and plot.

So, it boils down to believability within the aspect of the play, character, and plot. And voice and rhythm and diction and comprehensibility and... No pressure.

Electra

Electra: a name many recognize from Ancient Greek theater (or pop culture movies). This weekend I got to watch Sophocles's Electra, adapted by Frank McGuinness, performed by the Seattle Shakespeare Company.

The first thing apparent about the script, even before the performance starts, is that it has been translated and adapted from the original Ancient Greek. However, as the script and performance did not call attention to this fact (it did not sound cumbersome or foreign), I will not spend time on this.

The monologue-like sectioning of portions of the play did link it to the monologues we're doing in class. In this case, the author often used monologues to "stage" events that happened in the past, or off-stage. While some of these are fairly "natural" occurrences for the characters (such as the messenger explaining Orestes supposed death), others are more abstract situations, for lack of a better term. Many of Electra's grief monologues replace dialogue she might have had with characters other than the Greek chorus. In this genre, though, the combination of slightly stylized speech in both monologues and chorus response/dialogue balanced in the performance. The script was not supposed to focus on the realism, but on a slightly surreal interpretation of events.

Perhaps because of this stylized aspect of Greek theater, the scripts that I've read, and likely Electra as well, have very little in the way of staging or performance notes. In this case, much of the impact of the play comes from the staging and interpretation rather than the script itself. The script sets the outline, and the director and actors must fill in the rest of the picture.

This performance filled in the outlines amazingly. The use of silence, contrast in voice, sudden shrieks (only one or two, but they were precisely effective), overlap of dialogue, and character arc and change brought the play to life in a way that Greek theater never really did for me when reading a script.

As for the arc of emotions in the script and performance: it was dense. The tagline the the Theater Company uses sums up this idea. "Filled with 90-minutes of raw emotions, this startling family tragedy will leave you shocked, dazed, and breathless for more." I don't know about the "breathless for more" part, as my brain definitely needed some time to recuperate. Conventionally, a writer breaks up an emotionally intense scene so the audience has time to process the tragedy, and then they are ready to process another tragedy should it occur. Electra very rarely allows for an emotional break. It isn't meant to, but the wall of grief can get in the way of an audience's empathy with the characters.

This is not to say that the impact of the play did not work. It had me teary eyed at at least one point, but the over all impact of the key moments might have been stronger if the script allowed for an emotional break (or a switch in emotions) more often. There was one point that some of the audience laughed at a line that, in most plays, would probably not have been considered comic. However, with the irony of the situation on stage, and the need to release that emotional build up in some way, the audience took the best opportunity they could find.

Mostly, playing off of the full range of emotions rather than draining the audience on tragedy works best in a play. However in the occasional play, like Electra, that emotional drain is, in part, the point they want to make.