Introduction
While doing odd jobs for a local director in Pittsburgh, I overheard a discussion about a recent production of Thornton Wilder’s Pullman Car Hiawatha. I had heard of this play and the author before, and the enthusiasm with which the two artists conversed about the rarely performed piece attracted my attention. I was determined to discover more about Wilder’s work beginning with Pullman Car.
The play turned out to be an entertaining read and the latter section seemed to have visual interest. I was intrigued and read a few forwards and essays by the author. Following, I read his most famous play, Our Town and his own ideas and writings about it. Thornton Wilder’s goals for the theatre connected directly with what I have learned at CMU about making theatre relevant for today’s audiences. His ideas also resonated with what I was studying about Gao Xingjian at that time. Having my hands on Wilder’s complete collection, I turned to his shorter plays. I was amazed by their poetic beauty and their visual appeal was like a rare dream. They sent my mind into the dark corners where cobwebs were accumulating. Inspired, I chose one of the most mythological pieces, And the Sea Shall Give Up Its Dead.
This piece, having never been staged, opens up an entire world of possibilities. When I read through the three pages, I admire Wilder’s facility with language. The words are beautiful and engaging. I am completely free to think of it as an artistic endeavor and propel it beyond the boundaries of traditional stage design. Wilder originally considered titling the collection of plays in which And the Sea Shall Give Up Its Dead resides, Three Minute Plays for Three Persons. In this three-page short, Judgment Day has arrived and three bodies floating in the North Atlantic come together to remember their individual identities before they ascend, panic-stricken, into the great oblivion. It is a piece rife with stunning images and dramatic philosophical speculation on personal identity and its consequences after death. How can I connect these intense themes to the search for a new theatre that both Wilder and Gao were a part of?
My brainstorming process took several months where I just let the ideas flow in and out while I was thinking about or working on something else. And the Sea Shall Give Up Its Dead deals with death, Purgatory, and Judgment Day (as categorized by the Christian religion). How does our culture associate with these ideas? Humans have dealt with life transitions since the beginning using mythology and ritual to soothe and make sense of the passages. There are a myriad of rituals and myths surrounding the death bed of an individual and also those whose purpose it is to ease the grieving of those left behind. The last rites given to Catholics are a familiar ritual for those who are actually going through the transition that is dying. Funerals are the ceremonies those left behind are most familiar with in western culture. They may or may not be religious events which incorporate various family traditions.
Performance has its origins in ritual and mythology. First, performances were a part of ritual and ceremony. Then performance separated from ritual and became its own distinct art. The first plays were religious stories and later became stories about humans, real and fiction. In the origins of theatre, we can find and bring to the front, important relationships between ritual and mythology and modern culture.
What could this mean for my production? How can I make this analytical interpretation accessible to the audience? And the Sea Shall Give Up Its Dead lends itself beautifully to visual interpretation, but unless it is relevant, it has done nothing to advance the cause for theatre. How can I create a performance that visually puts this piece in context?
A theatre group I recently experienced worked its way into my head. What I loved most about Teatro de los Sentidos was the attention given to the individual. The audience was always a group of one. I felt extremely special and important, as if this play had something to teach me. I paid careful attention to every part, every place, and every person I saw. I was completely entertained and at the same time amazed by the creativity of their art.
The individual attention and immediate push and pull of emotions fell right into place with my ideas for And the Sea Shall Give Up Its Dead. In order to make Thornton Wilder’s sea of souls more accessible to the audience, they need to be a part of the sea, one of the hundreds of thousands of millions of billions of souls floating in this universal ocean. If they experience a death, the audience will be free to connect with and relate themselves to the dead souls. The conversation about the loss of individual identity will expand to become a conversation about the audience and their lives.
Wilder’s original three pages now have a purpose above and beyond themselves. I do not want to traumatize the audience, but this play already states that it is not for everyone. With the new, exciting concept of directly involving the audience, I moved on to imagining the space for this piece. I kept thinking of it happening in whatever spaces were available, so that it could go anywhere. This kind of thinking quickly left me in a world swimming with too many possibilities to create something cohesive. I needed to come up with the ideal space. After that, I could worry about making it work anywhere.
The play turned out to be an entertaining read and the latter section seemed to have visual interest. I was intrigued and read a few forwards and essays by the author. Following, I read his most famous play, Our Town and his own ideas and writings about it. Thornton Wilder’s goals for the theatre connected directly with what I have learned at CMU about making theatre relevant for today’s audiences. His ideas also resonated with what I was studying about Gao Xingjian at that time. Having my hands on Wilder’s complete collection, I turned to his shorter plays. I was amazed by their poetic beauty and their visual appeal was like a rare dream. They sent my mind into the dark corners where cobwebs were accumulating. Inspired, I chose one of the most mythological pieces, And the Sea Shall Give Up Its Dead.
This piece, having never been staged, opens up an entire world of possibilities. When I read through the three pages, I admire Wilder’s facility with language. The words are beautiful and engaging. I am completely free to think of it as an artistic endeavor and propel it beyond the boundaries of traditional stage design. Wilder originally considered titling the collection of plays in which And the Sea Shall Give Up Its Dead resides, Three Minute Plays for Three Persons. In this three-page short, Judgment Day has arrived and three bodies floating in the North Atlantic come together to remember their individual identities before they ascend, panic-stricken, into the great oblivion. It is a piece rife with stunning images and dramatic philosophical speculation on personal identity and its consequences after death. How can I connect these intense themes to the search for a new theatre that both Wilder and Gao were a part of?
My brainstorming process took several months where I just let the ideas flow in and out while I was thinking about or working on something else. And the Sea Shall Give Up Its Dead deals with death, Purgatory, and Judgment Day (as categorized by the Christian religion). How does our culture associate with these ideas? Humans have dealt with life transitions since the beginning using mythology and ritual to soothe and make sense of the passages. There are a myriad of rituals and myths surrounding the death bed of an individual and also those whose purpose it is to ease the grieving of those left behind. The last rites given to Catholics are a familiar ritual for those who are actually going through the transition that is dying. Funerals are the ceremonies those left behind are most familiar with in western culture. They may or may not be religious events which incorporate various family traditions.
Performance has its origins in ritual and mythology. First, performances were a part of ritual and ceremony. Then performance separated from ritual and became its own distinct art. The first plays were religious stories and later became stories about humans, real and fiction. In the origins of theatre, we can find and bring to the front, important relationships between ritual and mythology and modern culture.
What could this mean for my production? How can I make this analytical interpretation accessible to the audience? And the Sea Shall Give Up Its Dead lends itself beautifully to visual interpretation, but unless it is relevant, it has done nothing to advance the cause for theatre. How can I create a performance that visually puts this piece in context?
A theatre group I recently experienced worked its way into my head. What I loved most about Teatro de los Sentidos was the attention given to the individual. The audience was always a group of one. I felt extremely special and important, as if this play had something to teach me. I paid careful attention to every part, every place, and every person I saw. I was completely entertained and at the same time amazed by the creativity of their art.
The individual attention and immediate push and pull of emotions fell right into place with my ideas for And the Sea Shall Give Up Its Dead. In order to make Thornton Wilder’s sea of souls more accessible to the audience, they need to be a part of the sea, one of the hundreds of thousands of millions of billions of souls floating in this universal ocean. If they experience a death, the audience will be free to connect with and relate themselves to the dead souls. The conversation about the loss of individual identity will expand to become a conversation about the audience and their lives.
Wilder’s original three pages now have a purpose above and beyond themselves. I do not want to traumatize the audience, but this play already states that it is not for everyone. With the new, exciting concept of directly involving the audience, I moved on to imagining the space for this piece. I kept thinking of it happening in whatever spaces were available, so that it could go anywhere. This kind of thinking quickly left me in a world swimming with too many possibilities to create something cohesive. I needed to come up with the ideal space. After that, I could worry about making it work anywhere.