Stories for the Folks Who Work the Cash Registers of Our Lives
Tom Loughlin over at A Poor Player has posted a emotionally true post about "Battling Ennui," expressing feelings that are all too common to people of his and my age, people who have devoted their lives to a particular something and now are looking for the next something to engage them. This, by the way, is the type of thing that youthful playwrights cannot write about empathically, having never experienced it. The young are still thrashing around with possibilities, while we are searching for meaning in what we've done and seeking the new thing that will enhance that meaning. Had Arthur Miller written Death of a Salesman at 54 instead of 34, there would have been a lot more sympathy for Willy and a lot less for Biff, I suspect. Salesman is a young man's play. Instead, at 49 Miller wrote After the Fall, a play that looks inward at his life. It is a middle-aged play.
At the end of his musings, Tom suddenly lifts out of his ennui, and writes something that is so clear, so true it struck deep in my heart:
They deserve better. Who's thinking about them?
At the end of his musings, Tom suddenly lifts out of his ennui, and writes something that is so clear, so true it struck deep in my heart:
If there is anything that is of interest to me these days, it seems to be the people I meet who have absolutely nothing to do with theatre or academia. The man doing my bathroom is a great guy and wonderful to talk to. He knows so many local people that I feel jealous. I ate lunch yesterday with a complete stranger at a local diner and had an interesting conversation about next to nothing. He was just a plainspoken, friendly guy. I always have these wonderful little conversations with Angela, the woman at the cash register in the student center where I get my bacon/egg/cheese sandwich some mornings. She talks about her vacation in Florida and how her husband is down there fixing up their small trailer, getting it ready for their retirement (retirement!). And Sue over in Cranston Dining Hall always asks about my son Eric, with whom she worked for a few months. They have their worries and concerns, I am sure, but at least they don’t appear to be trying to impress anyone.
I wish I knew how to create theatre for these people. I’m depressed that I don’t. They deserve better of me.These two paragraphs go to the center of what CRADLE is all about: trying to create theatre that has something to say to people who are just living life day to day. Not high-flying intellectuals, not artists, but just the folks who work the cash registers of our lives.
They deserve better. Who's thinking about them?
Comments
Just wanted to chime in on the Miller. I see your point re: After the Fall versus Death of a Salesman but After, while stunning is deeply flawed and practically unstageable, while The Price is where the real juice is. A play that astounds in real-time. It's everything Miller was trying to do in those earlier two without the flash and bang and bathos.
paulmullin.org
RVCBard -- Indeed, the MFA can take you away from the working class. Are you writing for them?
If that's true than I'd hate to imagine how depressing and fatalistic my plays will be at 50 years-old. Sheesh.
That aside, in order for there to be plays for working class people there would have to be working class playwrights. I actually think there are tons of playwrights writing plays for middle class audiences. You just won't ever see their plays because institutional theater is largely ignoring them in favor of rich folks and MFAs.