Sunday, April 23, 2006

Plays Personal and Political

( responding to Bus Stop by William Inge, Master Class by Terrence McNally, and a report on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday concerning Alan Bennett's play History Boys. Drama | News and History )

A Times essay around 1981 quoted a British critic deriding American "diaper dramas" which build up to the revelation, "Oh, that's why I'm so miserable! It's (choose one: Dad's, Mom's) fault." British plays, said the article, were all about "politics." That seemed odd to me, because I could think of two dozen British plays that never mentioned elections, -isms, or policies. What did "politics" mean in that context?

About ten years later, I heard American writer Robert Olen Butler respond to a question about his being a "political" writer. He, a Vietnam vet, had just published a set of stories about Vietnamese expatriates in Louisiana. He replied that everyone's politics are deep-seated, established long before they grow old enough to vote, and it was at that deep level, he said, where his stories take place. I read his book, then others, and began to understand what he meant.

This morning's interview with Alan Bennett about History Boys intrigued me. The snippets of dialogue that I heard were what I love: ideas diametrically opposed and elegantly expressed. Like characters in American dramas, these too, have a past, giving their convictions a personal context, and giving the clash of ideas an emotional power.

Now, last night I enjoyed Bus Stop at "Theatre in the Square" of Marietta, Georgia. The characters are all endearing, the conflicts keep us wondering what will happen next, the funny bits "land," and the resolution elicits "aww" and applause. There's a theme that emerges in dialogue, and the characters all exemplify different angles on that theme: love requires courage to let go of the self and to move into something new. Those who can't, we're told, are "left out in the cold." A wise character says something like that, and so does a foolish character, while two most colorful characters illustrate that theme. In the very last moment of the play, we're left with two peripheral characters who haven't had the courage to love, one trudging upstairs to her empty apartment (something she said she hated doing in her very first scene), and one literally left out in the cold.

This is an old-fashioned style of play, and it's what most people have in mind when they think of a "play." It keeps unity of time, place, and action, a realistic setting, and all the characters' pasts and dreams revealed in natural-sounding dialogue. Is it also one of those risible "diaper dramas?" Yes, in the sense that the focus is only large enough to see these characters confronting their own personal failings, which all stem from past experiences (the cowboy's an orphan, the singer's a youngest child escaping a neglect, the owner has been burned by a bad marriage). If Inge hadn't made it a comedy, I think it would have been pretty hard to bear, something like an old Hallmark Hall of Fame program.

Is the more recent Master Class different? Terrence McNally's previous hit Love! Valour! Courage! Compassion! was the old-fashioned sort of play: single setting, representative types, coming to terms (or not) with the present by hashing out their pasts. (Note: I've seen the movie adaptation only.) Master Class seems different: the star addresses the audience directly -- "No applause, please!" -- and sometimes retreats into her past, speaking both parts of dialogues with a couple of husbands, and sometimes recorded singing overlays the action. Other characters are little more than props for her monologue. Still, the overarching action is to learn enough about the diva's past to forgive her for what she has become.

These plays about characters' recovering their pasts can be diverting, touching, fun, as both examples here are. And the "political" plays are often built on the same structure. But after a "diaper drama," I always feel that I've been manipulated, whereas I always come out of one of those plays of ideas feeling on fire. One type of play takes you on an emotional trip; the other, in the words of my student Josh Cox responding at intermission to Shaw's Misalliance, makes you want to buy the script and underline every word. I wouldn't want to see Bus Stop again, good as it was: been there, don't need to go back. But I'd see Stoppard's Arcadia again any day, both to re-connect with the characters and to try again to capture the elusive truth in the dialectical dialogue.

Hmmm -- Miller's Death of a Salesman and All My Sons would both seem to be the quintessential diaper dramas, both climaxing with a child saying, "It was all Dad's fault, and Mom was just in denial, and that's why I'm a failure!" But both also have that broader political base. The latter play in fact indulges in direct Marxist propaganda near its end, and loses its power right then.

So there is a kind of "political" writing that goes much deeper than any pamphlet.

Plays Personal and Political | Category: Drama

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