Plays and "talk back"

We saw a staged reading of a most interesting play tonight, written by an Israeli woman, about Hannah Arendt, "The Banality of Evil." Afterwards there was a "talk back" but I'm not a fan of the exercise, not as a playwright, not as an audience member. As a playwright, it's useful when "entertainment" is the goal, plays written outside-in, but for serious work, inside-out work, "talk back" is not only useless but distracting. Private truth is never revealed through consensus, although differing opinions sometimes can trigger new thought. It's just an inefficient way to get at it and nearly as useful as the rehearsal process itself, which with good actors and a good director is all the collaboration a playwright needs.

I had fun with the "talk back" form by putting it in The Half-Life Conspiracy:

(BLACKOUT.)

(A pause. The STAGE AND HOUSE LIGHTS COME UP together. All the actors, as well as JOE, CYNTHIA and OLSON, are sitting casually about the set.)

JOE: (to audience) Any other questions?

(A beat.)

BILL: (responding to question) Let me tackle that one. That's something that went through my mind as well. He blows his wife away — I mean, I do — because, you know, she's been cheating on me — with a woman, no less. She's gay, and this is real, real hard for me to take.
CYNTHIA: He believes she's gay, is the point.
JOE: In the back row . . .?

(A beat.)

ANN: Oh, maybe I've gone to bed with her once. I really haven't come out or anything. I'm in a process of deep personal change. Obviously I've been influenced by Heather, and by the courses I've been taking. But suddenly the unthinkable has happened, it may really be the end of the world — the most existential moment in human history, as it's put — and obviously I have to go through changes quicker than I would otherwise.
JOE: Your question, sir?

(A beat.)

OLSON: I don't know how to respond to that. I don't think of it as a political play. I think it's very realistic, that it can literally happen that way. I think the end of the Cold War makes for a more dangerous world, not a safer one, because now enemies are more invisible. It's nothing I can prove. It's just how I feel about things. There's no accounting for taste.
CYNTHIA: The context is what's important, like Ann said. What's happening outside makes the rules of ordinary behavior irrelevant. Everybody is acting through a crisis. OLSON: I don't think you need any special context to explain their behavior. The context is on the front page of the newspaper every day. The world's as dangerous as ever — every day, every minute. We live on borrowed time.
JOE: The woman in the corner?

(A beat.)

OLSON: Sure, I'll answer that. I'm not gay. Why should it make a difference?
JOE: The lady in the hat . . .

(A beat.)

OLSON: I hear you — you don't like the "f-word." Again, what can I say? That's the way people talk.
JOE: Go ahead, ma'am.

(A beat.)

OLSON: But consider my point of view. I mean, here's a play set in a nuclear crisis, the beginning of a nuclear war, that tries to speak to the dynamics of why such things happen, and you're worried about a very popular if maligned little four-letter word pronounced "fuck." What the hell kind of hierarchy of obscenity is that, lady?
CYNTHIA: Robert, I think she's only suggesting that you could have made your point without using — the "f-word."
ANN: Fuck. Are we all afraid to say fuck here?
OLSON: (to Ann) Thank you. (To the audience) The point is: war is more obscene than saying "fuck." But here we are . . .
JOE: (to woman in audience) Go on.

(A beat.)

OLSON: I think that's a rationalization. If you don't like the play, fine, but don't give me that crap about f-words and melodrama and contrived situations. You dislike the play for the same reason you dislike turnips or horseradish or oral sex or whatever the hell it is you dislike. It's a matter of taste, not of reason, it's—
JOE: The gentleman in front . . .
OLSON: Wait, I'm not done yet! This is important. Reason isn't calling the shots out there. Anything can happen out there. Your so-called reason, looking at the world for motivations and causes, builds an edifice that hides what's really happening. It's pretty hairy out there, you know? I mean, we're going to end up blowing up the planet over an obsolete myth!
JOE: The gentleman in front . . .

(A beat.)

WILLOW: My character is definitely gay and radical. How would Heather make sense otherwise?
OLSON: She doesn't have to be gay and radical to make sense. Sense of what? Heather could be a conservative heterosexual and still pull off something crazy like that. Are you telling me you've never met a weird conservative heterosexual? The point is, all these labels and categories don't work. They hide what's really going on. People are more mind-boggling than we give them credit for. We fall victim to our own categories. CYNTHIA: The masculine style that's brought up in the play — is this one of the things we fall victim to?
OLSON: Of course. But, hell, that's just a part of it. We fall victim to our mode of thinking rationally. We fall victim to language itself. You know, in Zen, language isn't supposed to say anything. In Zen, language is a bulldozer one uses to push all the garbage out of the way. Reality's between the lines, in the silence.
BILL: I was going to say something, but . . . .
OLSON: The language is insufficient to express the feeling.
BILL: You must love being a writer!
JOE: Anyone else?
OLSON: One more thing, and I'll shut up. Sure, we want answers. But what's to be done out there? Kierkegaard said that there are two ways: to suffer; or to be a professor of the fact that someone else suffers. In my humble opinion, we've got too many fucking professors. Sorry for the f-word, lady.

(He quickly exits as Joe tries to cover with:)

JOE: I'd like to thank Robert Olson for . . . being with us tonight . . . .

(Joe applauds, the others join in, as lights come down to BLACKOUT.)

What a great quotation from Kierkegaard! There are two ways: to suffer; or to be a professor of the fact that someone else suffers.