I originally was going to do a posting giving my reviews of the plays I had seen while at vacation at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, but sometimes things do not go the way planned. I have spent the last couple days trying to digest something I had witnessed, and realized that I had to write down my thoughts.
They say art is something that provokes a reaction in you. Could be good, could not. And I saw two instances of this from the same play. And it is because of this my mind has been lost in thought.
On Saturday afternoon, I went, by myself, to see the play 'The Language Archive', one of the more modern plays being preformed. Written by Julia Cho, it's story is of a linguist who finds he cannot talk to his wife, an assistant who is willing to learn a new language to show her love for the linguist, and a couple who are two of the last speakers of their language. It deals with how difficult it can be for people to truly communicate, in spite of all the different ways we can.
For the most part it was an enjoyable production. The acting was top-notch, the directing excellent. The only problem I had was that I felt the script itself was lacking in spots. In particular a scene on a train and the epilogue. I know they both were really needed, but they both just didn't seem to flow as well to me as the rest of the play was. But the actors rose above this easily. And in two spots, the performance hit me harder than I expected.
The first scene that knocked me for a loop was in the second act. The research assistant, who has longed to become romantically involved with her partner, the lead male actor in the play, has been studying Esperanto specifically to tell him she loved him. Since his wife has left him, she feels it is time to let him know, and for the first time in the play you can see her confidence and happiness soar. But as she is racing to the lab to tell him how she feels, she runs past a newly opened bakery. Enticed by the smells, she goes in...
And see's his wife baking.
She leaves and heads back to the lab. She can still do it- she just doesn't have to let him know. But when he appears, she tells him to go check the bakery out, without telling him why. Even though she could have had all she has been looking for, she chose instead to due the right thing. And you could see her very being dying because of it. She gets no happy ending, instead she just... functions.
There are those of us who will never get the happy ending we so desire. We must make do with what we are given. Sure, there are chances, but the cost is too high. Would I love a wife and children? Yes- but the price I nearly paid for that dream would have most likely have taken everything. Have I let go things I desired more than anything, because it was the right thing to do? Yes, and I have felt like my being died as well. But we still continue; we still... function.
The second scene...
The second scene has two parts to it; the lie told and the truth revealed. Near the beginning of the play, when the main character and his wife are having a disagreement about being sad, she mentions that he has never cried. And one example she brings up is when his grandmother died. He brings up a plethora of reasons why he just didn't feel too bad when she passed: she was old and ready to go, people die all the time, she was senile, and he wasn't too close to her. He rationally explains it to his wife. It is later when the structure of his life, his routine is torn from him that we get to know the real reason why:
It turns out his grandmother was the last speaker of a language, and she tried to teach him it. Being a younger child, this (for him) unusual behavior scared him, and made him pull away, isolating her and letting the language die with her.
He realized it was the greatest mistake of his life.
Because of this major lapse in judgment, he ends up spending his life dedicated to cataloging and saving dying languages. Saving dying ones and yet never developing properly his own ability to communicate.
So we have a man who, for all the wrong reasons, makes a HORRENDOUS choice that can never be taken back or forgiven, and as a result dedicates his life trying to rectify and atone for it?
Watching this revelation and it hitting me had the unintentional effect of putting me in a mood that is normally prevalent in me during the Christmas season: moody, melancholy, quiet, and a bit dark. For that, I apologize to my family who was with me that weekend. I tried to shake it off, but that performance shook me to the core, even more so than the first scene.
So by the very definition I stated at the beginning of this post, this performance was art- at least to me. While it didn't elicit happy emotions, emotions it DID invoke. I have no intention of seeing this play again, once was enough. But I will never forget it, flawed as I thought it was, because of how it connected with me.
And I thank it for that...
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