MeyerBros

i’m working on and off on my follow-up to “sadomasochism” which i wrote in the spring of 2005. “sadomashochism” was a fairly straight-forward one-act explosion of love and pain and repression - written in that good-old psychological realism sort of way. when we performed it last fall, i began playing with it - cutting this and that and turning into more of a theatrical event with music and dance and spectacle and the works. i realized that to really get the feeling i wanted would require a full-out physical collage a la chuck mee jr. now i’m working on that.

i read an interview with chuck mee the other day (thanks michelle and project muse) in which he talks about joseph chaikin and ‘random emotion theory’. chaikin’s theory as stated by chuck mee is:

I think there are things that everyone feels at least once every 15 minutes: embarrassment, for example, or humiliation, from no-where, without apparent cause; sudden gr ief , anxiety, dread, distraction — as though a spirit or monster of some kind had passed overhead; regret, impatience, hatred, and unreasoning rage. It’s not the same for everyone. Some people I know feel none of those things, but instead, every 15 minutes they feel vengeful, jealous — they are immobilized by envy, a longing to possess something or someone, greed, lust, a wish to put something in their mouths.

chuck writes out of this emotional theory rather than the freudian psychological aproach that needs each feeling to be explained by the feeling or action before it. chaikin also uses it as a director, having actors cycle randomly through emotions as a scene progresses. both claim the result is amazingly realistic and powerful.

i’m sure that has something to do with another theory i’ve been mulling over as i work. my theory is that ‘young love’ is a self-perpetuating myth along the lines of ‘redemptive violence’. just as violence becomes our only option because we expect it to be, young love dies out over time because we expect it to. once you believe in a theory of young love, there is no good reason to attempt anything else. love will slowly degrade as you watch it with complete certainty that ‘this is just the way things are’. aha - here’s the connection:

One of the strategies of my plays is to extend the boundar ies of what’s considered normal and acceptable for what it is for a human being to be.

i thought this quote was a little more direct than it is, now that i look back at it. in context, mee does seem to say he is expanding people’s notions of what ‘just is the way it is’ - and i think his aproach to psychology has everything to do with that. people are not controlled by what their father did to them as children. there are so many influences on one person that the resulting psychology is not one logical progression, but fractured and random splinters.

i also believe in the human potential to decide. this is claimed by nearly everyone, at the same time that they make excuse after excuse to remove responsibility. in the rehearsal room, where i (as director) am responsible for the process of producing a show - it is imperative that i set a complimentary mood in which that can happen. yes, i go in with the conscious decision to create an atmosphere of creativity, play, exploration and encouragement. even if i’m not feeling great. it’s not about dishonesty, i don’t have to change how i’m feeling or lie about it or anything. just encourage people. very simple.

what if all that is true for love? what does that look like?

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 30th, 2006 at 5:53 pm by eric and is filed under plays, theatre, playwriting, love, emotion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.