The Old Maid by Zoe Atkins (1935)

Summary:  After returning home from a perilous bout down South with a "lung disease", Charlotte Lovell opens a daycare to care for the children of the working class.  Her family treats this as folly that she will give up when she gets married.  However, when she becomes engaged and states that she will not give up her work, her engagement is broken.  Charlotte's ulterior motive for having the daycare is the ability to have daily interactions with a little girl named Clementina--an orphan who is now being raised by "negroes."

Charlotte eventually reveals to her sister Delia that the "lung disease" was actually a pregnancy that resulted in Clementina.  When the daycare is eventually closed, Delia agrees to adopt Tina so that she will have an easier life, witnessed by Charlotte.  As Tina grows, she views her "aunt" (who is actually her mother) as an Old Maid and is brutally rude to her at every opportunity.  On the eve of her wedding, Delia tells Tina that she needs to be nicer to her aunt because she has always loved her "like a mother."

Thoughts:  In a departure from playwright mantra "show-don't-tell", Charlotte's humanity and martyrdom is revealed in stories of the choices she has made, rather than realistic depictions of these conflicts.  Though Charlotte gives up "everything" for Clementina, the child's actions toddlerhood to adolescence that indicate that she feels more connected to Delia.  While Charlotte has made herself a martyr, she is never "rewarded" for the choices that she has made and becomes more depressed and bitter as the play progresses.  Because people are consistently rude to Charlotte, it sometimes seems that she spends the entirety of the play (and her life) karmically atoning for having premarital sex.

'Night Mother by Marsha Norman (1983)

Summary:  Jessie is planning to commit suicide and tells her mother just hours before she plans to do it.  The play chronicles their subsequent night in one continuous scene.  True character traits are revealed and words left unspoken for decades are finally uttered.

Thoughts:  No play in the Project thus far has made me as uncomfortable as this one.  Perhaps because I was familiar with the story before reading it, I knew that when Jessie promised suicide that this was a promise she would fulfill.

Adding to my discomfort was the fact that, for 18 years, I lived in a house with two women--my mother and grandmother.  They have interactions that mirror Marsha Norman's prologue note, "There is a shorthand to the talk and a sense of routine comfort to the way they relate to each other physically.  Naturally, there are also routine aggravations" (4). 

The play is a fifty-eight page scene with no intermission.  The New York Times blurb on the back of the Dramatists acting edition simply states, "...a shattering evening..."  I agree.  And know that it is not something I ever want to spend an evening witnessing.

How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel (1998)

Summary:  Over the course of thirty years, Lil Bit's relationship with her uncle-by-marriage Peck is explored.  He teaches her to drive, takes her out drinking for the first time and eventually visits her at college.  He begins touching her inappropriately before she can reach the pedals of his car (presumably age 11), and their last meeting (when she is in college) ends in a vague sexual experience and a proposal.  She states that she will not marry him, nor will she be home for Christmas.  She never sees him again. 

 

Thoughts:  Though the summary reflects a relatively straightforward plot, Vogel uses a number of techniques to ensure that style takes center stage in this play.  Lil' Bit is played by one actress, age flexible but likely in her 30s (Mary-Louise Parker in the original Broadway cast).  However, she morphs in age back to eleven and the action of the narrative is aided by individual characters named Male Greek Chorus, Female Greek Chorus, Teenager Greek Chorus, each played by an individual actor.

 

While the incest is unquestionable, the play raises questions about degrees of guilt and innocence (Vogel describes "Peck--attractive man in his 40s.  Despite a few problems, he should be played by an actor one might cast in the role of Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird.")  Further complicating the play, Lil' Bit sometimes directly invites Peck's touch.

 

Like Vogel's The Long Christmas Ride Home, the style of the play enables her to write a fairly straightforward dysfunctional family drama in a very unique and dynamic way.

 

Miss Lulu Bett by Zona Gale (1921)

Summary:  Lulu is basically a slave for her sister and brother-in-law Dwight, who agree to let her stay in their home if she cooks for them, provides childcare and looks after their aging mother.  However, when Dwight's brother Ninian comes to town, he displays an interest in Miss Lulu, whisks her away and marries her immediately.  A few weeks later, Lulu dejectedly returns "home", stating that Ninian  revealed that he had another wife somewhere that may or may not be dead.

Dwight is cruel to Lulu about the situation until Ninian eventually returns, proves his first wife's death and lives happily ever after with Lulu...once again.

Thoughts:  1918's Why Marry (written by a man) contained powerful feminist statements about the roles of women in marriage.  Because it was the first recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, I wondered if it would set an unexpected (for me) socially progressive tone for subsequent winners.  Miss Lulu Bett (written by a woman) answers the question with a resounding, "No!"  Once Lulu meets Ninian, she is completely dependent upon him for her happiness and salvation from a bad situation, even though her own romantic feelings toward him are never fully explored.  The conflicts of the play are interesting, but the return of Ninian resulting in immediate conclusion is disappointing.

Topdog/Underdog by Suzan Lori-Parks (2002)

Summary:  Lincoln and Booth are adult brothers whose parents named them as a joke and later abandoned them when they were 16 and 11, respectively.  Younger brother Booth has recently developed an affinity for three-card monty, a game accompanied by a painful history for Lincoln.  While Booth is attempting to make money on the street, Lincoln holds a job as an Abraham Lincoln impersonator at an arcade.  At work, he sits in a chair (in whiteface) and gets "shot" by children on field trips and those seeking interesting entertainment.

Throughout the play, Booth attempts to get Lincoln to play three-card with him--arguing that they could go into business together and be wildly successful.  As the play progresses, the brothers laugh and fight and laugh and fight--until Booth reveals that he has killed his girlfriend and then kills his brother.

Thoughts:  I read this play shortly after reading some of Parks' other work (Fucking A, In the Blood, Venus) and it is evident that there are themes and characters that continue to reappear in her work.  In all four of these plays, Parks seems to argue that, whether we like it or not, our relationships with our families are significant and binding.  Even when her characters do everything in their power to break these bonds (including murder), they still remain.

The play also examines the the imperfection of memory--individuals in the same household remembering things in vastly different ways.  Although Booth is the younger brother, he saw his mother leave and was given the task of taking care of Lincoln--though he was certainly not old enough for this kind of responsibility.

"People are funny about they Lincoln shit.  Its historical.  People like they historical shit in a certain way.  They like it to unfold the way they folded it up.  Neatly like a book.  Not raggedy and bloody and screaming." 

-Topdog/Underdog, Scene 3  

 

Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley (1981)

Summary:  The Magrath sisters have returned to their family home after youngest sister Babe has been arrested for shooting her husband.  They revisit old arguments (and old boyfriends) and seem to argue that, though we age and move apart, the way we interact with our relatives never really changes.

Thoughts:  Another play about a family that fights, but also loves each other very much.  While the catalyst for the reunion (Babe's newly minted murderous tendencies) is certainly flashy, the interactions of the Magrath sisters are fairly banal.  Additionally, we can't hate Babe too much because her husband had been abusing her for years.  However, additional dramatic tension is added by the fact that Babe has been having an affair with a fifteen year-old black boy (and there are pictures!  Scandalous!)  Though the murder and subsequent meetings with the lawyer are certainly important to the advancement of the plot, this play is fundamentally about the relationship between sisters.  It seems obvious from the outset that Babe is not going to spend any time in jail, but worrying about it gives the sisters something to do besides fight with each other.

The Heidi Chronicles by Wendy Wasserstein (1989)

Summary:  The play follows Heidi over the course of 30 years--from her time in high school to her successful career as an art historian.  Several characters play varying degrees in importance in her life over the years, both romantically and not.  Sometimes Heidi is happy, sometimes she is not, but it seems that she is never fully satisfied.

Thoughts:  I understand why this play is important--especially for female audiences in the late eighties.  Many of the scenes chronicle Heidi's experiences with feminism--"rap sessions" conspicuously set in liberal university towns (Ann Arbor) and protests about the absence of female artists on the walls of prestigious galleries.  Heidi's "one that got away" ends up unhappy in his marriage (thus kissing her on his wedding day, obviously) and her "maybe it could work" eventually comes out to her.  The play seems to ultimately state that though women can be "liberated", they can't have it all.  The last scene of the play reveals Heidi with her adopted baby; but despite her successful career, good group of friends and new baby...she still seems to feel incomplete without a man.  I know that this play is often referenced in discussions about feminism in drama, but I found it to be largely anti-feminist.

Interestingly, it contained the first reference to AIDS that I have encountered thus far in the project.  Though the word AIDS is never mentioned, Peter has a monologue about the difficulty of attending multiple New York City funerals with the same cause of death.

Harvey by Mary Chase (1945)

Summary:  Veta Dowd attempts to have her brother Elwood committed because he has an “imaginary friend” named Harvey—a rabbit who stands at over six feet tall.  Antics ensue involving Mrs. Dowd’s involuntary accidental committal to the asylum.  Ultimately, the head psychiatrist (Dr. Chumley) begins to see Harvey as well. 

Thoughts:  Because I have seen the 1950 film, Elwood’s lines echoed in my head in the voice of Jimmy Stewart—not an all-together unpleasant reading experience.   Somehow, the cruelty of humans towards each other seemed much more apparent in this play than in the film, perhaps due to the unlikeable self-obsessed character of young Myrtle (Elwood’s niece).

In their brief introduction, Gassner/Barnes reveal that, in the staging of the play, the choice to make Harvey invisible was simply because the director couldn’t figure out how to put a six-foot rabbit on stage without looking ridiculous.

Alison's House by Susan Glaspell (1931)

Summary:  On the last night of the 1800s (December 31, 1899), a family has gathered to pack up their family estate, where only ailing Aunt Agatha currently resides.  Agatha will move in with her brother (male protagonist Mr. Stanhope) and the home will likely be sold to a couple who will transform it into a summer boarding house.  Aunt Alison is the unseen title character of this play--a poet of national acclaim who died many years ago.  Regardless, she is still the main topic of conversation in the house, especially after a reporter from Chicago visits, hoping to see her room and get an answer to the question, “Have all of her poems been published?”

Thoughts:  This play did a really excellent job of holding my interest in the two essential questions of the text:  1.  Have all of Alison’s poems been published?  and 2.  Why does everyone keep talking about her as if there is some sort of secret surrounding her?  The obvious answer to the first question is no, which becomes a pivotal issue in the third act; but the second question led me to a number of different hypotheses while reading.  A suicide?  A lesbian?  Incest?  Inquiring minds want to know! 

From the outset, it is clear that Aunt Agatha does not want to move because she feels closest to her sister Alison in the family mansion; and the strain of moving eventually results in her death—but not before she can hand over a satchel of unpublished poems to a recently returned niece (Edna).  Edna is the source of family scandal and not entirely welcomed at home because she recently ran off with a married man.  Eventually, it becomes clear that both old Mr. Stanhope and Alison experienced the same sorts of pining toward married people…but they didn’t act on their feelings.  Instead, Alison wrote poetry that ultimately both united and divided her family.  Most of the characters in this play, seen and unseen, have dealt with unrequited love and find themselves sharing stories (and poems) that have long been buried on New Years Eve, 1899.

“And then—all of a sudden—We had been dancing; we stopped by the door.  We just looked at each other—stared, rather, and he said—“Why, Elsa!”  We stood there, and then he said, “It is Elsa.”  And we went out to the veranda, and everything was different, because he was Bill and I was Elsa.  And everything we had together in the past—when we used to slide down hill together—was there, alive, giving us a past we hadn’t known we were making for ourselves.”  

(Act 3)

Wit by Margaret Edson (1999)

Summary:  Fifty year-old Dr. Vivian Bearing is suffering from stage-four ovarian cancer, after having dedicated her life to the study of 17th century poetry, specifically the work of John Donne.  She struggles through an eight-month course of chemotherapy alone; but we know from page three that she will be dead by the final curtain.

Thoughts:  Perhaps the most stunning part of this play came after the end of the text in the author’s biography.  There, I learned that Margaret Edson is a kindergarten teacher from Atlanta and that Wit is her first (and only) play. 

This play could easily be cut into a one-woman show and staged productions likely depend entirely on the prowess of the actress playing Vivian.  Edson succeeds at capturing Bearing’s stiff lecturer persona while using the elegiac language of Donne partially because this language is balanced with a few actors speaking the most plain and mundane English.

Ruined by Lynn Nottage (2009)

Summary:  Mama Nadi owns a bar/brothel in The Democratic Republic of Congo.  One of her rules involves serving any paying customer:  including soldiers on either side of the conflict.  The setting never changes, but stakes are raised when she is asked to take in more girls than she can handle and is visited both by rebel leaders and soldiers from the current government.   

Thoughts:  I feel like it is really difficult to offer any sort of critique of this play without appearing racist or culturally insensitive.  While the subject matter is unquestionably compelling, I was not extraordinarily moved by the actual text.  I was, however, moved by the photographs of the women in the appendix of the play (taken by Nottage’s husband) and information included in the Introduction (by director Kate Whorisky).  While the play is not an ethnography, Nottage’s work was primarily informed by interviews with women (in the Congo) who have experienced sexual violence as a result of the political upheaval in their country.  Unlike other interview-based work (The Laramie Project, The Exonerated) this play veers away from traditional monologue storytelling…and perhaps this is why I felt emotionally removed from a very emotional subject.

Other nominees in 2009 included In the Heights and Becky Shaw—both largely about families and their internal conflicts, so perhaps the committee decided it was time to award a play set outside of a nuclear family in the United States (from 2000-2010, over half of the recipients involve a central theme of dysfunction in the American family).