“When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you’re telling it, to yourself or to someone else.”
–Margaret Atwood
Sarah Polley included this quote as a voice over at the beginning of Stories We Tell, a film about her unexpectedly complex family of origin. Years later Polley would title her written memoir—so worth the read—with advice from the doctor who healed her from a severe concussion: Run Towards the Danger.
There is utter chaos when a story is coming into form. Then to couple that with the admonition to run straight at what scares you most is an apt description of how a challenging narrative can eventually come into fullness. (It is also a good description of how a painting gets made.)
The challenge of assembling a story—one that feels like a “wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood”—while also facing what feels terrifying is evident in two Boston theatrical productions currently on view. In an unexpected coincidence, both center around the concept of gender, a topic so rife with complexities it could fill every venue in town and still not feel complete.
A.R.T.’s world premiere, Becoming a Man, is based on a memoir by P. Carl. In this very personal account of making a transition, the overarching question becomes, “When we change, can the people we love come with us?” After 50 years of living as a girl and a queer woman, of being in a loving marriage with a successful career, he decides to affirm his true gender. That decision brings everything—family, career, friendships—into a state of confusion.
P. Carl (played by Petey Gibson) find such joy in finally being called “sir,” watching sports with other men in a bar, having a body that finally feels right, going for a swim with the appropriate swimwear. His long-awaited euphoria in feeling “at home” is so tangible. But his past self, played by Stacey Raymond, is a constant presence. There is just no dodging the presence of his prior life.
Becoming a Man is told in short vignettes that highlight key moments in P. Carl’s life. Rather than taking a bildingsroman or “biopic” approach, this method of staging enables P. Carl to verbalize the cascade of complexities he encounters as his personal identity confronts cultural norms, relationships, expectations and the very nature of what is true.
P. Carl is a thinker, a philosopher, an inveterate question asker. Becoming a Man does not engage in the immersive storytelling modalities of traditional theater. Rather it is a deeply thoughtful dive into the social, political and personal ramifications of gender in the life of one human being. This is an evening of ideas, of social commentary, and expanding the scope of empathy.
It is fitting that Becoming a Man is having its world premiere at A.R.T. In the years since Diane Paulus took over as artistic director, she has been committed to bringing theater and audiences closer together. This often features programming that focuses particularly on social relevance. Appropriate to that intention, the audience is highly encouraged to stay for “Act II” of Becoming a Man where responses and questions can be shared and discussed.
In an optimal, “e) All of the above” world, there can and should be gatherings that take place in theaters where every form of social enlightenment and entertainment can happen. I am recommending Becoming a Man to everyone because the intelligence, honesty and compassion with which these issues are considered make this an unforgettable experience. It will be performing the Loeb Drama Center through March 10.
Across the river in Boston, John Proctor is the Villain is being produced by the Huntington Theater at the Calderwood Pavilion. Written by Kimberly Belflower, John Proctor is the Villain is a shot across the bow at that reliable standard bearer of high school curricula, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. What results is a play about a play, and one that leaves theatergoers with a permanently altered view of Miller’s classic.
Belflower is young, female and an educator. The play came into form as the first #MeToo allegations were surfacing. Belflower had also just finished reading The Witches, Stacy Schiff’s engrossing probe into what led to the mass hysteria and irrational accusations of witchcraft in 17th century Salem, with 400 people accused and 19 executed. When Belflower reread Miller’s play, she was astonished at how differently she perceived it from when she read it as a teenager. John Proctor is a villain, not a hero.
For years The Crucible has been used to introduce high school student to theater, social history, ideological distortions like Nazism and McCarthyism, and the importance of personal honor and integrity. Belflower situates her story in a contemporary high school in a small rural Georgia town. A mostly female group of students is struggling with fundamental adolescent issues: making sense of their own personal identities, confronting the patriarchal culture of rural Christianity, considering who gets to speak and who can be trusted. They are also confronting the larger cultural context of #MeToo allegations and coming to terms with what constitutes sexual violence.
There’s a whole ongoing conversation about our culture’s complex views regarding adolescent females. Those attitudes–deeply embedded and often subliminal–play a significant role in both The Crucible and John Proctor is the Villain. It is however the complexity of that search for what is true in an individual life as well as in the culture as a whole that most poignantly provoked me. Stacy Schiff probed a cultural phenomenon that took place 300 years ago in search for clues that could bring that tragic and irrational moment into a more comprehensive framework for our 21st century minds. Miller elicited his own a version of those events in 1953 when another contagion, McCarthyism, was roiling his present day reality. Belflower takes that storyline a step further.
In Belflower’s words:
“The play at its core is examining cycles, cycles of power cycles of abuse, how cycles of teaching The Crucible the same way over and over again leads to one right interpretation. It’s all about the way things get repeated. We’re seeing this happen in real time in our world. So in a lot of ways so much has changed, like with the whole pandemic. But also we’re right back where we were; so much is being undone.”
This process of getting to what is authentic feels so painfully slow. And now it is the sheer issue of directionality, not just the speed of change, that we must safeguard.
In a prior essay I referenced the work of conceptual artist Dario Robleto. When he learned that the EEG and EKG recordings included on the Golden Record (sent into space in 1977) were made by a woman who was in love at the time, he asked the fundamental question: “Are we in our signals? Are we literally in there in such a way that the full experience of human subjectivity can be pulled out of the body, held in this other format, and be fully decipherable at a later date?”
We are, according to Atwood, still in the middle of this story—”a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood.” But the signals are in there, somewhere.
This terrific production of John Proctor is the Villain, directed by Margot Bordelon, is at the Huntington through March 10.