And around we go on the whirligig of fun that is TOO MUCH MEMORY. Third week of the run down, the show feels solid now. It has filled out and grown into itself. It had that summer when you got your braces taken off, started needing the bra you’d been wearing for a year and finally figured that if you were a 5’9” fourteen year old girl, you might as well stand up straight because your slouch wasn’t fooling anybody. We play and keep it fresh within the solid framework of a disaster-safe structure. Which is good for me, for Ismene. It’s how we like to work.
Being a part of a production like this is exciting. In structure, in presentation, in style, it contradicts almost every tradition, turns the tables on its audiences. And it doesn’t try to be pretty. It makes no excuses for itself. It is proud of its quick and dirty, big and scary, rock and roll, fuck you, love me self and it doesn’t care if you take it or leave it, but you’d better make up your mind. It has injected adrenaline into the veins of this community, a veritable kick in the ass. It is proof that theater still is, contrary to some cynical points of view, a vehicle for change. And the merit of a piece of art that can ignite a notoriously uninterested generation is unquestioned. It’s making people angry. And it’s damn glad to be doing it. None of that is news to anyone. Interestingly, everybody isn’t angry for the same reasons.
The cast is split right down the middle: Team Antigone, Team Creon. (Anyone who doesn’t think there are two valid points of view should’ve been at the talkback two weeks ago, or should spend five minutes in the dressing room when we get going.) The divide is about priorities. Between the sisters, it’s pretty clear what it comes down to. Antigone values civil liberty, freedom. For Izzy, and for me, the cost of that liberty is just too high.
In Sophocles’ ANTIGONE, Tig boils it down for Izzy: “For you choose life, and I choose death.” I was raised with the belief that life is the ultimate gift, and to take it, the ultimate sin. That sentiment in principle is still at my core, but if I’m honest with myself, it doesn’t reflect my top priorities. For me, family is the greatest gift, and I know already that there are many things worse than death. Any choice that would bring pain to my sister would be one I was incapable of making. Living on after all of my family is dead would be worse than dying myself; death would be preferable, easy. Choosing to live on would be the mark of someone who possesses true strength, true bravery. And how would someone be able to face such a life? What could keep them going?
At the end of OEDIPUS AT COLONUS, Oedipus tells his daughters he must leave them, that he is dying.
“It shook the girls with trembling, and they fell
weeping at their father’s knees.
Nor would they stop, but beat their breasts and sobbed
And when he heard this bitter burst of grief,
he took them in his arms and said:
‘and yet one little word can change all pain:
That word is love, and love you’ve had from me
more than any man can ever give.
But now you must live on, when I am gone.’”
Love makes us persevere. It is the only thing man knows that is strong enough to make us keep going, love past, love present, and the hope of love in the days to come. However political, however intellectual, however philosophical, this is a play about love. It would be a shame if that got lost in all the hype.
