Heaven, or something like it
I had been unable to think of a good way to introduce this concept. This week, though, I found the perfect example in the movie The Sixth Sense. It’s the scene where Malcom (Bruce Willis) arrives late for dinner with his wife Anna (Olivia Williams). She is at a table for two but there is only one place-setting. Malcolm apologizes for being late. He thought dinner was going to be at a different Italian restaurant. Then he talks and talks. Anna never says a word. The check comes and Anna appears to snatch it away from Malcolm just as he is reaching for it. Malcolm continues talking. Anna then signs the check and puts away her pen in her purse. For a very brief moment, she looks toward where Malcom is sitting, then looks at the check and says, sadly, “Happy anniversary,” gets up from the table and goes.
There are several tricks here. We guess that the lack of a second place-setting (if we even notice it) is explained by Malcolm’s lateness. Anna must’ve had the wait staff take it away. Next, we are meant to believe that Anna is upset, disappointed, something like that and refuses to speak to Malcom, or even to acknowledge him, except for the brief comment, which is said to the check, not Malcolm. The quick, seemingly preemptive grabbing of the check reinforces the idea that Anna is upset. Everything that might lead you to guess Malcolm is a ghost has a plausible, wrong-world explanation.
In Gunderson’s play there are tricks for a similar effect. Spoiler alert, the first eight- or nine-tenths of the play are in a similar sort of ghost world as The Sixth Sense. In that part, the characters Caroline (Mimi Santos) and Anthony (Kevin Masayuki Tanner) are high school classmates, but not friends. Caroline is ill and has been home in her room for a long time. One late afternoon Anthony shows up, asking Caroline to partner with him and help finish his school project, which is due tomorrow, so they can present it together. Initial iciness thaws and the two bond over the subject of the presentation, Walt Whitman’s poetry, specifically, Leaves of Grass.
When Anthony first enters, Caroline is perplexed at how he got past her mother. Anthony explains that mom did not feel the need to give Caroline a heads up and just sent Anthony upstairs on his own. More than once, Caroline says she is going to call for mom but Anthony dissuades her. We never see or hear from mom, not in this first part.
Caroline is stopped several times throughout the evening by unbearable pain, like in her kidney or that area. At one point, Anthony tells a story about a kid who died at school that very day. One moment the kid was on the basketball court, filled with life. Moments later he was dead, apparently of some kind of seizure.
The twist at the end is that this is all happening in Caroline’s dream, or maybe in the spirit world. Anthony is actually the kid who died on the basketball court and is the organ donor that keeps Caroline alive. As she is waking up to this news, for a brief time, she is in both worlds, realizing it was a dream while still talking and interacting with Anthony.
What tricked me was thinking the absence of the mom was down to it being a two-person play. This is a two-hander, I thought, and they did not need a third actor to play the mom. Why hire and pay someone for what would be a nothing part. “Oh, hi Anthony! I’ll go up and let Caroline know you’re here,” and so forth. Cementing the effect, the playwright and the actors made me believe mom is trusting and Anthony is so wholesome and kind that it makes sense she would waive him through.
There is a beautiful moment where the staging and scenery participate in the trickery also. The attached picture gives a little bit of a sense of it. The action in the first part takes place entirely on an eight-inch high (or so) twelve-foot by twelve-foot (or so) – just about the dimensions of a bedroom – platform. The characters never step down onto the theater floor. The platform is surrounded on three sides by wide bolts of sort of gauzy, translucent fabric. In the photo, these are lit with the Strawberry Theater Workshop logo, which goes away after the show opens, exchanged for colored, soft, muted lighting.
I, the theatre-knower, assumed the platform served nicely to differentiate the playing space, the stage, from the wide floor of the large 12th Avenue Arts space. The gauzy fabric, I thought, created a nice frame and even a sort of proscenium and back wall that kept the action from getting lost in the space.
All those things are true, but after the transformation, when Caroline and Anthony have their liminal moment between worlds, they step off the platform. They glide and dance among the lighted strips of fabric. They are in heaven, or something like it.
A lot of people over the years have told me they were not fooled for a minute by The Sixth Sense. At least one of my friends who I saw I and You with told me they caught some of the clues and were not entirely surprised at the ending.
Looking back the set clearly represents Caroline’s dream world, if only I had seen it. But thankfully I did not. As opposed to the “suspension of belief” (which I think is a terribly misguided and wrong concept, but that discussion is for another day) I think there can be, for me anyway, a sort of encrustation of belief. I think I know how theater works and I make assessments from that perspective. The absence of an actor playing the mom is because it’s a two-hander, not because mom is not in Caroline’s reverie. The stage and scenery are set up merely to provide a frame, not to portray a dream world.
I fell for my own mistaken assumptions. I was aided in doing so by what I have called tricks. But in this case, tricks aren’t bad, they’re art.
Regrettably, I and You only played one weekend of the Strawberry Jam but I recommend you see it somewhere, as soon as you can.
Comments
Post a Comment