Recently, my wife and I took our two young boys on our first Disneyland vacation. For those of you that have not been there, Disney’s imagineers have created several rides that allow riders to “live through” the Disney adaptations of many storybook adventures. To pass the time while waiting in line for one of these rides, a frequent topic of conversation between my wife and my oldest boy centered on how many of the Disney shows had a less-than-happy ending. While this would seem somewhat uncharacteristic of the Disney brand, the list kept growing as they came up with titles. Tucked deeply in the wealth of memories made on this vacation, the idea of the unhappy ending stuck with me, or at least why not all stories - or for purposes of this entry, plays - end with “... and they all lived happily ever after.”
In fact, at one point in theatrical history, after eras in which federal academies enforced extremely strict rules on exactly what made plays either comedic or tragic, the conventional standard was that plays should almost always have a pleasurable ending. In fact, during the era of Romanticism, many classic tragedies - including “Hamlet” - were rewritten to have happy endings. While this more accurately reflected a major philosophical/artistic trend to focus on a general triumph of virtue over vice resulting in the rise of the melodrama, sentiments such as these can be seen today. When I attend theatre, or talk to people about it, quite a few folks prefer to have a play end with a smile.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not some sort of theatrical Eeyore that only prefers to attend theatre with dark little rain clouds hanging over the stage. Rather, as I’ve said in previous columns, I practice theatre with the idea that the stage is a laboratory in which we experiment with human situations, and watch humanity view through a “microscope”. In many cases, things turn out well for the characters onstage. However, if the stage is to be a laboratory, and meant to experiment with the breadth of the spectrum of human experience, the less-than-happy places on that spectrum must be explored, as well.
I’m not suggesting that we must ONLY attend the theatre to feel uncomfortable, or to experience feelings that are not immediately “happy.” What I’m suggesting is that the entire canon of dramatic literature would be nearly empty if not for the “non-happy” plays. In fact, in order for theatre to grow and progress at certain points in theatrical history, it could only be advanced by the exploration through more somber plotlines and genres. Graduate students have used the genre of tragedy as the focal point of dissertations for decades, as it has contributed so much to the health of theatrical literature.
Recently, I’ve been reading a lot of “downer” plays. It only took me about an hour to devour David Harrower’s “Blackbird,” which is legitimately one of the darkest and most necessary plays I’ve ever read. Last summer, I pored through the stage adaptation of the Swedish film “Let the Right One In,” about an adolescent vampire who befriends a young boy, which ends up being a horrifying fable on the depths of co-dependency. I’m embarrassed to admit that it’s taken me years to read Tracy Lett’s “August: Osage County,” which centers on the turmoil in a large rural Plains family that all gathers together with the family patriarch disappears. I haven’t really selected these from a list of suggested plays that Amazon might create: “Total bummer plays.” Rather, each of these plays either received immense critical acclaim over the last decade and/or many awards and nominations. I plan to finish the summer reading several Tennessee Williams plays that I haven’t gotten to yet.
At the beginning of this fall, my theatre company, Trident Theatre, will present a series of classic horror movies on the big screen at the WYO. As I’ve been preparing for this event, the question often comes up: “Why do we subject ourselves to this kind of fright?” Some of these films are some of the most psychologically terrifying stories ever committed to celluloid, and have stayed so for decades. So, why do we submit our psyches to that level of stress? I would suggest that it is for the same reason we go to see “downer” plays: in the laboratory of humanity, we must exercise all emotional response in order to be able to understand and appreciate the fullness of what humanity can present.
So, in the long run, I’m not advocating only seeing sad plays. Rather, that while happy endings are a necessary device in the playwright’s toolbox, I hope that you, as the audience member continue to consider plays that may not exactly have a happy ending just as enriching as those on the bright end of the spectrum. You might come out surprised to have explored very necessary territory that you may not have even known that you needed to explore. I suggest that, in order for us as a society to use theatre effectively, sometimes that means dragging a skeleton or two out of the closet.
I’ll see you at intermission!
