http://blog.steppenwolf.org/2006/03/13/guilt-trip-february-26/ Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:08:46 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0 http://blog.steppenwolf.org/2006/03/13/guilt-trip-february-26/#comment-88 Mon, 12 Jun 2006 22:18:47 +0000 http://blog.steppenwolf.org/2006/03/13/guilt-trip-february-26/#comment-88 I can't imagine that anyone who saw your last play will go to the next one expecting " a good time". In fact, I left that play convinced that you had written a play that seemed to be about politics, but was in fact about the uselessness of dialogue, of conversation, and even of words. I was mystified by the fact that you chose such a conventional form for the questions your raised, since you seem to have no confidence in the theater and its conventions. I'm not saying that you ought to. I'm saying rather that when you have a radical distrust in the nature of identity and the content of language, then you may want to use a form that is not realistic and doesn't rely on very traditional structures of character and narrative. I felt as if I were watching someone try to escape from a trap of his own making, without actually daring to break it. I would love to see what you would do if you decided that you didn't care what "we" went to theater for, because I think that somehow, your idea of your audience or some imagined sense of what you are permitted to do as a playwright has created an artificial barrier in your work. I can’t imagine that anyone who saw your last play will go to the next one expecting ” a good time”. In fact, I left that play convinced that you had written a play that seemed to be about politics, but was in fact about the uselessness of dialogue, of conversation, and even of words. I was mystified by the fact that you chose such a conventional form for the questions your raised, since you seem to have no confidence in the theater and its conventions. I’m not saying that you ought to. I’m saying rather that when you have a radical distrust in the nature of identity and the content of language, then you may want to use a form that is not realistic and doesn’t rely on very traditional structures of character and narrative. I felt as if I were watching someone try to escape from a trap of his own making, without actually daring to break it. I would love to see what you would do if you decided that you didn’t care what “we” went to theater for, because I think that somehow, your idea of your audience or some imagined sense of what you are permitted to do as a playwright has created an artificial barrier in your work.

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