Steppenwolf Theatre Company Blog – Chicago Theater, World-Class Ensemble

My father-in-law was in a bad car accident three days ago. My husband watched it from our driveway, after we had all had a wonderful dinner together out in our garden. I was putting my daughter to bed, when I heard the screech of tires and metal on metal. Although my father-in-law went to the hospital in an ambulance, immobilized on a gurney, he did walk out four hours later under his own power.

We’ve been living with the heaviness in the middle of the body that comes after trauma. Every morning feels worse than the one before. There are mind numbing insurance forms to fill out, police reports, and every telephone conversation begins with reference to a claim number. In the evening, we pick broken glass out of the flower-beds. My mind bounces between “thank god” and “if only” like some unstable electron.

I mourn—not for my father in laws physical injuries, which will heal, but for his mental injuries—and ours—which may take much longer. The world looks much different today. I mourn for the loss of a warm summer when life and death decisions involved whether to cut a monologue or a scene from Gary.

Which is not to belittle that life. Someone observed that playwrights are sadists. We create a world with its own rules; we create characters that we love, and then make terrible things happen to them. We make them suffer. But even a bad play is not at all like life. Even in a bad play, things change, characters learn something, and there is some meaning. If it is an exceptionally bad play where there is no meaning, we get angry over drinks at the bar later, and say, “Well I guess that was just the writers statement.” But by and large we don’t like statement plays. We like plays where even amidst the chaos of a reproduction of life, there is still some order.

When I started writing Gary, I had a few strong images. One was a boy—Tommy—who knows his place in the world. And although it isn’t perfect, he understands who he is. In a moment that all changes for him, and suddenly everything is different, and everything he believed is untrue. “Was there an earthquake? Are we like, on Mars?”

That’s how I’ve been feeling. And yet, the mind works overtime to create some meaning. Some order.

Last night I had a dream. It’s so cliché, I couldn’t write it if it weren’t true. I’m not one to remember dreams. But this was so vivid. In my dream, I had my niece’s cello, which I have never played. The instrument is small scale, made for a child, and about the size of a guitar. The frets are small and difficult to fit adult fingers into, but I was playing it—in public—some old dormitory where I have never been, for childhood friends. I drew the bow across the strings and played a song everyone knew—though I have never heard it. Something in the key of A Minor. The song was beautiful and sad and I didn’t play it perfectly—even in the dream it was my first time playing a cello—but I did play. I woke up and I was happy. I thought very clearly, “I’m not too old too learn.” Then I thought, “Everything is going to be okay.”

How strange that this is also the last line of Gary.

This entry was posted by Melinda Lopez on Monday, August 20th, 2007 at 10:01 am and is filed under First Look Rep (07). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.