Laughter, Community Theater, Ritual
On shared art & the meaning of life
I’m in a production of 12 Angry Men (retitled 12 Angry Jurors because it’s half women).
My father-in-law, Jeff, plays the foreman.
Jeff’s friend, Luke, who also happens to be, like me, a lawyer, plays the main antagonist — he wants the Defendant dead for what turns out to be purely personal reasons. Luke helped found the troupe years ago. In the very beginning, they performed plays in local restaurants, sometimes as part of a bar crawl, starting a play in one bar, going to a second, and finishing in third. A line cook would take a break from his shift to do a scene and then return to dropping fries in hot grease. Luke always promises every show is his last, but Jeff (Poppy, to me and his grandkids) always convinces him to return for one more.
Poppy's neighbor, who lives in the house next door to him, plays the Bailiff. Rachel and I lived in that same little house (where the Bailiff now lives) for eight years. We had a little stone path between the houses and we’d walk across it dozens of times a day, starting with coffee in the morning, ending with dinner at night.
A good friend of mine, Geoffrey, plays a blue-collar, sexist, racist, loud-mouthed moron. Geoffrey is definitely cast against type. Geoffrey teaches history and philosophy at the Key School in Annapolis. He has a background in theater and is always impeccably dressed. He has never even tried ketchup (that is not a joke). He is most definitely NOT blue collar or racist. No comment on the sexism. (Just kidding, Geoff).
I’m juror #12. My joke is that I play the titular character (get it? 12 Angry Men?) I play slick advertising exec who loves golf with only about 50 lines. Like everybody else, I’m on stage, sitting down at a table for the entire play, which is 63 pages. I’m so unimportant that I’m one of the lucky three who have my back to the audience the entire play.
But so what? There are no small parts, etc. To prove this, last night I spent a good chunk of the rehearsal making faces at Geoffrey (and everybody else) while he tried to deliver his big, super obviously racist speech about the Defendant (“you know how those people are” etc.). It’s Geoffrey’s fault, though. He taught me the face - instead of looking at somebody, you look at the space just in front of them. The result is you go gently cross-eyed and your IQ drops by about 35 points and you change personalities instantly. If there was a face of racism/sexism, this is it. It was big fun.
Usually, about half the cast goes to the bar after the rehearsals. We talk about the show as if it were the most important thing ever to occur. We want it to be good, but are worried - dramatically - about this or that or the other going wrong. You’d think we were on Broadway or a big Hollywood production.
In a way, though, a small way, I believe it means just as much to be in a big movie as a small play— at least to the people in the play - this tiny, community production of all amateurs, rehearsing for months for what will no doubt be an audience of mostly family and friends — because it’s still the show. The reason why theater kids are the way they are is because they know, deep in their bones, that they are part of that show. The show is eternal, it's everywhere, and it’s alive. It’s real.
It’s like Jung says about ritual: A ritual like, say, taking communion, doesn’t happen again and again; it’s not a repeated act; it takes place exactly once, outside time, in a special psychic space called eternity, which is not - as people mistakenly think - a name for time going on forever but a name for time that is stopped, irrelevant. “Do this in remembrance of me,” Jesus said, but you aren’t just remembering Him, you are participating in His death. You are eating His flesh and drinking His blood, and it’s happening now. (At least that’s what the Catholics think. But they put art on their walls, the bastards. Southern Baptists know the only way to worship is to stare at empty drywall and that all you're really doing is eating cardboard and drinking sugar water.)
Rituals get a bad rap as serious, formal, and stiff. But have you ever been to any church ever when there isn’t some kid giggling in the back? There’s always been one when I’m there, though, in fairness, he’s always me.
It’s easy to think things are serious and important, so that even a little thing like God dying and returning must be serious too. And it is serious - that’s what makes it so funny.
Nothing that isn’t inherently serious can ever be all that funny. Think Duck Soup. If you own all of Freedonia, who are you laughing at? What are you laughing about? The only fair answer is to break the fourth wall when you respond: the great depression. That’s what’s so funny.
“Instead of paying attention to the faces of people passing by, I watched their feet, and all these busy types were reduced to hurrying steps - toward what? And it was clear to me that our mission was to graze the dust in search of a mystery stripped of anything serious.”
- Emil Cioran, Anathamas and Admirations, as quoted by Olga Tokarczuk in Flights, which won the Nobel Prize, by the way, and seems good so far.
…but not as good as Twin Beach Players’ production of 12 Angry Jurors will no doubt be! Come see it at the end of August/beginning of September! I’ll buy you a beer if you do.