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Introducing Between the Lines: The Past is Prologue

Writer's picture: Mychal LeverageMychal Leverage

Updated: Jan 14, 2024



Hey look, a new kind of blog entry! Neat!


As some of you may know, I read over 200 books last year, most of which were plays and books on playwrighting. I did manage to carve out plenty of time for novels and nostalgic revisits, but it became a numbers game instead of reading for pleasure. The problem is that I’m an uncertain reader, and I’m bored too easily. Tier one is that I am hungry, starving, to absorb all collective human knowledge, and I feel like time not spent reading and learning is time wasted. Tier two is that I want variety. When I need a break from my 1,200 page fantasy epic, I’ll turn to the life of Bob Fosse, then to get a break from that, I’ll reread some Charles Dickens, and before you know it, I’m in the middle of seven different stories. This year, I’m aiming for a little more attention and focus.


Laid out in my welcome post, “Between the Lines” will serve as the review portion of the site. This will largely cover plays I’ve read, sure, but I can also try to throw in movies and TV shows I’ve seen recently for variety’s sake. With Broadway tickets reaching record high prices, Heidi and I are quite limited in what shows we can afford to see, almost exclusively taking advantage of discounted/rush tickets to visit the Great White Way. Eventually, after Little Women wraps and we return to some sort of normalcy, we’ll definitely make the effort to find more underground theater to experience and share.


Until then, I wanted to give everyone a peak at the tone of future posts by looking back on 2023. “Best” is such a subjective term and causes a tremendous amount of controversy surrounding award season. Hell, nowadays, even referring to material as “good” can start a heated argument. Plus, my all time favorite play is unquestionably someone else’s least favorite play. As a compromise, below are the three most affective plays I read last year.


I should also make it known that I did reread some of my favorite plays to keep them fresh in my mind, but listen: I’m not gonna have any new insight on any top ten most popular play that everyone knows. I’ll gladly talk about Hamlet or The Crucible or A Streetcar Named Desire, but that’ll be another day. Reading these plays for the first time in 2023, there was this unknowable element that drew me in and remains with me still.


In case you aren’t familiar with any of these plays, I’ll do my best to provide the right context without giving too much away, but I encourage you to seek them out in whatever way you can.


Copenhagen by Michael Frayn (2000)


If you wish Oppenheimer had more scenes with Kenneth Branagh, then boy, do I have the play for you.


In 1941, with WWII in full swing, German physicist Werner Heisenberg paid a visit to his mentor, Niels Bohr, in Copenhagen, Denmark. The details of their encounter remain shrouded in mystery, argued by historians and scholars for decades. Winner of the 2000 Tony Award for Best Play, Copenhagen imagines the possibilities of their historic visit as the two men are joined in their reminiscences by Bohr’s wife and confident, Margrethe. Beautifully sad, this play works to answer impossible questions, historical and moral, looking for clarity where it cannot exist.


MARGRETHE But why?


NIELS BOHR You’re still thinking about it?


MARGRETHE Why did he come to Copenhagen?


NIELS BOHR Does it matter, my love, now that we’re, all three of us, dead and gone?


MARGRETHE Some questions remain, long after their owners have died. Lingering like ghosts. Looking for the answers they never found in life.


The play is structured so Heisenberg can explain his intentions behind the visit, and finally settle any unanswered questions “now that no one can be hurt… [or] betrayed.” Most of the dialogue is driven by the three characters trying to remind each other of what really happened as they stumble through solving this mystery. We seamlessly float between reality, academic lecture, and pure uncertainty in a unique and engaging way. You’re left wondering what the truth really is, for we must count on some unreliable characters to tell this story.


I might still write it, so forgive the secrecy, but I’ve had an idea for a play about two deceased musicians, who had conflict in life, reunited in purgatory to confront their disagreement. I’ll likely have to retool it because the structure closely mimics much of the style in Copenhagen, but imagine my excitement when I found, essentially, a play that I would have written. My mind exploded when I finished this play, and I cannot recommend it enough.


The Flick by Annie Baker (2013)


In a rundown movie theater in central Massachusetts, three underpaid employees sweep up popcorn in the empty aisles and tend to one of the last thirty-five-millimeter projectors in the state. The show is a comedy of the mundane delivered in bits of conversation that might be considered insignificant.


AVERY Hey. What do you wanna like… What do you wanna like be when you grow up?


Pause.


SAM … I am grown up.


AVERY Oh. Yeah. I guess I just mean like…


SAM That’s like the most depressing thing anyone’s ever said to me.


AVERY Sorry.


They finish sweeping. They empty their dust pans into the trash. On their way out the door:


SAM A chef.


Hey, is anyone using this soap box? I just thought it’d be a nice place to stand for a minute if that’s cool. Great, thanks guys. Actually, while I’m here…


Photorealistic illustrations are really cool to look at, no doubt about it, but we have cameras designed to take photographs. A singer who can perfectly replicate the sound of a flute is cool, but we have flutes that make flute music. I’d much rather see you draw the weird, formless portrait you have floating in your head that you scribbled out in charcoal, give me music that can be heartbreaking when it’s sung by a human voice.


See, there’s this weird thing happening in the creative world where we’re taking great strides to make everything be as grounded as possible. The general consensus is that audiences prefer the muted, understated, subtle, and realistic over the outlandish and spectacular. The biggest complaints against the work of Aaron Sorkin, or Tennessee Williams, or William Shakespeare, is “Well, real people don’t talk like that.” Like, bro, of course they don’t. This isn’t real life, this is something else. If you want to hear people talk the way “real” people talk, go to a restaurant and eavesdrop on the table nearest you, I hope you have fun. Keep normal people out of my theater and off my stage. I want larger-than-life, impossible, beautiful, poetry.


… That said, I still thoroughly enjoyed Annie Baker’s style. The Flick is all about finding great beauty and peace in the monotonous and the ordinary. The play is written with mostly naturalistic dialogue, and half the pages are loaded with space for awkward silences. It’s not until Act Two where anything really happens to move the plot along in a traditional sense, but spending time with these characters while they shoot the breeze feels very familiar if you’d ever worked in food/customer service. If you’re a cinephile and you can spare three hours for a longer-than-average read, this is the one.


Blackbird by David Harrower (2005)

Trigger Warning: Statutory Rape


Fifteen years ago, Una and Ray had a relationship. They haven't set eyes on each other since. Now she's found him again.


RAY I didn’t recognize you.


UNA Yes you did.


RAY I didn’t.

I don’t.

You.

No.


UNA Your face went white.


RAY Not


UNA Drained white.


RAY Not not when I saw you.

I didn’t know who you were.

There’s a woman here to see you.

That’s all I was told.


UNA When I said


RAY Yes

Yes but I know the name.

I remember the name.

Jesus the name’s

But you could be a, a friend of hers.

Your hair’s a different colour.

A journalist.

A


UNA I’m not.


RAY Reporter, I don’t know.

I don’t know what any of this is meant to be.


UNA How many other twelve-year-old girls have you had sex with?


This is a spectacular play for stripped down productions or character scene study, thanks to its simple purity: there are two people, a man and a woman, together in a room, and they can not leave. The dialogue is written in jagged, disjointed sentence fragments, and I’m sure hearing two great actors performing it, both on the attack and interrupting each other, would give it the passion, the agitated heartbeat, that it needs.


On my first read, I found it edgy, provocative, dark, and twisted, but I was left wanting so much more on subsequent readings. There’s a gradual twisting knife in our side as we learn more about “the event” of the past, but I would have much rather spent time discussing the repercussions and fallout, the psychological effects on the victim of assault, Una. How does a woman who was kidnapped and raped at age twelve ever trust another human being ever again? The play doesn’t seem that interested in the answer.


If you’ve read or seen it, you know what I’m talking about here: the final tableau is probably one of the most disgusting and shocking scenes I’ve ever read. As soon as I finished it, I handed it to Heidi, who loves dark and twisty, and commanded her to read it. I know the subject matter would be offensive and off-putting to most, but I thoroughly enjoyed it for it’s moments of intimacy, honesty, and profound regret.


College Mychal is an absolute FOOL for not going to see Jeff Daniels and Michelle Williams perform this play on Broadway in 2016. Young Adult Mychal is absolutely itching to see it some day, or perform it himself when he’s a little older and a much better actor.


“Bad” Plays


Now I will say here, I read plenty of plays that just aren't my thing. I can get a lot of material down if I just ripped into a disappointing play that I thought was trash, but I’d rather not use “Between the Lines” to denounce other artist’s work. Writing a play is a deeply personal process, and the final product can only ever be an imitation of the beautifully constructed masterpiece the writer was hoping to create. And hey, I’m certainly no expert, I’ve only just started tinkering with the idea of being a writer, I’m for sure gonna write some incomprehensible trash. I don’t know what makes a good play and what makes a bad one anymore than you do, but I do know it’s very close. We’re living in an indecently cynical time, and I think we should be celebrating the underrated rather than bringing down the overrated.


Mychal, wrap this shit up, will you?


So far, keeping pace with my reading these last few days has been a challenge, at least maintaining my average of two plays a day. Future posts will definitely feel more like a book report on a singular title, and my first impressions as a writer and actor… I’m sure that’s where I’ll start losing subscribers. As always, thanks for sticking around and letting me drone on. You are all beautiful souls and I’m grateful for you.


And scene.

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