A Gentle Theater of Cruelty
Process Journal Entry # 1, 2015
This morning I sat down to write poems, but I’d read a call for submissions last night that was sticking in the front of my mind. I flipped my schedule. But in the best way. The topic was overcoming trauma, and the limit was 500 words. This is something I’ve written about before—something I’ve been writing about since childhood in one way or another. But expressing this particular perspective has been difficult until now.
The reason I bring it up is that, sitting down to write the tiny essay, I remembered something that I realize, only now, shaped my life. Or has at least been pushing me toward this shape all along.
The year before kindergarten, I had a babysitter who lived in a fancy house, with sliding glass doors to the patio. She had an inside-the-house dog. She had a player piano and she would sit with me, in her immaculate, middle class living room, and we’d belt out show tunes all afternoon. Then my mother would take me home to our paisley-ed apartment, with the dripped-candle-wax-covered cable-spool coffee table and the black lights glowing over the pot plants. Jim Croce playing on the turntable. And that man—whose secrets were the problem—would be slouching in the bean bag chair.
From that time on, a part of me longed for show tunes and the world they represented. My grandmother once told me I was born feeling better than. I don’t know. I do know that from this time, I wanted better than.
But it was when I turned thirteen, and heard a fellow student performing a monologue from a play about incest, that I understood the power of live performance. I’d read a lot of books, a lot of disturbing books that I could identify with, but here, in this nearly empty classroom, with self-important high school teachers jotting notes on prescribed evaluations, I heard someone literally give voice to taboos that I knew intimately but had never given breath. I knew someone else had written the truth down on paper first—and that there was a whole community of people out there taking on the truth (theirs or not), and telling the truth. Literally shining lights on it.
A book is an intellectual comfort. Theater, at its best, is a somatic experience composed of genuine empathy. The same work may be cathartic for some, but therapeutic for others. It’s why even watching weakest of productions, I will cry at the curtain call: this is what it means to me when Dickinson says tell the truth at a slant. All those playwrights and actors telling a basic truth of human experience without a spot of shame.
I will never fully embrace Artaud’s ideas, his Theater of Cruelty, break-you-down-to-build-you-up, approach to using theater as a therapeutic tool. I have to confess that I have never been able to sit through Clockwork Orange. Though, from what I understand, all that exposure to cruelty didn’t go well for Alex.
There is such a thing as precision surgery. There are ways to address pain without numbing everything. I honestly believe this is why I keep returning to theater, no matter how impractical it is. It is doing the good work.
Or trying to.
I’ve written four more wasp poems this week, and am enjoying the process. As for the play, I think I understand the Baroness now, and am close to finding a way to tell her story. I discovered a common need that she and I share. A drive that is so intense that I can honestly forgive her all the things I find repulsive, and I can love her. I can tell her story without shame.
Now my job is to make you love her, too. Shamelessly.
I’d love to hear your theater or poetry origin story! What it means to you to tell the truth at a slant, or “in yer face”1.
Thank you for taking the time to read/listen. I’ll be back again next Monday with an audio poem. Until then, I hope you have a great week!
Warmly,
Ren
Spread the love. It only takes a little ❤️
Prefer to hear from just one section of my blog/newsletter? No problem—you can customize your email preferences in your settings at any time. To do this:
Navigate to your own account Settings page at www.substack.com/settings
Click on Dramatic Roots under Subscriptions
Use toggles to select which sections you want to receive emails from.
For readers/writers who aren’t theater peeps, “In yer face” was a form of violent, confrontational theater in the 1990s. Sarah Kane was arguably the most influential of the playwrights working in that genre.
Much to consider here from a personal viewpoint. At a loss for words.