A Remembrance of Things (of the Recent) Past

I had just finished directing a children's play for the Hangar Theatre's 370-seat mainstage and was now to work on the English-language premiere of a crazy German comedy in the 30-seat Wedge Theatre...and I couldn't be happier!

Rotation Two flew by at the pace of a peregrine falcon, it would seem, but I'm certain it will be remembered as two of the most valuable and rewarding weeks of my entire summer. It is far too rare that a director gets to do a production he or she truly longs to do. There are all too often compromises made in the process due to lack of funds or talent or commitment. So when it DOES happen--when you get the opportunity and support to produce THE production you really do envision--it is an absolutely joyous moment.

I was introduced to THE UGLY ONE, a new play by Marius von Mayenburg, last January as I was on a solo tour of Europe attempting to see as much theater as possible. Through my three weeks of travel, I saw about 10 different plays, none of which was in English and none of which I could understand (as I speak ONLY English). Of all these plays I couldn't understand, THE UGLY ONE was the best un-understandable one.

I was in Berlin and got tickets to the show through a friend of a friend (who was the Assistant Director of the production). Thankfully, he gave me an English translation of the script before I saw the play, which I read over dinner one evening and with which I immediately fell in love. From the first read, I knew that it was a play I wanted to direct at some point.

The production itself that I saw was exhilarating, frantic, and ultimately totally dissimilar to the play that I directed. It is often a difficult thing to get a past production out of your head when trying to direct your own production of a specific play. Thankfully, certain circumstances made it a lot easier for me. For example, the production I saw in Berlin involved hydraulic floors that raised and lowered at various moments in the play, as well as fly cables that lowered from the ceilings, that the actors attached to themselves, and that then flew the actors through the air. Since the Wedge has neither hydraulics nor a fly system, I was forced to think of a different way of doing the play.

THE UGLY ONE is the story of Lette, who is told one day that he is hideously ugly. (He didn't know.) When he starts losing jobs because of it, he decides to get an experimental plastic surgery to rework his face. When the bandages are removed, Lette discovers that not only is he no longer ugly, he is now the most beautiful man alive. He lives the high life until other people start getting the same surgery and start looking exactly like him, forcing the audience to ask the question: How can one stick out in a crowd when every face within it is his own?

It is a play about the pressures society places on us to become one thing. We are becoming increasingly homogeneous, if not in our appearances, than in what we view as the ideal of beauty or success. This play acts as a fable to challenge the idea that being what society terms "beautiful" may not be the thing for which we should strive. When one of the characters in the final scene of the play declares the anti-moral of the piece--"Stop wanting to be different!"--, it leaves us all feeling a bit empty, a bit guilty. Or, at least, I wanted it to do that.

For this production, the entire action of the play was confined to an 8'x8' white square painted on the floor. The audience sat on risers on either side of the square, looking down on the action as medical students would view an operation. I used live sound to both acknowledge the theatricality of the world and to comment on the action of the play. For example, the actual plastic surgery scene is accompanied by live sound effects to heighten the sense that this operation is actually a violent, inhuman act. The surgeon asks for an electric knife, and we see and hear a blender turn on, eviscerating the tomatoes inside it. He asks for another instrument, and we see and hear a jigsaw drilling gratingly into pieces of wood.

While the actors I directed are still in early stages of their training, they were totally game for everything I threw at them. Throughout the process, I admired their work and dedication to make it happen. And while every performance may not have been ideal, I could tell that they were constantly striving to make it better. They WANTED it to be perfect...which is definitely not always the case.

In the final scene of the play, the main character sees the face of another man who has had the surgery and now looks identical to him...and he falls in love with himself. Through a series of comic lines between the man and his doppelganger--"I'm beautiful." "Thanks. You're sweet. I'm beautiful, too." "Thanks. I'm blushing."--the two characters move into each other, and Lette loses all sense of reality, giving himself over to his own appearance. It is a moment of false hope. He seems content and peaceful, but what has really happened is that he has lost all sense of self. He has sacrificed his own identity for the image of beauty that is his face. (Complicated to explain, I think...I hope that makes sense!)

Anyways, the most gratifying moment of the experience was when my parents came up to see the play. My Southern parents are not the most artistic folks. Aside from the plays I've been in, they haven't seen much except the stuff to which I take them. But after the play, my mother offered, in her slow Southern drawl, her personal critique of the final moment:

"It seemed like I was supposed to be happy, but I just felt so sad."

I laughed, and my heart warmed. I had gotten it right...

On to Rotation 3!

Kerry