Sports journalists mold inconsequential activities like running around a diamond-shaped field touching square white pillows into metaphors for the major conflicts within our culture. Racial equity, immigration law, problems of persistent poverty, optimal design of capitalist systems find expression through heroes on and off the gridiron, court, baseball field, and track. Stories of hope, redemption, revenge, delight inflate with meaning activities as artificial as a curveball.
In the performing arts, we tell stories—or we should—of hope, redemption, revenge, and delight; race, immigration, poverty, and capitalism, but only ever seem to discuss whether the actor playing the Player spoke his lines "trippingly on the tongue" or the make-up over the King's eyes was believably bloody enough.
Hamlet, Oedipus Rex, August: Osage County—all plays no matter the era question who we are and how we live in the world, the fundamental nature of being human.
Hunter Gatherers by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, currently playing at
Red Eye Theater until October 30, belongs to the subgenre of human nature stories that literally explore the neverending battle between what seems natural, instinctual and animalistic vs. what appears civilized, refined, human, and rational. Stories also in this genre include: Jacob and Esau, Jekyll and Hyde, Pentheus and Dionysus, Gilgamesh and everyone he meets, the book
Lord of the Flies and the play by Yasmina Reza recently produced by the Guthrie Theater,
God of Carnage.
Coincidentally, I first read
Hunter Gatherers the same week that I saw
God of Carnage. Though there are differences in class and style among the characters, any synopsis of the plays would be remarkably similar. Two married couples meet. They are refined and representative. They appreciate fine food and live in impressive apartments in urban environments that represent the height of western civilization. Over the course of the play, their behavior degenerates from intellectual to instinctual, from rational to animal, from civilized to primal.
Both plays, by the way, were first produced in 2006, and both plays seem to conclude that civilization is little more than a self-serving façade we throw over our instincts in a futile effort to lie to ourselves about who and what we really want.
Hunting for meaning
I tend to see art and culture as a kind of ongoing conversation with the world—like Facebook but with less familiarity and more thought—so I wonder what motivated a 51 year old French woman and a 35 year old man in San Francisco to write plays at approximately the same time with such similar set-ups and conclusions. I also wonder what it means.
Especially when you consider the following facts: In the Western World, less people commit homicide than ever before in history. Average lifespans are as high as they have ever been. We have Internet connections and two car garages and dishwashers and laws that prosecute people who want to take our cars, dishwashers, and Wii game systems from us. When people want to take other people's spouses, we even have a civilized system of divorce that allows that to happen with a minimum of bloodshed.
Obviously, these material comforts and legal protections have not inspired a circus of joy to break out across the land. I'm still waiting for someone to buy the world a Coke like they promised. In 2004, just before these plays were produced, George W. Bush was reelected despite the growing obviousness of his dangerous incompetence. The world must be going to hell in a hand basket and, apparently, some popular contemporary playwrights would like to drive. (Peter Sinn Nachtrieb's play
boom was the most produced play by
TCG member theaters in 2009-2010 and the American Theater Critics Association named
Hunter Gatherers best new play in 2007.)
Before I continue, let me say that I believe that writers should write whatever they want. They should be congratulated for writing plays that a lot of people want to see and also praised for their ability to make people laugh—which both of these plays do. Knowing how personal the theater-creating process can be, I become nervous as I think about what a play means beyond what the playwright himself graciously admits to in a polite email response to my questions, "I was very curious to explore the notion of humans as animals and play with the line that separates those two ideas." He does that in
Hunter Gatherers and, in all honesty, he does it with more bravery and commitment than Yasmina Reza. In case you might see the play before it closes, I will reveal only that Nachtrieb's characters "go all the way" in a fashion that Reza only suggests.
But why? Though we are descended from monkeys, we are not monkeys—descended from Hunter Gatherers, we are no longer in any way that honors the actual definition of those words, hunters and gatherers. We may be savage sometimes and at times live under the glare of the God of Carnage but not usually. I don't know about you but I've only ever been to perfectly pleasant dinner parties. In fact, an outbreak of primitive passion would relieve the boredom.
Why would two talented writers write two perfectly enjoyable plays that conclude nothing more than: "Life's a jungle. You'd be better off if you just admitted it and retreated to the forest for some berry-picking."
I understand the impulse—relieve the boredom, for one—but these plays make me deeply sad. Civilization is not a façade; it's a response to being human. Humans convert experience into meaning—we even do it on the sports page—and aspire to greater meaning and greater experiences. We fail often. We murder and lie and cheat and, in some parts of the world, we still do all those things on a scale that makes the mind stammer and drown.
Civilization, culture, is the imperfect antidote to that sense of helplessness in the face of mortality and nature's destructive force. We continually strive to build better mousetraps. Whether or not we succeed is beside the point.
I grow sad at the thought that these plays represent an impulse in our culture to throw up our hands in resignation and shout, "If your mousetrap is so good, why are there still mice in the world?!?"
There will always be mice
The best stories of this subgenre embrace the never-ending struggle between our animal nature and our equally compelling and natural instinct to aspire to greater things. Dr. Jekyll cannot separate himself from the Hyde in his nature, but Hyde cannot live without Jekyll. Jacob outsmarts Esau but must eventually make peace with him. Gilgamesh struggles with mortality and desire, instinct and aspiration, in equal measure.
If you want to argue that we're really animals at heart, you're right. You're just not entirely right. I'm not suggesting you defend yourself from an aggressive attack with a book of poetry. Defend yourself with a gun or your legs or whatever. (I remember a particularly depressing dramaturgical moment in
God of Carnage when one of the characters struts with glory when he goads the woman who insists that people can be better and more civilized into erupting in irrational anger—as though the fact that she still has emotions somehow disproves her points.)
I am suggesting that we can be both savage and refined, vicious and noble, hopeful and desperate. In fact, I believe, the theater—the arts, in general—culture including movies, television, books, internet articles—are part of how we reconcile these confusing sides of ourselves.
I look forward to the plays that wrestle with human nature rather than indict it.
In the meantime, I guess, I'll keep finding meaningful struggle on ESPN.
