In it, he introduced a mysterious package in the first scene -- a package that one character had asked another to carry through customs, a package intended for a mysterious slum lord.
The package remained onstage for most of the play. It was argued about, it was wondered about, it was a way to talk about the dangerous slum lord and the potential for violence in the city where the play took place.
The play was not really ABOUT the package -- the play was about the relationship between the three men in the room, and their relationship to their home culture and the culture in which they found themselves. But the package provided an entry point into discussing those relationships, and was just about all the "plot" the play had -- if you were trying to map the events of the play, they'd be "men show up with package. Man disappears with package. Friends are worried something has happened to him. Man returns."
The play was a relationship play, but the package gave the play a skeletal system.
Then I heard my friend Sam's play...he made an offhand comment, at the end of the reading, about how he was struggling with "those things you think about in realism -- the secrets and the order of revelations..." His play, too, had a mysterious object -- a short essay that we think is one thing, then think is another, then realize is another still. Each time we hear the short essay, its meaning has changed.
I've gotten very, very caught up, in the last few years, in the idea of a play as a series of events. And I think I've taken that to mean that a play must contain as many events as possible. Ben's play was a reminder that we go to the theater for story, but we also go for MEANING...we don't ask that of our movies the same way, really...
Story exists to carry questions, and meaning. Yes, you must have story. But if you spend all your energy on the series of events, and none on meaning/mystery, then you are neglecting part of what's essential to the theatrical form.
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