"THIEVES" by Herb Gardner

Okay, now most of you know that I DO NOT LIKE PLAYS.  Theatre really isn't my thing.  Now, don't get me wrong, there are a few plays that I like because they are written in a realistic format as opposed to a theatrical one, like "4000 Miles", for instance.  Now there is a play called "Thieves" by Herb Gardner that I LOVE, and it is not really in a realistic style, but I will explain why I love it so much.

When I was in high school, I was a part of the speech and debate team.  During this time, I performed a duet and duo piece with my partner called "Thieves".  The piece/play lasted as long as time limits allowed (10-12 minutes, thankfully).  The play was about a married couple named Martin and Sally Cramer, who had fell in love when they were 16, but now have grown tired of each other.  Sally continues to try to spice up the relationship by creating little games like pretending she forgets things just so she can create new worlds for herself or rediscover things, or just try to get some kind of reaction out of her husband, who despises these little games.  Also, not only did these two grow apart over the years, but they grew apart from themselves as well.  In the play, Sally explains how when Martin/Marty was young, he was so exciting.  Their first date he "broke into Lowe's Delancy with a crowbar, and you put me [Sally] in the middle of the 8th row and you got up onstage and played your flute for me.  And then the cops came, sirens and everything and we're running through alleyways and we're halfway across town and we're getting away with it.  Oh Marty, how did you do it?  How did you get so boring?"  "You had a knife and a flute and you were a damn interesting person".  It turns out that Marty has turned in his knife and flute for a suite and a job, because he is now the Principal of Little Blue Bell School where he does "the totally unnecessary, for the completely un-needing."  Now in the midst of all this nonsense, they are attempting to get a divorce.  However, Sally just found out that she is PREGNANT!  Marty does not know this, so while they are fighting and discussing their future plans for divorce, Sally tries to mend the relationship at the same time, because of her pregnancy.

I love this play for so many reasons.  One, it is hilarious, the things they say to one another, like when Sally and Marty would go to parties "[Marty] would go off in the corner and pretend you [he] were an onion dip".  But, it was also very sad that these two people who have been in love for YEARS just grew tired of each other.  In that way, the story is very real.  My partner and I played Martin and Sally as if they were New Yorkers, so that made it EVEN BETTER!!  The reality of the story behind this play, the idea of love and loss and trying to repair something that is broken and you don't know how it could ever break because you thought that you were taking extra care of it, but it turns out that it was just chunked in a corner somewhere for years slowly breaking, that idea is harsh, but it is also beautiful, and trying to find that line between the harshness and the sympathy in the play is so interesting and fun, as well as incredibly sad.  Performing this play was the first time I had ever acted with a partner, and for that reason alone, it is very special to me. 
Not only was it incredibly fun to yell at my friend, and not only did we place a lot with this piece, and not only did we get recognition from other coaches and teams, but this piece allowed me to practice another part of acting, reacting.  And, it turns out that I'm not half bad at it.  Also, it is so incredibly great, because in speech, you perform the same pieces all year long more than once a day, and sometimes, for that reason, you tend to lose interest in something that you've worked incredibly hard at and love.  You get bored.  However, that was never the case with this piece.  When you have a partner to rely on in acting, there is always the chance that one of you could mess up, and trying to get back on track becomes fun.  Your partner may not walk the same way everytime, or use the same hand gestures, and to try to each time play off of those things, suddenly makes the piece new to you and in that way, makes it more interesting and alive again.  Your emotions also change with these changes.  All of a sudden, you would remember in one look of your partner's eyes or a quiver in their lip that this piece truly is sad, and you start to feel emotions that you forgot that you had, and in that way you rediscover yourself as an actor as well as the piece.  So that is why I love this play so much.  It is (as cheesy as this is going to sound) A PART OF ME.  Also, anytime one does a New York accent, you know you're having a blast!   

"4000 Miles"

Literary-devices.com defines motif as, "any element, subject, idea or concept that is constantly present through the entire body of literature."  It also explains that, "Motifs are very noticeable and play a significant role in defining the nature of the story, the course of events and the very fabric of the literary piece.". I, however, disagree with the though that motifs are very noticeable.  In the case of Amy Herzog's 4000 Miles, I found that the motif of the play is not very noticeable, but in fact, rather difficult to find.  Based on Herzog's choices in writing the play, the reader is left with many unanswered questions.  For example, the reader does not know why Leo and Vera have such a close relationship, or why Leo and Vera do not get along with Leo's mother, or how Lilly really feels about Leo or him about her, and etc..  With all these unanswered questions, it is hard to find a central theme of the story.  There are so many details within it, many of which that are not explained.  That being said, in order for me to find what I thought to be the motif of 4000 Miles, I had to go back a read the play again.  Despite that, however, I still may be wrong about what I think it is.  Now, the definition of motif says that it can be a reoccurring element, idea, subject or concept.  So, does that mean that there can be more than one motif?  For example, can it be said that Micha's death serves as a motif, being that it is mentioned more than once throughout the entirety of the play, along with Vera not having her hearing aid on at certain moments more than once as another motif?  Or, is the motif something very broad, like, "One event in a persons life could damage a person's whole life and save it as well", like the way Micah's death sort of created a domino effect of all the bad things that are going on in Leo's life, but in the end, it leads to him having a better relationship with his grandmother and gets him a job?  I honestly do not know, but if I had to guess, I would say that the motif, or another motif for 4000 Miles, in my opinion, would be Leo's constant failed relationships with other people based on misunderstanding.  Again, this is just a guess; so I may be completely wrong, but the reason I said this is because throughout the play we see, or at least hear about relationships that Leo has in his life; the relationship he has with his sister, his friends, Bec, Amanda, Vera, and his mom, and although we may not know the whole story of all of these relationships, one thing that is certain is that most of them have failed and mostly because of misunderstandings.  Leo does not get along with his mother because they do not understand each other.  Bec was mad at Leo because she didn't know the real reason why Leo did not go to Micah's funeral, and misunderstood it as that he didn't really care about anyone.  Leo's relationship with Lilly, his sister, failed because he kissed her, and everyone thought that this emotionally damaged  Lilly.  Also, he didn't understand or know if that was true, so he was sort of embarrassed or ashamed to talk to her.  His very brief encounter with Amanda failed, because Amanda did not understand what Leo was going through and didn't understand why he wouldn't use her number.       

"Judith"

It is very difficult to distinguish what the Major Dramatic Question is for the play, Judith.  Judith in itself is a very ambiguous play leaving many questions the reader may have unanswered.  The playwright's choice to not include certain things in the plot makes it even more difficult to determine the major dramatic question.  Based on that fact, my guess of what it could be is probably horribly wrong.  However, if I had to guess, I would say that the major dramatic question would be, "Will Judith 'lay with' Holofernes?"  Based on the meaning of the MDQ being a question of will the desire of the character that surrounds the play be resolved, I would say that this question is a proper major dramatic question.  Throughout the play Judith, Judith and Holofernes continuously discussed if the reason for Judith's visit was to 'lay with' Holofernes.  Like Night, Mother, it was sort of a round-and-round thing.  Again, although this play was extremely ambiguous, one thing was clear to the reader, and that is that it was a desire of both characters to do this.  However, at the end, Judith ends up decapitating Holofernes, which leaves her unable to do so, almost (counting the fact that she kind of raped his dead body...or did she?).  As I read this play, the one question that I found myself continuously asking was this question.  For most of the play, this was the main conflict, until the reader gets to the end and realizes that they have no idea what the play was really about as they asked themselves, "What on Earth just happened?".  Nevertheless, if the point of the Major Dramatic Question is to keep the reader interested and continuously reading, then this question fulfilled its purpose.        

"Night, Mother"

  The major dramatic question of a play is a question that drives the script. Once the MDQ gets answered, the script ends.  Some argue that the question of "Will Jesse kill herself?", serves as the major dramatic question for Night, Mother.  Now, where that is a very important question that the reader constantly asks whilst reading the play, I don't believe that, "Will Jesse kill herself?", is really the MDQ.  This play forces the reader to ask a lot of questions like:  "Will Jesse explain exactly why she wants to kill herself?", "What are Jessie's true feelings toward her mother?", "What are Mother's true feelings about Jesse?";  so it is rather difficult to guess, or rather see clearly, what the MDQ really is?  However, if I were to guess, I would say that the MDQ would be, "Will Mother succeed in stopping Jesse from killing herself?".  In my own experience reading this play, I found myself getting frustrated due to the fact that it was basically a 'run-around' story.  The whole play consisted of Jessie saying she wanted to kill herself and the mother trying to stop her or distract her, her mother failing, trying a new tactic to stop Jessie, failing again and again.  It has been said that the major dramatic question of a play is "what keeps you engaged from the beginning with the tension that is created by the conflict between a desire and the resolution."  As I read, I constantly found myself questioning whether or not Mother would succeed in stopping Jesse from killing herself (which was a desire of mine to know as it was Mother's to do).  Therefore, I believe "Will Mother succeed in stopping Jesse from killing herself?", is a proper major dramatic question for this play.  The question is answered at the end of the play when Jesse does in fact kill herself, and Mother does in fact fail to stop her.      

"Trifles"

I remember reading Trifles by Susan Glaspell my senior year in AP English.  We had to read it, annotate it, write about it in a journal, answer questions about it, and of course, do homework and take a test on it, and I remember thinking as I read it the first time just how interesting it was.  I remember thinking just how specific it was in all its details, not just in the stage directions, but in the actual story itself.  You see, when I read things, books, scripts, whatever, I like to picture in my mind if I were to film this, how would I do it, and when I read Trifles, I'm allowed to have a very specific vision of how I would want people to see it.  The specificity of the play however is not the only aspect I found interesting, but the language of the play caught my attention as well.  Despite the fact that this play was written a long time ago, the language is still understandable, as if we would still speak this way today, not just with the words themselves, but how they are said and how the characters speak to each other.  It is very relate-able in that way.
This play is very intriguing for its length.  In the short pages, so much happens with so little, and I love that.  The sentences are very short and straight forward, and somehow it is so strong.  Again, the story itself is very alluring as well, as many people agree, because of its showing of how women in that time were controlled by men and how they were made to feel inferior, but in the end they turned out to be smarter than the men and ended up getting what they wanted.  I myself, however find not only that aspect of the message of the play alluring, but also the fact that, as the title suggests, it's all about the little things.  Sometimes the tiniest things that people overlook is what is the most important.  It reminds me of the television show "Monk".  These women "solved the case," the murder, by looking at the smallest details that everyone else overlooked.
Lastly, I'd like to comment on the "feel" of the play.  Although some people view the play as amusing based on the women outsmarting the men, and others view the play as sad for obvious reasons, this play, to me, is very eerie and dark.  Sure, it's a story about women outsmarting men, but the story also explores the inner workings of a very disturbing and unhappy marriage taking place in this sort of desolate, or isolated farm in a small, lonely town.  It explains a woman's loss of mind after a marriage to what on the outside seemed like a good man but was actually someone who took away her soul and every bit of freedom and happiness.  It makes you think of, what is really "good" and what should or shouldn't make a woman happy.  That eerie thought is what makes this play, to me, so powerful and exciting and great!

OVERTONES

There were quite a few aspects about the play "Overtones" by Alice Gerstenberg that I found rather interesting and enjoyable.  First of all, I liked how the stage directions set off little "hints" about the play's characters.  For example, in the first stage direction, it is explained that Harriet is wearing "a light, 'jealous' green", and her counterpart Hetty wears a darker shade of that jealous green.  This hints at two things, one, that Harriet's character is jealous, and two, that the undertones are stronger and darker beings than the overtones.
Another thing that I liked, was the balance between humor and sadness throughout the play.  Sure, it's funny because it's two women of societal values arguing with each other and themselves while being completely "fake", or "two-faced" rather, but it is also sad that both women have to argue with themselves to try to maintain sanity, which in itself is pretty insane.  One thing that I did not understand though was the ending.
In Script Analysis, we discussed how the characters' undertones were absorbed by their overtones, implying that societal values were more important than women trying to show their real feelings and getting what they want.  I disagree, however.  The women did technically get what they wanted.  I feel that the undertones being absorbed by their overtones was not a sign of the overtone's weakness to societal values, but rather their weakness to their undertones.  Now, maybe I'm wrong, but the way that I saw that ending was that the hatred of the undertones became so loud and violent that it was absorbed by the undertones, sort of like the undertones had taken over the bodies of the overtones, and after that moment of them saying their goodbyes, the "claws" had officially come out.  Now,  maybe they still will be "ladies" on the outside, which I suppose is what they meant by societal values being more important, but I disagree with the general thought of the class that, as I understood them stating, the women just gave in to society's morals of keeping your mouth shut because ladies would never get what they wanted anyway.