Reading Log 2025 III

Object, Reference, Monophone // Losing My Mind

This Week:

Sun by Adrienne Kennedy
The Crystal Spider by Rachilde
The Chinese Lady by Lloyd Suh
Venus by Suzan-Lori Parks
The Braggart Samurai by Yasunari Takahashi
Shun’ei by Unknown tran. Mae Smethurst

“Dramaturging Non-Realism” by T. Harding Smith
“Recognition Scenes in Greek Literature” by Bernadotte Perrin
“Kyogenising Shakespeare / Shakespeareanising Kyogen: Some Notes on The Braggart Samurai” by Yasunari Takahashi

The Taming of the Samurai by Eiko Ikegami
[Excerpt] Greek Tragedy in Action by Oliver Taplin
[Excerpt] Ornamentalism by Annie Anlin Cheng

Slightly different readings this week than predicted. In the class I’m teaching we ended up delaying our discussion of “Dramaturging Non-Realism” to this week, which I think was helpful in providing a framework for discussing Sun and The Crystal Spider. Likewise, I have to confess that the reading for my Greek / Japanese theater course is usually sent one week in advance and includes every possible text we might cover. (Sometimes, it’s difficult to decipher what is even meant to be read before class and what will be read in class.) That experience has been hard to capture this in this reading log without making it seem like I’m actually reading whole libraries every week. I think moving forward, I’ll put the texts I anticipate actually reading in our “Next Week” section of the Log and then when reviewing each week, I’ll include the things we actually did talk about.

I turned in an essay this week on objects in the “recognition scenes” across versions of the Orestes story. Originally, I was going to look at Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, but I only ended up having space to talk about Aeschylus and Euripides. (This is fine, as those two are in direct relation to each other. Also, thank God for page limits. )

Aeschylus’ recognition scene is dependent on an escalating series of objects: lock of hair, footprint, piece of weaving. Euripides’ scene refutes these objects and then provides a fourth, bodily object: a scar.

So, we have:

Aeschylus:
Lock of Hair
Footprint
Weaving

Euripides:
Lock of Hair
Footprint
Weaving
Scar

Although our professor (iconically) hates Aristotle’s Poetics as a framework for talking about Greek Tragedy, I referenced it a bunch. Sorry. (“Recognition scene” as a concept is from Poetics.) I think it’s a useful text because it “cleaves.” It creates categories that separate various parts of the play from each other, and then further separates these parts from themselves. So, while the categories might not be entirely accurate historically, they’re useful in their ability to separate. Dramaturgy is all about separation. And love.

Aristotle categorizes the recognition scene in Aeschylus as the fourth mode of recognition, recognition by reasoning. I think this is because it is the sequence of objects and not the objects themselves that create the circumstance of revelation. Still, it’s difficult not to think of the scene as the first mode of recognition, recognition by object. (Bernadotte Perrin agrees in “Recognition Scenes in Greek Literature”, which is from 1909 so basically I’m retreading the retreaded treads.) In the essay I wrote, I argued that the first two objects in Aeschylus are, isolated, belonging to the first mode of recognition. The final object, the piece of cloth, however actually belongs to the third mode - recognition by memory. The first two objects are objects of present-ness. The hair and the footprint stir recognition by their ability to be similar to present Electra. Meanwhile, the piece of weaving causes recognition by the evocation of some kind of memory - it’s creation, it’s wearing, it’s use. (That is bears the mark of a beast seems significant semiotically, but logically helps cement it as memorable. Euripides fails to address this in his critique of the weaving in Electra.) The object sequence in Aeschylus, then, places importance on past-ness as a location of recognition.

The coming together-apart of identity also factors in these scenes. Euripides’ scar (allusion to Homer’s Odyssey) causes recognition by permanently separating Orestes and Electra in identity. Whereas Aeschylus’ objects are all about the merging of identity and gender (Orestes and Electra suddenly share hair and footprints), Euripides sparks recognition not only by bodily cleaving the two (Orestes has a scar; Electra does not) but also by emphasizing gender difference in his rebuttal. What exactly to make of this…I ran out of pages before I could really think on it. And also, frankly, I still don’t know enough about Greek Tragedy to comment. But it seems useful that, in adaptation, while both of these playwrights felt beholden to include the recognizable objects of the myth, they used them nearly in opposite. (Obviously, Euripides was also parodying Aeschylus’ scene.) How do we come to use the objects of myth in adaptation? How do recognizable objects and tokens exist on stage not only as symbols but also as physical, tangible manifestations of story mechanics, of the choices made in adaptation? This reminds me, very loosely, of Annie Anlin Cheng’s Ornamentalism, which attempts to reconcile the connection between portrayals and manifestations of Asian femininity and the notion of “the ornament.”

The allusion to Homer in Euripides’ Electra made me think of The Braggart Samurai, a contemporary Kyōgen adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor. In Electra, the scar is a reference to a recognition scene in The Odyssey. This is similar to my (very basic and in some ways, probably wrong) understanding of Noh theater, which is that it is comprised of “famous excerpts from classical literature of all periods from the most ancient times up to the civil wars of the twelfth century.” (This is from Sadler’s introduction to his translations of Noh, Kyōgen, and Kabuki plays.) One thing this serves to do is make Noh a theater for the “learned” class, the people who are able to understand the references. (I think, in Western academia, of the 19th and 20th century German theater of intense academia that piles onto itself.) But what does it mean for a play to be comprised of reference? What happens when history, cultural difference, and ignorance separate the spectator from the reference? (As I was separated from Homer lol.) I feel optimistic that reference can do more than just totally isolate a number of spectators. I believe in the esoteric’s ability to be universal. I think most things that are specific, esoteric, ornate, referential, etc. can achieve universality. (All theatrical reference is necessarily bound in presence or emotion, which is universal. “I do not understand the words, but I understand the feeling.”) At the same time, I don’t think it’s an entirely bad thing to not understand everything that happens in a play. Christine Mok gave a talk in our Grad Playwriting workshop this week where she discussed the dramaturgical decision to not provide onstage translations for elements of The Far Country at The Atlantic - a dramaturgy of “exclusion” which actually served to both uplift and forefront the verbatim text and the experiences of the Chinese people on Angel Island. What would the politic be of making those experiences more “accessible” for a non-Chinese audience? Would it undermine the purpose of the play?

I don’t really have a conclusion here. It’s just something I’m thinking about, especially as I read these Noh plays which are ostensibly populated with references that totally go over my head. It’s also made me try to think of contemporary Western playwrights who engage with this kind of composition. Ludlam comes to mind. When I was in Der Ring Gott Farblonjet there were a bunch of unannotated references in the text. here was a random line from Finnegan’s Wake he threw in! Hell, there were barely stage directions. We had to read The Ring Cycle to understand why people did certain things. This is where I think dramaturgy can be really exciting, an act of love. If Der Ring Gott Farblonjet ever receives further publication, there is the opportunity for someone to really sit down with the text and say “Hey! This is a line from Finnegan’s Wake!” and notate the reference for all to know. But is this the right thing to do? Some of the Noh plays I read are annotated with extensive footnotes. Others are not.

This is all an insane lead-up to say that The Braggart Samurai is a modern Kyōgen absolutely populated with theatric reference - primarily to Shakespeare and Beckett. Yasunari Takahashi’s essay on his adaptation process for The Braggart Samurai is excellent. I think it’s worthwhile for anyone studying adaptation. He says that the thing he wanted to achieve with The Braggart Samurai was not a Kyōgen adaptation of Merry Wives or a Shakespearean version of a Kyōgen, but a new, third thing - a text of reciprocal movement, each form expanding the other. I was most interested in what he called placing the “polyphonic” Shakespeare within the confines of the “monophonic” form of Kyōgen. This necessitated both extreme sacrifices on the part of the Shakespeare story (Anne Page is totally gone and, as Takahashi states, true love is better suited for a Noh anyway) and on the form of Kyōgen itself. (Can the form tolerate multiple scenes? Can it tolerate extended length?) I’m curious to read Takahashi’s other works, and especially his writings on Beckett, when I have the time. (How are Beckett and Forman indebted to the Noh?)

My two playwriting classes this week (one taught, one taken) really got into the weeds of “History”, meaning, and representation. In Playwriting II we looked at Sun and The Crystal Spider as plays that de-prioritized character, plot, and logic and forefronted language and symbol. How can language and symbol become perfect manifestations of something - of an event, of a feeling, of an idea?

We watched Skibidi Toilet as a primer for our encounter with non-realism. It was kind of a joke, but I also think we have to be making consumptive connections in order to untangle difficult material. Skibidi Toilet is not about the psychology of the toilets. We’re never worried about what the toilets are thinking. We might feel slightly troubled (“There is a head in a toilet. It seems like something violent is happening.”) but to try and present an encompassing explanation of the story is foolish. It matters that there are toilets. Now there are two toilets. Now there is a big toilet. There are guns. Do we think of war? Are we meant to? There are cameras. I do not care what the camera thinks. The camera thinks nothing. The camera is being a camera. What do I think when I encounter the camera.

Adrienne Kennedy was commissioned to write Sun in the aftermath of Malcom X.’s assassination. Her play , which I selfishly wish there was more scholarship surrounding, exists are the perfect expression of a certain experience. Maybe this is her experience of making sense of the assassination, maybe not. Maybe it’s something we don’t have access to. But it is statement, a complete gesture. It’s scary and evocative - suns of every color, a bleeding moon, a body in pieces, both dismembered and disembodied. We can talk about these things as they create “webs of meaning” (from “Dramaturging Non-Realism”) for us, but we can’t seek to “understand” them. They are an experience. To prepare for class I watched Daniel Alexander Jone’s excellent production of Sun at Fordham.

The Crystal Spider is slightly more legible. (Is it??) There are a characters. They talk. They are in relation to each other. But as the play continues the language sort-of takes over, and the story ends with a violent and unseen action. What has happened? We don’t really know. The centerpiece of the play is a description of a young man looking into a mirror as it shatters, as it becomes the “crystal spider” of the title. He talks of being dismembered by this. Something in both of these plays (and yes, Skibidi Toilet) is body separated from itself, the body where it ought not be. All three of works are encounters, in some way, with dehumanization in strikingly different contexts.

The experience of de-humanizing connects to our consideration of “character” in the capital-H History play. We continue to reference “Lights Shining In Buckinghamshire” as a play in which the audience’s ability to differential character is not important. (I think of Kennedy and Smith’s description of her porous characters in “Dramaturging Non-Realism.”) What characters can exist in history plays? How can they shirk the burden of symbolizing the universal, or being a spokesperson for a certain group or experience. Many of the plays we’re reading involve some kind of metatheatricality. Venus and The Chinese Lady are both plays of re-enactment, re-staging, and fabulation. In Galileo, there’s a puppet play of Galileo that occurs towards the back-end. Does the History play require pointed enactment as a theatrical confession of its own fallibility? Or is it done to, yes, distribute the burden of “representation” more truthfully across the play. What does it mean for History plays which merely posit a theatrical theory of “what happened” without drawing attention to it’s imperfection. Is that how propaganda is made? We also began to develop a theory of the function of the Chorus in a History play versus in a Tragedy, which was great for me because I’m so deep in Greek Tragedy world anyway.

I can’t quite pull it all together. These are some thoughts I’m trying to reconcile this week. Comment below your favorite thought and what I’ll do is I’ll send you an ear of corn in the mail. I went running for the first time in a while. It felt good to move. I’d like to do more of that. I went to a football game too. That was great fun. Next week I start dramaturging Mother Courage with Brown/Trinity, a bit of a last minute appointment, so I’m spending the weekend catching up on my Brecht. Have you listened to the Duke Special Mother Courage album? I love it. I love that guy.

Next Week:
The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World by Suzan-Lori Parks
The America Play by Suzan-Lori Parks
This Beautiful City by The Civilians
Youchi Soga by Miyamasu
Flower of Edo by Tsuuchi Jihei II and Tsuuchi Han’emon
Ataka by Kanze Nobumitsu
Kanjincho by Namiko Goghei

“This Beautiful City” Album by Ghostlight Records

Essays (TBD) by Suzan-Lori Parks