I am three months behind on my promised
blog. I apologize, but when the garden
calls I must answer. Somehow the warm
weather and the smell of the soil pull me outside until the last light of day.
Fortunately, it gives me time to think and for the last few days has led
me to musing on my two favorite things, gardens and plays.
How
often has the setting of many of the Hamilton-Gibson plays been absolutely
essential to the atmosphere of the play?
My first thought today, as I was pinching snails from my peas, was to
remember “The Chalk Garden.” You may
remember the movie from the ‘60s starring Hayley Mills? In the 1996 H-G production, Miss Madrigal,
whose past is shaded in mystery, is hired as a governess for an unruly
teen. Madrigal dares to chide her
employer, the child’s grandmother, about her indulgence toward the child
comparing it to the grandmother’s failed attempts to raise beautiful flowers in
barren soil. In this play, the chalky garden beyond the French doors becomes a
metaphoric explanation for the child’s aberrant behavior and draws the audience
into an intimate understanding of the peculiar Madrigal and the shocking
revelation about her past.
“The
Secret Garden” of several summers ago is another example of a musical in which
the setting commands and directs the movement of the story, from the horror of
the cholera epidemic in India to the dreary English manor set in the moors of
Yorkshire. Colin, an invalid, is
virtually imprisoned by his father. In
this play the secret garden of his deceased mother becomes a kind of mystical
place of physical healing and emotional reconciliation between father and
son.
Likewise,
in this season’s “The Miracle Worker,“ Annie Sullivan begs Captain Keller to be
allowed to remove Helen from the family home.
She takes the child to the potting cottage. It is only in that isolation, removed from
the well-meaning indulgence of Helen’s parents, that Miss Sullivan is able to
make the miracle, the breakthrough that gives Helen her first true mutual
communication with the sighted and hearing world.
On
the lighter side, what about that spooky bayou of “The Sugar Bean
Sisters”? Can the audience SEE the swamp
and the dripping Spanish moss and believe in the possibility of a lost sister swallowed
by an alligator and a happily anticipated alien abduction? You bet!
The setting makes the macabre believable. We take in stride, the
appearance of the Cajun bird woman and the bizarre happenings of the play,
thanks to the creepy crawly atmosphere created by the set designer, playwright,
and the imagination of the audience.
And
speaking of the imagination of the audience, there was 2009’s “Our Town”. The
title alone conjures images for everyone.
Does the “Our Town” of Thornton Wilder fit with your sense of home?
Though we weren’t, any of us, raised in Grover’s Corners at the beginning of
the 20th century, are there some universals about everyday life:
growing up, courtship, committing to marriage, the cycles of birth and
death?. No doubt Wilder was entirely
intentional in his minimalist approach to staging. I suspect that‘s the very reason “Our Town”
has lived on a century later.
Contrast
this to “The Laramie Project.” Indeed
the brutality of the story could occur in any age or any country. But the
specific circumstances seem to be particular to 20th century, rural,
conservative America. By naming the
actual town in its title, it directs us to a“There”. The documentary style of the “project” takes
us painfully to the real site of the torture of Matthew Shephard, “The Fence”,
above the sparkling lights of Laramie.
Nevertheless, we are left ill-at-ease. The “There” of Laramie is
slippery and uncertain. At the heart of the play the question nags, “Could this
happen in MY town?”
For
me, the most successful plays are those in which the locale becomes a character
in itself; those in which the setting serves to isolate the players physically,
psychologically, or spiritually. I
recall “The View from Here” a quirky comedy in which an agoraphobic woman
anxiously watches the world from her window, daring to venture beyond only when
she wins a TV set from her local grocery
store. Contrast this to the terror and
isolation of the Jewish family in hiding in “And Then They Came for Me,“ and against this season’s “Seven Stories,“ a
goofy microcosm of urban America, in which the characters dwell in cubicles and
the protagonist eventually flies away from it all when he leaps from the ledge.
Perhaps my personal favorite for its pathos and power was, “The Elephant Man,”
in which John Merrick is confined to a hospital room as a grotesque. There,
within the four walls of his confinement and the prison of his wasting body, he
painstakingly builds an intricate model of a soaring cathedral as he approaches
his inevitable death.
What constitutes setting? It may be as large as the heavens, or small
as the human mind. Often it capitalizes
on a charming corner of the world. Could
“Steel Magnolias” be set anywhere but Chinquapin Parish? Could “Quilters” story be told anywhere but
on the isolated prairie of the 19th century homesteads of Midwest?
The geography of these plays are so intricately woven into the human fiber of
the characters that to separate the setting
from their stories would be impossible.
Sometimes the “setting” is embodied in a world
as limited as a prop. In “Walk Right Up,” Lily and her children confront the
issues of aging and disability in a vacation cabin away from their workaday
worlds. But Millar’s wheelchair is the
defining image of the play.. Millar’s eventually defiance of its confines,
becomes the fulcrum that lifts him from pity to dignity .Who would have thought
that a few season’s later H-G would stage that crazy “Flight of the Lawn Chair Man?” In counterpoint, this title character’s chair
becomes his ticket to freedom.
One of my favorite H-G events is the Tales of
Tioga Playwriting Contest. What a challenge to these developing playwrights. We
all connect to place, specifically to this place. Tales of Tioga contestants
must find the integral bond between their story and this place. If they find a
story that could only happen here, they have truly hit the mark.
When
you reflect about the 20 years of H-G plays, you find a wealth of settings
informing us about the world in which we live.
From India to Delancey Street, the bayou to Almost, Maine, thanks H-G
for telling the tales and taking us away.
What a way to travel!
MARY GINN lives in
Wellsboro and has been actively involved with HG in
many ways for many years. She has appeared in major roles in THE CHALK
GARDEN, THE ELEPHANT MAN, STEEL MAGNOLIAS, the United States premier of
WALK RIGHT UP, and most recently ANCESTRAL VOICES to name a few. She
served on the HG board and currently serves on the Artistic Planning
Committee.
