Outlawing Tragedy

My director's notes for two Irish one acts, both from 1904:  the darkly brilliant "Riders to the Sea" and the spritely hilarious "Spreading the News."


Actor Sir Ben Kingsley spoke to an audience at the National Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C. earlier this year. Kingsley, who won the Oscar for his the lead role in Gandhi, is admired and known the world over for his work portraying characters in films about the Holocaust. Paraphrasing playwright David Mamet, Kingsley took a moment to speak about tragedy during his talk:

“David Mamet in his book, Writings in Restaurants, defined, let me slightly paraphrase and say western civilization, western civilization is a civilization determined to outlaw tragedy. If you remove the presentation of tragedy from the shaman that's sitting by the bonfire, you're telling the tribe nothing of real life. And it doesn't prepare us as adults. It infantilizes us and it dodges an enormous responsibility. And all great mythology that we love and respect has included loss and tragedy as well as great moments of salvation. It's braided in.”

Stories are the human race's greatest treasure. We are constantly telling stories, listening to them, watching them, and making them. Anthropologists tell us that we encode these stories with lessons and wisdom, passing them from one generation to the next. Stories that get told and retold become a sort of cultural genome, a DNA of our values and worries. Think of your favorite fairy tale or TV show. The characters from our stories are like members of our families: they inspire us, scold us, entertain us, and comfort us.

When Mamet tells us that we are outlawing tragedy, he is issuing us a warning of a storyteller. He tells us: don't forget the tales of woe. Don't forget the stories of loss. We need these stories.

In our schools and homes, however, we don't like these ugly stories. We loathe loss; we cringe from risk. We are baffled by tragedy and, often, we push it to the corners of our lives. We need to clean it up; put things into boxes. When we hide our eyes, we often lose the wisdom than can only be won through loss.

Kingsley ended his talk with a story:
“After a performance I gave of Hamlet I was walking across a field near Stafford-upon-Avon and I saw a young woman on the other side of the field walking towards me... She was determined [to get to me] and she faced me in the middle of this field. And she said (because I played Hamlet on stage the night before), 'I saw Hamlet last night. How did you know about me?' That's [a theatre-maker's] job. I know you. I'm trying to know you. And through knowing each other and holding onto that tribal bonfire, it will be okay.”

Drama remains the most vital storytelling we have. I invite you to see how special it is to see young people tell our oldest stories. When we see our kids act, sing, and dance, we are reminded just how tribal we are. Listen to them. There is old wisdom here.

Here's to our human tribe's great stories. May we never stop telling them.

Thanks to NPR and Ben Kingsley for the story.

The Irish Plays, at North Shore High School, Glen Head, NY.
An evening of Irish drama, poetry, music, and dance.
Friday, 25 March, at 7:30pm
Saturday, 26 March, at 2:00pm and 7:30pm
Sunday, 27 March, at 2:00pm

The "No More Trash" Principle

So here's the basic idea: nothing ever goes away.

There is no loss of anything. The old family car that, every blazing summer afternoon, smelled like melting plastic? It's not gone.  It's still here. That strawberry shortcake you had six years ago at that amazing July 4^th BBQ? Still around. The clippings from your first haircut as an infant? Yup. It's here. Somewhere.

We're not just talking about Dunkin Donuts' styrofoam cups or the waste from Chernobyl. We're talking about everything. This is the Law of the Conservation of Mass.

Ask any science geek worth her horn-rims and she'll tell you: there is a finite amount of energy and mass in the universe. When you burn paper, the paper doesn't go away-- it just looks and smells different. Some of the paper changes molecularly into something else. Some of the paper turns into energy. But none of it disappears or no longer exists. (Note for my super nerd readers: yes, laws of special relativity, as speculated by Einstein and his followers/critics, makes my explanation way too simple. To that I say: humbug! It's not bad for a layman. Or laywoman, for that matter. Oh, and by the way-- what's up, super nerds? I love you guys).

As my friend from college, Todd Kreidler, once said, “it's all cut and paste, man.” He was talking about playwriting and, by association, the creative process itself. Picasso knew it, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg counted on it, and Girl Talk celebrates it: genius is found in artfully re-purposing and re-using somebody else's stuff.

We don't need more stuff-- we need to find a way to use and reuse the stuff we have. Think about that. I'm not talking about finding a new use for that grocery bag. I'm talking about everything: banana peels, candy wrappers, smoke from cigarettes, spit, loud sounds (and soft ones), junk mail, broken lamps, etc. All of these things have energy and useful matter.

Thinking like this makes big issues such as the energy problem or food shortages seem, well, kind of solvable.

A Lack Of Imagination

There is value locked up in everything. One man's trash is another man's treasure, we say-- but imagine if we decided, culturally, that there was no distinction between trash and treasure? What if we valued things based on their usability in any situation, rather than their usability in a given current situation? “Trash,” in fact, is anything without an easily definable use. Once a use is found for a piece of trash, it becomes a thing of value.

And now let's think really big for a moment: what if we didn't just look at materials this way-- but at EVERYTHING in this way? Movement, ideas, relationships, mistakes, regrets-- anything we toss off. Often, we see our limits in our resources as what keeps us from moving forward. We stand among our trash heaps, dwarfed by our wasted chances and resources. We throw so much away.

We need to start using the trash. Not for the environment-- although it would certainly help. Not because it's moral (although recycling must be the best example of good stewardship one can imagine). We need to start using the trash because IT'S NOT TRASH. 

"Trash" is, simply, the word we use when we stop believing in the potential of something that has been used.  It's foolish.

We need to have the imagination to re-see what we look at every day. This is what artists do. And business innovators and scientists do. They have the bravery, talent, and energy to see the world in a different way.

Smarter Reusing:  Borrow-Swaps

I have an example: look online. There is a growing “borrow-swap” sector that enables people to take their junk and share it with people who need it more. It started with ebay-- but this is a whole new thing. Craigslist, Zip Car, and Home Away are just a couple of manifestations.  These “borrow-swaps” allow people to borrow cars, rent apartments, lend step ladders, bike helmets, fishing rods, saws, sewing machines, etc. The basic idea is that we all have too much stuff-- and that we are wasting the opportunity to re-use what just sits there. It's beautiful.

Heck, think about composting.  Gross?  Sure.  But way smarter than wrapping biodegradable waste in plastic and sending it to a landfill.  Swap your trash for food and flowers.

A Call To You, Reader Person

The applications are limitless.  Think about the difference in required energy between making a meal from scratch and making a meal from leftovers. Compare the difference in the outcome.  

Now, apply it to your whole life. What are you trying to replace from scratch? What are you throwing away? What of that experience, pain, and junk would be useful to you if you could use your imagination to unlock it?

We need to stop putting so much energy into new stuff and putting more energy into re-using and re-purposing all the stuff we have. We're not going to run out of stuff!

Let's get to work, people. Start thinking. All you artists without jobs (or with horrible jobs), let's do this. Let's turn our trash into treasure-- it's the future, if we're going to have one.