“A cartographic conception is very distinct from the archaeological conception… The latter establishes a profound link between the unconscious and memory: it is a memorial, commemorative, or monumental conception…Maps, on the contrary, are superimposed in such a way that each map finds itself modified in the following map, rather than finding its origin in the preceding one: from one map to the next, it is not a matter of searching for an original, but of evaluating displacements. Every map is a redistribution of impasses and breakthroughs, of thresholds and enclosures.”
–Gilles Deleuze
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I have often thought of thinking styles as either a tendency towards the horizontal or the vertical: to expand out and cover a lot of territory, or to stay tightly focused on a particular realm, digging down to understand it thoroughly. This passage by Deleuze—a thinker/writer well known for his layered, complex and omnivalent viewpoints—fleshes out my two dimensional, “go out or go in” model to a more full-bodied and three dimensional one. Much more than a thinking style, these are orientations that can apply to many other domains.
I had this model in mind when I attended three theatrical productions now running in Boston. Deleuze’s taxonomy offers a rich way to consider how a story is assembled, why it sometimes works , why it sometimes does not. Where is the story sourced? What is its directional energy? Where does it want us to go? There’s much to consider than just out or in.
PRAYER FOR THE FRENCH REPUBLIC
Written by Joshua Harmon
Directed by Loretta Greco
Huntington Theater Company
Through October 8
This play is built around a multi-generational Jewish family living in Paris as each member considers what safety and belonging means to them. Playwright Joshua Harmon, (is he really only 40 years old?) steps fearlessly into a whole range of “radioactive” issues–Judaism, the nation of Israel, identity, nationalism, loyalty, family, lineage, self preservation. One of his characters, daughter Elodie, is the rapid fire voice articulating the Churchillian “riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma,” that is the history of Jews in the Western world.
Prayer shares a shelf with several other prize-winning plays about multigenerational Jewish families: Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt, the Huntington’s recently produced The Lehman Trilogy, among others. (Harmon won the Outer Critics Circle Award and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play in 2022.) And that form has been shown to be a worthy vessel for concerns that are both interior as well as exterior.
Prayer operates in both of Deleuze’s domains. The vertical/archaeological axis is a necessary element for a story full of the deeply personal, of collective memory, of asking what is and should be memorialized. Prayer is also horizontal/cartographic in its treatment of the ever morphing saga of the Jews as they take up residence, become marginalized, then are driven out. Safe harbor is found and lost, then found and lost again. Deleuze’s concept of “mapping”—a stand in here for storytelling—aptly describes that oft-repeated story: “it is not a matter of searching for an original, but of evaluating displacements. Every map is a redistribution of impasses and breakthroughs, of thresholds and enclosures.” Prayer confronts deep history, tribal memory, present day displacements.
The Huntington production is so well done. An outstanding cast offers a great showcase for new Artistic Director Loretta Greco’s directorial skills. The play will be on Broadway in January, but this Boston version is so worth seeing.
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HALF-GOD OF RAINFALL
Written by Inua Ellams
Directed by Taibi Magar
American Repertory Theater
Through September 24
Based on a poetic work by Nigerian writer Inua Ellams, Half-God is Homeric, syncretistic, fantastical. Ellams describes it as “an epic revenge fantasy, a meditation on power and patriarchy, a Black feminist response to the #MeToo movement, Nigeria’s answer to Marvel’s Avengers, and a feature film waiting to happen. A friend described it as a love-letter to lone parenting—it explores the extensive lengths a mother goes to in order to protect her son from an abusive father.”
This poetic monomyth moves its hero Demi from a small village in Nigeria to the courts of basketball stardom in the Western world. With its phantasmal blend of Yoruba spirituality, Greek mythology and Western cultural iconography, the production feels dreamlike. This is an archaeological storyline that digs down into the source of the mythological.
But making poetry work as theatre is not without its difficulties, and Half-God suffers from some of those adaptation challenges. There are moments in this production that feel inert, falling short of the dramatic tension needed in a theatrical event (a level of tension that, interestingly, is not required in a film.) While the ensemble cast is full of expansive energy and passion, the narrative itself felt more earthbound than airborne.
Notwithstanding, the production is visually sumptuous. Kudos to the whole creative team: costume design by Linda Cho, lighting design by Stacy Derosier, sound design and music composition by Mikaal Sulaiman, projection design by Tal Yarden, and movement direction by Orlando Pabotoy.
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ASSASSINS
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Book by John Weidman
Directed by Courtney O’Connor
Through October 15
Assassins was first performed in 1990. But the play is unnervingly timeless. In fact it feels like it was written for this very moment in our history.
The premise of the play is a wild idea: Choose nine presidential assassins, some successful and some not, then bring their very specific grievances and issues into a play with music. (It may be a minor point to call this a “play with music.” But Assassins doesn’t feel like it should be categorized as a “musical.” The content is way too serious, and the music, though Sondheimly masterful, is ancillary to the storyline.) Throughout the play Director Courtney O’Connor chose to use no gun props—the human hand shaped like a pistol, with sound effects, is all that is needed—until the final scene. And then, each assassin now armed, the true terror of this story is delivered in an instant.
Hats off to this Lyric Stage production. Performed in an intimate space, the cast and the energy spill out into every corner of the house. High fives to the actors who give these legendary misfits their chance to speak:
John Wilkes Booth (Robert St. Laurence)
Samuel Byck (Phil Tayler)
Leon Czolgosz (Daniel Forest Sullivan)
Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme (Lisa Kate Joyce)
Charles J. Guiteau (Christopher Chew)
John Hinkley (Jacob Thomas Less)
Sara Jane Moore (Shonna Cirone)
Lee Harvey Oswald (Dan Prior)
Guiseppe Zangara (Teddy Edgar)
In Deleuze’s nomenclature, Assassins is cartographic. The assassin storyline is perennial and ubiquitous, one that continues to morph and resurface. The inevitable tenacity of that very particular storyline is embodied by John Wilkes Booth as he whispers his advice into the ears of his many latter-day copycats.
In the words of director O’Connor, “Our relationship with violence and guns, what it means to be an American, and with our history are more fractured than ever…We as 2023 America must be willing to look critically at our past and explore how the actions of a few ‘different’ people screaming to be heard have reverberated, repeated, and harmed—and who might be screaming around us today.”