Okay, at
the very first my reaction was “Really? What the hell is the point
of asking, anyway?” Then I ruminated on it, cuddling the idea until
it gained weight. Out of all the questions/subjects in human history,
this is probably the thorniest. To wit: Do you think about death?
And, if so, what are your thoughts? And how do you, as a playwright,
treat your characters who die?
The
question was asked by a playwright. God knows what spurred him on to
dump this onto Facebook, but he did. And, of course, it being
Facebook, folks responded. Mostly serious, nearly all earnest. I
think there was one who responded with tongue mischievously planted
within cheek.
I sound
dismissive. I, like most self-aware, sentient
beings, understand death to be inevitable. (It's actually the very
last thing on my bucket list.) It's gonna happen. Only questions are
when and how.
Having
come pretty close to sharing a hot fudge sundae with Death on several
occasions, I think I have a passing familiarity. When I was a kid, I
had asthma bad enough to close my airways down far enough keep me in
an oxygen tent for two weeks. The doctor who did my tonsils when I
was five fucked it up big time and I was ambulanced back in to Lenox
Hill Hospital toot-fucking-sweet to stem some kind of out of control
infection. (Because of my childhood proclivity to contract all sorts
of stupid medical ailments, Lenox Hill became my home away from home
and I knew all of the nurses in pediatrics by name.)
I had
five concussions by the time I was eleven. (And NO, it was not from
physical abuse. I was a first-class klutz. I once fell off the damn
doctor's exam table when I was five and landed square on the noggin.
These are the days before litigation became as commonplace as
therapy.)
Three
bouts of pneumonia by the time I was eight. When I was nine I
contracted viral meningitis. I was in hospitals so much I came to
think of them as normal places for any kid to be. To this day I find
them soothing and safe. My parents heard from doctors more than once
not to plan on keeping the college fund open. Nurses, who kept me
from being frightened, who stayed up with me and played games with me
and made sure I was okay and sat with me when my Mom and Dad weren't
there . . . they are the noblest humans on the planet; they are my
goddesses of goddesses.
Moving
on. I was almost decapitated on the number one train. My appendix
burst right before the surgery. A giggling four year old girl tossed
a live mortar at me one sunny day in Baghdad. My wife and I were hit
by lightning in Quebec.
Any one
of these could have led to a greasy end. How do I feel about death?
Like I've cheated it a few times. Like there's a big bill accruing.
Like whoever is eventually gonna collect is deliberately fucking with
me.
So when
someone asks how I feel about killing off my characters, I respond
with curiosity. I mean, how should I feel?
I've
expounded to those within earshot any number of times about being a
playwright and playing God by creating virtual life forms on the
page. Characters with feelings, pasts, motivations, fears, loves,
etc, whatever resembles real soul-possessing humanity as closely as
possible. Because that's what we do: we create viable souls. To me,
in my head, my characters are real. They exist. In reality, they do
not. Thank you, Dr. Phil, but I know the difference.
And
should I have occasion to end their literary corporeal existence, I
do so with what I hope is good reason. Death is, simply, a truthful
functionality. They die because that is what is supposed to happen.
All things die. They die because they are meant to. I can only hope
they die at the right time and for the right reason.
To me,
Death is not a convenient device, it is a logical end to a character.
It is not used to be efficient, to remove a body from a stage, to
lean down a production. It is used because that device of death for
that character-soul is an integral part of the whole (plot). That
death, as every death should, resonates throughout the work and
creates ripples in the plot that others now have to deal with.
Again I
come back to a topic all too familiar when dramaturging a work: what,
as opposed to the playwright's own particular desires and wishes,
serves the play itself? More than a few times I have had to seriously
reflect on what I'm scribbling down: is it my wish as “a playwright
with desire and ideas” that it should happen THIS WAY or is it the
play itself's dictation that X should bite the big one? Most of the
time I know, deep down, behind the initial surprise, that it's right
because I have that feeling of logical completion. Only once have I
been perturbed by the play telling me of the need for a character to
shuffle off this mortal coil, and it took this path:
Discovery:
Oh fuck. Really?
Denial:
Oh, fuck no. Not you. Dude. I like you.
Anger:
Fuck this shit!
Bargaining:
Oh fuck, can I rewrite . . .?
Depression:
Oh fuck. The rewrite's bullshit. I hate this writing thing. I'm no
good. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!!!
Acceptance:
Ohhhh . . . fuck!! Wait a minute . . . this works!!!
So I
guess my answer to the question of how I think about my characters
who are no more, who have ceased to be, whose metabolic processes are
now yeah yeah yeah is simply:
This is
your job. You are dead. Since you are dead in one of my plays, you'll
probably still have lines. You'll have a really creepy makeup job.
This is theatre, remember. Dead people on stage are pretty cool.
Think about it: from Hamlet senior to the Woman in Black, you're the
character who most likely lucked out, cuz you get to provide the
spine chills and the bad dreams. You're dead, yes, but you're lucky.
The
author Terry Pratchett passed away last week. I'd read all of his
books at least twice each. His characterization of Death was the
personification of the Grim Reaper: cloak, hood, skeleton, scythe.
SPOKE IN ALL CAPS. Classic freaky anthropomorphication a la Dickens
and many others. And yet this Death had a large part of humanity
within him, although he didn't quite know it. He did his job
ruthlessly and efficiently, yes. He took whomever was next on his
list and cut them loose from life as we know it with dutiful
precision. He was, for the vehicle that moved you on, rather
non-threatening. He had a sense of humor. And a profound sense of
sympathy.
What do
I think about Death? I hope Pratchett was right.
