Wednesday, May 22, 1996
Shanley presents ‘Psychopathia’ at Mark Taper ForumBy Jennifer
Richmond
Daily Bruin Contributor
His plays and screenplays are usually based on personal
experiences.
And his newest play is no different.
"It’s like I’m walking down a road and I see different things
and I talk about them. The road is my life and the things that I
see are like time periods I pass through. Each period has very
different emotional climates and cause me to have very different
reactions. So, I’m always changing and growing and responding to
all these new things that are happening."
Sounds a little like he’s analyzing his actions, doesn’t it? For
playwright John Patrick Shanley, it’s fitting. His newest comedy,
"Psychopathia Sexualis," is now on stage at the Mark Taper Forum.
His play’s L.A. run is another stop in a distinguished career,
during which Shanley has received an Oscar for "Moonstruck" and
penned popular films and plays like "Congo" and "Four Dogs and a
Bone."
"Psychopathia Sexualis" takes a close look at the effects a
shrink has on a couple’s relationship. Shanley got the idea for his
new play from a book of the same name, some friends’ relationships,
his own relationships and several writings by Carl Jung.
"I really wanted to write something that had to do with all
these things and apply a little skepticism to it as well," Shanley
explains.
Although all these ingredients went into "the mix," a large
portion of the play focuses on psychology and dreams. The dialogue
analyzing the dreams came from writings by his favorite
psychiatrist, Jung. But just because he loves Jung doesn’t mean he
dismisses Freud. He just doesn’t always agree with him.
"If you give a dream up for Freudian interpretation, at the end
of the interpretation you will have less than you had when you came
in. In other words, you’ll have a slight feeling of disillusion and
disappointment, and with a Jungian you’ll have more.
"One is a reductionist. He destroys all the magic and imagery of
the dream by reducing it to that and the other links the dream to
your personal mythology, and so it becomes a larger thing."
If it sounds like Shanley knows a lot about dreams, it’s because
he does. In fact, they’re a huge part of his life, so much so that
the large portion of the play revolving around dreams is based on
his own.
"I interpret them in different ways in the play, but they are my
dreams," he says. "So, in a sense, I’m the one on the couch in the
play."
Although Shanley inserts a large amount of textbook Jungian
interpretation into his comedy, the section focusing on the central
relationship isn’t quite as concrete. While he did take from his
own experiences, Shanley says it’s "hard to know when the basic
experience moves into the thing developed from an artistic
standpoint. Certainly I started from a place of my own experience,
but I couldn’t tell you how much of it is actually mine."
But this play doesn’t just focus on men. As Shanley says, he
wanted to focus on the relationships between men and women, and he
does that by adding the feminine side to his male dominated
production. Shanley’s written the comedy in such a way that his
lead character, Arthur, can only survive his wedding night if his
fiancée saves him from his psychiatrist. Arthur has always had
men rescue him, and if his best friend were to step in, Arthur
would still be caught in the same vicious cycle from which he’d
never escape. "So, it’s important to have the women step in and
redress that imbalance," Shanley says.
"The play itself is imbalanced," he continues. "In the first
half the play is totally masculine and the women arrive to provide
balance not simply because the men are unbalanced, but because
structurally the first half of the play is from a man’s point of
view. Then the women come in and turn the whole thing around and
you’re forced to look at it from another angle."
And that’s something Shanley loves to do. He enjoys it so much
in fact that he has no plans to stop. Although Shanley admits there
have been times he’s considered never coming back from his fishing
trips, he says he usually gets bored after a couple days.
"I’ve been a writer since I was 11. I want to die a writer."
STAGE: "Psychopathia Sexualis." Through June 30 at the Mark
Taper Forum. TIX: $28-35.50. For more info. call: (213)
365-3500.
GENEVIEVE LIANG
Park Overall (left) and John Aylward in "Psychopathia
Sexualis"
If it sounds like Shanley knows a lot about dreams, it’s because
he does. In fact, … the large portion of the play is based on his
own.
GENEVIEVE LIANG
Gregory Itzin (seated) and Matt Servitto in "Psychopathia
Sexualis"