In the aftermath of the politically charged election week, UCLA’s theater department brings two plays laced with political undertones to its new season with Charles Mee’s “Big Love” and Lanford Wilson’s “Book of Days.”
“Big Love,” directed by Mary Jo DuPrey, will play at the Little Theater in Macgowan Hall from Nov. 12 to Nov. 22. “Book of Days,” directed by David Bridel, will play at the same venue from Nov. 13 to Nov. 21.
“Big Love” explores the power struggle among a group of women who turn on their husbands, while “Book of Days” chronicles the reaction of a small town to the death of one of its leading citizens.
Both works promise a strong dose of power politics in very different historical contexts, particularly the politics of gender.
“Big Love” is one of the many remade projects undertaken by Charles Mee, an historian-turned-dramatist whose plays have been floating around the Internet for aspiring playwrights to draw upon. An online manifesto of Mee’s actually encourages authors to take material from his plays while writing their own because, as he writes on his Web site, “There is no such thing as an original play.”
Mee used “The Suppliant Women” as the basis of his remaking in “Big Love.” Instead of having the daughters of Danaus flee from their arranged marriages to their cousins in Egypt (as in the original Greek play), Mee has the timeless brides escape to Italy, where one daughter’s refusal to kill her groom becomes the subject of a trial that degenerates into a tug-of-war on gender politics.
At the center of the play are three girls with different sensibilities. Thyona is an independent woman with a cynical view of males who won’t accept anything other than an ideal world. At the other extreme is Olympia, a girl lost in fantasy who imagines marriage as a fanciful affair. Between these two extremes is the protagonist Lydia, who believes that not everything is black and white, and that following one’s ideology may not be as important as following one’s instinct. She is the only daughter capable of falling in love and ends up refusing to dispatch her husband. Aeschylus’ austere treatment becomes a comic romp of a tragedy under the pen of Mee.
Mary Jo DuPrey, the director of “Big Love,” believes that Mee’s unique concept of theater has given her more freedom to construct a scene and insert a unique score for the play. Within Mee’s framework, DuPrey explores the modern-day dynamics of the sexes.
“I think we live in … a postfeminist world, where the intricacies of male and female power are much more relevant,” DuPrey said. “(The play shows) how social power interplays in the modern world, how it intermixes true love and true passion … and how social norms muddies the waters.”
For example, one cynical character’s dispute with her would-be husband, Constantine, leads to the issue of the redefinition of male identity in the modern world. In DuPrey’s view, Constantine’s character embodies the difficulty a man has in having to be both sensitive to the needs of women, yet also a protector of her interests in times of conflict.
“Men are expected to have a certain sensitivity now, but at the same time, when push comes to shove, and people are invading your country, nobody wants a nice guy,” DuPrey said. “(Men must learn) how to be a nice guy and a defender at the same time.”
The character of Lydia, who serves as the voice of Mee, refuses to act with her sisters and ends up being the only woman who falls in love.
Like “Big Love,” Lanford Wilson’s “Book of Days” uses a strong female protagonist to push the story forward. The story begins with the mysterious death of a cheese-plant owner during a storm in the conservative community of Dublin, Mo.
Suspecting foul play and newly infused with the energy that comes from her role in the town’s production of Shaw’s “Saint Joan,” the protagonist Ruth Hoch takes a journey to discover the truth behind the death, encountering small-town opposition and hypocrisy in turn.
The rejection of Ruth’s claims by the reverend and the sheriff point to both the hypocrisy and the sexism of small-town conservatism.
Wilson combines some plot elements of Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People” with the atmosphere and structure of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” in creating a political exposé of rural community life.
David Bridel, the director of “Book of Days,” has adapted Wilson’s technique for having inhabitants of the town form the chorus of storytellers, just as in Grover’s Corner in “Our Town.” One consequence of this construction is the ability to see who’s telling the truth and who’s lying without the use of direct dialogue.
Regarding the politics of “Book of Days,” Bridel notes, “The play is a sharp look at conservatism with a small “˜c,’ the kind of conservatism that runs through rural communities (and) addresses the shortcomings of that conservatism.”
In regard to the prominent role of politics in the two plays and the recent political happenings, Bridel adds, “Maybe we should have been on two weeks ago.”