Jade Keller

I had a whirlwind of a weekend and it seems there’s so much I want to tell you about it all, but they’re little disparate thoughts that I can’t quite wrap my head around, so we’re going a little stream-of-consciousness today and hopefully some order will emerge from the madness by the end of it.

On Friday, my husband and I went to see this play performed at UCSB:
The Rabbit Hole was an amazing production. We were a bit leery before seeing it because we had heard that it wasn’t very good. By intermission, we were sure we had been had. It was funny, it was raw, it was real, and in many ways, very touching. The story was about a husband and wife suffering with the loss of their little boy who had been killed in a tragic accident. The boy had been playing with the dog, when suddenly the dog ran out into the street, the boy chased after the dog and got hit by a car driven by a young high school-age boy. The play deals with the aftermath of their grief: how the husband and wife lose touch with each other, the feelings of guilt of all the things they could have, should have done, the feelings of blame that they try to tamp down because it was an accident and no one is to blame, feelings of jealousy seeing the irresponsible sister get pregnant when the bereaved one was clearly the better (i.e. more deserving) mother, and the struggle of negotiating a way between holding on and letting go. Holding on to their son’s memory and their grief, and letting go of him and moving on with their lives.

Also, the set design was absolutely brilliant. It was set up in an arrangement I understand is called something like “tennis court seating”, where the set is constructed in the middle of the room and there is audience seating on two opposite sides. So as the play went on, I could see the faces of the other audience members reacting to what was happening in the play. Somehow it made the whole thing more intimate as the lines between stage and audience blurred and audience became part of the stage.

What I loved most about this production actually comes from a line of insight written in the program. The playwright explained in his bio that a teacher of his had told him that to write a good play, one must write about something they fear. He said he didn’t understand this immediately, and it was only after his son was born that he finally really got it: his worst fear was the loss of a son. And I love that he didn’t just make a play about being scared to lose a child, what he did was play that fear out. What would happen if one lost a child? What are the consequences and repercussions of that loss? What does that fear really consist of? So his play did not deal so much with the act of losing a child as it did with all the subsidiary feelings and relationship dynamics that occur as a result of that loss.

It makes me see my own work in a new light, and gives me ideas for some direction to take in the future.

On Saturday, we attended another performance that dealt with a particular kind of loss: this time, it was suicide. NECTAR performance company produced a collection of dance, spoken word, video, and music all centered around alchemy: turning lead into gold, taking pain and making it something positive, powerful and uplifting. Proceeds went to benefit families who have been affected by suicide. It ended with a moment of silence, where people collected together and spoke softly the names of people this performance had stirred up for them. It was an intense moment, and tears were shed. I found myself remarking on my weekend being steeped in death: both accidental and intentional. It made for a heady weekend.

I could probably say something weighty here about how we foist off death, doing so many things to stave it off and pretend it doesn’t exist, instead of recognizing it as part of life, or about how sometimes we go through life so unthinkingly, on autopilot, and how we might look and wonder what about our lives is so very different from death. But instead, I’m just ending with an observation that something I was told I wouldn’t like was something I found profoundly moving and important, while something by all means I was supposed to enjoy, I found less satisfying.

Sunday ended with a trip to see New Moon, which really…I have to say was crap. I was entertained, but it was crap. It sort of dragged, but thankfully being only 130 minutes long, did not drag as long as the books did. There were moments when I cried, but only because I have been in a dark place like that before. There were moments when I laughed, but it was mostly due to the cheese, like when Robert Pattinson ran Baywatch-style, through the woods. The part I found most entertaining, honestly, was the audience, who sighed, and swooned and gasped every time some dark, muscled man ripped off his shirt. Ladies, I’m sorry, but y’all need ta get laid. And after spending two hours looking at dark, muscled men, it is a bit of an unpleasant shock to go back to thin, pasty white vampire. Makes the whole Team Edward thing a little difficult. I would say I’d be Team Edward, but given the choice between snuggling up to a warm man versus a cold one…I’d probably chose the furnace. There are some parts of my body that just would not abide a cold one. I’m just sayin’. Shrivel, dry up and wince are words that come to mind. I did read all the books and found them addictive, but mostly because I just HAD to know how it ended. Everything in the middle was just one long drag of puff. I know how it ends, so I’m not clinging to the movies, desperate to find out anything (and really, how she resolves the whole love triangle thing is just weird). So the next two…it’s all about the Netflix. The first movie (which shock of all shocks as I’ve never said this before about any movie-book translation) was better than the book and shall remain my favorite purely for entertainment purposes.

Grand takeaway from all this? Man, I’m pooped.