In the River of History
Reading plays, raising children
I’m starting the year by going through a few of my “saved for a good time” tabs, and I really enjoyed
of ’s feature on the Guthrie’s History cycle. The theater staged Richard II, Henry IV (parts one and two), and Henry V in reperatory.And, on opening day, they did all four plays, one after another.
I’ve hosted two History Cycle parties (one for this cycle, one for Henry VI (parts one, two, and three) plus Richard III, where we watched each of the Hollow Crown adaptation cycles over the course of a whole day and three meals.
I enjoy Kate’s piece purely as a theater lover, but there were two pieces of her article that seemed like a good way to start the Other Feminisms year. The first is from the Guthrie’s artistic director:
He told the company that he was a road biker for many years and described how the endurance required for long rides was similar to that required for the Histories. “You think that the differential between riding 75 or 78 miles and riding 100 miles is a matter of fitness, and it's not,” Joe told the company. "The difference between riding 75 or 78 miles and riding 100 miles is simply a matter of developing your capacity for suffering. How much can you endure? His direction to them in this difficult moment? “Increase your capacity for suffering.”
It’s not bad advice for parenting or any kind of sustained caregiving. Being tied to others creates moment where… to borrow from another classic of the theater, all that can be said is
Estragon: I can't go on like this.
Vladimir: That's what you think.
The idea of developing your capacity for suffering is a helpful one, as long as it’s clear what you’re suffering for and that this isn’t merely an exercise in masochism.
Which brings me to the other quote that stuck with me from Kate’s piece. When over a thousand theatre patrons show up for the all day History Cycle, Joe tells her that:
Watching them, Joe was reminded of an experience he had on a tour of the theatre archives at the Folger Shakespeare Library when he directed Hamlet there in 2010. "I remember [the librarians] taking these prompt books down and looking in the margins, which are filled, filled, filled with scribbles of...artists just like us, trying to wrestle to the ground the hardest material in the world. Trying to find a path into it, trying to make something that may be beautiful for people to come and participate in and watch. I realized this play has been around for centuries...we're just in the river of the long history of this play."
"We get to go in, splash around a little bit, make our minor contribution to this eons-long contemplation of this play. It was so disburdening...I don't have to make the perfect anything. I don't have to make the thing nobody's ever seen. I don't have to do any of those things. I just have to try to -make the thing as beautifully as I know how with these collaborators in this process, that's my only responsibility. And I found it really beautiful to feel myself in that moment in this long tradition of makers."
I got to do a living room reading of Twelfth Night on Saturday for Epiphany eve, and it was a pleasure to hear to the old words again in new voices.
Our copy had old cast lists from prior readings scribbled over the dramatis personae (Olivia for me previously, Feste this time round). And then there were official annotations made by the play’s editor, which both glossed unusual words and commented on notable production choices.
It gave us a strong sense of being the latest layer of a palimpsest.
And I love how Joe’s reaction to being in the long river of the play is:
“It was so disburdening.”
There are moments when being deeply enmeshed in tradition, scholarship, or parenting (anything that connects you to the past or the future) is a real gift in this way.
You are handing things on in a long lineage. You don’t want to break the chain, but you are the inheritor of the faithful service of many people who came before you, whose names have not been passed down to you and whose fidelity was not memorable. You might do much without being remarkable yourself.
I’m always interested in acts of maintenance as “boring” ways to touch the sublime. Conserving something in small ways allows it to stretch out for many lifetimes, even though each readaloud, mending, etc. is not one “for the ages.”
Oh, I love this so much: "I don't have to make the perfect anything. I don't have to make the thing nobody's ever seen. I don't have to do any of those things. I just have to try to make the thing as beautifully as I know how with these collaborators in this process, that's my only responsibility."
Feeling this deeply right now.
One way that I've been thinking about the river of history, especially re: parenting is cooking & baking. How teaching my kiddo these skills that I got from my dad that he got from his mom etc etc - it's a beautiful thing.
Last night my daughter ( age 15) and her friend (16) trudged around the neighborhood in the snow and then landed in my dining room. We drank tea and her friend asked me what I thought about gender roles in Catholicism, considering she'd heard a weird talk by a pregnancy center about women being naturally afraid of things like bees and men protecting women from bees (WTF??). I told her that I thought that Catholicism understood the body as good, created, and here to steward a future, much of which we will not live to see. Alas, the female body is designed to create new people and the male body is, in part, designed to protect, in the sense that creating new people is implicitly vulnerable and dangerous, much more than bees. If we see ourselves as a small piece in a long story then our role as creators and stewards makes more sense than asking, perhaps, if we'd rather have a sports car or a child, or if our bodies should be harnessed for maximum short term pleasure rather than the hard work of creating and caring. The friend replied that this made sense to her and then wondered why, if Catholics are concerned so much about stewarding the future of people, we aren't nearly as concerned about stewarding a created world and the environment. We discussed the dignity of work, and I told her that we are concerned to see people use their bodies and minds and do real work, and not to replace our ingenuity and labor with machines and fossil fuels or waste time, for example, day trading. Since both girls had taken Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, I reminded them of the time lines, which show such a long history of the world, the goodness of creation, and our "blank page," indicating we are both very important as contributors to our moment, and so small in God's redeeming vision which started well before us and will end well after us. Later that night, I sent them both your blog Leah, imagining that you'd have more to offer them on gender, stewardship and the goodness of creation and creating than I might.