30 PLAYS IN 30 DAYS: Play #10 "Titatnic" by Christopher Durang

 

I have decided for the month of September to read 30 plays in 30 days. It is my belief that, if possible, a play should be read in one sitting to get a better inherent sense of the dramatic arc. Each day, I will write a short post here about the play of the day.

Play #10

Titanic by Christopher Durang

I have been a fan of Christopher Durang since my high school days. Like many young people over the country, I first became acquainted with him from his play The Actor's Nightmare, a one-act that is still done quite often for high school one act play programs (I starred in it my Freshman year of high school). From there, my drama director, who had a most impressive collection of plays, would lend me other, less age-appropriate plays Durang had written (my drama director was super cool). 

I am fairly certain I never read Titanic high school. I may have read it when I was in college, but that was quite a while ago, and my memory of  it was fuzzy, if there at all, so I decided it would be like reading it again for the first time, and indeed it was. 

Christopher Durang is one of those awesome playwrights who provides a great deal of backstory in the published collections of his plays and on his website. Titanic started as a playwriting exercise while he was at Yale, and continued to be workshopped there. It became a very early New York production for the young playwright when it was produced off-off-Broadway and then moved off-Broadway. The cast featured Sigourney Weaver, one of Durang's good friends from Yale, who has been in a whole lot of his work since. Running at about an hour and some change, the off-Broadway production featured a curtain raiser, Das Lusitania Songspiel, a cabaret piece written and performed by Durang and Weaver. 

Durang makes it clear on his website that this one act is NOT for high schools. He writes, "It's funny and very perverse, and definitely the most x-rated of my plays."  (He means this due to language and things that are talked about--- it is not actually x-rated... more of  a hard R). And indeed, it is gleefully perverse and, in my opinion, hilarious, with laughter on every page. It is meant to go to extremes, and like others of his earlier one acts, characters shift in their identities and motivation in strong, bracing ways. This is a high energy play, intentionally shocking and surreal, with a love of strange language that feels inspired by Ionesco, and a kind of sexual and sexuality free for all that is not guilt free or without consequence. Durang notes that he has not seen a production ever quite hit the tone he saw in his head while writing--- "I've seen the funny farce, but I've never seen the moments where weird and unexpected sadness presses itself through."

Richard Peterson and Sigourney Weaver, from Christopher Durang's website

I can understand what he means. As I was reading, while I laughed out loud more than once, these characters are in dark situations. One character specifically is heartbroken every moment that goes by and the ship isn't sinking.  And almost every character makes mention of a yearning, a longing, a kind of loneliness or need for connection that cannot be filled. This was not lost on me, though I imagine it must be difficult (Durang, once again on his website, tells us, "This is a really difficult play to do") to get the tone just right in production, when there is so much talk about animals hidden in genitals and dildos being strapped to heads. Indeed, and I am not making this up, this kind of energy has the kind of feel of how Ancient Greek Theater Festivals were described in books I have read about them. A kind of bittersweet, dark bacchanal. 

This is my cup of tea, though it isn't for everyone. Durang writes in his collection 27 Short Plays that "One should never call a play Titanic as this is too great a temptation for critics to say Titanic Sinks and Durang Goes Down With His Ship. Etc., etc., all of which happened."

But I think it's a riot. 

To read more about Christopher Durang's thoughts on the play, CLICK HERE to be directed to his website.