Death is inevitable.
How do we deal with that?
This is the central question of the Swarthmore Theater Department’s recent production — “32 Very Short Plays About Letting Go.” In 31 plays about death, and one about life and community, the performers seek to scratch the itch of death in an attempt to reveal penetrating insights. Each play pokes at the subject from a different angle, placing the concept in a comic, tragic, or matter-of-fact manner. They experiment with humor — what were these famous individuals’ last words? — as well as tragedy — even though I know you’re gone, I still miss you — to show that death shouldn’t be viewed as some amorphous existential horror. Knowing death as an intimate friend allows profound comfort, and some degree of tranquility to the otherwise chaotic subject.
The play begins with a short piece entitled “Arrival.” Told entirely through movement, the piece expresses the vivacity and joy inherent in life and how that love of life is shared communally. The piece begins with one individual entering the empty stage — confused, dazed, and alone. They are soon joined by another, and though the two initially are apprehensive, they begin to connect and come together. As more and more people enter the community, the relationships become more complex — individuals connect, mimic each other, and depart. The piece ends with the whole community coming together, looking upwards (acknowledging the beyond), and then collectively falling to the floor in joy and laughter.
The piece was all-in-all heartwarming, but inherently idealized. While one may define life as the sum of the relationships they make, the piece makes connection at once simple and unanimous. It assumes this cosmopolitanist society where all can connect with each other by virtue of the shared quality of being alive, and are willing to come together in solidarity. While it functions as an interesting critique of our current society — juxtaposing this idealized community with society’s current isolationism — it does not fit with the theme of the rest of the play, which focuses largely on a largely realistic (if exaggerated) experience of reality.
Image Credit: Howard Wang
The point that you are largely meant to take away from the play is the Nine Contemplations. Taken from the book “Being With Dying” by Joan Halifax, the Nine Contemplations are all true statements about death which demand inward reflection. The Contemplations range from point-of-fact statements — “all of us will die sooner or later” — to more poignant commentary on death — “my loved ones cannot save me” and “my own body cannot help me when death comes.” The Contemplations, however, are not integrated well into the framing of the story. Where one might expect a tool like this to function as commentary on the other plays surrounding it, the way they were employed felt jagged — incongruous with the otherwise genial or sincere air which was found in the storytelling. Further exaggerating this issue was the slipshod attempts to infuse the Contemplations with the same levity as the scenes themselves. Actors were given creative freedom in how to read out their respective Contemplation, which led some to take very solemn diction — preaching à la “Godspell” — while others took more genial, lighthearted interpretations — the recitativo Third Contemplation invoking “The Black Parade” by My Chemical Romance. These contradictory readings further confused the meaning, and left the audience somewhat stranded.
Overall, “32 Very Short Plays About Letting Go” was at its best when it was most sincere. The play that most stuck out among the lineup was when each actor, sitting upon their individual swing, gave a monologue from interviews they had with friends of theirs regarding death. It was clear that these interviews were deeply personal, with each actor paying special attention to “getting it right.” Whether this meant including filler words such as “like” and “uh” or slowing their speech to articulate their thoughts, each actor made certain that they were giving honest expression to their peers’ stories. A conversation — albeit one-sided — was created, leading the audience to feel as if they were discussing something deeply personal with a close friend of theirs, and getting intimate feedback. While the conversations ranged in scope from a biology major discussing the trauma of feeling animals’ last breaths to a high school student discussing what they would do if these were their final three years, they shared the essential quality that these were real individuals’ stories, not just performative expressions of a theme. The effect was palpable. Rapt in the stories, the audience was made to practice radical empathy while each individual — standing in for our peers — communicated their fears, their bittersweet connections, and their loss.
Further exemplifying the positive effect of honest, frank discussions of death was each individual’s “dream funeral.” The concept of the dream funeral is nothing new, with many online referring to the albums they’d wish to play at their funeral, discussing the benefits or detriments of different forms of burying, and many other gory elements. The narrative description employed, however, gave shape to honest, intimate expression and showed sides of the actors that hinted at a sincere connection with their subject. The limit, of course, is that creating what one would describe as a “dream funeral” demands a degree of separation from the topic, taking some imaginative and elevated approach. The funerals thus ranged in sincerity, with obviously comical descriptions of booze-fest joy ride funerals and a funeral hosted in Crum Woods, coupled with sincere, romantic visions of funerals surrounded by nature, beauty, and the people and things most cherished in life. Taken as a whole, the dream funerals blended the most tender and the most amusing aspects of death and the “after-death” to connect with the audience.
With a subject as tender and divisive as death, one must ride a thin line between poignant and preachy — an effect which “32 Very Short Plays About Letting Go” is able to produce to varying degrees. While the play falls victim to certain tropes, and occasionally shies away from more gruesome descriptions, there are an equal number of moments which give rise to radical empathy and discuss death sincerely. In a society that seems to perversely fetishize youth and muffles discussion of death, “32 Very Short Plays About Letting Go”’s frank descriptions of death act as an essential societal ungagging.
