100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write (4 page)

An assignment: write a play with at least three neologisms. At least one must be an insult, one must be an expression of disgust, and one must be an expression of love.

24. Bad poets make good playwrights?

Bad poets can make good playwrights. But it is not an axiom that works in the reverse. That is to say, bad playwrights do not necessarily make good poets. And great poets do not necessarily make great playwrights. (See the case of Edna St. Vincent Millay.) And yet great poets do not necessarily make bad playwrights. (See the case of Shakespeare.) So what is a bad-to-indifferent poet to do? Enroll immediately in playwriting school. Put the bad poetry in the mouths of outlandish characters. It might make the bad poetry funny instead of sad.

25. The place of rhyme in theater and is it banished forever?

The leap Ibsen made from
Peer Gynt
to
Hedda Gabler
represents an enormous cultural leap from the rhymed to the unrhymed—can we ever go back to
Gynt
? Theater is by and large now in the language of prose, rhyme banished to musical theater.

Oh, the memory of rhyme and its populist primordial power … Shakespeare’s rhymes, his rhymes! Did the rise of the novel coincide with rhyme’s banishment from the stage? Why has rhyme become an embarrassment? Homer used rhyme to help remember his poetry. Actors once used rhyme to remember their parts. Do actors have better memories now? Now that they have to memorize prose purposely broken to resemble real speech, whatever that is?

And what of audiences? We remember Shakespeare’s great couplets because they are rhymed. It is hard now to leave a play and remember a line because they are all in prose. The meter of poetry used to be thought to have a curative effect: the ancients used certain meters to calm the breast and other meters to inflame. Did we lose some of the medicinal power of language in the theater when we lost meter? Did we abandon the ancient origins of theater as song?

Perhaps we have lost the guiding force of form; we live in the age of prose. Everything is goop. I long for that alchemical thing where the meaning
was
the
sound
—wherein the sound of the word can actually imitate experience. If we trained playwrights’ ears rather than their parabolic sensibilities (that is to say, their ability to make an arc), what would our plays look and sound like?

Did the rise of subtext correspond to the rise of prose on stage over and above poetry on stage? Is it possible to use subtext when speaking Molière’s couplets or Shakespeare’s verse? How to indicate subtext when singing a song from
The Tempest
? One speaks or sings, “Full fathom five thy father lies,” and one thinks something different? Impossible.

Part Two

On Acting in Plays

26. On nakedness and sight lines

I do not take lightly the burden of putting a naked actor on the stage. I only request nakedness when the subject matter seems to require it. In my play
In the Next Room, or the vibrator play
, the most intimate scene involved not vibrators but a woman undressing her husband and seeing his body for the first time.

When we did the play at the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway, the press asked me constantly about the nakedness. “What’s the big deal!” I would say. “But the duration!” they would say. “It’s a matter of seconds,” I would say. “It’s in our face!” they would say. “Really?” I would say. “Do you mean to offend the audience?” they would say. I was bewildered. Why was a sophisticated New York audience making such a big deal out of a little nakedness on stage?

Well, as it happened, the director, Les Waters, and I had been seated house left during all of the previews. On the last preview before the press came, I happened to sit on extreme house right. Sure enough, poor, gallant Michael Cerveris was frontally exposed to the audience for an impressive five minutes. I had late-night phone calls with Michael and with the exquisite Laura Benanti, who played opposite him. Laura: “His penis is upstaging me. They aren’t hearing what I’m saying, because they’re looking at his penis.” Michael: “Unfortunately, my penis is on the same side of my body as my face.” Laura: “Precisely. You’re upstaging me.” (I have invented some of this dialogue to give you the general flavor.)

In any case, I was determined to fix the situation. On our last day of rehearsal, Les Waters was suffering from a migraine and lying down in the dark. I was five months pregnant with twins, full of hormones and possibly a savior complex. I charged to the theater, calling the wonderful Roy Harris, stage manager extraordinaire, a man who has spent a career successfully handling all kinds of desperate people and divas, saying, “Roy, I’m coming to rehearsal. We have to fix the sight-line problem with Michael’s penis.” “What?” said Roy.

“We’ve all been sitting on house left,” I said, frantic. “House right gets full frontal for five minutes.” “No,” said Roy, “you’re not coming to rehearsal to fix Michael’s penis. That’s Les’s job.” “But Les has a migraine.” Roy: “It’s not your job, Sarah.” I, close to tears: “But the press comes tonight and the penis sight lines will never be fixed.” Roy: “Sarah, go home. Rest up.” “What? Go
home
?” I said, incredulous. “Yes, go home,” said Roy, emphatic. I was so mad. “Go
home
?”

And so I went home. And Michael’s nakedness was bold and beautiful and unashamed. He did not cheat upstage to appease house right. They had to be reminded of reality in that moment—for nakedness is always real on stage, just as eating on stage is real, and kissing on stage is real, and dogs on stage are real—and one can only bear reality in small doses. In any case, Michael’s bravery triumphed over my desire to placate house right so they would better hear my dialogue.

We opened a week later, and I started to bleed, and my doctor told me to go home immediately on bed rest. “Go
home
?” I said, incredulous. “Go home,” she said, emphatic. And I did.

27. The four humors: an essay in four parts

Is it possible that modern psychology is closer to the medieval humors than we ever thought? Medieval doctors thought we had four humors or temperaments—choleric, melancholic, sanguine, and phlegmatic. This theory of the emotions held that our feelings proceeded from fluids in the body—yellow bile, black bile, blood, and phlegm. In this theory of the emotions (which Shakespeare inherited from Aristotle), Hamlet would be described as melancholic—full of black bile. The psychological roundedness of characters in the Renaissance was based on the humors rather than on Freudian insights.

Now that we can obtain medication quite easily from our doctors to adjust serotonin levels in our brains, do we still hold with a theory of the emotions that is essentially disembodied and based on secrets? And what are the implications for actors if emotions are bodily experiences to be neurologically replicated, rather than psychological back bends?

The experience of motherhood acquainted me more intimately with the humors and convinced me that emotions are more embodied than I’d ever imagined. To investigate the four humors and their deeply embodied emotional logic, I offer a short memoir of black bile, blood, phlegm, and choler.

On Black Bile

When I was pregnant with twins, around week twenty-five, I started to itch. An intractable itch. No casual itch, this was the itch of Marat in his bathtub, scratching until I bled. The itch started in my hands and feet, in the afternoon, until it spread over my whole body by nightfall. I applied lotion. I put on a humidifier. I scratched. I took Benadryl. I scratched. I rubbed ice on my body. At 2:00 a.m., I would take a cold bath. As soon as I got out of the bath, I itched. I wrapped myself in cold wet towels.

My doctor told me that sometimes pregnant women get itchy, it’s normal. That seemed like a banal description of my experience, so I trolled around the Internet, eventually finding a website called
itchymoms.com
. Here I learned about a condition called cholestasis of the liver, in which bile leaks into your bloodstream, slowly poisoning your bloodstream, causing a terrible itch; and, more important, it can immediately kill the babies.

I went to see my doctor. He assured me I did not have cholestasis of the liver. “It’s very rare,” he said. “But I have all the symptoms,” I said. “How do you know?” he asked. “
Itchymoms.com
,” I said.

Doctors are not terribly interested in the online research of anxious patients, or in websites like
itchymoms.com
, which had online memorials for stillborn babies, but he said he would do a blood test to reassure me. It took a week for the blood test to come back. In the meantime, I itched. I went to a hypnotist. For a wonderful hour, he convinced me that I did not itch. The hour was up. I itched.

A week later, my test came back, positive for cholestasis of the liver. Now, rather than seeing the tolerant, kindly faces of doctors indulging their anxious patient, I saw the stern and compassionate faces of doctors trying to make life-and-death decisions.

“Every three days,” they said, “we will do an ultrasound to make sure there is still fetal movement. We cannot promise that in the intervening days the fetuses will not expire.” (I believe at this point they changed their language from “baby” to “fetus.”) They made sure I knew that they could make me no promises about the safety of the babies while trying vaguely to reassure me that everything would be all right.

Every four days I would struggle into a taxi with my large belly from my homebound state to advanced maternal-fetal medicine to see if the babies had died inside of me. My great-aunt Laura delivered stillborn twins in Iowa in the 1950s. I worried that it was genetic.

Every four days we did an ultrasound, and my heart would stop until I saw the babies moving. If they were sleeping, the doctors would tap on my belly to wake them up. Baby B moved more than baby A. I could feel baby A’s fingers move gently across my belly. Baby B made more global movements. The doctors reminded me if I stopped feeling the babies moving, I should go straight to labor and delivery.

At two days before thirty-six weeks, my bile levels rose. I called the doctor in the middle of the night, sitting on the bathroom floor, wrapped in cold wet sheets, in a circle of hell reserved for pregnant women, fearing that the increased symptoms meant that increased bile in my bloodstream was poisoning the babies.

The doctor said they would do an amniocentesis to see if the babies’ lungs were developed enough to justify early delivery. The doctor put a large needle in baby B, my girl. Girls’ lungs develop faster than boys’. The test said her lungs weren’t ready. The doctors were walking a razor’s edge between the mounting danger of carrying the babies in a poisoned bloodstream and delivering them too prematurely. They gave me steroid shots, to help the babies’ lungs develop. We waited.

Two days later, my doctor told me to go to the hospital. He said there were no beds in labor and delivery, that I should say I couldn’t feel any fetal movement in order to get a bed. Superstitious, I longed not to say those words. But I did say them, to get a bed.

When we got there, the doctor said, “How are we delivering these babies?” “Just take them out,” I said. He said, “I’m happy to do a C-section, but baby A is positioned head down and baby B is breech. It’s a perfect position for a vaginal delivery, especially since you’ve already had an almost ten-pound baby.” I said, “I think I’m too tired to deliver two babies. I’ve been on bed rest for three months.” He said, “Just push one out. I promise I’ll take care of the other one; I’ll pull her out by the legs.” “Okay, if you say so,” I said. I was already starting to look upon this man as my savior, a superhero in scrubs.

I got my epidural. I got my Pitocin drip. We watched basketball on television. At midnight time sped up, and they rushed us to the OR. Everyone in scrubs, just in case. My doctor put on his birthing mix tape. I think it began with “American Woman.”

I pushed William out, looking into the face of my husband.

I heard a baby cry. “Is he all right? Is he all right?” “Yes, he’s perfect.”

Then the doctor reached inside me, as he’d promised, and pulled Hope out by the legs.

“Is she all right?” “Yes, she’s perfect.”

I began shaking. I delivered the placenta. I shook. My teeth chattered. They placed both babies on me. I settled. The shaking stopped.

On Blood

And then I bled.

On Phlegm

Then I nursed the babies, one on each side, and then I was paralyzed on one side of my face and thought I had a stroke, but it was only Bell’s palsy. The hour we were supposed to leave the hospital with the babies, William was lying in his bassinet and he choked on his own spit-up and his lips turned blue and then they rushed him to the NICU.

On Choler

They put William in a little plastic box and monitored his breathing. They wanted us to leave Hope overnight under a yellow lamp because her face was yellow with jaundice. I didn’t want to leave her.

I asked, “Couldn’t I stay in the hospital because I got a paralyzed face?” “No,” they said, “your insurance won’t cover it.”

So we went home without our babies. I remember the silent car ride, looking out the window.

We went home and slept a little. The phone rang. Phone rings are not good when your children are in the NICU. I expected the call to be about William. But Hope had a breathing episode in the night. She was rushed to the NICU.

We ran to the NICU in the ice and cold. Once there, I saw William in his little plastic box, breathing. “Where’s my other one?” “You mean baby B?” “Yes, Hope.” “She’s sicker than your boy, so she’s over there.” “Sicker than? What does that mean?” “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask the doctor when he rounds.”

A nurse took me to Hope. She was in a little plastic box, attached to monitors. I wanted to take her out, hold her, and feed her. I asked if I could move Hope toward William so I could feed them both. “No,” they said. “We don’t have enough chairs.” I spent a lot of time feeling angry at the nurses, for having dominion over my babies, for not knowing my children’s names, and for not having chairs. The more angry I got with the nurses, the more food I brought them so they would remember to keep my babies alive. I brought the nurses donuts so they might hold the babies a little extra in the night, take them out of their plastic boxes, say their names.