I recently was reflecting on some outstanding theatre I had seen over the past few years. What is the power of playing against the line in a play be it a comedy or tragedy? One of the biggest laughs Alex Jennings gets in the National Theatre (UK) production of Noel Coward’s Present Laughter is near the ned of the show. While assessing the miserable human circumstances around him and responding directly to one of his manager’s laments of unhappiness and unfaithfulness Jennings booms out, as he postures and crosses his legs, “don’t be so theatrical.”
In the Royal Shakespeare Companies production of KING LEAR — i believe about one hour into the play — my heart almost skipped a second beat when suddenly in a calm stillness, he utters, for the first time, I fear I am losing my mind. The paradox is he is becoming to be perceived as sane and so very very sad for the first time in the evening. Disowning knowledge in seven Shakespeare plays by Cavil writes of this but Stephens brought it dramatically to life as a real human being.
I think the power relates to our constance omnipotent struggle AGAINST self awareness and our wish to delude ourselves. This device is very common on the wonderful show FRASIER. Would not Coward have made a brilliant writer on that show giving it a depth and darkness that might even match O’Neill.
Self delusion — let’s try to keep it at bay — knowing full well it will never go away like troubling recurring dream.
Jim,
The fly in the ointment of self-delusion is our span of attention!
Psychologists have demonstrated that our human span of cognitive control is only 8 items at a time, +/- 3: what this means, over time, is the conditioning of very few spheres of attention that mean something to us, subjectively.
The thing about comedy is that this limitation of attention is humorously demonstrated to us: that, I think, is also the power you describe in Lear: that awareness costs us something—- and that something is the anxiety of knowing, of disconfirming what we’d thought was so.
Very few of us are willing to expand our horizons at the cost of feeling anxious: so we tack to the other side—- and attempt to shut down uncertainty with premature closure, which at least has the virtue of not shaking us up too much!
To keep self-delusion at bay, we have to develop ways to tolerate the intolerable shakiness induced by not knowing!
Let me know when you’ve nailed that one: I’ll be your first angel investor!