Dear Arthur.
Thank you for your words.
We hope we have used them well.
We’re sorry this is still happening today.
Yours Faithfully…..
We had a way of making work. We would improvise, bring in text, film. We’d try anything, like Forced Entertainment did… yet it fell flat without a framework.
We wanted our work to have grounding, meaning in a way. So that our fragments of material would have something concise to fall into. Something that would allow us to create a narrative out of nothing. A narrative work born out of a post-dramatic way of making.
For weeks we passed around the ideas of existing texts to respond to. Caliban, Prometheus and Frankenstein’s creature were all ideas discussed. We believed they would give us an ample platform to create work about, by and through. When put into practice, we discovered that they didn’t feel relevant to both the theatre makers we are, or the men we are. The post-truth society we find ourselves creating work in beckoned us, as a collaborative, to find someone who resonates with us today. Step forward Willy Loman – protagonist of The Death of a Salesman.
This character seemed to resonate with myself both as a man and a theatre maker. Moreover, it created collaborative opportunities within the creative process. I, James would collaborate with Willy as well as collaborating with Arthur Miller. We penned a letter to Miller, stating what the play meant to us as the men we are today and its resonance in this context.
Initial discussions we had as a company focused on our own aspects of masculinity and what they meant to us. We empathised with Willy and his sons. Moreover, we especially empathised with his wife, Linda. The matriarch of the family. Although the collaborative company contained three men, it would be unfair and naïve to neglect Linda from our process and our performance.
The play gave us a grounding to make material in the process. It became a necessary component going forward, giving us a grounding to refer back to at all times. It allowed fragments to flourish and create their own ontologies, both separate and contained within the performance.
Lessons in Unmanliness: Willy Loman
- Success doesn’t come from just luck, popularity, or personality
- Luxuries aren’t worth taking on debt
- Don’t live in the past
- Stay faithful to your wife.
- Running from your problems won’t solve them
(Brett, 2008)
Brett, 2008. Lessons in Unmanliness: Willy Loman. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/lessons-in-unmanliness-willy-loman/. Accessed on 28th December 2018