CONTEMPORARY CANADIAN DRAMA AND
mmSCIENCE
A Thesis
Presented to
The Facuity of Graduate Studies
of
The University of Guelph
by
LIANA ELIZABETH MADDOCKS
In partial fiünllment of requuements
for the degree of
Master of Arts
August, 2000
@ Liana Elizabeth Maddocks, 2000 Acquisiions and Acquisitions et BbI'bgraphic SeMces senrices bibliographiques 395 WeningtOn Street 395, rue Wellington -ON K1AûN4 OttawaûN K1AW Canada canada
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Liana Elizabeth Maddocks Advisor: University of Guelph, 2000 Ric Knowles
This thesis is an investigation of the use of post-Newtonian physics in
contemporary Canadian drama, focusing Iargely on John Mightoli's The Little Years,
John KNanc's The Halfof It, and Jason Sherman's Patience as plays that explicitly
invoke "the new science" in their constructions of characier, action, and audience.
Foliowing the examination of these plays, this thesis explores the implications of the
unconscious usage of this model, examining Daniel MacIvor and Daniel Brooks' Here
Lies Henry, Daniel Brooks and GuiIIenno Verdecchia's Immnin, and Daniel MacIvor's
The Soldier Dream as plays that utilise the principles of post-Newtonianism without
explicit citation of the science. The conclusion of this thesis investigates the cultural work
perfiomed by the drarnatic usage of %e new science", explo~gthe model's paralIeI potential for both intervention and collusion in oppressive hegemonies. TABLE OF CONTENTS
CIHAPTERONE: Introduction: From Science to the Stage...... 1 - 17
CRAPmTWo: From Character to Subject: John Mighton's The Little Yems, John Krizanc's The Halfof It and Jason Sheman's Patience...... 18 -29
CHAPTER TEREE: From Action to Behaviour. John Mighton's The Little Yems, John Krizanc's The Halfof &and Jason Sherman's Patience ...... **...... 30 - 50
CHAPTER FOUR: From Passive Observer to Active Participant: John MÏghton's The Little Yems, John Krizanc's The Harfof It and Jason Sherman's Patr'ence...... 5 1 - 69
CHAPTER m: Beyond Citation: Daniel MacIvor and Danie1 Brooks' Here Lies Henry, Daniel Brooks and Guillenno Verdecchia's Insomnia, and Daniel MacIvor's The Soldier Dreum., ...... 70 - 84
CHAPTER SIX: Conclusion: Contemporaiy Canadian Drama and the New Science...... -85 - 97 CEAPTER ONE
Introduction: Ftom Science to the Stage
Physicists of past centuries providecl more than theorems and proofs; their work aiso in£luenced visions of humanlty's place in the world Explorations of thuigs such as the "true" shape of the earth and its place in the universe âffited how people sought their positions in both universal and local hierarchies. Adopting a tenn from science in her work Chaos Bound: Orderly DLrorder in Contemporary Scimice und Literizture, N.
Katherine Hayles casthe reciprocai interaction between science and culture a Yeedback loop," where the connections are 'hot generally expIainable by direct influence" but by the shared 'L~uituraifield withùi which certain questions or concepts become highly charged" (Chaos Bound 4). This feedback loop denotes that a shared epistemological base cm prompt similar inquiries across disciplines, while the disciplines' investigative movements can strengthen the acceptance of that epistemology.
Such a feedback loop occurs between the investigations of drama and science, as each system seeks to understand and interpret the world. Historicdy, the link between the two can be seen to exist in the naturaikt drama of the late nineteenth cenhrry and the eighteenth-century scientific theories of Newton. Although a significant temporal divide separates these dates, that delay reflects the epistemological process Uivolved when scientSc investigation is absorbed into cornmon discomeeIn Newton's own time, his theories were only emergent, but by the thne of mturalism they had entered into the
"feedback loop," and emerged as part of the new hegemony. Newton's physics introduced a fiamework for understanding the construction of the world, reality, and human destmy. In Taking the Quuntum Leop, Fred Alan Wolf sums up Newton's theoretical conûihtions to science as foliows:
(1) Thmgs moved m a contlliuous manner. All motion, both in the large
and in the mail, exhibits continuity.
(2) Things moved for reasons. These reasons were based upon eârlier
causes for motion- Therefore, aiI motion was determined and
everything was predictable.
(3) Ail motion could be analysed or broken down mto its component parts.
Each part played a role in the great machine cailed the universe, and
the complexity of this machhe could be understood as the simple
movement of its various parts, even those parts beyond our perception.
(4) The observer observed, never disturbed Even the errors of a clumsy
observer cotiid be accounted for by sirnply analyshg the observed
movements of whatever he touched. (56)
Newton's world was detemiristic one, where every cause had an effect. This mechanical understanding made everything knowable; the entire universe was an enormous, intercomected clockwork, whose intricate workbgs were ail observable to those who used the nght tools. David Lindley, in mere Dues the Weirdness Go? explains that the role of the physicists was to:
trace out these links of cause-and-effect in perfect detail, thereby
rendering the gast understandable and the future predictable. The
accumulation of experimentd and theoretical howledge was taken ÏnarguabIy to brhg a single and coherent view of the universe into ever
sharper focus. Every piece of new information, every new inteiIectual
insight, every new elucidaîion of the linkages of cause-and-effect added
another cog to the clockwork of the universe. (1)
The implications of Newton's ideas stretched well beyond the realm ofphysics and into the discourse of other disciphes. Wolfwrites that:
By the end of the nineteenth century, classical physics had becorne not
only the mode1 for the physicd universe, but the model for human
behaviour as weII. The wave of mechanicd rnaterialism, which began as a
mail ripple in the stream of seventeenth-centwy thought, had grown to
tidd wave proportions. .. .Physicists investigated dead things and
physicians sought clockworks in 1iWig people. (46)
The model of mechanical materialism dominated how the Iaws of the world were viewed; indeed, it was not until the twentieth century that this mode1 was challenged. This understanding of the world affected the creation of similar world-views, and, in turn,
Newton's deterministic models and experimental rnethod are reflected in some of the dramas that evolved out of Newtonian ideas. Entering into a feedback loop,
Newtonianism affecteci modek such as Darwin's, which then influenced nahdist theories of dramatic creation, such as Zola's, In naturalism, neo-Aristotelian hear structure was idealised; plays were constructed around a leading character with which the audience should empathise, who is led through exposition, complication, reversal, and resolutionldenouement This structure reflected the Newtonian modeîiïng of the world, upholding continuity and Iinear throughlines of cause-and-eEectt According to J. L. Styan, the "scÏentifÏc natudi&' focused on the repercussio~~~ofheredity and mvÏronment, and akhough their characiers were intended to represmt reai people in real situations, they often became representatives for their class or sex. The emphasis on heredity and environment echoes the Newtonian focus on discoverhg originary causes and tracing the paths of cause-and-effect to find the equal end result. Within a Newtonian world-view, the use of "scientinc objectivltf' (Styan 6) codd onIy imbue the world of the drama with a validation of its cMty."
These "scientifÏc" focuses are encapsulated in the ideas of EdeZola, who wrote:
It seems impossible that the movement of inquùy and anaIysis which is
precisely the movement of the nineteenth century, cm have revolutionized
al1 the sciences and arts and Ieft dramatic art to one side, as if isolated. The
natural sciences date fkom the end of the 1stcenhiry; chemistry and
physics are less than a hundred years old; history and criticisn have been
renovated, vhaily recreated since the Revolution; an entire world has
arisen; it has sent us back to the study of documents, to expenence, made
us realize that to start &eh we must fbt take things back to the
beginning¶become familiar with mm and nature, verify what is.
Thenceforward, the great naturalistic school, which has spread secretly,
irrevocabIy, often making its way in darkness but always advancing, cm
haliy corne out tnumphantiy into the Iight of day. (356)
J. L. Styan states that the "driving force behind the thought and Iiterature of the age was that of natirralism," and cites that Zola recognised the "signincance of the nse of the naturai sciences in the previous centiiry and that the nineteenth centwy was the age of the experimentai method" (Styan 6). Drame, accordmg to these mdersfandings, should then
"serve the inquiring min& investigatmg, andysing and reporthg on man and society, seeking the facts and the Iogic behmd We" (Styan 6). The feedback loop of the nineteenth century reinforced detennhism, a '?ruth" to be found in objective reality, and resulted m a reliance on Newton's scientSc method of investigation in Wtually alI disciphes.
Naturaiism aimed to discover and portray the 'teaI,'' a project apparently made attalliable by Newton and his contemporaries Characters were understood to represent stable identities, which evolved through the pIay dong a trajectory detemiined by a chah of cause-and-effect. The structure foiIowed a linear pattern that ensured that any prop placed on stage in the htact wodd be used by the last, that any cause in the play would result in an quai effect and vice versa, and that nothing extraneou would happen. The opening of the pIay would establish initial conditions, while the ending wodd demonstrate the logicd conclusion. Views of spectatorship aiso refiected the Newtonian positionhg of the scientist/audience, as the spectator was figured in a largely passive role, present in the theatre in order to view the world and the Word of the playWright and to undastand the message embodied in the play. Naturalism positioned the audience as merely the observer, nuuiing parallel to the notion in science that the world had an order which the objective obsenrer could perceive.
Newton's laws, developed around the turn of the 1700s and naturalised in the drama of the nineteenth and early twentieth cenhiry, have undergone enonnous
challenges in the twentieth century. The Iast centiiry has seen new scientinc
interrogations emerge in the forms of relativity theory, and, more recently, quantum and
chaos theory. Similady, the last century has seen challenges to naturalist drama in such modemist movements as symbolism, expressionism, and the documentary and epic theatre of Piscator and Brecht. In the present day, foIXowlng a scientifk movement m which the "new" physics challenge Newton's laws, postmodern drama rewrites many of the temis of engagement set by the nahnalst drama In response to this changing interrogation, 1propose to examine this feedback Ioop and mtmgate how post-
Newtonian modehgs of the world relate to postmodem drama, In my interrogation, 1 will analyse some postmodern Canadian plays recently produced in Toronto that explicitly use post-Newtonian concepts, examining their potential to undemine deterministic models, both artisticdy and culhrrallyYMer defining my terms of usage for the scientific models, I wiU investigate their application; nrsf to the construction of character; secondly, to dramaturgicd structure, action and event; and finaily, to the positionhg of audience. My first case studies will be of John Mighton's The J,ittie Years,
John Krizanc's The Half of Tt, and Jason Sherman's Patience, which explicitiy invoke post-Newtonian physics. Foliowing these investigations, 1will expand my discussion to other contemporary Canadian plays in which thece is no explicit citing of contemporary science, ilamely Daniel MacIvor and Daniel Brooks' Here Jks Henry, Daniel Brooks and
GuiIIenno Verdeccaia's Jnsomnia_ and Daniel MacIvor's The SoIdier Dreams, My final chapter WUexamine the culturai work perfomed by this mode1 and these plays, together with its potential for intervention in oppressive hegemonies, as weU as for collusion.
What 1 am particularly interested Ki are the ways that these plays constnict: 1.
"Character," and therefore promote an understanding of human "identity"; 2. action, and therefore the construction of human behaviour; and 3. audience, and therefore human dialogue with the world To explore these focuses, 1will utilise only a specinc and select 7 groq of post-Newonian ideas. The expl&-011s provided here are by no means exhaustive, but merely provide a bask for understanding my mvestigations. Here, the temi 'bost-Newtonian" includes ideas dram hmboth quantum physks and 'cchaos" theory, which serve to undermine or shift the grornid beneath classicai, NewtorYan modes of understanding the world.
CHARACTER
WMe Newtonian science assumed that the basic mit of existence' and therefore the hdarnental object of scientific inquiry, was an increasingly smalI and elusive particle, post-Newtonian science emphasises process over particle, or becoming over being. This epistemological shift has proven to be enormous, upsetting many traditionally held views about the role of science as its basic object of investigation moved fiom fündamental particle to constant, shifting process. The discovery of wavdparticle duaiity, which heavity influenced this shift, rewrote many of Newton's laws for the physicists.
Under Newtonian modes of under~tanding~the prionty of the scientists had been to dissect, but the sbift f?om being to becoming was a move fiom the search for the basic cornponent of matter to fiindamental patterns of behmbur.
Wavdparticle duality was recognised fkst as an experimentai nddIe. Physicists discovered that when studying the nature of light, the end result varies depending on the measurement process. An experiment caIled two slit interference demonstrated the following paradox to physicists; 'Wwe perform an interfierence experiment light behaves like a wave, but ifwe examine the photoelectric effect light behaves like a stream of particles" me 6). Nick Herbert, m Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics, expIains the implications of this expriment mer=
@ight]acts me a particle whenever we look. In between looks, it acts like
a wave .. . . Ifwe ignore observations for the moment, we might be
tempted to Say that an electron is ail wave, since this is how it behaves
when it7snot looked at. However this description ignores the massive fact
that every observation shows nothing but Iittle particles - only their
patterns are wavelike. If we Say, on the other hand, that between
measmement the electron is really a particle, we can't explain the quantum
facts. (66-67)
The discovery of wave/particle duality problematises the Newtonian idea that "ail of an entity7sattributes are in principle accessible to measurement, with a precision limited oniy by the experimenter's ingenuity" (Herbert 67). The du- demonstrates what
AIastair Rae in Physics: l7Ixsion or ReaZify? cas"a general property of quantum physics which is that the nature of the model required to describe a system depends on the nature of the apparatus it is interacting with" (Rae 9). TZus duaiity and its experimental repercussions meant that only one attn'bute (position or momentum) could be measured at a the. Following hmthe recognition of duafity, Heisenberg developed his Uncertainty Principle, or Principle of IndeteRninism, which states that it is impossible to make a simultaneous position and momentum measurement on a quantum object (Rae
9). In the face of this recognition, the focus of contemporary science shifts significantly, fiom dissecting the components of a system to examining their behaviour. The uncertainty IabeiIed by Heisenberg and the idea of process (or c%ecomÏng'') over particle (or "being'? are reflezted m postmodan drama as the focus of the playWright has shifted in tandem with developments in science. As scientists dissected, so did naturalist playkghts. But in conjunction with post-Newtonian models, postmodern drama has shifted toward the representation of hman behaviou.. rather than the
"essence" of identity-the article," as it were, that was the focus of nahnalist dramaturgy.
Further to the construction of character, chaos theory problematises identity categories as it destabilizes various binary distinctions that are reinforced in Newtonian methods and understandings. As N. Katherine Hayles writes in her introduction to Chaos and Orde: Cornplex Dynmics in Liferatweand Science:
The science of chaos draws Western assumptions about chaos into
question by revealing possiibilities that were suppressed when chaos was
considered merely as order's opposite. It marks the validation within the
Western tradition of a view of chaos that constructs it as not-order. In
chaos theory chaos may either lead to order, as it does with self-organising
systems, or in yi.n/yang fashion it may have deep structures of order
encoded within it In either case, its relation to order is more complex than
traditional Western oppositions have allowed (3)
As discussed by Hayles, through 'cchaos" theory certain binary distinctions-between stable and unstable, order and chaos-are made inoperable. Within the study of drama, the destabilisation of binaries opens hterpretations to a more multiple view of the word.
Categories, hierarchies and a beliefin the possibiIity of comprehending any singuiar Truth are cast aside m favour of muItiplicitous truths and @iiistories The destabilisation of binaries, central to post-Newtondsm, has the ciramatic potential to refke or problematise imprisoning and reductionist notions of CCa~thenticity"or 6cessentiaii~."
The use of the principles of wavdparticle duality and of the destabilisation cf binaries in character construction suggests a focus on the constant process of subject positioning in response to extemal, contextual stimnll: becoming over being. The post-Newtonian drama shifls fiom the Newtonian development or revelation of a fully reaiised
"Charactef' to the exploration of how psychological and social context impinge on the
adoption of shifüng subject positions, which are constantiy in process.
As experimentai situation affects experimental outcorne, so cause-and-effect bajectories and the evolutionary development of chamter are replaced by an exploration
of context-dependent behaviour in response to local context and extemal stimuli (rather than universal laws). John KrÎzanc has been quoted as saying that "seeing characters in tems of cause and effect is a falsification" (qtd. in KnowIes, The fientre 260). Rather than putting focus on a single, empathetic character, Krizanc noted in an interview with
Metropoh that the point of the play is 'hot to expound what he believes so much as to
aiIow each of the characters to have their proper say" (Hunt 8). The resdt of science recognising wave/particle duality and context dependence, and turning away fiom the descriptive possîbilities of binaries, prompts post-Newtonian theatre to mate characters not as stable identities, but as ciramatic postdates placed in specific dramaturgical
situations, STRUCTURE
Alongside the post-Newtonian models discussed above, the second law of thermodynamics dso encouraged the shift to a focw on process and on constant becoming. This law put an arrow on the flow of time, stating in contradiction to
Newtonian laws that time can ody run forwards. One example of this law is the breaking of a window. Ifa rock is thrown through a piece ofglass, the pieces can always be put back together, reversing (to a degree) the act of breaking. However, the heat produced by the act of shattering can never be regained. This law applies to the world as a whole in the concept of the "heat death" of the universe. As David Porush writes, through chaos and its understandings of entropic systems 'ke experience a world of time-bound dissipative structures, not a world of elegantly predictable mechanical collisions and reversible, symmetric reactions. Any study of this world . .. . requkes a science of becorning" (59).
As post-Newtonian science shifted to this focus on ''becoming" and on contextually defined behaviour in reaction to Stimuli, it ako developed models that erased the neat throughline fiom cause to effect that had dehed Newtonianism and dominated naturalist dramaturgies. Post-Newtonianism examines systems where fluctuations are seemingly erratic-they cannot be explained through Newtonian cause-and-effect, and they cannot be traced to determinable initial conditions. Newton's clean and precise ide-for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction-is problematised, as actions and reactions spin off and away fkom one another in non-hear ways. Minuscule causes produce enormous effects, and vice versa, in ways that are impossible to predict. Various modeIs were developed h conjimction with this undexstanding, hcIudmg Bell's theoreni, which States that subatomic particles can affect each other over enonnous distances and seemhgiy without any direct contact with one another; and CIunneIling," which claims that these particles can also penetrate seemingly impossible barriers.
Chaos theory dso introduces the idea of sensitive dependence on initial conditions, which states that dessthe starting conditions can be specified with infiite accuracy, a system will quickly become chaotic. Hayles notes that the 6Newt~nian expectation is that smaU causes lead to srnaII effects. but chaotics looks at sÿstems where minute fluctuations are amplifid into drarnatic large-scale changes" (Hayles
%Introduction" 8). This is best dernonstrated with the "butterfiy effi"detaiied by Ian
Stewart in Does God Play Dice? as the now famous idea that the "flapping of a single butterfly's wing today produces a tiny change in the state of the atmosphere. ûver a period of tirne, what the atmosphere achially does diverges hmwhat it wouid have done" (Stewart 141). Cause still initiates effect, but the determjnism that previously underwmte the impact of that effect has been undermined.
As post-Newtonianism retheorizes the Mages of cause-and-effect, postmodem drama moves away from a neo-Aristotelian cause-and-effect trajectory. In structure, the refusai of Newtonian detemiinism suggests a refusai of neo-Aristotelian naturaiist plot patteniS. and a rejection of the traditional binary of conflict-protagonist vs. antagonist, good vs. evil. In addition, post-Newtonian dramas hdnew stnicturing principles as they draw consciousIy or unconsciously upon models derived fiom post-Newtonian physics, such as strange attractors, and hctds. For the shrdy of chaotic systems, such as turbulence, chaos theory developed the idea of strange atûactors, which consist of the rnapped exploration of random fluctuations withh a limited space. Physicists had long worked with ccattractors," dehed as "any point of a system's cycle that seems to attract the system to it The midpoint of a penduIum's path is an example. A penduIum, no longer pushed, retunis to this point"
(Hayles bbIntroduction"8). But a stmge a-tor "combines pattern with unpredictability, confinement wÏth orbits that never repeat themselves" (Hayles
C?ntroduction"9). It is a 'tegion of phase space that attracts nearby trajectories, but inside the region neighbouring hajectones diverge and are chaotic in form" (Mulh 66). James
Gleick, in his famous work Chaos: Making a Nav Science, says the strange atûactor
'kas stable, low-dimensional and non-periodic. It could never intersect itseif, because if it did, retuniing to a point already visited, fiom then on the motion wouid repeat itselfin a periodic loop. That never happened - that was the beauty of the attracto?' (Gleick L 40).
Strange atûactors are also one example of a kctal. These shapes, rather than
Euclidean geometry, are now thought to desmie the modehg of the universe. Benoit
Mandelbrot, one of the original fiactai physicists, defines hctals as geornetrical shapes that "are not regdar at alI. Fbt, they are irregdar alI over. Secondly, they have the same degree of ineguIanty on all sides. A fi-actal object looks the same when examined fiom far away or nearby - it is self similaf' (Mandelbrot 123-4). One example of hctal patternhg is the structure of a coastluie. Maps of coasthes show a distriiution of bays and headlands; each bay has its own bays and headands, ad infiilitmn (Stewart 217). As
Lindey wrîtes, "[a] tiny piece of coastline, magnined ten times, still looks iike a coastline" (Lindey 2 19). These non-linear and associative modeIs provide new structuruig modeIs in contradÏction to linear, Newtonian, cause-and-effect trajectories. Post-Newonian ciramas have adopted and adapted these structures to create new stage spacetimes and models for action in contradistinction to neo-ArÏstotelian throughhes. As physicists move away
the search for initiai conditions to examining the behaviom of a system, post-
Newtonian drama uses plots of action that are more associative than causai, and that often imitate the strange attractors and hctai patternuigs of contemporary science.
AUDIENCE
As context dependence came to the forenont in post-Newtonian science, it helped hturethe seemingly concrete division between observer and observed. The context dependence of the experiment meant that the observer had to be included among the variables of the experimmt situation. As noted above, Newtonian physics had promoted
"abelief in the idea that the world exists independently of us and our measurement of it, and that as we build up a coherent scientific account of the world around us7 we are constnrcting an increasingly detailed and precise image of something that already exists"
(Lindey 158). In contrast, the post-Newtonian approach insists that ''we cannot know a quantum entity as it is because we must invariably distub whatever we observe" (Herbert
228). The observer is the other halfof the experiment, not distinct fiom it. This is demonstrated in the wavelparticle duality srperiment, where the measurement apparatus and the partyo f the observer so insistently af5ected the outcome of the experùnent. The observer is always already impiicated in the rneasurement process; there is no such thing as an "independent obsenrer" if "every act of measurement sets into motion a possible chain ofsubsequent events' and thereby renders other possiiIities nugatorf' (Lindley
220).
In reaction to the role of the active and "disturbmg" observer, various interpretations and understandings of the measurement process have been introduced In
Niels Bohr's relational reality, entities "do not possess dennite attin'butes except under defite measurement conditons" merbert 229). The ''realitf' of the electron's attrîîutes resides in the relation between the electron and the measmement device, which includes the experimenter. These attributes "are not intrinsic properties of quantum systems but manifestations of 'the entire experiment situation'" (Habert 161).
Probably the most well known solution to the measurement conmdnim is the
"many worlds" theory. In a quantum realityy"an electron in an atom may occupy several, indeed, an infinite number of positions simultaneously" (Wolf255). The electron continues in this "superposition" of infinite positions until it is examined. Then, the position suddenly '%oiIapses into a single location at a single point of space and tirne''
(Wolf255). The problem surfaces when the experimenter has to detedehow this cm be an accurate measurement, if the electron must simultaueously occupy all positions.
The mauy worlds theory suggests that every possible outcome to every experiment does occur, in paralle1 and simultaneous miverses. Both paralleled with and in contrast to this is the "many minds'' theoryywhich states that every outcome does occur, but, as theorist
John Von Neumann concluded, the "human consciousness is the site of wave function collapse" (Herbert 148). The observer's mind brings al1 possible outcornes to fiuition until the act of observation brings one into immediate time and space. The repositioriing of the physicÏst and the experiment is mimicked in postmodem theatre's renegotiation of the roIe ofthe spectator. In temis of theatncd audiences, the many worlds and many min& paradigms dongside the rewriting of the role of the observer promotes an implication of the audience in the stage product, and complicity in making meaning. In this, "art is not an object distinct fiom ourselves, but an experience, an event that includes the observer" (Schmitt 9). Audience members, rather than operating as simply passive receivers of the Word of the playwright, are now figured as active creators of meaning, who, from their own particular subject positions, create meanuigs in dialogue and negotiation with the stage action. The recognition that the experimenter is always aiready impIicated in the experiment is reflected in the positionhg of the audience as active observers of meanings that are impinged upon by their own contexts.
With these principles in min& the next three chapters of my thetis will examine how post-Newtonianism effects the construction of character, structure and audience respectively in three particular plays that explicitly cite elements of post-Newtonian physics. Jason Sherman's Patience, John Mighton's 17ie Linte Years and John Krizanc' s
me HaIofIt are post-Newtonan ciramas that reconfïgure character, action and audience while explicitly citing ideas fiom chaos and quantum theones. These plays refuse a trajectory of character that foilows a path of recognitions, revends and empathetic construction in hivour of characters who move as dramatic postdates within worlds of non-hear cause-and-effect, bctal patteming, and the possiiility of multiple interpretations. Patience, The Harfof It and Tne Little Yens employ alternative, post- Newtonian conceptions of charactex, action and audience as they mptto understand and mterpret Me hma different worid-view,
FoIIowing the discussions ofthese plays, in chapter five I will expand my analysis to other plays that do not explicitly cite post-Newtonian theories, and conclude in my final chapter by lookhg at the cultural work pefiomied by this model as a way of understanding, interpreting, and intervening in the world. The potentid lamincations of post-NewtonÏan models in art and culture are undoubtedly hierating for identity politics in their move to nondeterminism and multiplicity. Alongside this intervention in hegemonies, however, lies the danger of collusion. As Ric KnowIes writes in The Theatre of Fonn and nie Production of Memùrgr Contemporary Canadian Dramaiwgiier:
if quantum spacetime and the turbulent flows of the universe of chaos
theory are unïnterrogated, then they cmsimply work to priviiege the
currently dominant, undermine identity politics and the strategic
essentiafisms of societally marginaiized groups, and beg the question of
who gets to observe, and therefore constitute, the new realities, and fiom
what position. (2 18)
The potentials of this model for both dramatic practice and cultural work will dominate the ha1section of this thesis. I wiil begin by examùiing Jason Sherman's Patience, John
Mighton's The Little Years and John Rrizanc3sThe HaffofIt as they explicitly invoke post-Newtonian p~ciplesin their coflstzzlctions of character. From Cnaracter to Subject: John Mighton's The Little Yems, John Krizanc's TIe Hcrlfof
fi and Jason Sherman's Patience
As post-Newtonian science shifted its focus hmhdamental? unchanging particles to context-dependent process, postmodem dramaturgy has shifted its focus fiom
'ccharacters" mderstood to represent unchanging human nature to ‘tales" mderstood to represent the positioning and construction of subjectivities in response to extemai stimuli.
This chapter focuses on the ways in which three plays, John Mighton's The Lide Years,
Jason Sherman's Patience, and John Krizanc's neHalfoflt represent the construction of human subjectivity?severing traditionai drarnaturgical links between dramatic character and psychological understandings of unined human identity. Through the characters of Reuben in Patience and JiIl in The Halfof It, the audience is able to witness a staged representation of context-dependent behaviour, as both their conscious and unconscious worlds appear on the stage. In Krizanc's play, which revolves around Iilson
Ashe, her fdy,and her fiancé as her father dies leaving them with less inherïtance than anticipated and at the 'hercy" of predatory capitalists, Jiu's "visions" are enacted in the script In Sherman's play, depicting the Life of Reuben as he loses his wife, his job, his fiiends and his home, Reuben leads audience members thmugh flashbacks of his Me.
This participation by audiences in the characters' "minds" dramatically depicts the
"hidden red" of the characters' experiences. These scenes make audience members privy to hidden responses or memorÏes triggered by onstage activity, highlighting the interplay and reciprocity in post-Newtonian habetween the psychological and the social. This device opais audience reIations to witnessing both the inner, subjective reactions or psychoIogy of the characters and their more socialIy conditioned interactions with other characters, with both conte- influencing their behaviour within the social worlds of the plays. For exampie, in me Hulfof Tt? as Newman/Kilman tries to kiss Jill for the fht the, she suddenly "sees" Peter, her fiancé, and stops herself@kanc 102).
In Patience, the juxtaposing of Paul's final speech, discussed below, with Xeuben's speech in the previous scene demonstrates Reuben's own interrogation of context-based behaviours. By depicting both the inner and outer fhmes of the character on stage, the plays demonstrate the influence on the behaviour of the chamcters of contextual factors that are ofien taken for granted or not realised.
In con-, but dso highlighting this context dependence, Wiiam in Mighton's
The Linle Years is not seen at dl; he is only present through other characters' representations of him, which often conflict with one another. The action of the play circulates around the lives of Wi1Iam's family and fkiends, although William never appears and in fact dies between the first and second acts. Spectators receive only mediated, conflicting information about William. fis mother and wife paint him as an egotist, while Kate quotes him as having said, Y used to leam things taiking to people now 1 only hear about myself' Wghton 66). These types of mutually exclusive descriptions complicate one another and eist simultaneously, again highlighting the context dependence of subject positioning. menaturalist drarna depicted Iinear* predictable evolution in character deveIopment, William, in The Linle Years demonstrates post-Newtonian subject positioning as his actions and representations are derived hmcomplex sets of social and psychological conditions that aren't traceable to origuiary causes or determinable orïginary conditions.
In much the same way, the stories of Kate Riley Ïn The Halfof It are ofh mutudy contradictory. She may have drowned at ten, or at forty, or she may have moved to Rhodesia Jill's parents each believe different stones, while Jill herself develops still other theories about Riley's me. The audience is left uncertain about whom to believe. In the same script, Khan, Boise's henchman, and Newman, JWs lover, are at once the same and totaily different people. The seeming JebU and Hyde split does not remain constant, as his behaviours as lover and businesman cross Iines continually and his
'tharacter" consists of different chles" that are more analogous to theatrical doubhg than to psychologically consistent notions of human identity or personality. The multiple
Stones surrounding these three characters operate as a materialisation of the scientist's
'hany worlds7' thinking7where all stories are at once true and not me7and it is the context and the decision making process of the observer that provide seefniflgly "stable" interpretations or "identities." Although William and Kate Riley never really appear in their respective plays, their representations by others open up the constructions of identity to a multiplicity of interpretations, refusing either a Iimiting concretization of who they are or a psychologicaIIy consistent exp1anation.of how they carne to be that way. This shift £tom "charactefYto subject position shifts focus fiom being to becoming, or to the continuai process of identity construction, the adophg of various subject positions that are dependent on the characters' own behaviour in response to stimuli, as weii as on the context of the peuple with whom they interact. The principle of constant becoming is repeated in the representations of WiIliam's sister, the character of Kaîe in Tie Linle Yems. In this case, the possiiility of a positive impact on identity politics through post-Newtonia. understandings of CSdentitf'becomes apparent. Although science is Kate's main interest, her principaI, Mr. Castle, tek her mother that she never excel in a career
CASTLE. We've found that girls don't generaiIy succeed in the sciences.
They don't have the right spatial skills, they can't rotate three
dimensional objects in their heads.
ALICE. They can't?
CASTLE. No.
AZice tnes to rotate a three dinrensional object in her head.
ALICE. Are you certain about that?
CASTLE. Absolutely. (22)
Through the agreement between Mice and Mt. Castle, Kate's scholastic friture is stunted by pedagogical essentialism. At the same the, Mi. Castle's assurance of being
Gsabsolutelycertain" rings directiy in contradiction to the Uncertainty Principle, paramount in the ideas of wavdparticle duality. At this point in the script, Kate is transfeffed to a vocational school, whae she loses interest in the sciences. However,
Mighton does not Leave this as a point of hality for Kate's abilities, and her own impact Îs reveded through her contrast with Roger, an artist In the nnaI scene, Roger revisits a conversation they had years before about the futîlity of striving for 'cartisticimmortaiity:"
You were right. 1 spent months thinlang about what you said 1 couldn't
see any point in chasing something 1didn't understand- 1thought about the
whole idea of artistic immortaiity-ifs quite recent-a cultural creation.
Artists used to make things anonymous1y-to glorify ders or gods. I
realized I was oniy painting to be admÏred, not because 1had any great
spintual thing to Say. But I went on painting, even though everything I did
seemed forced and aaincial. Because I didn't know how to do anything
eIse.
These days 1can sit in a chair for eight hours, starhg at a canvas.
Pause.
I'm not bla-g yo-but success is a kind of speIl. You broke the spell.
(59)
Kate, meanwhile, had been envying Roger what he could do for other peopIe, saying he was one of ''the privileged few." Artistic immortality is problematised, but she envies him the ability to positively influence otiiers:
Yes.. .for a moment people felt pleasure looking at your work, they
stopped thinking about hselves, they believed there was something there.. .in the cofours, the fomis... that ody you codd express.. .
something etemakfor a moment peopIe believed you had something to
convey to them.. .What more cm you ask for? (61)
FolIowing this, in the play's W scene, an older Rate, visitmg her sister-in-law, Grace, has a conversation with her niece, Tanya:
TMA.I've learned so much hmyou, Aunt Kate.
KATE. We've never spoken.
TANYA. When 1was twelve 1found a box of yom books in the basement.
With your diaries. I read them.
Pause,
You made me think about hfhity, the begùming and the end of the,
things I'd never heard about at schooI. 1 saw how vast and mysterious
the world is and that I wouid never nin out of thuigs !O inspire me.
UntiI then I'd been an average student. You made me believe I codd
do anything E wanted, as long as 1believed in myself, (64-65)
Mighton does not use this interaction to excuse the limitations imposed upon Kate; rather this recognition of her by Tanya reveais context dependence and constant becoming in a dinerent way. Tanya's success, set dongside the lack of support given to Kate, invaMates assumptions about abiIity based on gender, dispIa-g this inteiiectual essentialism as a fdacy- The focus, then, shifts to the contextdependent fiom the gender-based, and highlights the interpretations of oh.By problematising the search for artistic immortality and demonstrating that Kate's scholastic Yailurey'was context- rather than gender-based, Tle Little Yems higblïghts the behavioural over the psychological; Kate's infiuence is as strong as Roger's within Tanya's world, while
Tanya's success highlights the fdacy of supposedly c'common sense" assumptions about gender.
As the jwtaposing of Kate and Tanya demonstrates the fdacy of gender-based assumptions, the theatrical practice of Patience aiso moves toward non-essentialised understandings of genda through the use of doubling. AU actors, with the exception of the actor playing Reuben, play multipIe des. Some doublings make statements within the play; for example, the actor who plays Liz, who cmno longer play the piano, also pIays the pianist in the bar. But in addition, one actor plays Paul, Mike, Janice, the Rabbi and other chmcters, and another plays Donna, Frank, and other characters. While the idea of doubling in many ways refiects the post-Newtonian understanding of subject positions as constantiy shifting__cfiaracter as 'Yole7'-the use of this kind of doubling ignores gender in favour of context; the construction of these characters rests in the behaviouraI, and not in the psychological or gender-based. The gender of the actor does not affect their representation of a specific character, which problematises the idea of a gender essentialism or "authenticity.." Sherman also removes the "being" fkom gender, suggesting that it is not a static state, but a socialised one. The focus on the behaviours of the characters rather than their "essence," combhed with this doubhg, demonstrates context-dependent, rather than gender-dependent, behaviour.
The construction of Wfiam, Rate Riley, KilmZIII/Nmanand Kate points toward the acceptame of''identitf' as a shifting adoption of subject positions. Ifthe fiindamental object of study in these plays is no Longer 'kharacter" (or particle) but behaviour, then the ways in which the dramatic postulates we used to calI character might be reconceived (as 'tales") changes significantlyyThe focus is not on the unchangbg particle, not on cause-and-effect tracings of initial conditions, and not on the psychological, but on the social. This change in focus suggests a new way of conceiving the relationship between human identity and the world, exchanging essentialised and concretised identity (based on UIUlty) for a reconception of the construction of subjecmity
(an ongoing, context-dependent process).
As the shift in focus fkom the development of an mchanging, psychological identity to the construction of shifting, social subject positions occurs, then the search for originary conditions, or psychological foundation is made less important and, at the same time, Me.As in post-Newtonian physics, when the shift of focus nom process to particle made it clear that initial conditions were in fact indeterminable, the shift fkom
'ccharacter" to dramatic postdate in postmodem dramaturgy made necessary a reconceptualisation of dramatic "action," and a movement through a stagetime in which cause-and-effect are not necessady linear, nor are onginal conditions determinable. Any
Newtonian throughline is eschewed in a world subject to the "butterfiy effect," and sensitive dependence on initial conditions, which states that unless the starting point can be specifïed with -te accuracy, the systern will quickly become chaotic. In Sherman's Patience, Reuben and Mike are overüy occupied in their searches for the cause, the initial starthg conditions Ieading to their cmtpaths in He-Shaman's characters search for a reason why they lost everything, how it al1 began., and thei.inability to reason "why" mirrors the chaos idea of sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Mike, Reuben's recently fired &end, talks about economic evolution in his search for understanding, discussing the days of the "caveman":
Think about it. What was the concem of the day, the chief measure of-
how did we occupy our the? The search for food That was it And once
that was done, we entertained ourselves with stories. Then what
happened? The search for food became the desire to accumulate wealth.
Where did that happen? Ifwe could pinpeint that moment when the shift
occuned, we could, we couid, we could fïx this mess we're in. 1 think it
has something to do with the automobile, but.. .or the steam enpine. I'm
not sure. 1gotta read some more. (24)
Reuben's brother Phil, a physicist, encourages Reuben not to look for the initial cause which prompted his cuxrent course, to stop looking for his own automobile or stem engine:
What 1 want is for you to stop mgto make connections between cause
and effect. For two reasons-first of ail, you cannot, findy, control alI of
the events that effect [sic] your Me, and, perhaps most important, you'U
go mad if you try to. You're trying to understand what led to the end of everything? You'E never do it You can't pinpoint the precise moment
when everytJGng starteci to go wrong. (51)
In chaos theory, this distant cause, one Iand of Uprecise moment" which cannot be precisely cdculated, is dso calIed the "butterfiy effect-" Liz, Phil's partner and the other physicist character directly articulates this idea in the script She explains the theory to
Reuben as "[a] butterfiy leaves a tree somewhme, and stus the air, which effects [sic] the wind, which causes turbulence, which brings dom a pssenger jet" (Sherman 60).
Sherman includes this idea metaphoricdy in the events of Reuben's Life as his ex-de,
Donna, explains her meeting with her current partner, Bill. In a conscious mimicking of the butterfly effect, Doma tells Reuben:
He splashed me. 1was w&g dom the Street, oh God, it was so Wy-
weU, not at the the, but-he splashed me, with his truck. .. . He said he
was-ha ha ha-he said this butterfly ha4 you know, gotten into the cab
of his truck and-ha ha h&he was ûyhg to swat it out?which is why
he. .. . Anyway, 1was soaked, and he stopped, he got out, he was so-
you shodd have seen it-he was so sorry.. . (78)
This precise moment expIained by Donna, is what Reuben and Mike are searching for, the irreversible cause which led to their current effects. Reuben eventually asserts that he has found this moment in his own He as, in the nnal scene of the play, he discusses his situation with Liz:
You're living your He, you've got ambitions, you've got dreams, then one
day-bang-it's alI taken away fiom you. You sit and you wonder why, why did it happen to me, where did ii all go mng, $1 can pinpoint the
moment when it ail went wrong, 1 can fix it Everybody tells you you're
kidding yourself, no way cmyou fhd ii, it's d mudom, it's all history
and temperature changes. Then one day you do hdit, it just comes to
you, you didn't have to Iook too ha& it was the moment of your biah, and
no matter how much you wish it had never happened, it di& and there's
not a hcking thgyou can do about it, except wait for the day when itYU
alI be over, wait it out, wait out the darkuess waît for the morning, for
peace to corne, wait, wait. (88)
In Reuben's final moments on stage he reaüses the fùtiIity of his search for cause, but tums bis vision of originary indeterminabilj and heat death into a withdrawal fkom the work The hdword of the play goes to Paul, who is seen in a flashback and is already dead, giving a sombre tone to his words, which are nonetheless opposite to Reuben's withdraw al:
When you get right domto it, we're aU done here, just particles of
energy iIluminated by dust and light.. .floating, floating.. .aU of us,
seeking attachments.. .and in a way, it doesn't matter what you get
attached to, but only that you.. .what am I saying. . .? I'm saying that, even
when we're surrounded by the most Iovhg fdy,the dearest fiiends,
there's the inrefiitable fact of our doneness. Now we cm do one of two
things.. .we can stare into our mugs and wait 'til the Lights go out.. .or we
can relish the fact that we're here, yes, and we can love those around us,
and be loved back.. .(92) AIthough these characiers fidly recognise some fbtility in their searches, the playmights reinforce the theme of becoming and context dependence within the chaotic
Iaws of reality. Heat death and the second Iaw of thamodynamiw are recurring themes in alI three plays, but are not left as an excuse for inaction. Rnzanc wrîtes that Ji 'kealizes that it's one thingjust to shit on everybody's values but 1make the andogy that this kind of withdrawai into yourselfor hmsociee is no a11sweq in fact it is the same as the greed. It's a form of selfishness, of non-participation" (Hunt 8).
The contrast between Reube.: and Paul's speeches demonstrates Krizanc's point.
The post-NewtonÏan wodd highlights context dependence and shifting çubject positions, but these plays, while embracing non-determinism as potentialIy liberating for identity politics, also call for the investigation of supposedly unwritten contexts. The representations of William and Kate Wey in these plays demonstrate the highly mediated nature of interpretations, promoting wariness as the stories surrounding them continually conflict with one another. Kate's lack of support, juxtaposed with Tanya's success, highlights the fallacy of gender-based, binary assumptions. As this shift in dramatic construction of "character" occurs, it necessitates a shift in the way plays are structured, and this will be the focus of my next chapter. As originary conditions are recognised as indeterminable, and focus shifts to process over particle, physicists their focus eom iinear chahs of cause-and-effect to the snidy of patterns. In much the same way, the structure of post-Newtonian plays moves fiom Iinear trajectories to patterns, associative rather than causal co~mections,and structures that imitate the shapes and patterns of chaos. From Action to Behaviour: John Mighton's Tiie Little Yems, John Krizmc's The Harof
fi, and Jason Sherman's Patience
As post-Newtonian physicists theonsed about wavelparticle duaiity and shifted their focus hmparticle to process, %eing" to %ecoming," as the basic mît of existence, their study of chaotic systems changed in focus hmdetemiining initial conditions to investigating patterns of behaviour. SimilarIy, as pplaywrights shifted their attention fiom character to behaviour, they began to structure tbeu plays around contextual hesand patterns rather than neo-Anstotelian action and hear cause-and-effect trajectories.
Patience, The Harof 1,and nie Little Years operate within post-Newtonian stage spacetimes in contra-distinction to Aristotelian or Newtonian structures. As behaviour is figured as context-dependent, the action of these plays moves fiom the assumption of establishing originary causes and following a linear trajectory of plot developrnent to an associative and episodic patterning, establishing extemal stimuli within which behaviours are explored. AU three playwrights consûuct the action of their plays within fiameworks and desof spacetime which differ greatly fiom hear movements, furthering ideas of non-determinism and eschewing traditional dramatic binaria of opposition and conflict.
At the same the, these p1a.ghtsgestine towards other recognisable genres or works within their dramas, intertexts that open the plays outward to extemal resonances and associations rather than containing them within the self-reflexive dramatic worlds of naturalist plays. In her discussion of iteration and deconstruction, N. Katherine Hayles in Claos Bmdetes that "[t]he pemeation of any text by an indcnnite and potentially idhite numba of other te& implies that meaning is always already nidetenninate"
(Hayles Chaos 181). The playwrights' usage ofmtertextuaIity suggests preemptive interpretations and then discards them as somehow reductionary. Linda Hutcheon argues that the use of intertextuality cmrenegotiate relationships between art and the world, or
"art's critical relation to the 'worhi' of discours-and through that to society and politics" (Hutcheon 140). Through signalling other works within a piece, the "center of both histoncal and fictive narrative is dispersed. Mar- and edges gain new value. The
'ex-centiic9-as both offcenter and decentered-gets attention. That which is different is valorised" (Hutcheon 130). AU three post-Newtonian scripts considered here suggest the use of other genres, and then hally combine them in ways that negate Iimiting constructions of unified action. At the same the, as these playwights seek to deconstmct limiting Newtoniau concepts of unity and identity and explore seemîngly unmediated spaces in order to investigate context, they gesture to naturalist structures, which in themselves can appear umnediated, and explore hem in their works as upholding established capitalist hegemonies.
The Little Years begins with Kate as a young girl?writing in a notebook in the garden with her mother and listening to the wind in the trees. Her conversation with ber mother about space and theshows her, at the age of thirteen, to be highly intelligent:
"When you measure tirne you pick some recmhg phenornena Then you make a leap of faith. You assume it always gives intervals of the same Iength. But there's no way of
Imowing for sure. For dl we howtime could be speeding up or slowing domright now" (13). This speech both demonstrates Kate's abiiities and foreshadows for audience members the author's own use of spa~etime-AIthough the play is ostensiily about
William-as indicated by a cast list which desdes each character through their relation to hmi, and by the fact that the first scene is based around his mother and sister waiting for -the focus of the scene is Rate, and what she is going to do with her Hie.
All this occm in a seemingiy relaxed pastoral setting, establishing the fiamework for a dramatic biIdungsroman about the formation of a brilIi:ant young girl in her brother's shadow. M. H-Abrams defines a bildungsoman as a work of "education" or
"formation," the subject of which is "thedevelopment of the protagonist's mind and character, in the passage from childhood through varied experienc-and often through a spintual crisis-into mattirity and the recognition of his or her identity and role in the world" (Abrams 132). However, in the course of the play, the audience is not presented with a carefid progression in Kate's life to a Wedmaturity. The action of the play moves in jumps and intervals, and seemingly important events are skipped over: her transition to a vocational school her failed relationships, her many jobs. The binary of con£iict suggested by the bildungsroman's pattern of overcoming blocking forces or crises on her path to final fulfilment and the reaiisation of her identity is problematised as the audience is presented with a structure that is seemingly randomly episodic. The typical Newtonian cause-and-effect pattern is avoided, and we see relationships that impinge on her life in ways inconsistent with either personal "progress" or dîsappointed expectation. As Jason Basourakos wdes in his review of the published script, the play:
examines conventional mechanistic conceptions of temporal
rmderstancling, exploring a pervading link in human consciousness
between a linear fashion of thinking and the values assigned to the transitionai stages in the total life pmcess. Severdy critical of a prevailnig
reliance on a linear-~bronologicaIsense of thne to measure individual
success and social recognition, MÏghton suggests that the essentiai
mortality of human Iife should provoke a serious re-assessrnent of socially
remforceci labels for Uidividnal accomplishments. (92)
The lack of dsationof what other characters cite as c'füElment,"in conjmction with the episodic structure, pushes the drama to a vision of perpetud becoming rather than either concretized being, or realised or unrealised potential as, for example, scientist or wife. By setting up the idea of a biIdungsroman and then refusing any Mercomplicity with if Mighton also achews the idea of a "recognition of identity and place in the world," ieaving Kate's identity as an ongoing process, continuousIy shifting and never fasteneci to potentially Eting single roles.
In addition, the search for onginary conditions is problematised. Although the tmjectory of a bildungsroman might suggests the Iinear trachg nom initial conditions (or childhood) that both cause and explain the fbture course of event, Kate beiieves that her childhood is already over, and the representation of this friture course is hgmented. In the first lines of the scene, Alice asks Kate what she is thinking about, and Kate replies:
ALICE. What about it?
KATE, 1wish 1 codd Iive it over.
ALICE. You're only thirteen. ALICE- You're a Iitîie young to be regretting your Iife.
KATE. 1 stupidly missed so many opportunities. A pmon cm ody be
tnily happy as a child- And 1 wasn't (1 1)
Kate's "linle years," or orighary conditions, are already over, and are not discussed within the play. In the non-linear, episodic trajectory of the play, Mighton refuses an exploration either of who Kate is or how she came to be that way. The focus of the play is not on the characta's neo-Damhian evolution, but rather on the behaviod processes of "charactei' mdmtood as dramatic postulate placed in specinc situations, and the construction of unstable subjectivities.
The structure of John Krizanc's The Halff It dso suggests at moments a naanalist "progression," or evolution, through its invocation of Darwinian concepts, but the framework is Mercornpücated with the inclusion of two other potential degoricd structures: Shakespeare and Peter Pan, as weli as Darwin, are referenced within the script- Knowks, in me Theatre of Fonn discusses these suggcsted structures, writing that:
Krizanc tends in The Halfof It to use a vMyneornedieval allegorkal
structure that mimics the paraiiel universe theory, constructs parailel rather
than totalizing sipÎfying systems, and draws attention to the materiality of
the sign, in counterdistinction to the appropriative properties of metaphor,
which engulfs what it represents. Thus, for example, the audience is invited to view the action hugha varîety of mggrids, ranghg hm
Shakespearean tragedy (''Buniham Wood"), through social Darwinisrn .. .
. to fairy-taie degories ofgood and eviz based on Peter Pan. (224)
These paralle1 signifying systems remforce a sense ofwhat Hayles cas'Sndeterminacy of meaning" and Hutcheon "dispersion of center," as the three structures are set alongside one another, but it also reiteratw the post-Newtonian problemaîising of binaries as these mutually exclusive systems of understanding nm pardel to, derthat in conflict with, one another-
The play's refusal to signal ody one signifying system is echoed in its refusal to uphold one political system, as Boise's destructive right-wing politics run parallel to both
Dee's radical fedsmand Jiu's ineffectud liberalism. As Krizanc explores the problematics of capitalist hegemonies, he utilises a fiame of action that eschews any dramatic structusing that mirrors or upholds that hegemony. Many Werent allegories are cited with the work, including Biblicd stories and references to other dramatic works.
As the family struggles to maintain their property, their fight for the woods echoes the stmggle in Chekov to keep ownership of the cherry orchad At the same time, the woods also point towards a Shakespearean reference. The character of Boise, the predatory capitalist who is JWs biological father, draws attention to a Shakespeman connection:
Wurnham wood, Shakespeare, nght?". And JilI replies; "[ilt's the way the wind blows the willows on the other side of the pond They always appear as ifthey're moving towards you" (Krizanc 80). This Macbeth reference sets up the Mage to Shakespearean tragic form and suggests an degoricd stnicturing-if JiU is taken as the lead in nie Half of It, this reference could point to the danger of losing her home to predatory forces. But it does not, in fàct. foreshadow her own transition at the end of the piece as it foreshadows the defeat of the centrai character in Shakespeare's play. But neitha does the referace to Bumham Wood conjure a nineteenth-century romantic understanding of
Shakespearean tragedy. Ciare, Jill's motha, accuses her of trying to romanticise the woods and her father's relationship with Kate Riley, who may or may not have drowned in the pond there- As they debate whether or not Rate committed suicide over David,
Clare says, "[ilt's a far more romantic ending, but I'm afkid the truth is rather pedestrian" (Krizanc 135). The originary causes which wouid aid in assigning a status to the wood are, then, indeterminab1e. Burnham Wood is denied either soiely tragic or romantic status as both are posited as options among multiple "Yeadings," and its allegorical presence is problematised through its engulfment in contradicting and multiple
Stones.
Peter Pan references occur repeatedly throughout the piece, as crocodiles appear in the pond and fdfiom the lighting grid. The character of Boise also has a prosthetic ami which Jill continudy hdsin unexpected places and which is hally subpoenaed as a witness in the case against Boise. At this point, Boise retum to using a hook, which
Clare says she has 'inissed." If Boise is a "Eook" chamter' he does indeed take Peter,
Jili's fiancé and the play's aliegoncal Peter Pan, out of his "Neverland" of honest and ecologically sound investing and "compts" him. But at the same tirne, the script highlights Peter and Jiii's complicity in this ""comption." Any simple good/evil dichotomy or binary conniet rem& unstable in the play. When Jill telis Peter about her inndelïty with a man named Paul Newman, who is also dternately Boise's employee
Kihan, she explains that he "prmctured some sadness and [she] started to cry and cry." Peter replies, "[c]rocodile tears" @kkanc 117). Boise's relation to the Peter Pan story seerns to imply a connection to his brand of predatory, Darwinistic capitalism, but that pairing is continuously destabilisecl throagh the Iinkage of other characters to Peter Pm in the play, bgesthat resist too simple a fairytale, mmoralisuig interpretation.
Boise is also one of the characters who brings the idea of Darwinism into the piece. The economic survivd of the fittest is Boise's work ethic, in a world where
"doing" and '%ertaintfYare prized Dee, Boise's secretary (who says to Jiu "[wlhat am 1, some bimbo? 1don't know fiom Darwin?" (Krjzanc 156)), explains this mandate to Jill as "[plrofit and loss, the weak and the strong. It's not cornplex, Jiu. The key to SU];Vival is to adopt a strategy which turns your wealaiess into strength" (f3izanc 155). Jiu, on the other han& taIks about "feeling:" "[t]hatYs the problem with alI of us. A world fidl of
'decent-thinking' people and look at it. If only we could feeI a little more" (Krizanc 24).
Peter replies, ''[glo back to swinging in trees, is that it?'and Jill replies "[alt least animais aren't going to destroy the planet. Lake trout aren't going to jump out of the water and push the button. Maybe there'd be peace if the President was some big cuddly orangutan who sat around ail day eating mangoes and mastlilbating" (25).
Ji's sister, Hillary, is also a proponent of "doing" and "achieving." She teus Jill:
You think people are interested in feelings? People are interested in what
you ddehthe world! That's what people are interested in. People
Say, 'mat did you do today?" and 1Say, '7 sold a house and made
$43,000 commission." That is an event. Feeling is not an event, it is not an accomplishment, and it is not something people want to know. Good
night- (97)
But the Darwinism espoused by the characters is set within a fÏamework which simultaneously suggests three plothg strands and supports none, and linear DarwhÏstic evolution is eschewed withui the structure of the play. Rnzanc underlines indetenninacy and refuses binaria of ccgood"and "evil," strong and weak, moving towards a more complex political statement This refusal of binaries in order to focus on mdtiplicities is served by the citing of mdtîple and paralle1 signifyùlg systems. in her openhg monologue, Jill tells her student:
A concept like the &val of the fittest may have been indispensable for
the success of the indutrial revolution, but you only have to breathe the
air to know it's been devastating for the environment. And yet it's an idea
which has gone from fact to myth, and been bastardized into clichés like
"dog eat dog," and no one ever stops to sa), 'Tve never seen a dog eat a
dog!" (3)
The dangers of this movement of Newonian scient& principles into world-views and uninterrogated clichés, explored in the ktscene of the play, expiain the structuring principles of The Halfof IL As Newtonian world-views colluded with capitalist hegemonies, a Newtonian structure carries the same potential. Krizanc's structure then, in this post-Newtonian play, attempts to eschew colIusio11with a Newtonian mode1 by adopting parallel, intertextual sip@iug systems, highlighting indeterminacy and a!Iowing than to coedas the parameters sul~ouudingthe actÏons and behaviours of the play-
One of the signifi/ing systems7intertexts7 or potentid allegories invoked in
Sherman's Patience is the story of lob. The original BiblicaI Job was an 'iipnght and vimious" ma.who became the subject of a debate between God and Satan, the premise being that it is easy to be good when you are under the protection of God. God irnmediately withdrew his support, and Job lost his means of living the support of his wife, and everything he owned. He initially refked to tum his back on or blame Go4 but eventually ended up railing against his fate to fiends who hied to help him make sense of his Me. The parailels with Reuben's Iife are fdyevident, as he too Ioses everything and starts to question the rneaning behind everythhg-to search for the originary cause of his current situation. Job however, eventually came back into God's grace, while Reuben is left still wondering at the end of the play. Job dso has the "advantage" of dealing directly with God in regards to the rationale behind being "virtuous" and "h~nest"~while Reuben deals with a Rabbi on the Street, who '%allsY' God on his cellular phone on behalfof
Reuben, but gets put on hold and doesn't receive an answer (54). Reuben's originary conditions, unlikt Job's, are indeterminable.
But in addition, Patience, like neHurof It, utilises Darwinism as an alternate fiame in its investigation of predatory capitalism. In his discussion about his own changed life, Paul tells Reuben:
1always thought 1was on the tide of the good. But 1 hownow, 1never
was. 1was on the side of the strong, of the selnsh. Yes, and when 1 accepted that, when I accepted what 1am, then 1was able to take back my
lifi You see? "Gooâ" and '%ad," they have no meaning. The Lion kas the
deer for food; we weep for the deer but the Iion must eat. You see? The
beggar woman and the hmgry chiIdren, the Iost and the weak, the near
dead and the bardy living, thek rags and shit, their smeIls and looks, these
are the things which must be if you and 1are to have aii that we have. (19)
Darwinism is reinforced through other characters within the play as weM. Echoing Jill's monoIogue, Reuben and his CO-workertalk about the same stench of the city:
FEUBEN. Why are you holding your nose?
PET'ER. Stinks out there. Christ, it's Iike-
REUBEN. It's progress, baby.
PETER. It's like every fish in the Iake has died.
REUBEN. It's the me11 of industry. 1love it Fish, sludge, dogshit, the
smeU of a city going forward. (7)
Predatory capitalism, at least in its construction of the world as the value-fiee object of observation, scientific analysiq and economic exploitation, hctions here in much the same way it did for Krizanc. Patience sets the lineanty of Darwinistic capitalism dongside the characters' fiitile searches for oI5gina.ycauses, but the action of the piay eschews both hearity and cause-deffect even as it throws into question the prînciples of capitalism by means of its own, very diEerent dramatic structure. In all three of the works examinai hem, muitiplicity is embraced by using conflicting dramatic p~ciples.The playwrights cite other genres and lay muWy exclusive alternatives side by side Hi order to disupt generic structures that oEer too simple, cause-and-effect explanatiom for events. The alternative worI& that are created in these plays, as discussed below, are not detemiuiistic or linear; they eschew cause-and- effit, and explore multiplicity- By negating Newtonian tmjectories, these playwrights eschew complicity *th capitaiisni-at le& in its nineteenth century guise.
As they eschew allegoricd structures, The Little Years, neHnlfof It and
Patience also comtruct their stage spacetimes in non-hear and malleable ways. As
Helen Gilbert wrîtes in Sightiines, by "challenging notions of Iinear time and neutral space," the playwrïght cm "refuse compiicity with the kind of histoncal consciousness that claims objectivity" (Gilbert 54), and that thus reinforces capitalist hegemonies. As this kind of spacetime places characters as drarnatic postulates within non-linear worlds in order to explore reactions to and behaviour in response to extemal stimuli, it also demonstrates, through the use of the post-Newtonian concepts of non-locality and tunnehg, how that behaviour then impinges on other systems.
neLittle Years begins with a quote nom Thomas Nagel: "A man's He includes much that does not take place within the boundaries of his body and mind, and what happens to hirn can include much that does not take place within the boundaries of his
LW7 (8). This idea echoes the scientific concepts of tunnehg and non-locality, where actions sepmted fiom a system by space and thne can nevertheless affect it in apparently impossible ways. This idea is demonstrateci dramaticdy in the mediated and oeen confiicting stories smounding William, as his notoriety and the shifting identities assignecl to him repeatdy alta his representation, and therefore his 'Sdentity." In addition, and also hctioning in a non-IocaI mariner* WLUiam and Kate both can be understood to operate as "strange aîûactod' withm the structure of the play. They hction, that is, much as strange attractors do in the scientiflc model, in which a region of 'phase space" (a mapped exploration of chaotic systerns) continudy attracts, as in a pendulum, neighbouring but non-repeating trajectories. Wfiam is perhaps the best example of this pan-othmg is there? but everything in the script circles around him-
The two characters have enormous impacts on all the others, even though William never appears and Kate doesn't actualIy encounter Tanya, who is most subject to her
"attraction," until the last scene. This patteming effect, coupled with a kind of dramatmgical non-localityyproblematises the chah of cause-and-effect, highlights context dependence, and Mereschews determinian in the post-Newtonian world of the
PI~Y-
The HalfofIi displays another kind of non-locality through Jill's "visions." She knows that her father has had a heart attack before she is told, and she repeated sees crocodiles and copies of Boise's arm everywhere. In the conversation with her mother and sister about whether or not to seli the woods, Jill "sees" Peter who tells her "Jill-the middle ground" (40), influencing her haidecision in spite of hÎs not having been in contact with her about it When Boise says ''Burnham Wood," the lights go up on JiU, who is in that area (52-3). As Hillary and Peter try to convince JilI to buy questionable stocks in order to Save the woods, in her '%Sionyythey shovel dïrt on her (95).
Some of the most interesthg ideas developed through the use of the play's
'bisions" lie in their interrogation of fdse or inactive ùaeralism, as political complicity is aligned with non-IocalitytYIn the same conversation between Clare, Hillary and JiIl about whether or not to seII the woods, Clare, who is t&ed of Upoverty," descnbes an old fnend, Mrs. Stratton, who has since fallen on hard times; now, as CIare desmies her, she whesa shopping cart about and dresses Iike a 1umberjacJ.c"(36). JiIl then "sees" her, and Clare, who volunteers at a shelter, gives her a cake and she disappears (37).
EHlaryyin this scene, shows the more cdious side of inaction. Jïil attempts to explain to her why she doesn't want to sell the woods:
The woods arenyta resource, tbey're not money in the bank, and they
don? just stand for a few hundred years of family history. Maybe Dad
didn't lmow the value of money, but he understood the value of the woods
.. .. It's their uselessness, their utter inciifference to us, which gîves the
woods their value. They keep us humble.. . (39)
Hillary, however, as the social Darwinist, replies that "[ploverty keeps us people humble," at which point she takes out a gun and shoots JWs vision of Mrs. Stratton, who is just about to re-enter (39). This staged version of non-locality reverberates into the consequences of Hillary and Clare's ideas in reality. As Brian Davis writes in his review of the play:
The casualness with which Wary pds a gun out of her handbag and 1SUs
a homeless man [sic] who has wandered onto the stage is one of those
exaggerated theatncal moments which suddeniy brings you face to face
with reality- Of course people Like her kill people lke him [sic]. They do it every day. Not quite so directly. And not necessarily with guns. But their
indifference is just as lethal (10)
Hillary's "indifEerencey' is a kind of non-Iocality7where her complicity in a capitalist hegemony fortifies its oppressions. At the same the, as Jill watches without interfiering, she becomes complicit in the oppressions by aliowing them to occur. Their metaphoncal actions, not occumiug in reai space and tirne' nonetheless have an impact in the 'keal'' world. Boise's actions and their consequences are seen as dïrectly affecting others; the metaphors of rape surroundhg his actions continue throughout the play, demonstrating his personal, active involvement in a patriarchal, capitalist system, that relies on rape or the threat of rape to sustain and reproduce itseK Boise tells Angel, one of his agents,
"they're cutting dividends .. . . So, fuck it into the ground and put a stake through its heart" (14). As Peter is inducted into Boise's work ethics, he is asked "[d]onYtyou want to mate this new world? I'm offering you a chance to drop your drawers and fuck that world into existenceyy(48). At the same tirne' not only does the play use metaphors, but it is conscious of the materiai consequences of that metaphor. As Dee removes her
'%ostume,'' she asks lill "k]ou know about imperiaiism? Whites penetrating darkest
Anica? That's sex, Jill. Penetration is imperialism plain and simple" (157-8). Other characters fainto another category, where they are complicit in coiiuding with the actions of men such as Boise by dohg nothing. Their non-locaiity and non-interference affect other systems, even at a distance. The non-local effects explored in these plays disrupt Newtonian notions of the Iinear progress of cause-and-effect. Removing these throughlines dows for the eqploration of behaviours within different -es of action in reaction to différent stimuIÎ rather than the explmation of behaviour through the use of a cause-and-effect trajectory.
In addition to the ideas discussed above, these playwrights push their usage of non-Iineaity Mecby creating extrerney maHeable stage spacetimes. As discussed above, The Linle Yeurs, in contrast to a biIdmgsroman or a naturalist progression, jumps forward in time at seemingiy random intexvals and f& to produce a cumdative conclusion. As the action jumps over not only the %ttle years" but dso other seemhgIy
'Yormative" events, it hctures lineariw and adhexes to random jumps in time that produce episodic frames of action. The HarofIt, in addition to its use of non-hear stagethe, also interrogates and reverses conventionai uses of space. W be- the play off the set, lecturing in fiont of the curtain to the audience, constnicted in the prologue as her students at a priviieged private giri's school. At the outset of the play proper there seem to be discrete playing spaces established within the stage space: Jill's apartment, the office, Che's house, and the woods. The spaces are introduced, but then irnmediately disrupted. For example, Boise entes for the first time "crashing through a wali" (13). and
David's oxygen tent "fies in" mid scene to become part of the set (15). Actors repeatedIy enter a scene ftom the midst of their previous one. In scene eight, Jiu "acts out" for Peter what she wants to Say to her mother, and then simply steps into her rnother's space in the midde of their conversation (26-7). In scene meen, Boise is pacing while takgto
Kilman, and he paces directly into Clare's space, where he simply si& domand speaks the htlines of the subsequent scene. Boise's bugging devices fbrther disrupt any separation of spaces, as there are often characters in his space listening to and watching what is going on concurrentiy in Jili's space. The opening scene of the second act, set in a theaîre, is the most mgexampIe of the disruption of space, as Boise, Ciare, Peter and
Jill enter after intermission and sit with the audience. When thek scene is completed, they all exit through the audience and reappear on stage-but not before Clare has accosted a member of the audience and spoken to her as her sockiite fiiend, "Betsy" (9 1)- This technique destabilises theatrical conventions. but at the same time it defeats the idea of localisecl behaviom, which only affect those directly hvoIved
The movement of scenes in Patience dso necessitates that the staging be non- realistic. The scenes jump firom change rooms to cars in mid-scene and without a transition, again setting up a malleable stagetime in opposition to one that follows a linear progression through defined areas. The characters as dramatic postdates in ail three plays seem to control and create their own theand space, and the clramatic structures employed suggests a subjective reality. This non-hear spacetime allows for the creation of post-Newtonian ''fiames of action" rathm than Newtonian trajectones, where it is behaviour that is explored rather than any notion of "progress." And post-Newtonian ideas of interconnected spacetime are introduced as ways of understanding rather than as objective categories in the "reai" world.
Another stnicturai device wIiich deploys contextuai besder then Iinear trajectones is the use of kactai patteming. Ifhctals are self-similar shapes that recur on ail scale LeveIs, they translate into theatre as echoing and recurrïng hesof action on
Werent scales. The Little Yems uses bctdpatterns in the construction of Kate and
Tanya's situations. Kate's response in the nrst scene, '1 never leamed anything at school," in answer to her mother's question of where she developed these ideas about
Wace and time Wghton 13), is echoed by Tanya's comment in the ha1 scene: "b]ou made me thmk about nifinity, the begionmg and end of the, thgsI'd never heard about at school" (Mïghton 65). Whai Kate was thiaeen, she was sent to a vocational school; when Tanya was twelve, she first discovered Kate's books, which aitered her goals in
Me. Tanya's winning of awards at the end paraIlels Wfiam's award wuinuig which begins the play. Mer hadiscussion of artistic immortajity with Roger, Kate says:
Did you know that some infinite sets are larger than others? .. . .It's an
elementary fact of set theory. Iftime branches you would have more
immortality than in hear Newtonian tirne- lnfinitely more immortaliv .. -
. And if time is circdar then every work of art wodd be immortai. A
hundred years from now we'll have new ideas about time that we can't
even imagine now. (33-4)
This conversation, in tum, is echoed as Tanya says to Kate at the end of the pIay, "b]ave you heard of Maginq tune?. .. . We measure theusing reaI numbers. But if you use complex numbers, you get a new kind of the. The universe is closed, like a spkre, with no sinpuiarities" (Kghton 64). In addition, the actor who plays young Kate also plays young Tanya, making the simiIarities and echoes even more stdchg within production.
This hctal pattering then ai& in highlighting the context dependence of Kate and
Tanya's situations, as their possibly equai potential leads to vastly Merent effects.
In llre Harfof It, there is also the repeated use of images on different scale levels.
At the end of the script, the ambiguities surroundhg the disappearance of Kate Riley are repeated as the fate of Jill is debated. Did she drowa herself in the pond, or disappear to
Rhodesia? The audience is presented with her future at the end of the play as she teaches in fica,but the arnbiwtÏa are set agakt each other, echomg the story of Kate which has been rmfolding throughout the course ofthe script. In addition, Perm Pm imagery occurs in Jill's visions and &O in the 'hl?world of the stage, and in both they demonstrate, as âiscussed above, the dangers of f&e or inactive hiberalism as they corne to be associated with all the characters at different thes, rather than Boise done.
In Patience, the £king cf Mike is echoed by the nring of Reuben, and again as
Sarah orders the firing of a rnember of her Company over her cellular phone. Reuben's own embezzling, which led to his termination, is echoed in the restaurant scene with the man on the ce1luIa.r phone, whose rationde echoes Reuben's own words earlier in the play. Reuben and Sarah's kiss, witnessed by Paul at Mary's birthday, is repeated as Sarah sees Reuben and Liz's kiss at Liz's birthday party. The couple in the restaurant repeats
Reuben's conversation with Donna about his infidelity. Liz's piano playing is doubled as the same actor portrays the pianist in the bar. Images and ideas are repeated over and over in the course of the play, but at vastiy dinerent levels of scale and dramatic importance.
So is the use of song, most fiequently 'Tor AU We Know." Reuben listens to this song in his car in the opening scenes; it is sung, apparentiy randomly, by the man on the Street derthe car accident which kills a young boy; the pianist plays it in the bar, Sarah and the rest of the restaurant sing a show tune version of it; and Paul ends the play singing it.
Sherman's insistent pattemhg consistently brings parallek back to audience members, pushing their interpretations of the play's many hctal patterns back and away nom the action. The hctal patterns in all three plays cmtbe reduced to simply theatrical echoing. Their recurrence on different scakd levels interferes with this simplincation, and the patterns repeat alongside but do not reproduce one another. At the same the, the abundance of hctdswould seem more than gratuitous if; for example, Patience was simpIy enacting the story of Reuben in a hear mariner-
Fractal StnrcturÏng as a drarnatic tool aIIows these playwrights to merexamine context-dependent behaviour, as the contexts and responses repeat in the patterning. Each thea situation recurs, the spectator is encouraged to recollect its previous occurrence, and compare the impact ofthis stimulus on the actions of the charactem. Repetition of hctd patterns, rather than linear trajectories, Iends another kind of uncertainty to the scripts, as cause does not aiways Lead to cornmensurate effect This uncertainty, and the
Uncertainty Principle, figure largely in and are supported by the fractai patterns in
Patience. The Uncertainty PrincipIe is articdated withthe play by one of the two physicist characters, Liz, who tries to explain to Reuben what she studies.
LIZ. The Uncertainty Principle states that you can't meanire the location
and momentum of an object sïmuItaneously, not with any.. .
The principle of this theory is repeated throughout the play by the non-physicist characters as weil. Sarah, one of the catalysts for the end of Reuben's marrîage, tries to give Reuben perspective on his changing IÏfé, saying "[l]isten, the way I aee it, you have to embrace uncertainty, live in the world howing that you don't know, can't know, can't explain everything7'(Sherman 65). By O ffering recurring extemal stimuli as a way of fiamhg the action, these playwights bring to the fore the Mering conte- that me characters' behaviom, together with the context dependence of audience interpretation.
Fractal pattemhg, then, is one ofthe ways Ïn which these plays make available a new mie for audiences as active and muitipIicitous observen, as 1wilI discuss in my next chapter. From Passive Observa to Active Participant: John Mighton's The LittZe Years, John
Krizanc's nie Halfof It and Jason Sherman's Patience
The HaZfof It' Zne Little Yems and Patience all reconfïgure the role of the spectator in post-Newtonian drarna as one of active participation in the creation of meaning. As the recognition of wave/particIe duality Ied scientists to investigate behaviour rather than the particles, it ako prompted a reconception of the role of scientist(observa. In Newton's world, an experimenter couid review and examine without altering the observed. Reaiity existed independently of the observer-"[tlhe observer does not disturb; the observer observes what is there. The physicai world was a gigantic clockwork. It could be taken apart and put back together" (Woif27). Similady in naturaiist drama, the observer tended to be theorised as an unobtmsive bystander, receiving the full effect of the drama without having an effect themselves. Schmitt writes that Stanislavski thought of the audience as a 'c~ingIetmdivided entity," with the actors providing "an object wholly separate in space and time fiom the audience" (Schmitt 108).
The drama was to sweep up audiences, but not directly to include them in meaning- mhg.Naturaiist drama assumed that there was a Truth to be received-the word of the playWright as authortity) and creator of the dramatic world-and the role of the audience was to observe and receive, or at best interpret, that Truth.
As physics reconfigured the passive role of the observer scientist, so does post-
Newtonian drama reconfïgure the role of the audience as passive spectator. As mentioned in the introduction, in examining the audience of the post-Newtonian theatre, the active observer and the many min& and mmy worlds meories of quantum physics corne to mmb The observer in post-Newt~ni~smis seen as inextricably incorporated into the outcome of the experiment. The Uncertainiy hciple, discussed above in relation to
Patience, În fact figures in aU three plays, and the impiïcations of that principle carry through into th& construction of the audience. The scientist, according to this principle, makes choices m experimentation about what to observe, and thereby interferes with the system she or he is studying. In his book, Wolfparaphrases Heisenberg's Uncertainty
Principle as '20 observe is to dÏsturVT(Wolf 117). In the quantum reality, the experimenter aiways effects the collapse of the wave fiinction. Wolf explains that
No clear dividing line exists between ourselves and the reality we observe
to exist outside of ourselves. Instead, reality depends upon our choices of
what and how we choose to obsewe. These choices, in tum, depend upon
our minch or, more specifically, the content of our thoughts. (1 28)
The many worlds and many min& theones were developed in response to this experimental conmdnim, stating that every possÏile outcome to the exphentdoes occur, either in paralle1 universes or in the mind of the observer. When observation occurs in a two siit interference experiment, the spectatorlobserver makes the kinds of
'%hoices" discussed by Wolf, and the wave collapses into a single point in space and time
as the choices are made. Ifit had remained unobserved, the electron wodd remain in a
superposition of states, or an "electronic wave cioud" (Rrolf225) without particle
stabrlity- In this situation, "if the memernent of the position of the electron in the atom
is not attempted and the atom's energy aheis observeci, the cloud persists, and the atom remains in a stable energy &te" (Wolf225), creating the theoretical problem of collapsing the wave fiom every possiibility to a single point in space and the*To treat this problem, quantum theory posits that as a person views reality and makes choices (to observe or not to observe), copies of that person are fomed with every choice made and these multiple copies continue to exist either m pardel extemai worIds or within the mind of the observer. Every possible position is accounted for, either in "realitf' or in the mind of the obsenrer/scientistlaudience.
Through this acknowledgement of obsewation as disturbance, the deof the observer is reconfigured as active and meaning-making in post-Newtonianism, rather than passive and non-intnisive as theonsed by Newtonian scientists and nahiralist dramatists. The Newtonian spectator was understood simply to bear witness to the deep structure of the world, while the post-Newtonian spectator creates her or his own structures through observation as interaction. The view of the audience, then, can no
longer be that of a monolithic whoie, but rather that of a hpented group of context- dependent subject positions who interact with the world of the drama to mate multiple meanings. The role of the scientidspectator in post-Newtonian physics and drama is to make meanùigs rather than to discover Truth. In his essay, cCQuantumTheatre - Potential
Theatre: a New Paradigm?" David George wrîtes that:
cEmpiricai' reality has aiways passed through a fiiter, the filter of
consciousness, so that it has dways been an interface between structuring
and selective subjects and the objects they cognize*
Those filters impose form, pattern, on those objects and, since
every consciousness imposes a subtly different form and patternkg, reality is intinitely reJativizecL Empirical space-he has, in other words, much
the same elastk, plurai qdtyas subatomic worlâs, rdativized rike them
mto probabilities and dependent Eke than on the influence of the observa
on the observed- (174)
The feality of the spectator, then, is already relativise& eschewing any theorising of a single mass of similar rninded spectators absorbing iike a unifieci sponge. If, as Stanley
Aronowitz puts if in the post-Newtonian world "relations, not things, [are] the tnie object of inquiry" (qtd. in Knowles, The neutre 2 l6), then the project of the postmodem dramatist becomes the promotion of colîaboration between audience members and performances in the creation of meaning, not the presentation of a unified meaning to a homogenous group. As Knowles writes of Mighton's Possible Worldr, the play is observed by "audience members who mut, by observing the play, make choices (wave or particle?) thatproduce the action, in a theatncal version of the interactive quantum fact that we radically change what we observeyy(Knowles, The Theatre 222).
According to Linda Hutcheon, postmodem theory, like post-Newtonianism, concerns itselfwith the collaborative natrile of artistic production, and operates on the principle that making meaning is a shared project. Niels Bohr's favourïte phrase, the
"entire experiment situation7' (Herbert 161), which encompassed the observer and the observed, is echoed in Linda Hutcheon's work as she discusses, in A Poetics of
Posmiodenzism, the "entire enmciative situation" (Hutcheon 169). She States an "obvious point" about postmodernîsm: "the art of enunciation always includes an enunciating producer as weli as a receiver of that utterance, and thus their interrelations are a relevant part of the discursive context" (Hutcheon 75). Hutcheon argues, quoting Roland Barthes, that just as the colIapse of the wave fimction settles it hma superposition of States înto the here and now, "there Ïs no other thne than that of the enunciation and every text is etemally written here and now" (qtd. in Hutcheon 76). Opposing the dramatic construction of a clockwork world or the presentation of a single Truth,
"[p]ostmodernism highlights discome or 'language put Hito action' @enveniste 1971,
223), Ianguage operating as a communication between two agents" (Hutcheun 82).
Post-Newtonian theatre, then, must recognise this type of agreement with the audience where truth and meanings are produced contextually, and that purely by vimie of being in attendance, audiences are already Muencing the show. As Demastes writes in TIeatre of çhaos:
The spectatodcarnerédeye rnofies behavîour by its presence. The
mechanisms of observation alter the behaviour of the observed, forcing the
spectator and event in ways paralle1 to the interactive desires of
postmodem perfiomance artists as weii as in ways similar to the quantum
physicists and his/her subject of study. (37)
The Little Years, neHalfof It and Patimce can be seen as configuring spectators as these active participants. The use of space, time and theatrical convention are effective in initiahg a dialogue with the audience member as active participant h recognition of
Susan Bennett's point in meatre Audiences, touting the e5cacy of citing specinc performances, when discussing productions 1will refer to the original stagings of
Patience in Toronto at the Tarragon Theatre in 1998, and of Be Halfof It by Necessary Angel Theatre Company at the Stage Do& at Berkeley Street in 1989 in my explorations of their potentialities to configure a post-Newtonian audience-
Bennett notes that the "stage-auditonimi b& can provide the secure position which pemits reception" (Bennett 153). Dany Lyne's set design for the premiere performance of Patience, however, set the audience dong three sides of a rectanguiar thnist (wbich, through the use of another extension added on the upstage side, avoided reinforcing a phallic imagery). This meant, in effecf that while viewing the performance, audience rnernbers would also be forced to viewkeview one another and their rations raîher than simply to receive. The constniction of this stage refises the distancing typical of proscenium stagecraft, and has the audience comtantly monitoring one another's responses. This return to a kind of Elizabeth staging plan and away from naturalism's picture box proscenium also suggests a retum to the Renaissance conQyration of audience. The plays of Shakespeare and his contemporarks were designed to entertain and interest audiences who were divided by class and seating (or standing) arrangement and who were always assumed to be drawing different levels of meaning fiorn the onstage action. The use of the thnist here retums to the physicai pushing of the action audienceward, typicd of Elizabethan stagecraft, with the also similar assumption of multiple and multitudinous înterpretations.
In a physical mimicking of wavelparticle duality, the Uncertainty Principle and the observer, this seating arrangement for Patience also meant that no two audience members wouid ever see the same thing-one audience member would see an actor's back while the person opposite saw her or his face, producing different responses to the emotional and intellechial moment. Quantum experiments refer to the '%iddenred," that which is not viewed when the observer makes a choice about what to investigate
@osition or momentuxu?). What was the '%iddenreaI" of quantum experiments becomes the hidden reai of the stage to halfof the audience at any given tirne, although ked s&g limits thek ability to "choose7' thei.own observation positions.
The disruption of the stagdauditorium is Merreùlforced in The Halfof It, as
Jill begins and ends the play in fiont of the cuaaui, speaking to the audience as ha students, and as the actors use the theatre as a staging ground for their own theatre scene.
This disruption reinforces the importance of the quote hmBohr included in both the script and the program for the Berkeley Street production of The Ha[foflt: "In the great drama of existence we are simultaneously actors and spectators." The audience of the production shared the space with the characters, blurrhg any divide, and the characters were showas both actors and spectators as they entered with the audience at the beginning of the second act, leaving an uncornfortable Dee done on stage. Boise's bugging devices also reinforce the play's emphasis on spectatorship, as he spies on others and evenhially fds victim to his own technology. But in addition, this staging also means that Jiu's qyestions, "[wlhat is reality, and how much does it cost?" (Krizanc 4), and
'khy is it that hide so many of us increasingly feel like prisoners of our own chaos?
Unable to protest, unable to rach out, UivisiiIe in this, the best of alI possible worlds?'
(Krizanc 168) are delivered straïght to the audience, as she retums their gaze and therefore challenges the^ positioning as passive onlookers.
The positioning of Jili implicates the audience in her questions, as the design of
Patience puts the audience into a position to interpret one another as they do the show.
Reading the semiotics of physicaIity and stagïng for Shemian's production is then directIy dependent on how and where one observes- At the same thne*the complexities of
"gn systems within any play already ais0 puts meanhg mto flux Stage semiotics which are aiways necessarily a combination ofdenotative and comotative signs, are already on an unstable ground for meaning-makmg. In the inner fiame of meaning-making7Sherman uses the cellular phone as a constant sign in his drarna. Reuben's Company deds in cellular phones, with the motto, "[plersonal communications were never so.. .personal ..
.. Buddha. .. at one with the world" (Sherman 10). The celluiarphone means many things within the show, including a Ioss of Întimacy and personal contact. But this thematic and physicd representation of loss of intimacy between characters also results in a Loss of intimacy and information for the audience*as the spectator is rarely privy to both sides of a conversation. Even when both sides are heard, only one of the speakers can be seen. This popular and imstable sign ofthe information revolution aEects meaning-making in the play by presenting the audience with only halfof the story.
Whereas half the audience is aiways contending with a %idden real," during these conversations dl mernbers of the audience suffer a loss of information.
As the staging of Patience insisted that spectators viewlreview one another, the script works in cliffernt ways to distance viewers and constnict them as active maken of meaning. Bennett writes that there are ways the playwright can push the audience to review the events on stage and by this means remain active. This can be done, she argues,
'%ymeans of an onstage device. This might be achieved through a flashback, a scene in which many of the scenic elements mÏmr an earIier scene, or through a device such as chorus or nanatoi' (Bennett 141). Shennan employs such devices within Patience. Mer
Donna confiants Reuben about the letters she has found provhg his inndelity with Sarah, the scene flashes back to the party where the aduIterous couple was caught kisSmg. Again in the nnaI scene a string of flashbacks occur, disptaying past events in Reuben7sHe.
JWs 'Wsions" in The Harof It ppresent a simüar alternative reality to the spectators, as she breaks away fium the movemait of the scene. Presenting these scenes and breaking away hma linear flow of space and time activates the meaning-making role of the spectator; by reviewhg, audience members become active participants in the flow of the story,
The c'mirroring'' Bennett discmses cmalso be read as a kind of fhctal structuring, discussed above. AU tbree piays discussed here utilise recurring themes and images on different SC& levels in the course of the plays as a mode of encouraging active participation in meaning-making. For example, the repetition in Patience of the song, Tor Ail We Rnow," while suggesting the same hdof reviewing and recalling of previous renditions and the concems underlying those scenes, also underlines the futility of Reuben's quest to 'buil his socks up" and figure out when his problems began, to de uncertainty out of his me. This hctaistructuring again promotes the kind of "reviewing" discussed by Bennett.
Sherman's interest in the fbtiiity of niiing out uncertainty is also presented through the absence of dramatic irony. Audience members are rarely placed above the action, but are rather directly involved in the unfolding of the play before them. The secrets and lies of characters are related to the audience as other characters discover them. Reuben's fbt affiir is discovered by Donna before the audience hem anything about it, and the scene fiom the past then witnessed by the audience is Paul's discovery of the affair. Sarah hdsout about Liz and Reuben in her first scene after the idea corne to light befiore the audience. Phil and Liz are the only two who are left with less information than the audiencehil about Reaben and Liz, and Liz about PhiI and Mary.
sid de hmthese situation, the audience is not in the secure position of knowing all the characters' motivations: the "letter gone astray" trope is revealed by a character before the audience even knows of the letter's existence. Again in Be Little Years, the only use of dramatic ùony is in the relationship between Roger and Grace, which is revealed to
Kate and Tanya with no great impact at the end of the script. This kind of structure keeps the audience as a participant in the play's interpretation of information, only discovering behaviours and explanations as the characters do, unable to be lded hto a power position of higher understanding-
This lack of irony and use of malleable spacetime alIows Patience to end in the past with the words of Paul closing the performance. The retreat into the past negates a
"safe7 or defined movement of the characters into their "firtures," just as Jill's rebirth sets her on a new and unlmown path at the play's end, and Kate's words corne fidl circle to revisit some of her original lines," "listen[-mg] to the wind in the trees" (Mïghton 12,69).
The resulting lack of closure on the play's relationships leaves the audience to carry on
"becoming," and leaves the audience with no clear sense of fundamental c'beîng." In
Patience, the story is left in the past on stage, and oniy pushed out into the friture insofar as the audience is aware of Paui's end. LeaMng the storyiine to end in this manner refises to 1u.U the audience into passivity by presenting a cornfortable, no-loose-ends ending, in which a clear morai has been taught It is up to the audience in alithree plays to decide how the play's rnomentum continues or ends-and the number of possible choices for each spectator is Wtuaily infinite. With these options, audience members cm coliapse Uiis dramatic superposition of States ihto a final meaning or event sequence, but every option is possible, every Eterpretation can vary, and every choice is finally subject to and shadowed by an infinite number ofconcIusiofl~exkthg in possible worlds of interpretation.
Critics, reviewing the premiere performance of Krizanc's nie Harof lt, demonstrate a few of the possible interpretations of the play and the degree to which the play leaves itseIfopen to interpretation. The play's subtitle, "almost a comedy," provided an easy cue for several reviewers Rrizanc himself explained the subtitle by saying that '7 think it's funny, but if you laugh about it, you should feel bad" (Hunt 8), and Robert
Crew of The Toronto Star seemed to agree, wdïng that audience members should 'teçist the temptation to laugh too long or too loud. ïhe underlying message is serious. Deadly serious" (Crew F3). Doug Bale of The London Free Press' however, rewrote the Lue as
"almost a masterpieceand I'm not even sure 1need the modifier" (Bale E4). Robert
Cushman of The Globe und Mail, however, wrote that the "archness" of the ''~osta comedy" subtitle
shouid be fair waming. It dso counts as unconscionable conceit Krizanc
is messing here with the destruction of the envimunent and the glarnor of
greed: topics reasonably likely to wipe the srnile off any audience's face.
To puIl off that trick, however, you have to put the srnile there in the first
place. K.izanc cmtum the occasionaI neat Iine, but in the production of
his play by the Necessary Angel Theatre Company and the Canadian
Stage Company that opened in Toronto last week, he leaves his spectaton
with Little more warming than an embaxrassed grin. @6) It is interesting that the negative revïews of the production tended to assmne their own hegemonic authority by using the coIIective "we," and escbewing any kind of the individual participation touted by post-NewtonÏan theatre and provided by Krizanc's script For Cushman, for example, audiences have ody one 'Tace."
Reviewers also interpreted the character of Jill in multiple ways. Wilder Penfïeld
III of The Toronto Sm descriied her as a fanale Hamlet, and interpreted haopening speech as descriiing how "the old earth mother sprït collective was supplanted by Him up There. Our homework is to ask our parents: 'TVhat is reality?' And: Wow much does it cost?" (PenfÏeld D4). Crew gave a Marsynopsis of the opening qeech, Wnting thaï:
Jill is holding forth on the topic of duality-mind and body, nature and
reason. Her thesis is that monotheism has Med off the concept of the
Earth as a LiWig entity and the Darwinian doctrine of the sumival of the
fittest has been perpetuated to justify self mterest and exploitation. (F3)
Crew wrote that she "lectures her pampered private-school charges on the progressive degradation of our view of nature: hmthe primitive triie who wouldn't lop a branch without ashgthe tree's permission to the modem acceptance of the principle of Dog Eat
Dog" (Cushman D6). Although JiIl discusses the tensions between the gendering of earth and gods and between primitive and progressive, these summarïes cm be seen variously to perpetuate those notions.
Jon Kaplan of Now wrote that %e character most aware of the split [of mindhody duality] is Jillson Ashe, a science teacher who discovers, in Bohr's phrase, that she is simultaneously an actor and a spectator" (Kaplan 14). Brian Davis of The Canadia Tribune agreed, saying that through Jill 'Xrkanc callp into question all the categories of thought by which the bourgeoisie have sought to justify and 'make natural' the? ascendancy" (Davis 10). John Bemrose ofMaclean 's, however, cited her as an idealistic teacher in a private girl's schoo&" and went on tu say that the morai lessons of me Hurfof lit tend to Iean toward JWs spectrum. He also noted, however, that "because
JïU, especially in Guadagni's overly enthusiastic rendering, tends to Wear her moral values on her sleeve, she is a far Iess attractive character than some of the vilIains"
(Bemrose 76). It is aIso intereshg to note that while Crew's November twenty-sixth review described Jill at her first appearance as wearing "an inappropriately short, tight black dress7' (Crew F3) (ahhough inappropriate for whom is not specined), Leighton and
Howard's review in The Underground fiom December nfth desdedher as a 'primly dressed but vivacious woman" Geighton and Howard 14). Already, these reviews seem not to desmie the same show. In addition, they can be seen as reinforcing a gendedpower structure operating in pdeIto the sciences, in which maIe/female7 reviewer/reviwed, and science/.ture or scientistlobject of study continue to operate as mutualIy reinforcing binaries inflected with relations of power.
Reviewers' account of the plot and of the play's ideological position dso varied widely. Crew said that the play was the:
tale of a Bay St. buccaneer and a littIe girl forced to leave Never-Never-
Land and grow up. And, ifyou're thinking it all soua littfe Like Peter
Pan, you're right; our latter-day Captain Hook has lost his nght hand and
there's even a crocodile, The piratical FrederÏckBoise. .. . Ïs out to make some sort of
mgon the market And there's &O an mcomprehensible scheme
involving the woodland estate of Jill's fady- (F3)
Windmill LUies described The Halfof lit as '"a new play based upon a rnysterious crime set in the world of stocks and bonds. While the crime takes pIace, the heroine searches for her identity and a genuine relationship" (Wirtdmill Lmes 7). Penfield wrote that
The Havof lit is a fdeHamlet and a loose Family Ties set in a world
where quantum physics has replaced certainty and genetic hgerprinting
has replaced trust.
It's a meditation on loving ends vs. ethical means, and a rant about
ecology with its own pond vs. exploitation with thickets of phallic
symbols. @4)
Bale says that it can be read as "comedy, social satire, mystery or theatncal decathloa.
Viewed in any of these Iights it deserves respect" (pale E4).
Different reviewers cornmented on dinerent threads of the ailegories that underiie the work, but tended to select their aUegory of choice. Crew, cited above, wrote about the
Peter Pan influence. Cushman said that the prosthetic ami left Boise 'looking successively iÏke Dr. Strangelove and Captain Hook," and left it at that. (Cushman D6).
He also made reference to the wood, demonstrating a Chekovian memory as he said "the way they react to anyone chopping it down you would think it was a cherry orchard"
(Cushman D6). Bemrose pointed out the vision of the "baby m the basket, fioating Moses-styley' (Bemrose 76). Davis probed most deeply into the complex signiners m the piece, noting bot.Shakespeare and Chekov mresonances in Bumham Wood He dso
discussed Boise's hook m more detail than did his feilow [sic] reviewers.
Mortmain is the nght of corporations to possess property in perpetuity.
Originally a French word, it m-, @c literaiiy, a dead hhand And
Krizanc has created Boise with a mechanicd hand which automaticaily
siphis signature on cheques when his little artificid pinky is pded.
Boise does not represent capital, he is its Iiving, yet curiously dead,
embodiment The hidden force which moves it moves him. (10)
Davis summed up the play, saying that it
tries to get at the nature of reality as it is dehed by the rationale of
capitalism. The p1aywrÎght also seeks to caiculate what the daily
reconstruction of this reality costs us-not merely in monetary ternis, but
in emotional enervation, psychic damage and mord decay. (10)
Ray Coniogue of The Globe and Mail said that 'Xrizanc is a philosopher, interested in
how both lefi- and right-wing thidcers f~lto integrate man into nature" (C3). Penfield
cited and discussed the meaning of the foUowing quotation from Niels Bohr that precedes
act two:
"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement- But the opposite
of a profound tmth may weU be another profound tmth." Our questions survive the chaos of tnrths' but ou.answers
succimib to the orderhg of opposites.
Which is just hethis side of Sunday school. The gieeful
cIeverness of aii concerned is an antidote to aii concem.
I had a lot of fun thmkmg about it afterwards too. @4)
Critical interpretations of the "meank~g~~of the piece, then, obviously differed widely. These critics demonstrate conflichg respomes to Bemett's "inna fr;MeJ7of meanhg production in response to The HaIfof fit. Instability in the "outer hune" can be seen in the remount of Sherman's Patience fiom the two-hundred-seat Tarragon Theatre to Canadian Stage's massive Bluma AppeL In ccSurvivalSpaces: Space and the Poiitics of
Dislocation," Ric KnowIes discusses the material conditions of theatre and their impingement on meaning-making. He writes that
there7sno such tbgas an ernpty space. Ideology abhors a vacuum.
Empty space is to theatre what common sense is to culture7and al2
spaces-however apparentiy empty-like ali societal give-however
apparently obvious7intuitive, comrnon-sensical or natural-need to be
intemgated and, in an important sensz7dirlocated (or a; least
denaîudzed). If one is to do one's work within them, shift the cultural
ground, and avoid containment-r avoid being undercut-by structures
of authority that are ail the more powerrl for being invisible. (32) Patience's mehm the thnist stage at Tarragon Theatre to the proscenium stage at the
BIuma Appel recpired changes m audience-stage orientation. In the same article,
Knowles writes that the proscenium
evoived specincaUy to inscriie and make manifest a particuiar
monarchical, hierarchicai socid structure, in which the best seat in the
house, the best seat for beîng seen by the rest of the audience, was that of
the king. The hierarchy of the court was then made manifest in very
precise ways by a seating plan organized around relative proximïty to the
king (and relative accuracy of perspective on the stage picture). The same
structural and hierarchicd relationship is made manifest today in many
proscenium theatres, where it is also reflected in graduated ticket pnces
(together with lists of donor categories in theatre programs), which
continue effkclïvely to reff ect and reify social hierarchies. (32)
From Tarragon's non-graduated pricing, generai seating, and participatory staging,
Patience moved to a theatre with the exact opposite. This remount then raises questions about containment and the mediation of meaning as well as about fiaming devices which alter specific staged activity. If the proscenium stage has more potential to encourage a voyeuristic attitude to the stage than does the kt,then any efforts made by the playwright to resist closure may also be contained. AIthough shifts in perspective are effected by graduated seating according to cost, at the Bluma there would, nevertheless, be no physical mimicking of the '%idden reaî" for the audience, as dl audience members are privy to the same actions and seen hmthe same direction. In spite of the possibility of different perspectives on the play's critiques of predatory capitalism, then, the inability to view/review the response of other audience members to the action codd nevertheless work towards the creation of a monoIIhic spectatonial position withm the Wened theatre. The movanent in venue for this production demonstrates changes in meannig- making purely by virtue of architechne and the horizons of expectation created by graduated seating.
Whatever performance audience members witness is already an act of choice making, camed on through the "entire enkative situation" by ail the other members of that situation. George writes that:
Anyone who has eva attendeci the theatre has aIready had this expenence:
not only is any actuaiization of a role (or a whole text) the reduction of its
multiple possibilities to one particuiar production, those altematives
continue to shadow and haunt the actual performance: how else can we
Say, 'She shodd have stood there, he could have paused there, stressed
that word, moved on that sentence, used a Merent set, a different actor, a
different costume.. .?' (174)
The "shadowed" performances of these scripts are made even more indeterminate as the scripts endeavour to leave open-ended questionings on stage. The refusai of closure, signalled in Kate's repetition of the opening iines in The Little Yeurs' Jili's hctai mirroring of Kate Riley in The Halfof It, and Pad's final monologue in Patience, is a reiteration of the decision-making process and active hterpretation in which the audience is encouraged to participate. If it is accepted as a haticprinciple that the political work of a play has the potential to be camed on tbxough active spectatorship, then the post-Newtoniau theatre must use methods ofpmmoting active participation m order to promote that work.
Rrizanc?Sherman and Mighton, then, explicitly invoke post-Newtonian physics in their works, and their treatment of character, structure, and audience mimic some of the principles of quantum physics and chaos theory. As physicists recognised wavelpartic1e duality?these playwrights create characters not as stabIe identity effects but as dramatic postdates that mimic the focus on constant becoming; as physicists shifted their focus fiom the search hminitiai conditions to an investigation of the behaviour of chaotic systems, these plays avoid neo-Aristoteiian cause-and-effect patteming and search for patterns of action that are more associative than causai; and as physicists recognised that
!bey are always already implicated in their experiments as active participants, these plays position the audiences as creators of meaning, rnultiplicitous groups that observe nom and are affected by their social positionings. Conscious and deùàerate citation of post-
Newtonianism in these plays-bolstered by the invocation of specinc theones such as the
Uncertainty Principle or the '%utterfiy effect9-aiiow for the creation of a stage spacetime which explicitly divorces itself hmthat of the naturalist drama Instead, The
Little Years, me Halfof It and Patience mate charactbas who are conceived as UIlSfable identity effeçts, dramatic postulates who behave in response to extemai*social stimuli, and they construct spectatorship as an active process of context-dependent meaning- making. Beyond Citation: Danie1 MacIvor and Daniel Brooks' meLies l3m-y' Daniel Brooks
and Guillermo Verdecchia's Imomnhz, and Daniel Madvor's The Soldier Dreams
Mongside the conscious mimicking of post-Newtonianism by these Canadian playWnghts, other Canadian scripts empIoy similar constructions of character, action, and audience address without the stated and obvious lrnkages to the new science privileged by these three writers. This unconscious usage provokes a questioning of the merence between openiy addressing post-Newtonian science and invithg smtiny of its usefulness as an orgaaising principle in the plays, on the one han& and taking for granted the worldvÏews it insrnies, on the 0th-at which point it potentially moves into the position of the new cccommonsense," and therefore the new hegemony. Some contemporary Canadian piays written by Daniel Brooks, Daniel MacIvor and GuiUerrno
Verdecchia can be seen as invokbg arrangements and understandings of character, action and audience within their works simiIa.to those employed by Sherman, Krizanc and
Mighton, but they do so without explicitiy citing the new science.
In Daniel MacIvor and Daniel Brooks' Here Lies Henry, a post-Newtonian positioning of character as 'tole," or as dramatic postulate, can be read in the representation of the solo character, Henry- If the movement in post-Newtonianism is fhn a focus on the uuchanging particle or the essentid, hdarnental "Character" to behaviow in constant process in response to stimuli, Henry can be read as a post-
Newtonian 'ïdentity effd' whose subject positioning is in constant flux. Henry appears in hntof the audience with the mission to Weii you somethùig you donytalready know" (MacIvor and Brooks 17). With this pinpose, Henry tries varÏous and conflicting approaches to seIfdefinitionwith the pIay. He adopts some recognisable stereotypes; he is a stand-up cornedian, a lecturer, a lover, a monster, he perfom his own versions of
Biblical tales and jokes. Alongside the constantiy shifting positionings witnessed by the audience, Henry telis the spectators:
1wodd consida myself; if1 was supposed to consider myself, at
knifepoint or gunpoint or some point something, 1wodd consider myself
a bon viv-No.
A man of theNo.
A.optimist!
1wouid consider myself an optimist.
Ofcorne to Say that one is an optimist is just to Say that one is a liar. I
mean just look around. The more of an optimist one tries to be the bigger
the liar one must become. 1mean just look around. (18)
In this passage, even the positionhg he openly adopts is problernatised, a personined
vefsion of the paradox drawn inside a square: "everything written inside this box is untruee"
The action of Here Lies Henry takes place in a spacetime that remains unspecified
until the ha1 moments of the play. In the end, the script reveals that Henry is dead (adding a doubIespeak and multiplicity to the Me), and the &ai stage of his mûance into the next world is to tell the audience members, now made active participants through the position ofbeing taken as some kmd of supematuraf jury, something they don? ahdy how. Henry's behaviour toward the spectators and his own interpretation of his past changes during the play, until he &ts at the end, that in the end:
you find yomelfin a room full of peuple.
People you how,
people you don't Imow,
people you love,
people you wished love you,
strangers .. ,
mostiy strangers.. .
and you try to tell these people somethmg that they don't already lmow.
And then you realise that that is quite impossible.
Because how cm1 tell you what you don't know when 1don't even know
what I know. (53)
He ends the play sharing the 'Truth" about Henry with the audience, which is in fact a
Iist of conflicting and subjective fragments of (mis)infonnation. He assures the audience that he "can play the violin, It's just that some people don? cdit a violin, Some people cdit a ukelele" (54).
In the end, the onIy 6Tmth"in Hemy or about Henry is that Henry is always rndtipldere are hundreds of confiicting and even mutuaiiy exclusive truths about hun, and their coexistence is what makes up any sort of identity- His constant attempts to define himselfin recognisable stereotypes or categories repeatedly fd. He begïns the play by explicitly performing 6'nervously"for the audience as the Iights rise. His poor pediormance of "Suruiy Side of the Street" sets the stage for the rest of his representations to fail, wtiile at the same time highlighting the performativity of identity. He tries to tell a joke, and gives away the punchline m the set up. He talks about the public spealong course he took-another method of seKrepresentation in public-and inmiediately fails at the niles he lists. The search to crystallise his Iife into one thing that no one else knows enables the play to explore contradictions and multiplicities. Insofar as he represents a shifting positions in response to contextual needs (as opposed to a representation of psychologicaUy consistent human "Character"), Henry is a post-Newtonian figure who demonstrates ongoing flux. Even afkhis death, as represented onstage, he continues this process. Henry is revealed to the audience through his muitiplicitous and constantly shifting nature, in the face of categones and stereotypes which uphold the lies, but fail to encompass the tniths about him.
In another play CO-writtenby Daniel Brooks, the action of the play also centres around behaviours rather than Truth. Daniel Brooks and Guillenno Verdecchia's
Inromnia treats structure in a post-Newtonian mamer, moving away fkom the
NaturalistNewtonian belief that discoverhg initial conditions wili explain and determine the future- EscheWmg this idea, the sûucture of Imornnia is more episodic and associative than causal, and underlines the idea that originaiy conditions are indetenninable. A large portion of this play actually occurs in a paraIlel world-whether it is inside John FA conscious mind or in his unconscious dreams is mclear. In the face of this consideration and of the representation of John F. as the "dramatic postulate" in the piece who seems to embrace, or at least consider mdtitndinous possibiIities sprïnghg fiom a single "effect"-it is tempting to 1Sik this stage spacetime of the play to the many min& theory of quantum physics. At the risk of stretching to andogy, 1 will simply note at this point that the anti-naturalist spacetime ûajectory positions John F. in a realm of subjectivity in which the action of the script can explore these possibilities of cause-and- effect in pdelwith one another, And as in the many minds theory, there is a clear sense in this play that the events portrayed are in fact caused by the piaying out of events in the mind of its centrai character, as his acts of perception precipitate a kind of dramaturgical collapse of wave fimction to observable event.
rii the body of the work, John F. keeps trying to tape record conversations with his fimily in order to have a record for consultation later on. But his attempts to record the
'kause" of events for proof later on consistently fail. In one of their conversations, he argues with his fie, Gwen, about the me& of "hard" evidence (Brooks and Verdecchia
15). and goes on to discuss the reliabiIity of media "sources" in light of corporate bias. In these and other ways, the play speaks to the firtility of the search for any unitary Truthyor for originary causes that might explain away subsequent events.
Inromnia comtantly refuses to trace a linear trend or "effect" drawing fiom any of the choices made by the characters, or even to provide a conclusion to any of the possibilities he expIores- John F. modeIs this structure withm the play itseIfwhen he expounds upon the various conflicting possibilities of what could happen if he and Gwen split ap, telling her:
We cmseparate, and 1'11 go hugha series of women and repeat the
same mistakes and eventuaIly surrender ;O the reality of my condition and
hang myself.
Or Y11 meet someone who makes me glonously happy and proves
to me I'm not wrong and Lay adjusts, or she doesn't, and you treat me
like shit every time we meet and make every interaction miserable and you
go through a bunch of men and one of them molests Lilly and 1 end up in
the slammer for manslaughter. Or you hdthat in fact you like Living
alone and we develop a strong niendship and mise Lay with mature and
intelligent coopmtion. Who knows what will happen? 1 don't But you've
got to think about it and decide because 1can't live Bethis anymore.
(22)
In addition to his modelling of a kind of ~ossibleplots" structure, John F. is also the
character who explicitly speaks to context-dependent behaviour and interpretation within
the play. In one scene, his sister-in-law, Kate, without mgamund assumes that he is
William, her husband, and begins a monologue about how unhappy their seemingly
perfect marriage is. Tuming and hdyseeing him, she says:
KATE. Oh, sorry. (Tumaway) 1 thought you were someone else. JOHN I am someone eIse.
KATE, John, You're Job
JOHN. 1 am a dinerent John with you than 1a. with Gwen.
RATE. Spare me John, pIease-
JOHN. Just as you are a different Kate in my mind than you are in that
chair. (47)
The episodic structuring of Inromnia highlights the context-specifk behaviours of the characters, and eschews a cause-and-effect progression or understanding of motive and results. The script focuses on behaviours, and, more specifically, on context-dependent behaviours. In the protocols John F. Iists at the end of the play in order to 'khange the world," respom'ble doing and behaviour are the only solutions that are posited to the
"evils" of the world. The only 'teal" originary cause to the world's problems that he points to is laziness (52). But the "l~ess"he underlines is not the refûsd to act, or "puII up [one's] socks" (as Reuben's capitalist CO-workersadvised in Pa~ence),but the inability to interrogate "common sense" hegemonies. Near the end of this speech he outlines the coUusions and partnerships which undenmite and direct spaces that are supposediy '%e":
you don't know how you became what you are in the Republic of Doubt.
You don't know who makes most of your decisions for you in this
Republic of Doubt You don't know who is playing with your child's braih or who played with yours when yon were a tyke. CIA brain washing,
the CathoIic church, the PR budget of your govemmmt-we spmd more
on advertising than education, we bdd cities for cars. The collusion of
bankers and the US Congres and the Zonist state and idiot Matand the
arrogance of this ignorant Consemativejuggeniaut and the bottom heof
even the leftist of the liberals and Iaborers votmg for the men in suits and
Christians schoohg their kids at home and I teIl you, the radical iight
paramifitary and the radical anarcho Ieft sleep in the same forests. Emst
Zundel, Ralph Nadar, Louis Farrakhan, they aii preach to the same hole in
the timiorous sou1 of democracy. (53)
The effect of this speech and the "protocols" he lists, pronounced fiom a passionate and subjective viewpoint, is to make clear that there is no such thing as an unmediated space.
The search for onginary causes has made John F. a paranoid man, plagued by insomnia, but his discussion of "Secret Societies" and "Conspiracies" bïghlight political arenas where hegemonic context mediates behaviour.
The "protocols" that John F. lists appear near the end of the script, after his mmïage to Gwen has ended. The protocols are spoken directiy out to the audience, promoting an active relationship with the spectators. This flacturing of the stagdaudience divide recm in Daniel MacIvor's The Soldier Dreams, which treats audience mernbers as co-creators. Rather than configurhg the audience/scientist as the objective, removed observer of the Truth, MacIvor nconfigures the audience as shifting and multiplicitous, each member observing fkom her or his own contextualfy produced subject position and producing meanhg in negotiation with the onstage action. The Soldier Dream depicts truths as relational rather than absoiute. One of the characters, Sam, explicifly signals this appreciation of flux over the fixed, as he qyotes Bertrand Russell to the audience, saying,
'"We seek certain@, not knowledge'" (24). This cpotation underiines the focus in the script on characters who try to categorise one another, sIotting them into concretised, unchanging positions rather than exploring shiftuig patterns of relationships. It aiso simultaneously speaks to the problem that Heisenberg's Uncertaiuty Principle tries to overcome.
As Sam does in this passage, each of the characters in the play takes a tum speaking directly out to the audience members. But this is only one of the actions through which the audience's role as active makers of meaning is signalled As David (l),who is dying in bed, repeatedly says c'matchbook," ccOttawa," and German Doctor," each of the onstage characters interpets his words in her or his own way(s). His sister Tish believes he is referrïng to her wedding to Sam (12,29); his 0thsister, Judy, thinks he just wants a cigarette (38); and Richard, his ex-lover, thinks that he must have seen a German
Doctor on T.V. (MacIvor 30). Audience members, however, are pnvy to the happenings on the other side of the stage, which depicts David's unconscious, or possibly his manories, and they see a hedthy David meet the German Doctor in Ottawa, and the
Iighting of a cigarette with a book of matches. The spectators are able to witness David's referent, but also the subjective interpretations of the words David speaks by his family and niends. By portraying al1 the paraIlel positions of this story onstage, the play explores dramaticdy the fact that there is no unmediated truth, and it dso serves, perhaps, to make spectators wary of their own position as receivers, and makers, of mediated and unstable meaning- Throughout the play, as here, interpretations based on context are presented as constantly shittùg before the eyes of the audience, as with the use of the monologues given to each ofthe chafacters that deal with the "secret'' sign language each character shared with David. Judy, Tish, Sam, and Richard al1 talk about this secret sign languagenone of them aware that the other characters dso shedthis intimate interaction, In addition, audience members see the German student teaching David yet another sign language (41). Here, sign language seems to stand for all communication, including the theatrical. The script demonstrates cleariy the role that the receivedscientîst plûys in the making of meaning, as each character's own needs and shaping circumstances coilaborate with raw events to produce meaning and mediate commrmications. Through the stones about the& UnkLlown partnerships, each character tries to Iay claim to a seme4 uniqiie and personal comection with David, and the seemirxgiy conflichg "truths'' depicteci or recanted elsewhere do not negate that belief
Rather, they highIi@ the deplayed by subjective participation in its construction of meanhg, while at the same time demonsttating that any single version of 'David" is complicated by the stories of others. Each character's discussion of who David is, however, is grounded in one unanimous point: if David had his way, we'd al1 be dancing.
This point of comection then splits among personai understandings of who David is, and demonstrates that David, as others undentand him, is always in flux, always dancing, and cannot be concretised into one, objective "eing," ontologically preceding interactions with loved ones, or observers.
The positionhg of the receivers of messages as makers of meaning is aiso highlighted in Tish and Richard's paralle1 monologue. For the first halfof the play, these characters fight contindy, each disapproving ofwhat they believe the other "stands for." In this monologue, however, audience mernbers witness how m;my beIiefs the two characters share; disapproval ofJudy's EestyIe and Sam's behaviour, and recurring anga over Tish and Sam's wedding. Tish and Richard have an ongoing antagonistic relafionship, and in this monologue they revdpart of the mon, which is then hown to the audience to be based on lies tofd to them by David. Onstage in thÎs moment, the characters physically minor one another, one on each side ofthe stage in separate spots, each holding a dnnk. Then:
RICHARDtTISK And don't get me staried on the weddiog.
T1S.H. The wedding.
RICHARD. The wedding.
TISR Okay David says to me:
RICHARD. David says to me:
TISH. David says: "About the wedding, Richard's not coming."
RICHARD. David says: "About the wedding, you're not invited." And I
TISH/RI:CHARD. Okay. If that's the way Her Majesty wants it that's the
way it's going to be.
TISH. Maybe a fdymeans nothing what do I know. RICHARD. Fdydoesn't matfer to ber that's fine
TISK But a wedding only happais RICHARD. But a wedding is one of
once-kmck on woo&md maybe those opportunities to forge the
fine a person doesn't believe in fdybonds-and fine a person
zzmiage that's a person's is ignorant and Sghtened of
prerogative but if nothing certain lifestyles but this is
else a little common courtesy. famiIy and that's something else.
TISWCHARD. But 1guess that's my problem.
TEH. Her Majesty' s problem?
RICHARD. Her Maj&yYsproblem?
TISH/RICHAEU>. A Iack of compassion stenmiing fiom a basic fear of
This the, it is the similarity of responses rather than the dinerence that reinforce our sense of the role of context in making meaning. The assumptîon that one had objective knowledge about another leads in this play to a failure to understand merence (as with the stok surroundhg David), as weil as a fdure to understarid similarities. MacIvor, then, highlights the fdacy of assumllig an objective standpoint hmwhich to understand the world, rather than grasping one's own complicity in making judgements. Audience complicity m the making of meaning, even when the audience seans to be at its most passive, is underhed once again hughthe use of a homophobicjoke that is told twice in the pIay. Simi tells the joke (of which the audience ody hears the punchline) to Judy, and they both laugh un13Richard steps in, saying, 'T don't thmk it's fùnny. .. . I Uiink it's bordering on homophobic, actually. .. . It's a 'gay' joke. The fact that it exists is offensive-Wce a 'Nede' joke or a 'Jew' joke. The content is irrelevmt"
(20). David tells the same joke to the student, who also condemus it, saying
DAVID. WelI, it's a joke, that's what it's supposed to do.
STUDENT. So 1don't Iike jokes maybe.
DAVID. Oh corne on! Lighten up.
STUDENT. No you don? understand.
DAVID. It's just for a Iaugh.
STUDENT. To me Me is a war and it is very important what side you
choose to be.
DAVID. Well even in war they take a break ftom time t the.
STUDENT.Even when the soldier dreams the war goes on. (3 1)
Laughing at a joke, or simply üstening to it quietiy, is highlighted as a fom of complicity that must be recognised by the participant. This complicity, whether it involves generalisîng hto '%ertabties'"about peopb rather than expexÏencnig "knowIedge," or remaining cornpliut in a system which mates these categorizatr'ons, is highIÏghted m Tle
Soldier Dream through both the treatment of the audiencdstagebinary and the behaviours and interactions depicted onstage. Instead of presenting a certain 'Truth'" kough the script or, in Newtonian terms, an objective reaiity to be uncovered by the undisturbhg physicist,
MacIvor employs a post-Newtonan construction of the audience as experimenter- In this, the script encomges a recognîtion of the receiver of meaning as always already implicated as a context-dependent creator of knowledge.
Tlie SofdierDreams, Iwmnia, and Here Lies Hkmy, then, explore character, action and audience in a manner which can be seen to paraiieI developments in post-Newtonian science. If; in naturalist theatre, "all we can know are its laws, laws essentidy fatalistic in their determinism" (George 176), the post-Newtonian theatre must create a world in which, as George says,
the stage of Heis pld,multiple, innnitely relativized. Any actual world is
only one possible manifestation of a whole anay of possible worlds and. . . .
it is not a given, but created as much by its inhabitant as by immutable
(social or scientific) laws. This fact of creative intervention effectively
means that everyone has and lives in theù "own" world and none dare Say
which is right. (176)
AU six of the scripts analysed in this thesis can be read as utilising post-Newtonian ideas in character construction, the creation of &unes of action, and the negotiation of the role of the spectator. Now, 1propose to extend the investigation of post-Newtonianism to intemgate how this mode1 can work both *th and against bîmq conflicts that re* oppressive hierarchies. If; as George Wntes, "no one dare say whkh Ïs right," post-
Newtonianism contains dangers for socially engaged political work. In my final chapter, 1 propose to explore the potential for post-Newtonianism to both undermine and collude with hegemonies, and the ways in which these possibiIities play themselves out dramatically. In addition, my final chapter wiU explore how this mode1 means if; as in the Iast three plays, post-Newtonianism begins to be used in non-refmntid and possibly unproblematised ways, Conclusion: Contemporary Cananiananian Drama and the New Science
Post-Newtonan ideas are seen as operathg in a feedback Ioop with all sides of culture and science, affecting and being affected by other disciphes. As seen in the 1st three pIays discussed, post-Newtonian principles are increasingly becoming "givens," taken-for-granteci parts of contemporary cultureeHére Lier Henry, Immnia and The
Soldier Drem demonstrate this kind of intemaIisation. As this model cornes to be used unconsciously, it carries the dangers of aIl "common sense" understandings-to potentialiy subsume other theories and paradigms beneath it, and to make its operational language seemingly transparent and c7rutnithful," c1osi.g offthe necessity of the investigation and interrogation of its presuppositions as it becornes the only discourse through which one can desdethe world,
This is made even more dangerous when the control of the model is already hught with politicai hierarchies. Knowles notes in neBeatre of Fonn that "in Canada as elsewhere most pIayWnghts who have thus far explored post-Newtonian dramaturgicai structures have been middle-class heterosexual white men" (KuowIes, The Theatre 218).
ParaIlel to this, the physicists who have been championed as introducing and exploring the model are aimost entireiy male. Post-Newtoniimism's "cast list" is 'testricted to heroic, individualist maie scientists stnigpiing to control chaos (gendered fernale)" (Knowles, l7ie neutre 2 18). It is interesthg to note, in paraUeI with this, that aii three explicitly post-
Newtonian plays discussed here centre around femde physicists, with Patience using one physicist of each sex. Krizanc and Mighton both point to genda based Uiequalities in scientifIc education ùi theik plays, undennining Iimitïng essentidians based on gender- The
discussion between Ake and the principal Ïn The Cnile Yem,which was discussed in my
second chapter, underlines a pedagogicd assmnption about gender-based differences. In
The Harfof It, Jill's opening speech shows how these assumptions are transmitted into
mdividual consciousness. As she lectures to her students, she says
Anyway, we got this thing fiom God-the whole &it7s a present fkom
God. So, remember when you were a kid-what7s the htthhg you do with
a present? (points) AM? Play with it-a good answer. Unfortunately it may
be the reason girls are discouraged by science. Do you have a brother? What
would he do with his present? Find out how it works. How? Take it apart?
Right. Now, when it cornes to the worId, the system that was developed for
this purpose was called science. (2)
Krizanc shows the fdacy of gender-based assumptions in science through Jiu's
accomplishments, but also shows how pervasive these assumptions are, as Jill repeats them
imd her -dents are socialised to recognise them. However, in this same speech Ml also
points out that "it's interestmg that we usually thllik God is masculine and the earth is
ferninine" (Krizanc 2). Both the critical and dramatic work on post-Newtonianisn
interrogate this bias inherent in the sciences. In critiquing Gleick's popdar work, Hayles
writes that "chaos7' as a principle is feminised, and that by:
admitting the ferninine as an abstract principle but excluding achial women,
Gleick attains control over the polysemy of chaos, striping [sic] it of its
more dangerous and engendered aspects. As a result, chaos is admitteci into the boundaries of scientinc discourse, but science remauis as monoiithically
masculine as ever. (Cliaos 174)
While the model has the potentiai to problematise bWesand hierarchies, at the moment its popular and publicised usage in science and drama is restricted to the dominaut. And similady, aithough the characters portrayed are women, in Canada at Ieast, the playwrights themselves are male. The dissemination of the model's pop& discourse, and the threat of the "cornmon sense" positionhg of the model adds to the threat of the model's collusion with poIitical hierarchies.
Nevertheless, one of the oppressions that post-Newtonianism cm problematise is reductionary essentialism. The three explicitiy post-Newtoniian plays cited here react against essentialism in different ways. In me Little Years, Kate's f'sufes in math are juxtaposed with Tanya's success, showing the failure as context- rather than gender-based.
Sirnilarly, Dee's performance of her "role" in The Harfof It and the doubhg of actors in
Patience demonstrate the perfomativity of gender on dinerent levels. The focus on non- detenninism, constant becomkg and subjective engagement with the world indicates a priorïtising of the social rather than the psychologicd, and the local over the global.
However, this becomes problematic when set against its control by the dominant, and also when considered in comection with parts of its scientific basis. Hayles writes that the "new scientinc paradigms, especially the science of chaos, have been seen as c-g the case for local howledge into the physicai sciemes" (Chaos 210), and notes Merthat:
The conflation of geopoliticd with theoretical connotations is signincant,
for it signals a growing feeling that totalizing theones should be discredited bmause they are associated with oppressive politicai stnictures .. . . By
impIication, local knowledge has become associated with hieration. (Clam
209)
This "geopoIitical confiation,'' then, codd work to problematise multinational capitalisrn and the subsuming of the local in an oppressive global system. However, post-
Newtonianïsm does not simply uphoId the site-specific; rather it seeks to gIobalise in
Werent ways, Although some post-Newtonian studÏes3 such as turbuIence, require a focus on local knowledge and the examination of chaotic systems within a limited space, others, such as fktal patteming, focus on recursive symmetry on d scde levels, patteming the global to the local and vice versa. Hayles writes that she is aiways ''wary of the claim that chaos theory provides confimation nom within the physicd sciences that totalizing perspectives are no longer valid . .. . chaos theory is not opposed to no& science; it is narmal science" (Chaos 15). Post-Newtonianism does not kplyseek to defeat global and totalising theories. It searches for new ways to explain and pattern global systems, while physicists search for the "deep structure" of chaos.
Hayles dso problernatises the potentialIy li-m.hg and incfividualised notion of non-determinism in important ways. She Wntes that if
there is only epistemology and no ontology, universais within physical
theories refiect ody how we perceive, never reality In this view, there
is no différence between the second Iaw of thermodynamics and the doctrine
of white supremacy; both are social and political constmctions that serve the
interests of specific groups of peopIe at specific times. (Chaos 2 14) Ahhough this codation may be oversïrnplified, and she does go on to problematise this discussion Mer,her point cmbe taken that levelling out the p1a-g fieId may not be effitive for those who were disadvantaged before the levelling began, especially if, as discussed above in relation to gender, the dissemination of this system is stül for the most part in the han& of the dominant. The prioritising of action and behaviour in the individual must still take into account that the behaviour is context-dependent, and that oppressions perskt in supposedly C%ee"space and unproblematised "'cornmon seme" ideologies.
Knowles writes that
It is important thaf in the rush to embrace the polificd potential of a
scientifïc worldview based on instability and change, the erasure of places
on which to stand and of history effected by the scientific shift fiorn particle
to process and on into spacetime not conspire with developrnents such as the
reactionary marshailhg of fkee speech, fiee trade, and academic fieedom by
the right, or the alarmiflgly adaptive emergence of rnvltinational, post-
national capitalism in the face of post-coloniai nationalisms or political
philosophies based on revolutionary histoncal change. (BeTheatre 218)
Non-determùiism and subjectivïty then become problematic when the "fiee" spaces of the world remain UILinterrogated, and a new brand of "survival of the fittesf' takes the place of the old, where responsibility fdson the individual to change their own worldviews. When
Phil lectures Reuben in Patience on the fiitility of searching for the onglliary cause, he asks, "Okay. Let's Say you do find that moment. What are you goma do with it?' and
Reuben replies, as he does several times n the play, ''Pull up my socks" (Sherman 51). This attitude of overcoming obstacle in life by changhg individual worIdviews or behaviow is the dangerous side of non-detemimism. Non-detenninism then threatens to him back against the disadvantaged by making oppression the problem of the oppressed by ignoring the social in favou.of the psychologid Without the recognition that ail processes are context-dependent, hegemonies are left unùltmgated.
The focus on non-determinism and subjectivity becomes even more problematic when identity politics as a whole and poIiticaIly expedient and necessary categories like strategic essentialisms are made inoperative. As post-Newtonianism promotes non- detefminism, it can overlook other factors, such as the socio-economic, which affect personal possibility. Local imperatives and oppressions based on political inequalities cannot be overlooked in the desire to adopt a non-detenninistic paradip. The indeterminability of initiai conditions, and the rejection of unilinear chains of cause-and- effect, do not mean that actions have no material causes or consequences.
Even the %ee space" of the theatre that the playwrights hy to establish succumbs to unwrïtten asmptions. In his afterword to The Harof fi, Ric Knowles writes:
Largely about perception, about ways of seeing, ordering and understanding
the world, neHalff It consistently disrupts our expectations as
comfortably distanced spectators and forces us to see and understand
differently. Through the use of actors as audiences, simultmeous staging,
flexible barriers between conventionally dismete playing spaces, video
monitors, walk-through wds, ghosts, crocodiles, drowning girls, alter-egos,
and characters who overhear and spy on other characters, Krizanc forges a form that replaces traditiondly logocmtnc theatrical structures with ones
that are more flemiile, open and more appropriate to his subject. (170)
Rrizanc7splay attempts to ovede a number oftraditional stage convmtions in order to make the space of the theatre more open and fiexiMe. This attempt to denaturalise the stage spacetkne, however, hvolves a amender of authorid control that leaves the play open for appropriation by multiplicitous readings that mclude, perhaps even invite, reinscription of authoriq in, for example, reviews by culturally authoritative critics in the conservative press. In Robert Cushman7sreview of nie Harfof It, for example, in Canada's self-styled national newspaper The Globe and Mail, the author's own expectations and assumptions came to the forefiont. Not a fm of the environmental piece, Tamura, a earlier play by
Krizmc and directe& like The HuZfof li, by Richard Rose, Cushman wrote that, in The
Halfof It, ''Rose has rashly confined himselfto a single conventional stage. He tries to disguise the fact with a few nemous gimmicks" @6). Cushman disliked Graeme
Thomson's set, and wrote that he didn't understand why the stage is "covered with grass even though most of the action takes place indoors. Backing everything are three panels of blue-sky-*th-fluffy-cIouds, which look remarkably tacky, even before characters start making dramatic entrantes by busting through them" @6).
Although the script and the premiere production may have tried to deluieate the stage as a fixe space, or as a representation of malleable spacetime, Cushman saw this idea as overcome by the heounding conventional space. This expectatÎon continued into his review of the characters. He wrote that: pre-publicity has suggested that JilIson is not meant to have thùigs aU her
own way and that the play presaits the attractions of capitalism as weli as its
deformites. But that is not the way it plays: not with the boy fiend asking
rhetoricdy, "Ebw did we get so ugly" @arody?Who cmtell?). and 01'
Freddy bugging everythmg that rnoves. Tme, Jillson is rather a pain, but
idealistic heroines aiways are. (D6)
In addition, he noted that in playing the other characters7
Sheila Moore [Clare] and Lisa Bunting [Hiiiary]play the rich-bitch roles
with appropriate creamy smoothness, and Janet Land [Dee] deals
energeticaily with a young aspirant to the same status. Greg Ellwand peter]
and John Bougeois [Kilman/Newma.l are stolidly competent as the men in
our Little girl's He. 06)
Krizanc's own comments on the play and other pre-publicity may have tned to establish the idea of the "quantum characier," but in performance Cushman's interpretations push the pefomances back into mdactured and "conventionai" subject positions; the '%ch bitch," and ideahtic 'CIittlegirl," the ''stolid men." Although The Halff It uses post-
Newtonianism to set up its arguments about economics and identity politics, the ''fiee space" of the theatre, as also seen in the discussion of Patience, is already overwritten to some extent by theatncal expectation and conventio~~While Knowles's reactions to the play highlight the flexibility of meaning-making in the script, Cushman's review reinforces traditional structures and categories. This theatncal example parafiels some of the dangers for contanporary cdture>when the unwrïtten "common sense" expectations underIying hegemonies can ovdepotentiaHy disniptive practices occming within them.
At the same time and dongside these dangers, the libexatory possi'bifities of non- detembism are what make this system a possiiility for the future. By promoting non- detenninism and local knowledge, and underlining the fiitility of the search for originary causes, the notions of essentia5sm and "authenticitf' are problematised. As discussed in chapter two, Rate's education in The Little Yems is pdeiedwith Tmya's to explore the ramifications of the gender-based pedagogical assumptions espoused and enforced by
Kate's principal. Kate's actions, and her treatment by the other characters, echo David
George's discussion of Newtonian ideology, in which we are "determined by our social roles, by environment, heredity, and any fkedom we might feel is only the kedom to leam how deteRnined we are" (175). The pardel between Kate's expaiences and those of
Tanya in the fÏactal stnicturing of the play suggests how, in George's terms, the new physics challenges these Newtonian beliefs, in
discovering and now accepting indeterminacy, chance, and by implication
spontaneity, change and, most drastically, seeing the worId as one in a
perpetual process of creation and transformation. Determinism çtiU applies
(without it there can be no physics) but only statisticdy; in the quantum
world the behaviour of bodies in generai can oniy be predicted by
probability equations, but not therefore the behaviour of any individual
particle. (175) Non-detmsm desout the validity of predeteRnined expectations and shows them to be potentially determining politid constructions, just as the investigation of the properties of iïght ended in a recognition of duality- Without deteiminsm m its Newtonian conception, factors such as gender, race, ethnicity and sedtycm no longer be taken on their own, removed fbm limitmg political hierarchies, as deteminhg fxtors for behaviom and presuppositÏ011~.In Here Lies Hmry, Henry's attempts to adopt concretised positions in order to explain himseIffd each tirne, to be replaced by more shifting and fiuid understandings He demonstrates the idea that every quantum personality, shaped by shifting conte&, is in a constant state of proces, or perpetual c'becoming7"then it is impossible to extrapolate fiom one entity to another to presuppose a trajectory of movement. It becomes a fdacy to Say what or who a person fimdamentaiIy 3, since each person is aiways c'becoming," and since our choices about how to view others shape our own viewpoints. The pardel stories surmunding David in Tlie So[dier Dream demonstrate that each of the other characters' stones is context-dependent, but not exclusive. This multiplicity and the pardel possiiilities of history (or the inability to detemine initial conditions) means that the shifüng contexts impinging on this constant becoming must be interrogated. Ifsubjectivity and nondeterminism are paramount, then the post-Newtonian world, a world of non-Iocality, tumiehg and non-linear cause-and- effect, depends on the recognition of the roles of both actor and onlooker and on interrogating hegernonies therenom, as in John Fm'sinterrogations of "fiee" spaces in his statement of protocols in Immnia. As this non-linearity is embraced, hear and
Wewtonian" structures are refuseci in favour of the construction of a spacetime that espouses multiplicity and parallelism. In both Patience and ne Harfof It, Iinearity is equated with Dârwinistic "dog-eatdog" capitalism that reinforces determmistic models and
serves to reinstill oppressive hegemonies. The hctaland associative structurnig of these ptays, then, aIIows the playwrîghts to explore the dangers of detenninistic and linear models,
N. Katherine Hayles writes that:
The science of chaos shares with other postmodemisms a deeply ingrahed
ambivalence toward totalizing structures. On the one hand, it celebrates the
disorder that eariier scientists ignored or disdained, seeing turbulent flow not
as an obstacle to scientifïc progress but as a great swirling river of
information that rescues the world hmsteriIe repetition. On the other hand,
it also shows that when one focuses on the underlying rec-ve symmeîries,
the deep structures underlying chaos can be reveded and analytical
solutions can sometimes be achievd It is thus like other postmodemisms in
that it both resists and contributes to globalizing structures. (Cham Bound
29 1)
This ambivalence is at the heart of the puil in post-Newtonanism between coilusion and
intervention. The balance of 1ocaVgloba.Iand detemiinidnon-determiaismproblematises
the post-Newtonian paradigrn. This tension, as David George notes, is another realm where
theatre and physics meet, as the world of the theatre is spiit between the detemiinistic
world of the drama and the chaotic world of the theatre. And the 'potential theatre" of post-
Newtonian drarna, in George's words, can offér an alternative, one mwhich we nuw hsow there other
possiailities, other destinies, other reahties*where we are (whether we like it
or not) spontaneous, where we practise creative intervention. That has
always been the offer of theatre, one which, in a culture such as ours with its
monnous respect for science, has now received scientinc credibility.
Potentially.. . (179)
Possessing potentially poütically lierathg ideology, post-Newtonian theatre depicts a world where '%the entities (spaçe and time) are not rnerely the stage on which the cosmic drama is acted out, but belong to the cast" (qtd- in George 172). Interrogating '%ommon sense" understandings and disrupting Lïmiting and oppressive notions of "authenticity" and
"essentialism," post-Newtonian drama can set a stage where the search is for knowledge, not certainty?within a structure that resists collusion in hegemonic models, and undennifles searches for orighary causes in favour of explorhg the social and constant process of
"becorning."
The possibilities of wavdparticle duality Lead to a stagethne in which dramatic characters are not bound to linear cause-and-effect progression, but may instead be used to explore the possibilities of '%ecoming,'' and possible alternatives to predetermined and stable identities. This, in turn, models a world that destabilises essentialisms and authenticities for social and context-dependent explorations of behaviour, This focus on behaviour, which led physicists away hmthe search for initial conditions, leads post-
Newtonian dramaturgy to pattern the stage after a different worldview. This world is abject to the ideas of tunnelhg and non-locality, probIematising Darwinistic capitalism in a structure that undennines the mots of the worldview. As post-Newtonianism impiicates the spectator in the system of meaning-making, as both physicist and audience manber are aiways already afliected by thar own subject positions, stagetimes are opmed to reflect the infinite possiibilitk of the many min& / many worId modek Post-Newtonianism in the theatre thus reconsiders understandings of human 'Sdentity," behaviour," and didogue with the world, in a manner which, emphasising the mediated nature of ail spaces, nevertheless embraces potentially Iiberating ideas of plulcality and possiility. Abrams, M. R "Biidungsmman." A Glossary of Litermy Tmt6 ed. Orlando: Harcourt,
1993.132-33-
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