A Deeper Look a Study Guide for the Play
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A Deeper Look On bythe Eric Overmyer Verge photo: Peterson Creative Photography & Design Photography Creative photo: Peterson A Study Guide for the play. About the Playwright Eric Overmyer (b. 1951) is an American cide: Life on the Street, Law & Order, The playwright, writer and producer. On the Wire, New Amsterdam, Bosch (which he Verge is one of his eleven published plays. He developed), Treme and The Man in the High is also writer and/or producer of numerous Castle. TV shows, including St. Elsewhere, Homi- Some articles re-printed with permission from, and gratitude to: Tom Joyner Ph.D. tomjoynerphd.com On the Verge—A Closer Look 1 Presented by the Commonweal Theatre Company September 6 - November 10, 2019 On theby Eric OvermyerVerge The Characters FANNY—The most conservative of the group unequivocal calling. Mary is the oldest mem- in all aspects: socially, politically and mor- ber of the lady explorers’ expedition. She is ally. She is the only married member of the utterly devoted to studying and experiencing group. Fanny generally disapproves of every- the future, both from an objective and sub- thing she sees and hears in the future, finding jective perspective. it immoral. Her sensual side is brought out ALEXANDRA—The youngest of the group, in the second act, and she gradually warms Alexandra allows her age to make up a up to the future. Fanny is the second-oldest considerable amount of her personality. She member of the expedition. is typically forgetful and tends to daydream. MARY—constantly cites her favorite period- Upon encountering a new word (a frequent ical (the fictional newspaper “The Boston occurrence in their journey), she plays with Geo”) as a source of wisdom. She remains it, trying to find rhymes and alternative unmarried, and considers exploration her meanings, to the endless irritation of her From University of Wisconsin/Whitewater’s Study Guide. comrades. Any new discovery enthralls her. Glossary CULTURAL phenomenologist One who studies the philosophy of the baksheesh structures of experience and consciousness. Tipping, charitable giving and certain Developed by Edmund Husserl and Martin forms of political bribery in the Middle Heidegger in the early 20th century. East and South Asia. “Poobah of the first water” chronokinesis A high-ranking official. The word poobah The ability of the mind to manipulate and is based on the character Poo-Bah in Gil- control one’s perception of time. bert & Sullivan’s The Mikado. Often used clairvoyant sarcastically. A person who claims to have a supernatu- pro forma ral ability to perceive events in the future. “For form’s sake,” from Latin. Something ecdysiastical done or produced as a matter of form or Of or related to striptease performance or politeness. performers. quotidian ginchiest Of or occurring every day; daily. Colloquial adjective of the 1950s meaning sojourner sexy, cool. A person who resides temporarily in a Maasai place. A Nilotic ethnic group inhabiting northern, somnambulist central Kenya and northern Tanzania. Sleepwalker. palaver tonsorial Prolonged and idle discussion, chat; a par- Related to hairdressing. ley or improvised conference between two truculent sides. Eager or quick to argue or fight; aggres- peregrinations sively defiant. Journeys, especially long or meandering ones. 2 On the Verge—A Closer Look “Willie and the Hand Jive” beginning of the Devonian Period (at 419.2 A 1958 song by Johnny Otis. Reached #9 million years ago). on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. GEOGRAPHICAL HISTORICAL Hindu Kush Bébé Bwana An 800-kilometer-long mountain range The name given by native Africans to Mrs. that stretches through Afghanistan, from Mary (May) French-Sheldon, a white fe- its center to northern Pakistan and into male explorer and author of the book Sul- Tajikistan and China. tan to Sultan: Adventures among the Masai Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River and other tribes of East Africa, 1892. She Myanmar’s largest river and most import- was appointed a Fellow of the National ant commercial waterway. Geographical Society in 1910, one of the manioc (also: cassava) first women to be so appointed. A food starch, prepared from the root of a dirigible species of plants native to subtropical and Also “airship.” A lighter-than-air craft that tropical regions of South America, Africa can navigate through the air under its own and Asia. power (e.g., Hindenburg). Orinoco Great Leap Forward A large river in South America, draining an An economic and social plan (1958-62) in area of about 340,000 square miles, mostly China (aka “Red China”) led by Commu- located in Venezuela and Colombia. nist Party Chairman Mao Zedong. Putumayo National Review A tributary of the Amazon River, originat- An American semi-monthly editorial maga- ing in southwestern Colombia. zine founded by author William F. Buckley Terra incognita Jr. in 1955. Credited with helping to devel- “Unknown land,” from Latin. A term used op U.S. conservatism. historically in cartography to denote lands Silurian that have not been mapped or documented. A geologic period spanning 24.6 million Terre Haute years from the end of the Ordovician The U.S. city which is the county seat of Period (at 443.8 million years ago) to the Vigo County in western Indiana. “On the Cusp of Adventure: The Victorian ‘lady travelers’ and their world” by Thomas Joyner, Ph.D. I am doing what a woman can hardly pressed for changes in property law that ever do—leading a life fit for a man. would allow them the same rights as men— —Isabella Bird the right to own property, vote, and have equal protection in the workplace. In the Victorian Era of the 19th century Mary, Fanny, and Alexandra, the hero- women were often thought of as unable to ines of On the Verge, are fictional characters perform many of the tasks that men did. The based on actual women—those Victorian worlds of politics, higher education and busi- women known collectively as “lady travel- ness were virtually closed to them. Instead, ers” who escaped their own closed society society expected women to stay in the home, by exploring places far beyond the bounds raise children, and perform “social” tasks. familiar to most Westerners, male or female. In the late 1800s, a small group of women Though most expeditions into the uncharted (supported by an even smaller group of men) regions of the American West, Africa, Asia began to protest the dominant legal, social, and the islands of the Pacific were made by and cultural view that they were inferior to men, these women played an important role men. Beginning in America with the 1848 in opening up the world to Western society. Seneca Falls Convention, these women At the same time, their travels effectively fur- From www.tomjoynerphd.com. thered the emerging cause of women’s rights On the Verge—A Closer Look 3 by demonstrating the error of relegating in front of her women to an inferior role. when a portion Most of these real-life Victorian lady of a glacier travelers came out of British and American collapsed. She upper-middle-class households that provided continued them with enough money (and time) to begin her journey their travels. Isabella Bird, for example, and produced began her travels on money left to her by her invaluable father upon his death and supplemented this surveys that income with earnings from a series of books, would help her beginning with those she wrote on her travels become the to the United States just prior to the Civil first American War. Others, such as Frenchwoman Alexan- woman to dra David-Néel, married men who supported lecture at the their urge to travel and provided the funds Sorbonne. for it. David-Néel only lived with her hus- Alexandra Mary Kingsley, tamer of the Mighty Silurian band for a short period of time, spending David-Néel the rest of their marriage traveling while he became the first European woman to visit worked as a colonial official in Tunisia. She the holy capital of Tibet, Lhasa. In order also managed to make her own living as an not to be caught, she disguised herself as a actress and journalist. In the play, Alexandra Tibetan peasant traveling with her son—ac- speaks of an inheritance, Mary a “commis- tually her longtime aide, Yongden—through sion from the Boston Geo” (the Boston Geo- some of the least-traveled mountain passes. graphic Society), and Fanny of her husband’s For several months, they hiked at elevations willingness to support her while she travels. of 10-15,000 feet and higher to reach the Like their fictional counterparts, the lady city. The unexplored jungle could be just as travelers journeyed to many parts of the dangerous. Mary Kingsley, like Fanny in the globe. One of the most popular destinations play, drove off crocodiles by “thwacking” was the Himalayan mountain range of South them on the head—though she used a canoe Asia, the favored destination of the play’s paddle instead of an umbrella. These dan- Alexandra. Many portions of this remote gers were potentially fatal, but these women region remained unexplored by Europeans, persevered. even into the 20th century. In most cases, the Victorian “lady travel- Mountain traveling posed many dangers, ers” saw many problems with the way Euro- especially in an age when existing equip- peans treated native populations. Kingsley, ment gave who traveled among various tribes in the jun- little help in gles of West Africa, found the administration more ex- of the British short-sighted, solely serving treme climes. the colonists’ self-interest. She expressed the Fanny Bull- view that, “Whatever we do in Africa today, ock-Work- a thousand years hence there will be Africans man, an to thrive or suffer for it.” She wanted Euro- American peans to see the African tribes as “brother traveling in humans” with cultures of their own.