1 God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza Play Guide Snowy Range Summer Theatre at the University of Wyoming June 23 – June 27, 2020 @ 7:30 p.m. God of Carnage Play Guide compiled and written by Jenefer Pasqua, Snowy Range Summer Theatre Dramaturgical Intern. 2 able of Contents T Snowy Range Summer Theatre....................... Page 3 The Story and Characters ................................ Page 4 Yasmina Reza ................................................. Page 5 Interview with Director Jason Pasqua ............. Pages 6-7 Helicopter and Snowplow Parents .................. Pages 8-10 References in the Play ..................................... Pages 11-16 Privileged People Behaving Badly ................. Page 17 About the Dramaturg ...................................... Page 17 3 Snowy Range Summer Theatre at the University of Wyoming The Snowy Range Summer Theatre season runs at the University of Wyoming each June and July and generally features three productions, and sometimes one touring production. We are proud of the long history and success of Snowy Range Summer Theatre, which at 68 years old is the second oldest program west of the Mississippi! The summer company each year is comprised of current students and alumni working in the field, as well as outside professionals. The summer season is staged within a six to eight-week session and offers student performers and technicians valuable practical theatre experience and a stipend. Summer company members also have the option to earn up to 2 hours of academic credit if they wish. Outstanding junior and/or senior theatre majors at UW (particularly those students seeking a professional degree) are strongly encouraged to audition for the acting company or apply for the technical company. An effort is made to select qualified students from UW to participate in the company along with students who are recruited from throughout the nation. Source: http://www.uwyo.edu/thd/whats-playing/snowy-range-festival/index.html 4 By Yasmina Reza Translated by Christopher Hampton THE STORY: A playground altercation between eleven-year old boys brings together two sets of Brooklyn parents for a meeting to resolve the matter. At first, diplomatic niceties are observed, but as the meeting progresses, and the rum flows, tensions emerge and the gloves come off, leaving the couples with more than just their liberal principles in tatters. CHARACTERS: Alan Raleigh - A lawyer who is married to Annette and father to Benjamin. Annette Raleigh - Works in “wealth management” and is married to Alan and mother to Benjamin. Michael Novak - Owner of a wholesale company and is married to Veronica and father to Henry. Veronica Novak - A writer who is married to Michael and mother to Henry. Source: www.dramatists.com 5 born May 1, 1959, Paris France, French dramatist, novelist, director, and actress best known for her brief satiric plays that speak to contemporary middle-class anxieties. Reza was the daughter of Jewish parents who had immigrated to France. Her Iranian father was an engineer, businessman, and a pianist, and her mother was a violinist originally from Budapest. Reza studied at the University of Paris X, Nanterre, and at the Drama School of Jacques Lecoq before working as an actress. The first two plays she wrote, both winners of a Molière Award, were Conversations après un enterrement (1986; Conversations After a Burial), involving death and sex, and La Traversée de l’hiver (1989; “Winter Crossing”), about the unlikely friendship that develops between six people spending their vacation at a Swiss mountain resort. It was the play, Art, however, which premiered in 1994, that brought Reza wide notice. In the play three friends quarrel over a work of modern art—which is, in effect, a blank canvas—thereby showing just how fragile friendship can be. The play was in production on major stages worldwide virtually continuously after its opening. It won Molière Awards for best author, play, and production; a British Laurence Olivier Award for best comedy; and a Tony Award for best play. Another hit, L’Homme du hasard (1995; The Unexpected Man), was a two- character play set on a train traveling from Paris to Frankfurt. Following long monologues by a self-absorbed male author and his female seatmate and fan, the play ends with a brief dialogue between the two that centers on people’s need for one another. In the satiric comedy Le Dieu du carnage (2006; God of Carnage), Reza focused on two couples who meet to discuss a fight between their young sons. The play made its London debut in 2008 and subsequently won a Laurence Olivier Award. The Broadway production of God of Carnage, which opened a year later, was also critically acclaimed, and it earned a Tony Award for best play. For a 2011 film version (titled Carnage), Reza cowrote the screenplay with Roman Polanski, who also directed. Reza’s later plays include Comment vous racontez la partie (2011; “How You Talk the Game”) and Bella figura (2015; “Beautiful Figure”), which she wrote for the Schaubühne in Berlin and later directed in a 2017 Paris production. Source: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yasmina-Reza 6 Q: What inspired you to direct this play? A: There were several things that drew me to this play. The first thing was that my wife and I were lucky enough to see the original Broadway production of this play in 2009. The production was fantastic! Another reason I was drawn to direct this play was because Yasmina Reza writes great plays and dramatizes complex aspects of the human experiences in funny and touching ways. I love directing work that has great writing and reflects the social and political times of our society. Q: What are some interesting characteristics of this play? A: God of Carnage is about marriage and about being a parent. The play is ostensibly about what we are going to do about what we are going to do about the quarrel of the children, and they are not even present in the play. With the absence of the children, the play obviously becomes about the parents and their marriages. I have stolen this line from a TV show, and I love it…“When you’re married you say “I’m sorry” a lot. You say ‘I’m sorry’ when you mean it. You say ‘I’m sorry’ when you don’t mean it. You say, ‘I’m sorry’ when you have no earthly idea what could be wrong this time.” This play is about the day everybody gets tired of saying “I’m sorry.” There are personal and political implications to this statement. What makes this play unusual is there are a lot of ways to dramatize or explore what a marriage is, and what a relationship is, and this play takes the “what 7 happens when people stop lying to each other and themselves?” approach. What are the deals we make with each other and with ourselves? This play reminds me Yasmina Reza’s other play, Art. On the surface it’s about a painting (that the audience never sees until the end). But what the play is actually about is two friends and their conceptions of each other. Q: What is the relevance of this play in 2020? A: [All of us] are going to have to start having more honest conversations with each other. That can be scary and that can be painful. We’re going to have to be ready for some things we’re uncomfortable hearing, but you also need to be ready to hear some things come out of your mouth, that you might also not be comfortable with. Like I said, what happens when we stop saying “I’m sorry?” That doesn’t mean we have to go around and apologize for everything, but I do think we’re going to have to start having honest conversations with each other about politics and societal norms. We all tell ourselves things that get us through the day. That’s what makes the world work. But we better make sure we’re not living in a fantasy world. Otherwise, there is nothing to hold on to anymore. Who am I? Who are the people around me? We probably need to be a little more honest about that. *This interview was edited for clarification purposes. 8 By Jenefer Pasqua As an educator and parent, I believe one of the most interesting aspects of the play, God of Carnage, is the absence of the children and always talked about by adults on stage. The two boys involved in the fight are nowhere to be found. The entire play centers on the conflict between the two boys, Benjamin and Henry, however they never appear on stage. In my opinion, Reza uses the absence of the children to highlight the behaviors of the adults. In this manner, the adults are representative of the children. As a teacher of students at all levels in the K-12 public school system, I can tell you that most children will solve problems on their own with little intervention from adults. Most often when a violent act occurs, the children resolve the conflict immediately thereafter. Of course, this is not always the case, but often, the children will find a way to resolve their problems and move forward in an amicable manner. The behaviors demonstrated by the parents, Alan and Annette Raleigh, and Michael and Veronica Novak, are not unique to this play. Several terms have been coined by child psychologists in the last decade that clearly describe the type of parents in the play. “Helicopter” and “Snowplow” are two terms that come to mind when considering this behavior. For those unfamiliar with the terms, “Helicopter” 9 refers to a parent who helps their child do everything.