The project that I am currently investigating is a devised work centered around the question of what it means to be a man. As a young one, I feel that there is a a lot of stress in American culture to perform man-ness, that being a man involves acting and action, doing things, taking command, performing, physically, sexually, occupationally. Men get results. Men take matters into their own hands. Men dominate. Men lead. Men succeed. But with this economic crash and all the changes in our culture it has stimulated, men, maleness, and men's roles in society are changing. And I, as a decidedly less "masculine" man, find myself wondering, what about the ones who still aren't sure? What about men who don't know, who can't decide, who struggle with feelings and actually let them show? What about men who want to lead but don't want to dominate? What about men who are overwhelmed? Men who are lost and mad and scared and sad, are they still men? What about men who fail? Are they still men?
So I've started to interrogate this in relation to Hamlet, who culturally speaking represents both our key representation of Man, as well as in common parlance the Sissiest of Men, the Man who Could Not Make Up His Mind, the Man who Failed to Act Until Everything Was All Screwed Up. Hamlet, the man who goes crazy, or who pretends to be crazy but can't take advantage of his performance. The man who feels and thinks too much, who speaks too much. The man who cannot act.
I've also started to investigate my own clowning in relation to this, which echoes very nicely Hamlet's Yorick and other pressures of performing as a man. My clown is super slow, super low status, super sad, an emotional, pure, yearning young clown, seeking love from the audience but feeling overwhelmed and desperately lost in trying to get it. What if my clown is forced to perform, forced to try and be a "Man?" What if he has to speak the speech?
I'd like to throw other culturally Overthinkers into the mix, like David Foster Wallace, who's so self-aware he is self-aware about the futility of being self-aware, and speaks ad nauseum about it. I wonder if there's room too for James Joyce, who also folds investigations of Hamlet into his work. What if David Foster Wallace, Hamlet, and my clown were forced to play Hamlet in a play? Would they be able to do it? Would they be able to act?
I envision this piece with three actors, all men, who talk directly to the audience, and switch between different modes: Themselves speaking very vulnerably, self-aware, frank, honestly, about being young men growing up in this culture. At least one is not completely heterosexual. Then there's clown mode, where these clowns endure Manhood tests. Then there's Character mode, where we play these other figures, struggling in other language about performing, about taking a stand, about acting, about overcoming madness, about being men.
I get the sense that in a devised process this would be explored and explored and then winnowed down into a much more refined question and focus. There seems to me to be a sea of multitudinous ways to explore all kinds of things related to this question. My goal as director, co-writer/deviser, and perhaps one of the performers of this piece, would be both to question my own impulses to control & command, expose them actually in the piece (do we descend into a metatheatrical moment where I try to direct the other two actors on stage, and they defy me, and I fail? Could we set this up so it could happen for real?) as well as to focus on creating an experience in the audience of the spiraling state of self-questioning, self-doubt, self-investigation, and maybe self-exposure.
I'm in process of putting this piece into its early investigation stages. I'd love to push forward on it as it is refined and redefined for me.
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