Stories From the Kitchen, Friday at 2:00

Grace here. Let’s take a quick Beatles break, shall we?

“Life is very short, and there’s no tiiiiiiime for fussing and fighting, my friend”…makes me smile every time I hear it.

So, for the past few Monday mornings, the guests of Miriam’s Kitchen and I have been talking about meaningful hellos and goodbyes. We’ve had wonderful conversations on topics ranging from different ways that different cultures greet and bid farewell,to the impact of technology on meetings and departures, to anecdotes about meaningful hellos and goodbyes from our own lives. One person spoke about saying hello to his children at their birth; another spoke of the sad goodbye of her childhood friend passing away too young. We’ve even heard stories of people who have dropped by to say Hello after their death!

This Friday, following the matinee of The Hampton Years, a fantastic team of professional actors will read the stories of Hello and Goodbye written and told by the guests over the past few weeks. The short reading will start around 2:00, and last about 20 minutes. And there will be cookies.

Do join us. It’s our third “Stories from the Kitchen” reading, and they are very lovely, warm events. It’s also my last ‘Stories from the Kitchen’ reading for some time, since I am preparing for some Hellos and Goodbyes of my own, so I would love the chance to see you.

For more about the partnership between Theater J and Miriam’s Kitchen, check out Metro Connection!

Happy Wednesday

 

 

Grace’s Cheap-Chocolate Day Tradition

Grace here. Today is one of my favorite unofficial holidays: Cheap Chocolate Day (CCD), when heart-shaped candy becomes obsolete, and therefore, deliciously discounted.  I have two CCD Traditions. The first is to try to re-write a scene from a famous play using only Found Text from Conversation Hearts. Please feel free to join me in this quest, and post your attempts below.

The second is to buy Valentine’s candy for women who have inspired, befriended, mentored, or just impressed me.  So today when I purchased my on-sale sweets, I was thinking of lots of amazing women. One of whom readers of this blog know quite well.

And since she was featured in this profile in the Washington Jewish Week, many others have been introduced to Theater J’s remarkable Associate Artistic Director (nee Director of Literary and Public Programming) Shirley Serotsky.  Washington Jewish Week writer Lisa Traiger discusses Shirley’s colorful past as a musical theatre actress, assistant to “Orthodox rabbi-to-the-stars Shmuley Boteach” [author of Kosher Sex and The Kosher Sutra] and attendee of a “prominent African-American church.”

You should check out the whole piece, but I’ll take the liberty of sharing my favorite line:

“Just like Judaism wonders if your grandchildren will be Jewish,” Serotsky stated, “theater makers worry will our grandchildren ever think to go to the theater?” 

And speaking of going to the theater, I want to share another piece about the significance of theatre, written by another one of my CCD candy recipient she-idols, Catherine Crum (though Catherine’s healthy habits mean that I should probably consider a less sugary alternative for her. Suggestions appreciated).

In her stunning essay “Because We Matter” Catherine, who is the Deputy Director of Miriam’s Kitchen, –as as well as an avid literature and theatre-lover—writes, “Theater matters because it allows our group of Miriam’s Kitchen guests to be theatergoers, not just people who are experiencing homelessness.

…Theater matters because it gives us insight into other people’s minds and issues, and takes us out of our own worlds.  Brandon likes going to Theater J because he studied acting in college and dreams of being on the stage one day. Rocky loved The Whipping Man because he was able to focus on it, since he had a sandwich in his belly and his things were locked up for a few hours. Raymond hadn’t seen a play since 5^th grade, and he is 38 now; After the Fall was his re-introduction, and he hasn’t missed a performance since. For Cynthia, theater is a way to get out of the cold.”

Definitely check out the rest of the piece on www.theaterwashington.org   Catherine spends her life doing such beautiful work, and this piece does a great job of showing her warmth and love of the arts.

And as long as I’m bragging about the wonderful women in my life whom I am plying with candy, let’s not forget Carole R. Zawatsky, the CEO of the DCJCC, and her brainchild of an Arts & Ideas Festival. Thanks to her, we will be spending the weekend answering the question that David Mamet raises in his play Race, “Do you know what you can say? To a black man [or woman]. On the subject of race?” You can check out an interview she gave on WUSA this morning with this clip. Or you can just come to the symposium and meet her yourself!

I may even have some left-over Cheap Chocolate to share…

ADDENDUM:

Angels in America: Millennium Approaches Act 3, Scene 7

Stage Directions and Plot by Tony Kushner. Script by Conversation Hearts ©

(Louis appears. He looks gorgeous. The music builds gradually into a full-blooded, romantic dance tune)

Louis: Dance W/ Me

Prior: Get Real

Louis: Dance W/ Me. I love you.

 (Prior stands up. The leg stops hurting. They begin to dance. The music is beautiful)

Prior: Call Me

Louis: Let’s Kiss

Prior: Be My Man

Louis: One Kiss

Prior: I love you

Louis: See ya

The Inaudible Man

Grace here. This movie poster terrifies me:

In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream

And I’m not alone. It’s one of the most effective tag lines ever used, because it taps into a very basic human fear: not being heard.

Who hasn’t had the nightmare of screaming without any sound coming out? Who hasn’t felt invisible at some point in their life? We’ve been grappling with the fear of being unheard since we first found comfort in God: The ultimate all-seeing ,all-comprehending, all-forgiving audience.

Deb Margolin kicked off the Theater J season by saying, “I have always felt that the kindest… most committed and generous thing we do for each other, is the bearing of witness” On Monday night, David Deblinger (who is closing our season with the fabulous History of Invulnerability) noted, “The act of listening is generous.” Plus, I’ve heard enough bad-date stories to know that the easiest way to infuriate someone is refusing to let them get a word in edgewise.

But it goes even deeper than that.

There’s a man experiencing homelessness who has taken to asking for change on the streets. As you can imagine, he encounters a pretty vast array of responses. But the one that cuts deepest is total lack of acknowledgment: no money, no words, no eye contact. “That’s what scares me,” he says, “I would rather people cuss at me, would rather they spit in my face; because then at least I would know that they see me. Enough people don’t look at you, you start to get scared that maybe you don’t exist.”

Before this year, I hadn’t put a lot of thought into the population of people experiencing homelessness. I had a very fixed idea in my head of what a ‘homeless person’ was like. However, when I started volunteering at Miriam’s Kitchen, that idea shattered like cheap glass. The guests that I have met are brilliant, accomplished people, wonderful people.  They are professors and Fulbright scholars, artists and musicians, government employees and immigrants.

They are also people who share my passion for theater. So Theater J started inviting Miriam’s Kitchen guests to see the productions in the 2011-2012 season. As another facet of the partnership, Miriam’s graciously invited Theater J artists to come hang out in their Studio Series. So fantastic performers like Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey, David Emerson Toney, Rick Foucheux, Tim Getman and more have spent afternoons trading stories with the Miriam’s guests.

I’ve traded a few stories too. For the past four Monday mornings, the guests and staff of Miriam’s has welcomed me in with warmth, enthusiasm, and coffee. We’ve sat at the round table, and shared stories of triumph and loss; of youthful indiscretions and of future aspirations.  Some of the guests allowed me to transcribe their stories.

So on Tuesday night, the guests of Miriam’s came once again to Theater J, this time to see a play that they had written. Some of the actors who have gone to Miriam’s over the 2011-2012 season came together to perform a reading called “Stories from the Kitchen: Monologues Written by the Guests of Miriam’s Kitchen.”

It was a very simple reading. Bare stage. No costumes. Just people telling stories. People listening to each other, and bearing witness. But it reminded me why I love theatre.

I think there’s a shortage of listeners in the world. We’re lucky at Theater J, because we’ve got audiences who listen with their whole hearts. But they’re probably in the minority, because if everyone had a listener like that at home, you probably wouldn’t find so many people desperate to tell their stories online, right?

The instant you sign on, you’re barraged with people bursting to tell their stories: Tweeting, blogging, publishing their diary to Kindle and getting way too personal on Facebook.

Even with this post, I’m joining the chatter, flinging my own two-cent tale into the pile of stories that nobody asked for. So I’ll stop in just a moment, but before I do, I’ve got to ask a favor of you, Mr./Ms. Anonymous, (possibly nonexistent) reader. It’s an eccentric favor that most people probably won’t do, but it’s worth a shot.

Would you please find someone who is usually invisible to you, and ask them to tell you their story?  I’ll do the same, and you and I can sit (in our respective locations) and listen as the invisible becomes immediate.

I promise you, it’s the best ticket in the town.

 

Just Desserts

Grace Here.

Is there anyone else out there who feels oddly guilty at the sight of a Thanksgiving table?

I may be overstepping the norm of Jewish guilt here, but something about the heaping platters and steaming kitchens is as chastening as it is appetizing.

It’s like this: Thanksgiving is all about gratitude—reflecting on all the wonderful gifts that you’ve been given: friends, family, loved ones, and pumpkin pie. It really is an embarrassment of riches!

Which can be sort of, well….embarrassing. Because (if you’re like me) then you start thinking, “Wait a second—do I deserve all this pie?”

Arthur Miller, evidently, is like me (at least in this respect).

Anyway, when his protagonist in After the Fall goes to the airport and sees the beautifully gleaming face of Holga (played by the beautifully gleaming face of Jennifer Mendenhall), he is the picture of gratitude, joy, and anticipation.

Then he starts thinking, “Wait a second (or two)—do I deserve all this love?”

In this dizzyingly unjust world, how do we accept bounty that we aren’t sure we deserve?

In After the Fall, Arthur Miller ripped his conscience (and his marriages) open and showed their raw, pulpy insides to an audience looking for an answer.

Theater J’s production has produced some dramatic responses. Critics have shouted unanimous praise, and audiences are riveted. But the most dramatic responses came from the guests at Miriam’s Kitchen, a local “super kitchen” in Foggy Bottom.

Last Wednesday at 2:30, Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey (who plays Quentin’s glamorous but self-destructive second wife Maggie in After the Fall) sat with Catherine Crum (who is the glamorous and not-at-all -destructive Deputy Director of Miriam’s Kitchen) and me at a table with Miriam’s Kitchen guests Randy, David, Karl, Quincy, Ronald Reagan, Jim, and some more guests whose names I unfortunately cannot remember, discussing After the Fall. Several of the MK guests had seen the show the week before, and they left with a powerful connection to Quentin’s quest to discover whether he has lived his life well.

“I don’t care how much of a man you are,” said Randy, “You’re going to shed a tear.” We talked about guilt, about remorse, about the part of our brain that endlessly traces roads not taken and wonders what might have been if-if-if…

We told stories of memories in which we aren’t sure that we acted rightly, and then acted out those memories using one another as scene partners. The nice thing about acting out memories is that you get a second chance.  One guest acted out the story of an annoying coworker. In real life, he had punished the coworker by getting him in trouble for an act that he didn’t commit. Yet when the guest reenacted the story, he dealt with the coworker by trying to reason with him, and ultimately buying him a beer. Another guest acted out the story of being apprehended by a policeman for trespassing, this time finding humor in what was at the time a grim experience.

In After the Fall, Quentin tries to look at his life unflinchingly, recreating his own actions without revision, in an attempt to take stock of himself and figure out whether he can ever deserve the gifts that Holga tries to give.  At Miriam’s Kitchen, we allowed revision, but the core question remained the same: “Have I lived well? Do I deserve the gifts I am given?”

Like Quentin, we hold our memories close, waltzing in circles, hoping to stumble across the answers. If we’re lucky, we learn something and move forward.

I can’t tell you about what Quentin learns from his investigation of his past, because that would be spoiling the ending of the play, and there are still six more shows before we have to say good-bye (This Sunday! Eeep!)

But I’ll tell you this: I am grateful to Mitchell, who has outdone himself in a feat of acting genius that people will remember for years to come. I am grateful to Gabriela, who not only shares her electric performance with the audience, but also shared her warmth and intelligence with the folks at Miriam’s Kitchen. I am grateful to the cast and crew of After the Fall, who joke and scream and bleed together to give us access into the brilliant mind of Arthur Miller. I am grateful to Catherine and all the MK guests for diving into After the Fall with open hearts.

And most of all, I am grateful to every person who comes to our home at the DCJCC and sits at our table to share in this magnificent theatrical feast. Happy Thanksgiving!

Newspaperlove

Mitchell Hébert, Gabriela Fernández-Coffey. Photo by Stan Barouh

Grace here. Reviews are a controversial topic amongst theater-folk. Some read them religiously, others pointedly ignore them. I think it was Rosemary Clooney who, when discussing reviews,  said something like, “You’re never as good as they say you are, but you’re never as bad as they say you are.”

My personal feeling about reviews reminds me of the mild anxiety I’ve always felt about introducing various boyfriends to my parents.  I wouldn’t love the guy any less if my parents didn’t like him. That being said, it’s infinitely more pleasant when they do.

Similarly, when you get that critical “stamp of approval,” and the writers you respect share your enthusiasm for the play that you’ve poured your blood and sweat into, it feels really, really good.

So it’s gratifying to read the Washington Post’s headline, “Sharp casting makes After the Fall an Enjoyable Epic” and know that their critic felt the same fascination with this “compulsively watchable” play that I did.

You can read the whole review here!

And it’s great to know that I have a kindred soul at Washingtonian, who  enthused about the play’s “enthralling boiling point” and Mitch Hébert’s “layered performance” just as I did after watching the dress rehearsal.

Click here for the Washingtonian’s full text.

We’ve got something very special here–everyone involved with this project has known it from Day One. Now the newspapers know it too! I hope the word keeps spreading, because I think people are going to be talking about this one for a long time. I certainly will, and it will be great to have more people to reminisce with!

Reward: Cookies

Grace here. I’m glad to be typing, and not talking, because I have a nasty cold, and seem to have lost my voice. Feel free to print out and distribute the sign posted to the right.

It’s been an odd week to be sans voce, because this has been the week of BIG CONVERSATIONS. On Monday evening, we had a public presentation of ‘Conversations with Mike Nussbaum,’ in which Ari took on James Lipton’s role and did an ‘Actors Studio’ style interview with Mike Nussbaum.  Ari uncovered some pretty shocking secrets regarding Mr. Nussbaum’s shady past!  Most people don’t know, for instance, that before Mike became an actor, he worked as a hired assassin…of bugs.

Ants Beware!

He’s directed on Broadway, played every great male role in the Western canon [Willie Loman, Teach, Shylock, the list goes on…], and refers to William H. Macy as ‘Bill’ There’s a passage from a Charles Mee play, Limonade Tours les Jours, that occurred to me as Mike invited the audience into his memories,

“with each person
you enter into their world
you live in their world for a while
to step into their lives for a while
it is to have another entire life for yourself”

After the interview, Ari and Mike joined the audience for a dessert reception, and I might have liked to linger a while longer in the glamorous life of Mr. Nussbaum, but it was time to get some rest and prepare for…

the next BIG CONVERSATION.

As part of the Lincoln Legacy Project, Ari, Shirley and I, along with a team of Ford’s folk, will be helping facilitate a discussion series following performances of Parade. Because Parade hits such deep emotional chords and deals with the sensitive topics of racism, anti-Semitism, vigilante justice, and a whole plethora of other thorny issues, it was important for all facilitators to have some pre-discussion discussions.

…but this time it’s happening to us!

Jenny Fellner & Euan Morton. Photo by Scott Suchman

Grace here.

Part of the tension of the musical Parade  (starting a week from tomorrow!!) is that the trial of Leo Frank, a white upper-class man, spurred interest and action from the North in a way that the trials of countless innocent black people never had. As they say in the lyrics of “A Rumblin’ and a Rollin’…

“They’re comin’, they’re comin’ now, yessirree!
‘Cause a white man gonna get hung, you see.
There’s a black man swingin’ in ev’ry tree
But they don’t never pay attention!”

Let’s switch topics for a moment. Sort of.

For yesterday’s matinee of Imagining Madoff, we were lucky enough to have 17 guests from the wonderful Miriam’s Kitchen Writers Group. Some of the staff members had a picnic with the MK folk on the steps of the J, and we chatted a bit about Bernie Madoff and his notorious Ponzi scheme.

They had some amazing insights, but there was one that made a particular impression on me. A black man with short hair and a knowing expression on his face turned to me and said, “You know…I’m not going to say too much, but what that Madoff did to those people–people have been doing to me all my life…He stole everything they had; left them with nothing. All my life, people have done that to me.”

Rick Foucheux as Bernie Madoff. Photo by C. Stanley Photography

Maybe one of the reasons that people have felt so deeply about Bernie Madoff’s crime is because he touched a demographic that has been relatively protected from theft and economic desperation. Maybe the victims of Bernie Madoff are modern-day versions of Leo Frank: victims, absolutely, but victims who shed light on a problem of greed and deception that has been victimizing other groups for years.

Physical Attraction vs. Shared Beliefs?

Grace here.

The noise of an audience applauding sounds like rain.

Did you know that? When you’re tucked away inside, but you can hear the staccato steadiness of rain on the ceiling, the sound is identical to applause.

Over the past couple of days, there’s been a lot of both.

The rain has been less than thrilling, but the applause is always pretty cool.

On Monday, at 4:00, at the Kennedy Center Page-to-Stage, we had a packed staged reading of Renee Calarco’s The Religion Thing (which will be produced at Theater J from January 4-29).

I took it upon myself to be Theater J’s ‘roving reporter,’ and rambled ‘round, asking people one of the many questions that springs to my mind regarding The Religion Thing:

“In a relationship, do you think it’s more important for people to have physical attraction or shared beliefs?”

(I know, I know, The obvious answer is both. But obvious is no fun. Moreover, relationships tend to work in percentages. Rarely do people have 100% of the same beliefs, or 100% physical attraction. So, the real question is, in your opinion, which percentage should be higher for a solid relationship?)

I taped some of the responses, and we can post the video soon, but in the meantime, I’ll just describe people’s reactions.

Their first reaction was, “Who are you, and why are you holding a camera in my face??”

Then I explained, and we moved on.

Before the reading, most people seemed to favor physical attraction, explaining that they were open-minded enough about other people’s beliefs to learn to accept them, even if they were different.

My inner devil’s advocate pipes up, “Well, if they’re so open-minded, then how come they can’t learn to find their partner physically attractive, even if that initial ‘wow-factor’ isn’t there?

They get sexier with age...

Look at Tevye and Golde! They didn’t seem to be very attracted to one another based on their description of their first meeting, but after years of coexistence and shared beliefs, they’re all “For 29 years, my bed was his, if that’s not love, what is?”

In the words of The Religion Thing, “Jeez, that movie. Everyone treats it like a frickin’ documentary or something.”

Then the reading happened, and it was…it was a rock concert.

The energy level was sky-high, with the audience laughing so hard they were doing that thing that my mom does when she just rocks back and forth silently, clapping and gasping.  The actors took that positive energy and threw it right back into the performance, and the way they and the audience fed off one another’s excitement was…well, it was a rock concert, the likes of which I haven’t seen since I was at the Taffety Punk bootleg. Maybe it’s a Kim Gilbert thing.

After the reading, I rambled ‘round once more, asking people the same question regarding physical attraction vs. shared beliefs, and I’m not going to tell you their answers, but let’s just say that there was not nearly such a general consensus. In fact, there were more questions than answers. Questions like…

Is being Jewish like being gay: Once a Jew, always a Jew? Or is it different, because people can convert from being Jewish  but nobody can convert from being gay—or can they ever truly convert from either? Is being gay like being an addict, in which as long as you don’t indulge in the addictive behavior, you’re ‘clean’ regardless of what your urges have been? How much of who we are…our religion, our sexuality, etc. is up to us, and how much of it is beyond our control?

These are unbelievably difficult questions to ask. But Renee does so in a sensitive, hilarious way that has us thinking as hard as we’re laughing.

And by the end of the reading, if applause sounds like rain, The Kennedy Center experienced a veritable downpour.  I can’t wait until January, when we get to share this play with all of you!

Let’s Do a Musical! (Really?)

Grace here. It’s been a while since I’ve had a firsthand encounter of the musical-theatre-actor-kind.

However, the room was swarming with musical-theatre folk at yesterday’s first rehearsal of Parade, the Tony Award-winning musical that Theater J is co-producing with Ford’s Theatre [Grace puts on Marketing Director hat and says "Don't forget,  premium discounted seats are being held for Theater J subscribers only through September 9th! Subscribe now, or forever regret missing this offer" Grace takes off  Marketing Director hat and continues writing].

It  was more than a little intimidating. For one thing, they’re all unrealistically beautiful…Perfect hair, perfect skin and perfect teeth that are always showing because they are always perfectly smiling and hugging each other.

For another thing, they have anti-gravitational, super-power voices that can scale unimaginable heights, soar through the air, fill theatres, and overpower even the crustiest businessman (we’ve all seen that Brooks Brothers-clad alpha male weeping at Les Mis…).

And this production of Parade brings together some of the most luminous of the luminaries, such as Tony-Award winner Euan Morton, DC-favorite Erin Driscoll and Jenny Fellner, who just finished a little show called Wicked on Broadway.

Have I mentioned that it was a little intimidating?

Presiding over the morning was  Paul R. Tetreault, the Executive Director of Ford’s Theatre, who is effusive, intelligent, and can rock a bow-tie better than anyone I’ve ever seen (apologies to Alan Chapman).  He spoke of his 14-year attachment to Parade, (revealing that when he first saw the play, it rendered him unable to speak and barely able to breathe).

He also told us about the brilliant playwright Alfred Uhry,  the long road it took to get to the Ford’s stage, and gave a bit of the background of the Leo Frank story, on which the play is based.

Ari then elaborated on the Leo Frank story, and the significance it holds for Black and Jewish people today. In his program note, he writes that Parade is “a kind of galvanizing reminder of what can go wrong in our country when hate speech and raging angers aren’t tempered and set to rest, but allowed to metastasize”

Suddenly, a vivacious lanky man with shaggy grey hair popped out of his seat and began speaking with an English accent. He turned out to be Stephen Rayne, the director, who introduced the cast, shared his vision of the play, and gave an atmospheric  recounting of the story of Mary Phagan’s death at the pencil factory, complete with English-American translation jokes (“At that time, there was a shortage of brass at the factory, which was a problem you know, because they need brass to attach the erasers to the pencils—you Americans say erasers, yes? I was told that I’m not allowed to call them ‘rubbers’, as we do back home”…)

The idea, without giving too much away, is to do the greatest production of Parade that has ever been done.  Looking around the room, feeling the buzz of  talent and potential, it seems an idea that will quite soon become a reality. Rayne has a clear and deep understanding of the play, and what it will take to truly do this stunning  play justice.

And it is, incidentally, a stunning play.

Musicals can sometimes have a bad rap. Some say they’re less ‘substantial’ or  than straight dramas. I actually used to believe this as well, (thanks a lot, Andrew Lloyd Webber!), until I discovered Jason Robert Brown (and Stephen Sondheim, Kander & Ebb, James Lapine, etc.).  What these composers and lyricists showed me is that musicals do something very similar to what Shakespeare does: heightens language to capture passions too big for everyday life and parlance.

In life, words tend to stumble along rather awkwardly. I love this particular line from Madame Bovary, which says: “Human speech is a cracked cauldron on which we knock out tunes for dancing bears, when we wish to conjure pity from the stars.” (Good visual, right?)  Or the line in Annie Hall, when Alvy says, “Love is too weak a word for what I feel – I luuurve you, you know, I loave you, I luff you, two F’s, yes I have to invent, of course I do…”

Haven’t you had those moments when your rage, indignation, love, fear, what-have-you is too big for English, and the only way to begin to release a passion that big is to create new words, fling yourself into a sonnet, or belt out a song?

For me, Parade is two hours of those moments –an exorcism of hate, an ecstacy of love, and wave after wave of music borne of blood.

On with the show…

I attempt to decode the male psyche based on local playwrights

Grace  here. Again. As a 26-year-old-woman, I have more than a passing curiosity about the psyche of the 20-something-year-old man. Based on what I’ve learned from Theater J 5×5 alumnus Seamus Sullivan and the early work of Theater J Artistic Director Ari Roth, it’s a tangled web they weave.

TEXT TEXT
On the surface, the two fantastic comedies (one written by Seamus over the past year, the other  written by Ari Roth when he was about 25 and recently presented for the first time) have nothing in common.

TEXT TEXT
Seamus’s show, Incurable (produced by the Awesome Flying V and Wayward Theatre Company as part of the Capital Fringe Festival), was about Dale Prewett’s penis being colonized by a Utopian civilization, aptly named Genitopia—and his resulting relationship neuroses.

TEXT TEXT
Ari Roth’s play, Giant Shadows, (written in 1986 and presented in a staged reading by Theater J and the Theatre Lab as part of The Theatre Lab’s Acting in a Professional Production class) which he wrote when he was about twenty-five, was about Andy Glickstein’s attempt to get to the bottom of his family’s tangled, Holocaust-stained history—and his resulting relationship neuroses.

TEXT TEXT
Both shows have protagonists who are veritable Gordian knots of guilt—commitment-phobic, life-phobic men determined not to be happy, but self-aware enough that they’re funny and not irritating.

TEXT TEXT
For instance, here’s a great passage from Incurable, in which Dale Prewett bemoans his inability to show the same sort of emotion in his personal life that he feels in his artistic life:

TEXT TEXT
DALE: …EVERY time it gets serious with someone I start doing the emotional equivalent of looking at my watch. Some part of me switches off. But, like, anything aesthetic- expressionist painting, or when I’m driving and the Pixies come on and Black Francis does a guitar solo, or, or the opening credits of Ninja Turtles-He starts sniffling.
CARLY: Okay. Okay. Shhh.
DALE:I have this stupid idea that when I’m with the right person it’ll be like guitar music.
CARLY: That’s not stupid.
DALE: It’s never going to happen because my feelings are broken and I have a deathpenis!

TEXT TEXT

25 years ago, Ari Roth’s protagonist was grappling with these exact concerns [Well, not the exact same concerns, but similar] writing:

TEXT TEXT
ANDY: They would show this movie [Brian’s Song] once a year right before Monday Night Football and I would, like, cry ten different times in different places but it would never come out in front of the family. I can actually remember going to the bathroom to urinate and immediately I would start crying; shaking; my jaw would be, like, shivering, and there I was, peeing, thinking, “God. Here I’m losing all this bodily fluid over some stupid ABC Movie starring James Caan and Dick BUTKUS, and, and I have never been able to replicate this same emotional outpouring during real life!”

TEXT TEXT

I decided to play theatre-Yente, and send Ari and Seamus one another’s scripts, with a note saying, “Lenny Bruce was right—Irishmen who’ve lost their religion are Jews.”

TEXT TEXT

But maybe it’s more than just Ari and Seamus dealing with these issues. Reading over their excerpts, another angsty young man, troubled by misplaced tears and untapped passions comes to mind:
TEXT TEXT

Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann’d,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing;

I know that Hamlet’s age is a subject of great contention, but if Incurable and Giant Shadows  are anything to go on, Hamlet was definitely in his twenties.