Carrie's Final Response to Elephant's Graveyard

Great work George and Erica- Your process conversation brought out a lot of interesting ideas about the semester as a whole and some of the challenges of producing new work. I think I too am going to eschew the traditional in order to respond.

1) First of all--the prompt you began with "What would you miss?" Made me sad in a way, or made me feel like possibly you got a lot of conflicting feedback, the over all thrust of which was to cut down or get rid of various elements (but maybe that there was disagreement about which). In a sense this seems like its been a huge part of the work that you as a team have done this semester, continuing to refine/cut/condense--i think you've both worked really well in this capacity without losing anything from the story--but even the pages you brought in attest to what a skill this is (balancing what is potentially lost through condensing--specificity in the case of the hungry townsperson's speech) vs what is gained.

1a) That being said--something else I would really miss would be the presence of a Young townperson--a sense of generations (particularly since you are dealing with history--the idea of how history has been transmitted and the sort of childlike joy of the circus that goes so quickly wrong)

2) I was interested in the conversation that came up around casting, particularly in reference to race, for several reasons. I think the one that we did not actually talk about was that it brought up a few questions for me about process and development--how much of the final product or a published script comes out of a collaboration (not just between playwright and dramaturg or playwright and director) but playwright and the actual logisitics of a time/place/bodies s/he has to work with--is that making sense? I suppose that none of us are making art in a vaccuum and the fact that this play is being developed here and now will have some effect on it.

3) That being said, I would like to weigh in--literally--on the strongman. I agree that the strongman should have some real heft about him. (Walking around Winship last night I was definitely giving more than a once over to anyone I heard muttering his lines over and over to themselves. For me, this is an issue that has come out around all of the plays we've worked on this semester which is ensemble building or earning your place--coming out of Erica's comment about Priscilla's play and something I've been thinking about a lot with Soo-jin's play as well, I think it is important that the Strongman has a rightful place within the Circus--I also just can't imagine how the lines would hit where the Strongman recounts how crushing it is to see the crain hang Mary--I think that I, at least, need to believe that the thought of him trying to lifet Mary is not purely laughable. On a second read through that speech, the connection between the image of ballet girl wrapped in Mary's trunk and Mary wrapped up in the crane is even stronger to me--When he says I could never lift her like that, I am also thinking about the allure of Mary parading around with Ballet girl and the weird interesting nexus of desire/danger etc in that original image as explicated by ballet girl. What those lines also do (particularly in overlaying those images) is bring the circus/technology (train), town trifecta into focus in a readable/understandable way. If the crain has become Mary and Mary has become the ballet girl, it is in a sense as if the circus as a whole is wrapped up and suspended for a moment by technology/progress...and then crushed. Maybe an oversimplification and i am sure there are far more interesting and sophisticated readings of that moment, but it really works for me.

4) Can I repeat how wonderful I think it is that the Hungry Townsperson remembers simply because he eats peanuts--I really don't feel like I need or even want a bigger reason than than, a) because its a lovely little nod to the circus and the lore around elephants 2) because its such a simple little arbitrary thing that anyone can do, anyone can remember, not only those who are connected by race or social status/position to once side of violence or the other--maybe some, because of these things, have a harder time forgetting, but really, anyone can remember.

I think it is so cool that you are going to Erwin this summer--good work both of you!

Carrie