Baloney

A harrowed businessman once came into his therapists’ office after being bothered again and again by a reoccurring dream. Even although he’d been under analysis for a couple of months he couldn’t really tell you that he’d fully engaged with the treatment if he was to be honest. Deep down he was convinced that even seeing a shrink was a load of old baloney that couldn’t really help him with any matters pertaining to the real world, but it was a good opportunity to vent his spleen to someone who would have to listen and give his undivided attention, because he was being paid to. Meanwhile his life was crashing in around him, and getting progressively worse, which only went to prove that psychoanalysis was dated nonsense believed only by socialist professors in ivory towers who had never even seen the reality of the rat race first hand.

“You think I got problems, Doc? Let me tell you, even my ulcers got ulcers! My business is about to hit the rocks, my wife has insisted on separation and won’t even take my calls! Soon I’ll be getting the divorce papers through, heck that’s all I need! If I can’t get the cash together, and soon, I’m going to have to declare bankruptcy and lose the house to boot! I swear to god I’ll end up in hospital with another bypass. ‘Course I got problems. What do you expect me to do?”

This dream, however… he found it so irksome to be bothered by it night after night that he found himself turning up with a new willingness to do just about whatever his Freudian friend might ask of him. The hell with it, he didn’t have that much further to fall after all.

“I’m interested in knowing how often you’ve been having this dream? Or variations on the same dream?”

“It’s the same dream Doc! And I have it every night! Almost every night without fail! The only night I think I didn’t have it was when I was staying over at my mistress’ place. Does that mean anything?”

“Hm, I don’t know. How is your relationship with your girlfriend these days? Better than with your wife I assume?” he added with a sardonic smile befitting an analyst.

“I dunno to be honest. I just don’t think I excite her the way I used to, if you know what I mean. It’s ok I guess. Just no real verve.”

“I see, and is there anything else going on? It seems there’s a little something else playing on your mind, maybe you could let me in on the full story.”

“What, are you a mind reader? Ok, I just keep on thinking about how unfair all this is on my son. He’s only 8 years old and he deserves a good father. With a good strong marriage, and a good strong business to go into. Or at least sell it if he likes. I want to be able to give him an education, you know? Everything I went without. He’s the innocent victim here that’s what really gets to me.”

“I understand. You feel bad for yourself, but you can handle that because so far as you see it you’re the one who made the mess. Same goes for your wife, she’s an adult woman after all. It’s your son you feel worried about because he didn’t have any hand in creating these problems. Right?”

“Yeah! Right! Exactly! You know what Doc? You ain’t too bad! What about my dream though?”

“I’m just coming to that. Let’s go over it again. You keep seeing these little symbols, almost like items in a computer game. One is a small pot of gold. One two short pieces of string. Then there are two hands, one thumb up, the other thumb down. There is also a broken walking stick with a snake for a head, an old, discarded baseball bat and ball, and an olive branch with only one olive and three leaves on it. Is that right?”

“You got it Doc! Can’t make heads or tails of it neither. What do you say?”

“Now look, usually I’d interpret the dream for you, but I want to take a different approach, let me know what you think…”

“So you ain’t gonna make sense of it at all?”

“I think this will be much more effective.”

“Lay it on me.”

“I’m going to write you a doctor’s note and I want you to cut your work hours down to a minimum this week. Especially Monday through Wednesday. Only take absolutely essential calls. Delegate everything else to your secretary, get another one if you have to. I want you to spend time at home, and I want you to spend as much as you can doing the following exercises, here write this down.” The doctor scrambled to hand him a pen and notepad.

“Monday: I want you to visualise at least three big pots of gold, spend as much of the day as you can recreating the dream in your head but this time with these great big pots of gold instead of the tiny one you originally saw.

Tuesday: I want you to keep seeing the dream as much as you can, all day, but replace the two short bits of string with a big long braid that stretches on into the distance. If you see gold also, make sure it’s still great big pots and not the small one you saw at first, and I want you to continue in this fashion.

On Wednesday, I want you to see two hands shaking.

On Thursday I want you to see  that walking stick good as new, in fact turn it into some fancy diamond-encrusted sceptre if you want, go nuts.

On Friday I’d like you to picture a full-sized baseball field, with lots of enthusiastic people playing on it and having a great time.

Finally on Saturday, spend the day visualising a great big thriving olive tree. Then on Sunday you can come back in and tell me how you got on.”

“Doc, you gotta be kidding me! I need your help here! Can’t you see my life is falling apart? How is cutting work to think of cute pictures gonna solve me any problems? I gotta work hard at this. Cut me some slack! All I want to know is what this crazy dream is all about, and you want me to sit back and do nothing but think of cartoons?”

“Listen, this is serious work, I want you to give it a real shot. Don’t deny yourself any important leisure activities, but spend as much time as possible doing as I’ve asked you. If you try this out and it doesn’t work then next week we can take a more active approach. But I want you to give it your everything. Agreed?”

“Alright I’ll give it a shot, but I got to tell you, I’m pretty sceptical.”

“Put your scepticism aside for me, just for this week. I want you to engage with the process fully. Don’t let either of us down now.”

“Alright, alright already! Jeez you sound just like my mother. I’ll see you next week, ma.”

“See you next week.”

And with that the business man left.

A week later he returned to therapy, visibly glowing. He looked five if not ten years younger and there was a slight spring in his step as he entered the office.

“Doc, I don't know what you've done or how you’ve done it but I really gotta hand it to ya, things are changing in my life big time! I did what you said and didn’t go into the office until Thursday, just worked from home, then I got the important phone call and I'm just about to sign this great deal with another company. This could really save my ass! I spoke to my wife on Wednesday night and she’s called off the divorce, we're actually speaking to each other properly for the first time in years and she wants to work things out. I was even going to lose my mistress, but I took her out Friday night and the sex was so incredible I didn't have the heart to break it off in the morning. I checked my blood pressure today and it’s all back in the green zone. But best of all, you gotta hear this! Yesterday, instead of going out to playing golf with my buddies, I played my son at baseball. I was inspired by the big pitch that cropped up in my dream. Like in the movie, huh? ‘If you build it they will come’? Did I mention that? That everything in the dream changed around like you said? Well, the boy and I, we had an amazing heart to heart and I got to be completely honest with him about everything that’s been going on, and my feelings and all that crap, y’know? He’s such a bright kid, he understood everything I said and let me know how he was feeling about everything too, I could hardly believe he’s only eight! Well I feel like we’re best friends now, not just family, what’s family huh? Having sex with each other was just about the last good turn my parents ever done me. So anyway, enough already, I came home and did your visualisations all evening until I fell asleep and I woke up this morning feeling great. There’s only one thing that’s still driving me crazy. What did all that stuff in the dream mean, and why all these pictures? You gotta tell me what you done Doc, you gotta tell me what it all means?”

The analyst took the liberty of a long pause to stroke his beard.

“Well…” he laboured, “To be honest I didn’t really do any of the work. You interpreted the dream for me yourself. You see, the tiny pot of gold represented your attitude towards money. You just couldn’t ever see there being enough of it. So I got you to imagine an abundance of gold. Then you saw two separate pieces of string, and I figured it matched your whole outlook on your marriage. So I simply got you to braid them together into a long enduring tie that stretched out into the future with three strands: one for you, one for your wife, and one for your son. Next you told me how worried you were about your business: you saw one thumb up and one thumb down. You couldn’t see your clients agreeing on deals, so I got you to replace the picture with a handshake to make closing deal possible in your minds eye. Then there was the broken stick. I don’t think we need to say anything about this broken stick, Freud would have a field day. The really rather pathetic olive branch in your dream represented your health, so I got you to replace it with a vibrant tree, and finally that left the old, discarded baseball bat and ball. You wanted to invest more in your relationship with your son, so I got you to visualise a whole baseball field complete with a spirited game in progress. So, my fine analysand. What do you think?”

“Doc,” the client responded with a sardonic smile befitting an analysand, “What a load of old baloney! I think you oughtta see a shrink!”

With that he left the office and the therapist never heard from him again.

(c) Antony Sammeroff,  21/07/12

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy Radio Show – Live! @ The Theatre Royal

Read My Review of THHG Show HERE on the Skinny Website,

Or catch it in the mag this month!

Scott Miller is a Lying Cheat and Concerning Zombies!

Here are two reviews of locally produced shows by Glasgow-based companies that have gone up on The Skinny website today,

Scott Miller is a Lying Cheat by Sonic Boom
 (also in the mag this month)

and

Concerning Zombies by Overdrive Theatre

Two Quarks Interact

A quark Interacts with her friend in a cafe, 'I'm so Down! I'm just too Weak to resist his Charm, he makes me Spin, I feel so Strange'
'Don't worry' her friend says, 'I know you've hit rock Bottom, but keep Strong, I'm sure you'll end Up on Top - take Charge - It's meant to be!'
'How do you know?'
'elementary, Particle, you're Composites.'





dedicated to Finn Townsley


21-09-12 update
A quark Interacts with her friend in a cafe, 'I'm so Down! I'm just too Weak to resist his Charm, he makes me Spin and I feel so Strange! How did I ever get so Entangled?'
'Don't worry' her friend says, 'I know you've hit rock Bottom, but keep Strong, I'm sure you'll end Up on Top - take Charge - It's meant to be!'
'How do you know?'
'Elementary, Particle, you're Composites.'

"Eight" by Ella Hickson

Produced by 2 Theatre, 

Reviewed Here on The Skinny Website

"Static Speed Dating" by Antony Sammeroff and Finn Townsley 04/12

Cast:
Narcissist (f)
Shy Guy (m)
Insane Girl (f)
Arrogant one (m)
Humourist (m)
Yogi (f)
Intelligent One (m)

Narcissist enters the stage and addresses the Audience.

Narcissist. Hi, I'm a narcissist! I’m into...me, and the things I like, and I really like people who like Me! I really looking for someone who’s interested in talking about me, and likes listening to things I say about life. My perfect partner would look just as attractive as I do but wouldn't have much of a personality so that he could be like, a blank canvas that I would project whatever I want in a man onto. So I'd think that he was exactly the man I wanted despite who he actually was! Ok text back!

Narcissist moves to the back of the stage to watch. Shy Guy enters the stage and addresses the Audience.

Shy Guy. I'm the shy guy. I'm really sweet and tender, and not in any way sexual. I'm the kind of guy you tell your friends you want, and you wish you were in love with, but when you meet me you're just never really attracted. I tend to watch from afar without ever making a move. I think that friendship will one day lead to love, but it never really does. I live in my imagination and I'm artistic: a musician , watercolour painter or short-story writer. I hang out in groups of people who speak about lofty matters but I just listen and never really say much. If I do find a girlfriend she'll be a little more sociable than me, and will probably stay with me for years and years and years, but only cos she's afraid of change. Please be that woman.

Shy Guy moves to the back of the stage to watch. Insane Girl enters the stage and addresses the Audience.

Insane Girl [Overly Enthusiastically at First]. Hi!!! [suddenly self-conscious, she corrects herself] I'm the girl with self-proclaimed insanity! My normality confuses me so I try to make up for it by regularly doing arbitrary things, which may seem 'random,' as they call it, but are all actually completely premeditated! I consider my clothes to be a feature of my personality, because I don't really have one. My perfect partner would be as bland as I am but be in no way self-aware enough to consciously recognise how banal he is!

Insane Girl moves to the back of the stage to watch. Arrogant One enters the stage and addresses the Audience.

Arrogant One. Hi, I'm the arrogant one. I don't care who you are really, you're just an extension of my will upon the world to love me. My standoffishness attracts you to fill the void as you wonder why I’m not showing any signs of interest, but I'll be done with you as soon as I get bored, because I've had you and I need to prove myself! I need to constantly reaffirm that I can have other people, otherwise I won't feel secure in my status. Realistically, lets come together and perpetuate out own cycles of self-loathing. Call back! If you think you can handle me.

Arrogant One goes to the back of the stage and puts his arm around the Narcissist with the implicit assumption of success. She is only too glad for the attention and they pair up, while watching the rest of the speed-dating candidates.  Humourist enters the stage and addresses the Audience.

Humourist.  Hi I’m an alcoholic! Just Kidding! I’m the one who uses humour to cover my insecurities - Just kidding! Well no, not really. I tell jokes a lot! I pretend not to care if nobody laughs but actually in dying inside - Just kidding! Well, no not really. Everyone seems to like me, but no one wants to date me. I can't understand why because I’m always the life and soul of the party! I'm just not quite sure if people are laughing with me, or at me - Just kidding! Well no, not really. Hahaha! I want you to love me! I've been obsessively in love with my best friend for years but I promise not to compare you to her too much... If you choose me I promise devotion, love, and altering my personality in any way shape or form that suits you, quite despite my basic human needs. Just kidding! Well no, not really.

Humourist moves towards the back of the stage and, seeing that Narcissist is already spoken for moves towards Insane girl and prods her in the belly playfully, she gapes dramatically and then starts play-fighting with him, slapping his hands, before suddenly wrapping her hands round his neck and trying to lick his ear while he moves tries to move his head back out of her reach. Finally the kiss once on the lips and settle down as a pair, his arms round her waist, to watch the other speed-dating candidates. Yogi enters the stage and addresses the Audience.

Yogi [Slowly and drawn out, with a sense of calm]. Namaste. I'm the one who does yoga. I'm looking for a spiritual life-partner who will talk about self-attainment and non-attachment while bolstering my spiritual ego by telling me how honest and full of love and light our relationship is compared to those of the common herd. We’ll sip green tea while he ignores his own emotional environment and dismiss any signs of mine as a mere symptoms of the ego, which can be overcome with sufficient chanting and meditation. The Lotus Flower is ever in the water but not of it. Inlakesh. We are one. 

Yogi finds her way over to Shy Guy, presses her hands together before her and bows then leans over to kiss him on the forehead, he blanches for a second embarrassed, and not knowing quite how to react, but he bows back self-consciously. She takes his hands before her and holds them up, then slides them round her waist onto the small of her back, and the two watch the final performance as a pair.

Intelligent One. I’m the intelligent one who’s completely socially inept. Sometimes I come across as a bit interesting at first, but I’ll soon put you off by talking down to you and belittling your opinions. I can’t understand why being serious all the time doesn’t create attraction and I only talking about worldly matters and social science to the exclusion of all personal thoughts and feelings. I look down on most people for being too frivolous anyway and any jokes I might make require extremely specialised knowledge to understand so I’m looking for someone bookish whose as boring and serious as I am. If you’re interested in meeting up to exchange opinions, or better still listening to my ideas, especially on how the world should be run, please email me at this address.

Intelligent One turns round to inspect the talent and realises everyone has already paired off.

Intelligent One. Balls.

Lights go off, actors organise themselves in a row.

Lights come back up and actors take their bows.

My Reflection on Like The Greeks

Reflection on

 Like The Greeks

Inspiration for Like The Greeks

I undertook Like the Greeks, “A play for the artist and the philosopher in each of us”, after having a dream in which I was descending an ancient stone staircase at the side of a precipice, absolutely terrified. Finally I came to an alcove wherein there were the stone heads carved out of the rock, like the ancient depictions of Sophocles, Aristophanes and the great philosophers of Ancient Greece:

I knew that the stairs led down to Athens.

The Idea of the Great Man and the title.

I took the Ancient Greeks to symbolise a desire to be a historical figure who had an impact on the evolution of human thought and that prompted me to write on the subject. I thought a good start would be a struggling playwright who was trying to come to terms with his role in the world while simultaneously alienating it, or more specifically, those around him.

Throughout the play the idea of being a Great Man, an influential figure in the history of art or philosophy, is signified by the term of being “Like The Greeks.” It was interesting to work with this signifier as I had been reading on Hegel and his idea that there is "World Spirit" (Weltgeist) which guides humanities evolution through the spirits of Great Men who, through their actions, change the world and this fit rather excellently with the ideas I already had to work with. The fact that Hegel was a huge classicist and very much into “The Greeks” was a charming coincidence I was very pleased with, he did my work for me by referring to them in his own writing, and in turn Franz, the protagonist, decides to write a play based on Hegel’s (relatively famous) Master and Slave Dialectic in order to expiate his own feeling of powerlessness and desire to ‘rise up’ from his self-imposed slavery and achieve his potential.

In my dream, when I reached the bottom of the staircase I found myself in a venue where a rock band was playing a very intimate show. They were not on high above their audience. I text my then-girlfriend, “I’m in Athens! So now I can be a Greek like I always wanted!! Papa Roach are playing, I feel like it’s meant to be!”

In the morning when I messaged her to relay the dream she mentioned that she had been listening to the same band all day the day before. This seemed eerily like what the psychoanalyst Karl Jung, who was very into dream interpretation, would call a ‘synchronicity’ - the experience of events that are apparently causally unrelated and unlikely to occur together, occurring together by chance in seemingly a meaningful manner.

               In the final scene when Franz offers ex-partner Mary a part in a play he has written, he gives her character the name of Sophia, the Greek word for wisdom. The origin of the choice derives from Jungian psychology where the unconscious female aspect of a male, the anima, goes through four stages of evolution. Eve (as from genesis) deals with the emergence of a male's object of desire, Helen (as of Troy) is capable of worldly success and of being self-reliant, intelligent and insightful, but has lacks in internal qualities such as virtue, faith or imagination. Mary (as in the Virgin) who possesses virtue by the perceiving male, and ultimately Sophia, in which complete integration has occurred, allowing females to be seen and related to as particular individuals who possess both positive and negative qualities. Indeed when Franz bestows the part of Sophia upon Mary it is a symbol of his having gone from seeing her as merely someone virtuous, a means to his own ends, to a person in her own right.

               It is worthy of note that I was completely unaware of Jung’s theory when I chose the name Mary for her (she was named after Mary Shelly who was an inspiration to Percy Shelly and Byron) it was a mere matter of coincidence that Sophia turned out to be a Greek name and so I chose it for the character in the play that Franz would write as it gave me the needed link for last two lines of dialogue which I had delineated from the very beginning:

MARY. Like the Greeks?
FRANZ. Like the Greeks.

Exeunt.

               I see something of a parallel between Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious (the idea that below our unconscious there is a deeper level of mind which links all of consciousness) and Hegel’s belief in the Weltgeist. If we could ever conceive of such a supernatural force existing I would have to say I felt synchronicities were on my side in the process of writing. This idea found its own home within the play when Franz, a dedicated atheist, unexpectedly declares: “In the moment of creation it is as difficult for an artist to be an atheist as it is for a philosopher to believe in God,” referringhis feeling that, while in the element of writing, that there is something greater than oneself pushing things along.

Sunday in the Park with George

Not long after I had conceived of the concept of Like The Greeks I was working at The Edinburgh Fringe as a theatre critic where I saw the musical Sunday in the Park with George. I saw some parallels between it and my project, as it is about a painter who alienates his significant other by being grumpy, self-obsessed and blind to her needs, but I wanted to use my play as an opportunity to examine the psychological aspects of the characters involved and address some philosophical questions regarding art, and the relationship between oneself and the other.

It was not my aim to romanticise a difficult personality type or make excuses for it, but to expose it. Franz begins with severe writer’s block, unlike George, who paints prolifically. This is, in part, because Franz is extrinsically motivated, he cares that people will find his work insightful, masterful, ground-breakingly original, &c., while George simply feels the desire to paint and acts upon it. Indeed evidence shows that the imposition of external motivations leads to a decline in the ability to motivate oneself intrinsically (such as in Dweck, C. S. (1999) “Self-Theories – Their Role in Motivation, Personality and Development”, Columbia University.)

Art for Art’s Sake

An important theme within the play is the idea of Art as ‘ends-driven’ (by the desire for credibility, acclaim, fame, influence, &c.) versus the desire to pursue art purely as a means of self-expression. Franz describes himself as torn between two elements of his personality:

               “On one side of me is a poet who wants to create work of indescribably beauty and bliss. One who couldn’t give a rotten damn about what anyone else may think or say on it. On the other side of me is a philosopher. A great intellectual who wants to influence everyone he meets, startling them with revelation and epiphany. An innovator. A revolutionary - turning everything he touches into gold. I’m just a poet trying to play philosopher and playwright all in one breath, that’s the trouble.”

               ‘Like the Greeks,’ Franz wants to be a great man with his own place etched out in history, while Mary, his partner, prompts him to write whatever occurs to him while not assessing it too deeply at first glance and to prize quality over originality. Indeed it is when Franz decides that he should write for his own fulfillment that he finally finds it easy to achieve all that he wants, both artistically and philosophically. He places the poet first, but rather than abandon the philosopher he reconciles these two aspects of his personality by making philosophy the ally of art:

               “The poet designs clothes for the philosopher to wear, and if no one sees past their charm to what is truly being said, more fool them! He’s still all too glad for the attention.”

               At the last, the play is about Franz coming to see his creativity being worthy in its own right rather than an accessory  to his ego, and through that process also coming to see Mary as ‘Sophia,’ worthy in her own right.

Suffering for your Art

Throughout the play we see Franz constantly, as he puts it, “at war” with himself. Towards the end of the play he has a monologue which is the turning point of his character. He considers the fact that so many great artists (“great men”) suffered so greatly in their lives: Dostoevsky, Beethoven, Van Gough and Coleridge are some of his examples. He wonders whether their lives of suffering were worth creating some of the greatest works of all time and considers the fact that in some way their suffering makes the story of their lives more compelling. This is when he realises that all that remains is for him to ensure that he always acts in such a way that he can be proud of, as though he were the hero of his own story.

The Evolution of Mary and the Ethics of Like The Greeks

The character of Mary matures long before Franz does. The first step in the matter is realising that her relationship with Franz is unfulfilling to her and brings her more sorrow than joy. While Franz expresses the will to write about morality, she is interested in preserving her virtue in practical terms, and says:

“The saint who sacrifices self in the service of others becomes no longer worthy of the title of saint, for has he not spilled innocent blood though it be his own? Cultivating a bitterness in pursuit of a virtue leaves no virtue to speak of.”

When she breaks up with him reiterates the sentiment: “I have only so much good will to spare and I think its best we spent some time apart.” In other words she has realized that she does not like who she is becoming as a consequence of being together with him, she is unhealthily co-dependent and is substituting encouraging him for pursuit of her own aspirations, she wants to create a better life for herself, “I owe it to myself to consider how I’d like to spend my own future.”

She is being ignored at work and she's being ignored by Franz. She leaves him and would no doubt soon leave her job too.    While Franz is too self-involved to be aware of the needs of others, she manages to identify exactly what she thinks love is and would desire from a relationship, “Love isn’t just something you say you feel… it’s something you do! Love is attention. If you don’t give the correct attention your feeling is a bird without wing. Your love doesn’t nurture.”

Foreshadowing and self-reference within Like The Greeks

It was important to me to try to write something that was clever and worked on many levels. The continental philosopher Theodor Adorno believed that good art was constantly cognisant of the whole and worked with its own material immanently rather than evolving in a vacuum with no self-awareness. I agree deeply on this point and long before I was aware of those writings what impressed me in fiction was good foreshadowing, when themes that could have seemed of little significance when first occurring came to greater prominence later in the work or reoccurred in unexpected way. This approach is easily exemplified by “Chekov’s gun,” a literary technique whereby an apparently irrelevant element is introduced early in the story whose significance becomes clear later in the narrative.

There are a number of subtle examples of this within the script, but for brevity I will only discuss two. The first and most significant occurs at the beginning:

FRANZ. How’s the café been?

MARY. The same as ever really, people hear but don't listen. Now and then someone asks me to play the moonlight or sends over a drink, but only because they like the way I look. Were it otherwise they'd be as well to play recordings. I’d like to return to the stage but seems there’s little work open to an unestablished actress. Not in Paris anyway. Looks like I'm stuck behind the piano for the time being.

FRANZ. At least it’s nice for you to get paid for playing.

MARY. But it's dull being part of the furniture! You should really come in some time...

FRANZ. Perhaps I shall.

MARY. Perhaps.

In itself this passage shows Franz completely ignoring Mary’s aspirations; he is unable to pick up on her underlying feelings. All she wants is for him to show he cares by coming in to hear her play at work, and thus when she says “it’s dull being part of the furniture” it takes on a double meaning because she is heard but not listened to within his house as well.

This foreshadows the final scene play in which Franz finally does come into the café to hear her playing:

FRANZ. I always loved the way you played that Chopin étude.
MARY. Really? You never came in to hear it before, you always said perhaps.
FRANZ. Envious for the centre of attention no doubt.
MARY. Not that they pay any attention in here, I think you were overly optimistic.
FRANZ. Perhaps. Still, I'm sure you'd be sorely missed were you absent.
MARY. You think so?
FRANZ. I'm certain of it.

In a reversal of roles, Franz is now speaking of himself. He never paid her adequate attention when they were a couple but now that she’s gone the gap in his life is very apparent. Sometime during their separation Franz has become cognisant of Mary’s aspirations (as he mentions them for the first time in Scene 5) and the play ends with him offering her a role in one of his own plays, prompted (he says) by his director, although there is the suggestion that really she was really the original inspiration for the role.

Another, more subtle, example of self-reference within the script is that in the first scene Franz declares: “I’m simply unable to deliver under these conditions! No one cares what goes into it. No one cares how it works, just so long as it works.” Indeed, for Franz, creating is a difficult process involving much soul searching. Yet true to his prediction the Director of his plays has a strange faith in him demonstrated in this dialogue: 

FRANZ. I was always in awe of Da Ponte’s ability to structure a narrative, his use of multiple interweaving ironies in the libretto is most enviable...
DIRECTOR. Enviable? What nonsense my good fellow, that’s exactly the kind of level of complexity I can see you really getting a handle on in the following project.

The Director really means this as a compliment. He thinks Franz is a genius, but he hasn’t seen how difficult it was for Franz to produce the end product. His words only serve to compound the pressure which Franz is already placing upon himself to produce. Mary, on the other hand, when parting ways from Franz a second time, has the empathy to leave with the words, “Franz... your letters... I was dying when I read them…. And I knew you were dying when you wrote them... I just thought you should know.” Ultimately, she did know what went in to them.

A Play about doing what it does

        At heart, Like The Greeks is a play is about doing what the play itself does. Franz says of his own writing that the poet designs clothes for the philosopher to wear, and this play is to some degree philosophy dressed in theatre, as Sartre’s Nausea and Kierkegaard’s Either/Or were philosophy dressed in literature. For that reason it is written in a rather romantic vernacular (although notably I do not use dead language) because it seems more beautiful to me. I don’t think the play would have the same impact if it was written in common parlance rather than ‘backdated’ in this way.

               Franz practice describes my practice:

“… I just started writing. It was like going for a walk in a dark forest: I didn’t know exactly where I was going, but I came to recognise this familiar tree and the other. Each was a concept or view that had entered my mind at some point and left again... Gradually they came into clarity like a thousand single points of light beyond the darkest dark. And as I weaved those points together in prose like a nebula into a star they gained greater significance by taking upon themselves the tone of the characters who spoke them, for they were not [necessarily] my own  opinions but simply combinations of words and ideas which I found aesthetic.”

            And Mary’s advice to him describes my approach:

“When we dig deep and be honest – well – we uncover gems that are valuable to others, whether we are trying to please or not.”

I sincerely hope this proves to be the case.