Talking Apes

I told you so.  First week and I already fell off the blogging wagon.  In my defense the sun came out in Pittsburgh and this only happens twice a year, so had to take advantage of it.

Last night I attended the opening of Precious Little at City Theatre.  As those of you who work in theatre know, it is rare we get a night off where we can actually go see something, so this was a welcomed treat.  The play interweaves three stories into a 75 minute understatement that strives to examine how we communicate with the World.  Centering on Brodie, an apparently successful and talented research linguist, the play steps us through the discovery her unborn child may have medical complications, her encounters with an elderly Dr. Pepper loving woman, Cleva, who speaks a dying language, and a talking gorilla.  What ties these three storylines together is Brodie's determination to find ways to communicate through language despite any opportunity (or missed opportunity) for reciprocal dialogue.

I found myself during the play struggling to decide which of Brodie's encounters was most sincere.  In what I can "smart plays", or plays that concern themselves with language and semantics (The History Boys is another example), I personally yearn for a connection to something affective.  I have little interest in plays that try to explore large philosophical ideas, but never offer an opinion or vehicle for transmission to intrinsic meaning.

Although Brodie's brief recording sessions with Cleva were by far the most emotionally tangible (and cute) in performance, she was never able to break through the recording studio glass and connect.  The mother was simply an "informant".  This scenario becomes increasingly disturbing when Brodie visits the the talking gorilla at the zoo played by the same actress as the mother.  The audience quickly discovers that the gorilla can't actually talk, and although there are light-up buttons corresponding to nouns in her cage, the gorilla blatantly ignores them.  Once this was clear, it became evident to me that my quest for sincerity would could from something seen, not something heard.

For me, the most visually compelling moments of the play were when Brodie would sit outside the gorilla's cage and mimic her movements.  Towards the end, the roles of initiator and follower became blurred as it wasn't always clear who was mimicking who.  Often, these sessions would take place in the background of other scenes, so it took some deliberate concentration to notice their subtleties.  Although the pair was still separated by glass, a dialogue was created.  I use dialogue here not to mean communication, since I don't believe any information was actually transmitted, but as a means of one thing influencing another.  I'm sure there is a more appropriate word for this interplay.  The only other time Brodie transcended verbal language was seeing the sonogram of her unborn daughter for the first time much earlier in the play.  Waving to the fetus on the screen, something about the baby incited Brodie to try and open a dialogue although clearly the child could not communicate back.

Brodie spent the play looking for spoken language, the literal sounds people use to communicate, and although she was highly educated on the subject she failed to understand the simple principles of dialogue.  In the final moments when all the glass walls of her world have melted away, we find Brodie alone with the gorilla in a comforting embrace.  No words, no gestures, simply touch.  People often say in times of crisis, agony, grief, etc. there are no words that can express how they feel but I'd hazard a guess to say many of us rarely stop to think how things that have no words can communicate with us.  The more interesting things in life for me are those that aren't said...like a gorilla banging on a piece of glass.  Jump!