The Greatest Play in the History of the World... (Ian Kershaw)

Although it may have looked like I was gone my reading merely took other forms, primarily history of American socialism and a project which I’ll theoretically talk about in the next week or two.

However! March will mostly be a return to play or theatrical reading (with maybe some novels thrown in) so you can expect this daily deluge once more. The focus this month is on things I need to read: books I’ve borrowed, things I’ve stashed away for a rainy day, etc.

Our first foray this month, The Greatest Play in the History of the World… is chosen because I am hopefully doing a lighting design of it later this year.

As an Audience Member
The play is a monologue, with an unknown performer (named ‘Actor’) telling a story about love, loss, risk, and getting unstuck. She tells us about a few residents who live on Preston road, none of whom speak, but all of whom are onstage in the form of shoes the actor hopefully purloins from the audience.

It’s a sweet story, it’s a love story, and it’s a story who hides itself rather well by ping-ponging between the perspectives of its characters and telling the story of the very real golden record which we littered space with.

The method of story-telling keeps me at arms-length. By that I mean the actor is a story-teller, and the story-teller isn’t involved in the story. The person we’re watching isn’t obviously changed by this story, and there’s nothing textual about why the story is meaningful to her, and so, on the page, I feel insulated from its meaning and it's characters because they’re not being relayed to me in the usual way: words, movement, bodily representation, etc.

There’s an opportunity in that between the director and the actor to find some subtextual meaning, and there’s plenty of forced room in the script where the actor improvises with the audience, but and that is its own kind of magic, but one that is unknowable at this stage.

One of my favorite recent musicals Ernest Shackleton Loves Me is a pretty wrapper around an anodyne message: don’t give up. If Kershaw’s The Greatest Play in the History of the World is similar in it’s conventional message about the wonder, the magic, the surprise of tomorrow and what is it that you want preserved forever, then it will be a worthwhile night of theater.

As a Designer
I better have thoughts about this, huh?

Obviously I’m going to focus on lighting, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t say anything about the other departments.

This play is a madhouse: shoes represent people, the geography of the play is important but there is no suggestion as to how it wants to be seen, and the audience needs to be accessible at all times. This offers a lot of opportunity to a gleeful scenic and props designer to be as large or as small as they want. The play feels like a whimsical trifle and so I’d want the design to have lots of little surprises: objects used in unconventional or transformed ways.

Recorded sound is very important as well, and I think there’s a lot to be done to make the sonic landscape more three dimensional than you often see in productions.

Lighting though, let’s talk about lighting. Same principle idea: play into the whimsy by having surprising light, ideally wondrous light. Something that makes you sit back and smile like you did as a child at the planetarium for the first time. Light coming from unusual places and light doing unusual things.

For such a lovely show it is surprisingly dark: it takes place in the middle of the night, our chief character is a gloomy dude, and for most of the runtime the ultimate goal is unclear. I’d want to work from the image of dawn bleeding night out into day. Smart small and dark, show the possibility of darkness, then end it with some hopeful warmth as we end. Lamps are probably involved.

As a Writer
I still have difficulty with one person shows, especially ones that (on the page) are not revelatory for the speaker. Shows that happen to someone else don’t make as much of an impact for me.

But I do feel that this play achieves what I find very hard for myself to do: it makes space for the team to create their own version of this story while not feeling incomplete. I often say that what I love about theater is its collaborative nature, and that’s true, but as a writer there’s a burning desire to make sure that everyone gets it right, which leads to the scores of playwright’s notes that I find condescending and unhelpful.

This play trusts itself, it doesn’t ask you to do things its way (apart from the shoes) and feels complete, but like you can still add to it. As I said earlier in this post, there’s room for the team to make some magic happen, and that’s what I’d want to take away from this: the reminder that room for magic is an important aspect for any play.

I don’t know how to do that. And I don’t think it can be rote. There probably isn’t a formula that can be replicated, and that’s why magical experiences are rare and sought after. But I think about it, if I keep an eye out for it more often, I maybe be able to coax that room out.