Even with my involvement in this process, this is the kind of show that forces you to put down the pen to absorb and embrace everything that happening on and offstage. Two things I thought I post about were the audience's relationship to David, and the new 're-doing' of the end of the play.
This run through really highlighted for me various feelings as an audience member. Due to my interactions with David at the top of the show, I felt a real connection to him. When he brought me up during the "it's my fault" speech it was an interesting experience.I honestly felt good, a slight shadenfreude (to borrow the language of the play) against my fellow audiences member who were all feeling the brunt of his blame.
Perhaps it was this specific interaction with him, and the way it made me feel about my fellow audience members, that produced a real "Ah ha" moment when Ben pointed to the American Dream. And I looked back over my shoulder and saw David. I felt viscerally uncomfortable upon learning this. That this was the American Dream, the man who made millions of bad mortgage bundles. This man who essentially symbolized the broken economic system who had made so that I cannot ever imagine making more than my parents. Or affording the house that my parents own, or any house really. And suddenly I felt mad, so mad that this is what the American Dream was. But it made sense to me, despite my anger, that this of course was the American Dream. Otherwise why would people be so negligent in pursuit of their own personal wealth. It was this con man, that had only minutes before made me smile and so before he even opened his mouth I rather hated the American Dream. Because he had betrayed me.
And I realized that before the American Dream says or does anything, there is a visual statement that is made about the American Dream simply because I've had this real connection to David.
Also the final re-doing of the play was a fascinating exercise in frustration. I made more physical moments watching these actors try to re-create their own paths. I was physically uncomfortable and I felt this urges to help them. Correct them. And when the actors let their frustration show, when they said with their voices or body "fuck it," it made me laugh and it invoked in me this sense of release.
This run through really highlighted for me various feelings as an audience member. Due to my interactions with David at the top of the show, I felt a real connection to him. When he brought me up during the "it's my fault" speech it was an interesting experience.I honestly felt good, a slight shadenfreude (to borrow the language of the play) against my fellow audiences member who were all feeling the brunt of his blame.
Perhaps it was this specific interaction with him, and the way it made me feel about my fellow audience members, that produced a real "Ah ha" moment when Ben pointed to the American Dream. And I looked back over my shoulder and saw David. I felt viscerally uncomfortable upon learning this. That this was the American Dream, the man who made millions of bad mortgage bundles. This man who essentially symbolized the broken economic system who had made so that I cannot ever imagine making more than my parents. Or affording the house that my parents own, or any house really. And suddenly I felt mad, so mad that this is what the American Dream was. But it made sense to me, despite my anger, that this of course was the American Dream. Otherwise why would people be so negligent in pursuit of their own personal wealth. It was this con man, that had only minutes before made me smile and so before he even opened his mouth I rather hated the American Dream. Because he had betrayed me.
Also the final re-doing of the play was a fascinating exercise in frustration. I made more physical moments watching these actors try to re-create their own paths. I was physically uncomfortable and I felt this urges to help them. Correct them. And when the actors let their frustration show, when they said with their voices or body "fuck it," it made me laugh and it invoked in me this sense of release.
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