Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed ...

Hello, everyone. I apologize for taking quite some time to post an update on here. This semester is a very busy one for me in terms of teaching and trying to write, but I'll try to post notes on our meetings as quickly as possible from now on.

We've had two very productive meetings, and I have to say I'm feeling encouraged and inspired by everyone who's shown interest in participating. The conversations we've had remind me why I think doing this kind of work and using theatre to stimulate dialogue (and vice versa!) seems so vital to me. So thank you so much to everyone who has contributed so far.

In general, as we talk about this and start devising a performance (for one definition of "devising" performance, go here), we seem to be approaching it asking the general question: "What is the institution of marriage, exactly?" It's everywhere in culture and literature, but we want to know what it means. How is it built through language, images and people's experience? How does it change people, and how have people changed the institution over time and across cultures?

Our first meeting - with me, Zac, Amelia and Katie - was spent discussing how we would embark on this project and sharing material we thought we might like to use. We came up with a lot of useful questions and topics for discussion, including:

- marriage as a civil institution vs. marriage as a religious institution
- legal vs. spiritual aspects of marriage
- the difference between "marriage" and "weddings."
- the history of marriage
- the economics of weddings (dowrys, buying gifts, preparations and cost, etc. etc.)
- the role of love in marriage
- monogamy, polygamy, polyamory: what's the significance of only one partner?
- marriage as a loss of independence
- memory and weddings (specifically photographs)
- the "script" and "characters" of weddings and marriage (proposal, ceremony, etc.)
- marriage as a choice or an obligation?
- for whom has marriage been prohibited in other cultures or in the past, and why (between classes, between races, between faiths, etc.)?
- are there other models for marriage? can we find and propose a new model/new rules?
- Objection!! The moment in the wedding where the community is asked to voice an opinion.

At both the first meeting and our meeting with new people from the community this past Saturday, we offered more material we had gathered and read it together.

As an introduction, I brought the actual language from the federal (so-called) "Defense of Marriage Act," which was passed by the 104th Congress. I also shared an Associated Press article that went out after the election in Maine that overturned their state's law legalizing marriage for same-sex couples. I was struck by the terminology used by a man from a Christian legal group who worked to overturn the law: he said they had succeeded in preserving "natural" marriage. I'm interested to hear someone's explanation of what that means.

Zac brought a scene from Moliere's The Miser, and Amelia brought a scene from The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, by Paul Rudnick. I offered selections from two of Charles Mee's plays that center around marriage, Big Love (based on Euripides' The Suppliants) and A Perfect Wedding (based on A Midsummer Night's Dream).

Among other plays and films we read and discussed: the second act of Our Town, A Fiddler on the Roof, Medea, Othello, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Monsoon Wedding, Romeo and Juliet, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and separate songs from Sweeney Todd and Gypsy.

When we had other folks join us this past Saturday, we introduced ourselves and described the project, had a general discussion about the topic, and read and discussed some of the material.

More topics that came up during that conversation:

- even some heterosexual marriages are thought not to "count." What has to happen for a relationship not to be considered a "second class" marriage.
- the statistic we've all heard is that over half of marriages fail.
- people stay together "for the kids" or because they want to have children. What is the root of this?
- the connection between marriage and sex
- Who are weddings for? The couple? Friends and family?
- the association of weddings with comedy in dramatic theory, and how tragedies also deal with marriage, but differently

Amelia brought up a really interesting question: why put a wedding in a play? What dramatic function does it generally serve?

So. We have here an onslaught of questions and ideas, and over the course of the next few months will be discussing these things, interviewing people about them, collecting more information, and trying to shape it all into a performance.

Please, everyone, help us out! Tell us here, in comment form, what your thoughts are on any of these things. Let one of us interview you about marriage. Come to our next public meeting on December 5 at 1:00 in the afternoon.

More to come ...

- Amy