So I suffered from a case of good peer pressure today. I'll admit - I throw out half of the stuff I get in my mailbox, when I go down to the basement to actually check my mailbox that is. So when a fellow colleague asked me if I had gotten the invitation to the dinner following John Shanley's lecture, I truly wasn't sure whether I had or not. If I had remembered who the guy was, I probably could have done a clever word play on "I doubt it," but alas, I only had a blank, confused stare as a response. Apparently the English department response to this event was "low," which sounded like it must have been a bad thing and it sounded like maybe I was supposed to help correct this problem.
This was, delightfully, a case of good peer pressure. Shanley is an amazing speaker and storyteller. I had the good fortune to see a stellar production of doubt at Greensboro's Triad Stage (voted one of the top ten small theaters in the country!), so I was actually interested to meet the master mind behind the production. His entire talk was like one long poem: his voice and the words and images he used were like a symphony. Two of the many quotable lines from this talk: (from memory, so basically correctly quoted)
"To live is not enough, you must communicate you"
"Life is truly noble because life is truly humble"
The highlight of the talk for me was the moment Shanley started talking about how important doubt is to a genuine life and how unfortunate that most media productions do not allow space for doubt. "we are no longer affected by one another," Shanley says, citing those talk shows where people talk at each other, stating their views, but unwilling to permit the other's viewpoint to change their own or admitting they perhaps don't have it all figured out. As I cringe coming into the election year, I wish the candidates would watch Doubt and invite Shanley over for a chat; they could learn so much and possibly make an election year filled with engaging debates, change, and growth for our country. But, well, I doubt it.
3 comments:
That's so great that you got to hear him speak. I also love that play (and the quotation you cited). It makes me think of our many book club discussions. And I hear you about the whole why can't leaders (political or otherwise) show doubt...I would actually admire that in a leader.
Forgive my ignorance. Is there any connection with the film starring Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, and Philip Seymour Hoffman?
yup - it is a remake of his play. Shanley spoke some about the process of adaptations, whether from film to plays or vice versa. If I remember correctly he has found that adapting a play from a film is more difficult than turning a play into a film.
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