The Lily's Revenge Educational Toolkit by American Repertory Theater

Educational Toolkit

Educational Toolkit Welcome to The Lily’s Revenge! In this Toolkit, you will find everything you need to get ready for your trip to the A.R.T.! ENGAGE Lesson Plan.................................................................................................................................... 4 A New Myth................................................................................................................................... 5 Joseph Campbell: Hero of a Thousand Faces............................................................. 6 EXPERIENCE The Lily’s Revenge Garden Map........................................................................................... 8 Who’s Who.................................................................................................................................... 10 What’s What................................................................................................................................. 11 Japanese Noh Theater for Dummies................................................................................ 12 Everyone’s Talking About Taylor Mac.............................................................................. 14 ENRICH The Secret History..................................................................................................................... 16 Flower Facts................................................................................................................................ 19 Susan Stewart............................................................................................................................. 20 2

Welcome... to The Lily’s Revenge! We are thrilled to be presenting this epic fiveact theatrical experience, which will take audiences on a journey over continents, through dreams, and across genres. In addition to being a primer on theater history (with everything from ancient Japanese Nôh drama to modern dance), The Lily’s Revenge is also packed with literary allusions, beautiful poetry, and gender-bending performances. The polyphonic, “flowergorical” nature of this show is in service of a deeply important message– that we hold onto some traditions, in the name of nostalgia, only to neglect the rapidly changing world around us. The nature of love is ever-changing in today’s society, and we need a new fable to capture the multifaceted beauty of it. Taylor Mac, the incredible theatrical mind who created (and stars in) The Lily’s Revenge, is an artist who believes in the transformative power of theater...we hope that you, too, will be transformed when you leave this production. Look inside for a diverse range of materials to prepare you for the show, including an arts-integrated lesson plan on creating a new myth of your own. As always, A.R.T. teaching artists are on hand to help facilitate this lesson in the production. Thank you! The A.R.T. Education Team p.s. This production is five hours long, and contains mature content. It is appropriate for patrons age 16 and up.

The Lily’s Revenge LESSON PLAN Objectives Students will gain fundamental knowledge of Joseph Campbell’s theories on mythology and storytelling. Students will develop their creative writing skills by creating a new myth, based on Campbell’s mythic structure. Students will use this experience to understand the use of mythology to interpret and categorize human experience. Connections to Massachusetts Guiding Principles for English Language Arts and Literacy Guiding Principle 1: An effective English language arts and literacy curriculum develops thinking and language together through interactive learning. Guiding Principle 4: An effective English language arts and literacy curriculum develops students’ oral language and literacy through appropriately challenging learning. Guiding Principle 5: An effective English language arts and literacy curriculum emphasizes writing arguments, explanatory/informative texts, and narratives. Materials The Lily’s Revenge Educational Toolkit Paper and Writing Utensils Procedure

Lead a short brainstorming session to active students’ prior knowledge of myth, traditional stories and fairy tales. Discuss students’ received meaning of well-known myths, such as the origin myth from Greek mythology (story of Cronus, Gaia and the Titans).

Read “A New Myth” and “Joseph Campbell: Hero of a Thousand Faces.” Discuss what Campbell believes to be the universal structure of the “hero’s journey.” Does it apply to the stories, myths and fairy tales that were just brought up?

Assign students to write a new myth of their own, adhering to Campbell’s universal structure. Each myth must creatively explain the reason for a fundamental aspect of human civilization: love, language, invention, the presence of the sun, seasons, night and day, etc.

Procedure (Cont’d) 4.

Share the students’ stories. Discuss the tone and purpose of each myth (to enlighten, to warn, to comfort), and challenge students to identify each stage of Campbell’s structure in each myth.

Discuss the nature of myths, how traditional stories become received truth, and how students think myths can affect the course of a civilization. What new myths need to be told in order to progress our society?

Extension Activities •

Ask students to expand upon their stories, writing another creation myth or fable with the same characters or setting.

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Have students illustrate their myth. Why is mythology such attractive fodder for artists and illustrators throughout the ages?

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Challenge students to find a traditional story, myth or fairy tale and write an essay analyzing it according to Campbell’s structure of the hero’s journey. Does it fit the framework? If not, how does the deviation from the “normal” hero’s journey affect the story’s impact or meaning?

Make Your Own Myth

In his influential work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, published in 1949, Joseph Campbell drew from a magnitude of myths and literary works to map out the narrative of the “hero’s journey.” The following terms and definitions create the structure of a myth:

Call to Adventure: The point in a person’s life when they learn that everything is going to change (i.e. a prophecy that only the hero can fulfill).

Supernatural Aid: Once the hero has committed to the quest, consciously or

unconsciously, his or her guide and magical helper appears or becomes known. Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings is a good example of Supernatural Aid.

First Threshold: This is the point where the person actually crosses into the field of

adventure, leaving the known limits of his or her world and venturing into an unknown and dangerous realm where the rules and limits are not known. Alice falling down the rabbit hole, for instance.

Belly of the Whale: The Belly of the Whale represents the final separation from the

hero’s known world and self. It is sometimes described as the person’s lowest point, but it is actually the point when the person is between or transitioning between worlds and selves. The separation has been made, or is being made, or being fully recognized between the old world and old self and the potential for a new world/self. The experiences that will shape the new world and self will begin shortly, or may be beginning with this experience which is often symbolized by something dark, unknown and frightening. By entering this stage, the person shows their willingness to undergo a metamorphosis, to die to him or herself. When Pinocchio is swallowed by the whale, Monstro, this is (duh) the Belly of the Whale moment.

Initiation: The hero must endure a road of trials: a series of tests, tasks, or ordeals that

the person must undergo to begin the transformation. Often the person fails one or more of these tests, which often occur in threes. Atreyu in The Neverending Story must pass through three deadly passages on his journey, and loses something during each trial.

Marriage with the Divine: The point in the adventure when the person experiences a

love that has the power and significance of the powerful, unconditional love of a mother. This is a very important step in the process and is often represented by the person finding the other person that he or she loves most completely. Although Campbell symbolizes this step as a meeting with a goddess, unconditional love and/or self unification does not have to be represented by a woman. Marlin and Nemo are reunited in Finding Nemo, and their family becomes whole again.

Reintegration: The hero returns home, or re-emerges into the real world. The hero

usually gains a reward of some type either before returning or upon his return. In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy wakes up from her “dream” with a different outlook on her life in Kansas (her reward). 6

Joseph Campbell Hero with a Thousand Faces Joseph Campbell was born in White Plains, New York in 1904 to a middle-class Catholic family. His interest in mythology started at an early age when he was first exposed to Native American cultures. By the age of 10, he had read every book about Native Americans and their history in the children’s section of his local library. Campbell received his BA and MA from Columbia University in Arthurian Studies. After that, he began his work in myth and folklore by travelling extensively, translating myths, and submitting articles for publication. In his influential work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, published in 1949, Joseph Campbell drew from a magnitude of myths and literary works to map out the narrative of the “hero’s journey.” The Hero with a Thousand Faces earned him many accolades including an award from National Institute of Arts and Letters for Contributions to Creative Literature. The basic elements of the hero’s journey, as laid out by Campbell, are as follows: call to adventure, supernatural aid, first threshold, belly of the whale, initiation, marriage with the divine, and reintegration. Consider the myth of Odysseus by using Campbell’s map: Odysseus was called to fight in the Trojan War and then, after the war ended he had to return home to Ithaca: the latter is his “call to adventure” in The Odyssey. Odysseus is helped by many gods, but in particular by his “supernatural aid” Athena who advocated for him the most among them. The first “threshold” of his journey is escaping the witch Calypso who has imprisoned him, and he crosses many more thresholds in his journey back to Ithaca. Odysseus’s journey into the “belly of the whale,” a place where our hero appears to be either dead or has a choice to not continue on, is when he travels to Hades to consult the prophet Tiresias. His “initiation” is when he strings his bow and shoots an arrow through a row of 12 arrows. Odysseus’ “marriage” is when he is reunited with Penelope, and finally his “reintegration” is adjusting back into the society of Ithaca. What the “hero’s journey” structure does for the dissection of The Odyssey, and many other classical works of drama and literature, it also does for The Lily’s Revenge. If you look closely at this play, you will see all of the elements of this structure at different points. Campbell’s analysis can be used for almost every major work of theater and literature, and The Lily’s Revenge is no exception.

Fertilizer for Thought:

1. Can you think of an example of a story you know well that fits this structure? Are there any differences? What do you think is missing? 2. How do you think this repeatable structure affects how we approach theater? Do we have certain expectations when we go into a show? What effect does it have on you, as an audience member, when a film or play breaks from this structure?

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ATTENDANCE

A poet and literary theorist. Born in 1962, Stewart has written many collections and holds many awards. She writes so that people will “read more slowly…reread…and see connections.”

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Guests for the play: ❏ Quentin Crisp ❏ Susan Stewart ❏ Hegel ❏ Felix Mendelssohn ❏ Bayard Rustin ❏ Samuel Beckett ❏ Robert Herrick ❏ The Pope

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WHO’S WHO White Rose: The host

Daisy 1, 2, 3: Residents of the Garden

Mary Prime Deity: A flower girl; working for The Great Longing

Tick: Spies on the Humans for the Garden

Mary Subprime Deity: Mary Prime’s assistant

Groom Deity: a regular guy from the audience

The Mary’s Deity #1 and #2: Members of Mary’s Entourage

Master Sunflower: Director of the Garden Flowers; Speaks in verse

Susan Stewart: a philosopher and flower, dedicated to the understanding of the great longing in society; a muse and a teacher

Baby’s Breath: Works with Master Sunflower to teach Lily about the vicious humans; aggressive

Time/Wind/Stepmother: Time used to be in charge but has been overtaken by The Great Longing; reincarnates itself into Wind to help transport Lily to save himself and the entire Garden population; Assigned as the stepmother as a vehicle for perpetuating stereotypes

Tulip: Haiku-Off; “tries to get all up in the Lily’s business”

Audience Member/Incurable disease: A hesitant, frightened bystander to the world of the play Lily: The bride hopeful and protagonist with five petals; destined to fall from mortal’s soil and free the God of Here and Now The Great Longing: a talking curtain because theatre is the world of dreams and dreams are what the Great Longing suckles. Child of Time and Sibling of Dirt; traps flowers in addicted coagulation of nostalgia and hope with institutionalized narrative; God of Nostalgia Bride Puppeteer: Controls the Bride Puppet who is an image for how marriage is institutionalized Bride Deity: The bride hopeful as an adult human

Poppy: Haiku-Off; makes the other flowers “cheer” Red Rose: Haiku-Off; “Excites the other flowers” Pansy: Haiku-Off; “turns the other flowers on” Lilac: Haiku-Off; “Nasty” Bride Love, Groom Love, Mary Prime Love, Mary Subprime Love, The Mary’s Love #1, The Mary’s Love #2: Dream versions of the characters in the play Dirt: The God of Here and Now; Created Intimacy

WHAT’S WHAT ACT I – THE DEITY; A Princess Musical Lily, our hopeful protagonist, steps onstage and enters the garden world. The Lily meets the deities: Time and The Great Longing, and most importantly, the Bride and Groom Deity. After learning the Bride’s tragic story and gaining exposure to the corruption from the deities, the Lily decides to marry the Bride and become the story’s lovable protagonist. ACT II – THE GHOST WARRIOR; An Act in Iambic, Song, and Haiku Master Sunflower conducts the rest of the garden in an appeal to win the Lily’s love and distract the Lily from the Bride. The Lily hears about Dirt, the creator of intimacy, and is led forward in the journey toward marriage by Time, disguised as Wind. ACT III – THE LOVE ACT; A Dream Ballet In a dream and through dance, Bride and Groom Love, fantasy versions of the Bride and Groom Deity, create a ballet version of marriage; fighting, screaming, and competing until Lily learns from Time that love can exist without the institution of marriage. Despite this, the Brides and Grooms decide to marry. ACT IV - THE LIVING PERSONS ACT; A Silent Film The Lily enters The Technology Farm in order to free The Dirt from distance and so The Lily becomes a man through electric shock treatment. The Lily realizes once he is a man, that his love for The Bride was bigger than just a desire for companionship but a desire, too, to be the romantic lead and to be treated as more than less than. ACT V - THE MAD DEMON; A Pastiche Master Sunflower leads the Garden to infiltrate The Wedding Party. By “fertilizing,” the Flowers ruin the Wedding and allow Time and The Lily, as a man, to arrive and assert themselves. The Lily loves all of the Brides counterparts and by the end of the act, pops the question. They defeat The Great Longing with the Here and Now and the whole cast engages in a giant lovefest– as proof that anyone can marry everyone and everything.

Japanese Nôh Theater

• The stage is always 5.4 meters on all sides constructed with roofs (to reflect the original structure built outside), faces south (because of a cultural relation to south as front), and uses natural lighting.

• The performers get ready to go on stage in The Mirror Room, or kagami no ma. They put on their make-up and prepare spiritually and mentally for telling the story, then enter on a suspension bridge, hashi-gakari, to the main stage • The practice of using masks is called nohmen. The masks are more to help the actor transform into a new character than for aiding the audience’s suspension of belief. • Nôh Theatre has its religious roots planted firmly in Zen Buddhism, a combination of Shinto and Mainstream Buddhism from the 6th century.

What is a Kyôgen? Nôh Theatre is always performed as five plays with short interludes in be-

tween called kyôgen. In The Lily’s Revenge, the micro-performances and elements of participation between each act are inspired by a unique element of Nôh drama.

A kyôgen is a brief interlude in between Nôh plays that serves the purpose of comic relief. It usually involves two or three actors who lead the audience to gentle laughter through dialogue performed in a conversational style, and through carefully honed gestures. The roots of the term kyôgen come from China, where it was used to indicate either a joke or something divorced from reason or normal convention. The Chinese characters for “kyôgen” were read “tawagoto”, which means “silly talk.” It has a depth of feeling that can also portray sorrow, sympathy and nostalgia; deliver pointed satire; and explore philosophical questions regarding human sexuality.

Fertilizer 4 Thought:

1. What elements of Noh can you observe in The Lily’s Revenge? (Set, Structure, Characters)

2. Why include Kyogen in between each act of The Lily’s Revenge? 3. What is it like experiencing such a long play? Why do you think many traditional forms of theater were so long? 12

Noh Drama, like many traditional forms of theater, is all about bringing a community together for a day-long celebration of art, spirituality, and culture. The Lily’s Revenge is an attempt to recapture the communal (and durational) nature of live theater. Let’s learn how Noh influences the structure of Lily.

• These are the five types of Japanese Nôh Plays, which are performed in the following sequence:

Waki-Nôh (God): A God or messenger of the Gods, called the Shite (pronounced shee-tay, by the way), blesses the land with peace and bountiful harvest and the play has a general celebratory theme. Shura-Nôh (Man): Tells the story of old Japanese Warriors or heroes that have fallen into an endlessly warring Hell after death. Kazura-Nôh (Women): The spirits of young women, nobles, celestial beings, and plants perform an elegant dance to connote an ethereal or dream state. Kurui-Nôh (Crazed): Depicts human characters who are driven mad by extraordinary situations or trauma. Kiri-Nôh (Demon): Features monsters, demons, action and general chaos at a very quick tempo (beaten on the taiko, or stick drum). This is generally the shortest and flashiest play in the cycle.

The Nôh Stage (notice the long runway for entrances)

The Lily’s Revenge mirrors all five acts of traditional Nôh Theater. That means it is close to FIVE HOURS LONG!

Everybody’s Talking about Taylor Mac “First I ask, what is the one thing I don’t want the audience to know about me? And then I say, okay, that’s what the show is about.” – Taylor Mac October brings The Lily’s Revenge to OBERON, a five-act one-of-a-kind theatrical event that weaves together a musical, a verse play, a dream ballet and a silent film, and all comes from the inventive mind of one theatrical innovator: the playwright/ performer/singer/songwriter and all-around theater virtuoso, Taylor Mac. Hailing originally from Northern California, Taylor Mac has been performing his work and others’ for almost two decades at theaters, opera houses, museums, music halls, cabarets and festivals from Sydney to New York, from San Francisco to Dublin. Whether at home or abroad, Mac’s unique blend of whimsical political satire and extravagant, expansive imagination creates a theatrical style that is intoxicatingly personal and engrossing. As he writes in his Artist’s Statement: “I believe my job as a theater artist is to remind my audience of the range of their humanity. I do this by using theatrical traditions and established styles and forms… and injecting them with as much imagination and personal perspective as I can … Surprise (not to be confused with shock) is the way I get audiences to feel. When they feel, they’re reminded of their humanity.”

The Lily’s Revenge began its germination in 2004, inspired by the swirling political debate over marriage equality and the coincidental overlap of certain celebrity deaths. The original production received an Obie Award from New York’s Village Voice, and was voted “Best Theater of 2009” by The New Yorker, The New York Post, and TimeOut NY. Adam Feldman of TimeOut writes, “In its bravery, scope, creativity, extremity and sheer generosity of spirit, The Lily’s Revenge, to my mind, surpasses any American theater in New York this year. (Taylor Mac) is one of the most exciting theater artists of our time.” When asked about the epic scale of The Lily’s Revenge, Mac joked, “if I hadn’t already gone bald, this would certainly do it.” His subsequent projects have shown no indication of a more limited imagination. He is currently in the process of developing and performing a “24-Hour Concert of the History of Popular Music,” with each hour covering a decade of American music from the 1770’s to the present. All of Mac’s projects share a common impulse, as he creates diverse, multi-layered plays and concerts that surprise and delight while engaging the audience together, as a group: “Most of all I believe theater is community and think of myself as a community activist: someone whose job it is to bring people together, give them a shared experience and remind them of what it means to be human.” In 2004, George W. Bush is elected President once more, primarily because people don’t want gays to marry. I attend my first lesbian wedding in my home state of California. The wedding is typical: grandma dances disco; the guests both participate and are asked to be silent observers; Kat, the femme, wears a dress and Dawn, the butch, a tuxedo. It is an all-day affair (or at least a five-hour one) and some people can’t wait for it to be over and some people love every moment. And some are trapped somewhere in-between. This is also the year Ronald Regan dies and, inspired by Princess Diana’s funeral a few years before, thousands of people descend on Washington to throw flowers on the White House lawn. Fear of weakness is often confused with bravery. A little while after that Pope John Paul II dies and the flowers are thrown again. The three-way ends in a pile of cellophane and sentiment, and I begin writing The Lily’s Revenge. -From “Playwright’s Monologue,” The Lily’s Revenge

Fertilizer 4 Thought:

1. If you had to characterize Taylor Mac’s work into three words, what would they be?

2. How does Taylor Mac’s perspective on theater as a community event change your idea of theater? 3. If you could ask Taylor one question, what would it be?

e g n e v e R s ’ y l e Li

Missing Person #1:

History

The Lily’s Revenge references

many historical figures that you may not have heard of in your textbooks. These are the cultural heroes that lived on the fringe of society whose outsider perspective helped change the world from the underground. Taylor Mac includes quotes or allusions to these figures within the text of Lily; why do you think they’re invited to the Wedding?

Quentin Crisp

This quote is included in the script at the start of Act I:

“Find out who you are, without praise or blame and be it.” Fertilizer 4 Thought: Why did Taylor Mac include this quote? What about Quentin Crisp’s openness to identity is reflected in the play?

Missing Person #2:

This quote is included in the script at the start of Act 2:

“When an individual is protesting society’s refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act confers dignity on him.” Fertilizer 4 Thought: Why did Taylor Mac include this quote? Does Bayard Rustin’s fight for equality remind you of any character in the play?

Born Denis Pratt on December 25, 1908 to a lawyer and former nursery governess in London, England. He went to school in Derbyshire but left in 1926 because he was so badly teased. Crisp moved to London, attended and dropped out of King’s College, and became a prostitute (for six months), an illustrator, and designer of book covers. By chance, he posed as a nude model for a government-supported art class. He took nude modeling up as a career for the next thirty-five years. In 1968, Crisp wrote The Naked Civil Servant: a story about his upbringing in a “rigorously homophobic society” and made the “existence of homosexuality abundantly clear to the world’s aborigines.” It became a cult classic, with popularity revived once a television adaptation, starring John Hurt, was produced in 1976. Crisp moved to New York City in 1977 and, the following year, he presented An Evening with Quentin Crisp; a one-man show filled with scarves, eye shadow, and his signature white hair swept delicately under a black fedora. For this production, he received favorable reviews and a Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience. Crisp’s defining characteristic was the refusal to hide his identity as a homosexual man, celebrating gay culture in spite of the fact that “homosexual acts” were illegal in the United Kingdom during his life. Crisp died in 1999, at the age 90.

Bayard Rustin Bayard Rustin was born in West Chester on March 17, 1910. His mother (whom he believed to be his sister), Florence Rustin, was seventeen and unmarried when she had him so he was raised by his grandparents (whom he understood to be his parents). By 1939, Rustin had campaigned against Jim Crow laws, joined the Communist Party, left the Community Party, and was recruited to star in a Broadway flop, John Henry. In 1941 he joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation and founded the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) with George Houser and James Farmer on principles of nonviolent resistance as made famous by Henry David Thoreau. Rustin refused to serve in World War II and was sentenced to three years in prison. In 1951, after he was released, Rustin formed what would become Africa Action, the oldest nonprofit in the U.S. to focus on African affairs. He also helped to pen an important treatise on nonviolence, “Speak Truth to Power,” with the American Friends Service Committee. After the arrest of Rosa Parks, Rustin was asked to go to Montgomery to help Martin Luther King with a campaign. They formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and organized the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. Rustin’s involvement was controversial because of his communist background and homosexuality. Rustin was actually arrested for “sex perversion” in 1953– homosexuality was criminalized in parts of the U.S. until 2003 (!!)– and served 60 days in jail. He died on August 24, 1987.

Missing Person #3:

This quote is included in the script at the start of Act 3:

“Pity we haven’t got a bit of rope.” Fertilizer 4 Thought: Why did Taylor Mac include this quote? Doy ou see any elements of Absurdism in this play? What about Beckett do you think Taylor Mac was attracted to?

Samuel Beckett Samuel Beckett was born around April 13, 1906 to a surveyor and a nurse. Beckett attended Trinity College, Dublin from 1923 to 1927 and graduated with a BA after studying French, Italian, and English. Beckett met James Joyce while lecturing at Ecole Normale Superieure. They became close confidants and Beckett assisted Joyce on the book that became Finnegans Wake. His relationship with Joyce cooled when Beckett refused the advances of Joyce’s daughter on account of her schizophrenia. Beckett traveled around Europe and found himself at Carl Jung’s third Tavistock lecture. The lecture focused on the “never properly born,” a subject that has been referenced in many of Beckett’s later works. Beckett published his poetry, got stabbed by a famous pimp, and hid arms in his backyard during World War II. To develop his voice, he began toying with old forms and artistic movements. His most famous work “Waiting for Godot” uses basic vaudevillian structure (and jokes) to creates a unique meditation on...nothing. Beckett went on to earn a Nobel Prize in Literature “for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation.” He is considered a pivotal contributor to the “Theatre of the Absurd.” When thinking about The Lily’s Revenge, read Beckett’s short story “The Lost Ones,” which vividly illustrates the difficulty of human beings to connect with one another and “find their lost one.”

This quote is included in the script at the start of Act 4: “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may Old Time is still a-flying: And this same flower that smiles to-day To-morrow will be dying. The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, The higher he’s a-getting, The sooner will his race be run, And nearer he’s to setting. That age is best which is the first, When youth and blood are warmer; But being spent, the worse, and worst Times still succeed the former. Then be not coy, but use your time, And while ye may, go marry: For having lost but once your prime, You may for ever tarry...” Fertilizer 4 Thought: What does this poem have to do with the play? How is using flowers as a metaphor effective in this act in particluar?

Missing Person #4:

Robert Herrick Robert Herrick was born in London to a family that lost its father in a tragic fall from a fourth-floor window. Herrick was but one year old. He began studying at St. John’s College in Cambridge at the age of twenty-two where he joined a group called “Sons of Ben”. They devoted their time to the admiration of Ben Johnson. He then became the vicar (aka representative) of Dean Prior, a civil parish in Devonshire. He was ejected from the parish during the English Civil War, though King Charles II accepted him back after becoming aware of numerous poems that Herrick wrote, praising the King. He resided there until he died a bachelor at the age of 83. The women he spoke of in his poems were likely fictional. Herrick wrote over 2,500 poems, most of these are of the carpe diem style; as he believed that life is short and we should seize the day and welcome all of the beauty and love it will bring.

Anonymous

Missing Person #5:

This quote is included in the script at the start of Act 5:

“Weddings are like bad community theatre.” Fertilizer 4 Thought: Why did Taylor Mac include this quote? Compare this quote to Taylor Mac’s thoughts of theater as a way of community building.

Fill in here the history of a person that you believe would write a quote like the one in the box to the left: _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________

Hegel

Missing Person #6:

In Act 1, Susan Stweart is accused of being a “A lesbian femi-nazi academic who read Hegel and wore ugly clothes.” by the Flower Girls Deity. Fertilizer 4 Thought: What does Hegel have to do with this horrible insult? Why did Taylor Mac reference him?

Born August 27, 1770, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a philosopher and one of the founders of German Idealism. Idealism has many meanings but here it means that the properties we discover in objects depend on the way that those objects appear to us as perceiving subjects, and not something they possess “in themselves.” Before all of this advanced thinking, he attended a seminary attached to the University of Tubingen. There he met two other philosophers that also disliked the restrictive environment. He became interested in becoming man of letters who makes the abstruse ideas of philosophers more accessible to the public. Hegel went on to become a house tutor for two families while writing and publishing many scholarly writings on the Christian religion’s relationship with things like positivity and love. After traveling to a few different jobs and having a few more children, Hegel published The Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences in Outline in 1817. In 1818, he was appointed to be the head of philosophy at University of Berlin. He continued to teach until dying from the cholera epidemic in Berlin in 1831. He is known for muttering these last words: “And he didn’t understand me.”

Fertilizer 4 Thought:

1. Are any of these historical figures new to you? If so, why do you think you’ve never heard of them before? Do you beleive their contributions to history are significant? 2. Why does a playwright include quotes in their script that aren’t said outloud? What should the actors do with these quotes? 18

Floral Facts

Many of the characters in The Lily’s Revenge (including the protagonist) are flowers. Do you think the personifications in the play match their symbolic or historical meanings? Type: White Lily Sybolic Meaning: Modesty and Virginity • Discovered in 1580 B.C.E, the lily was so revered by the Greeks that they believed it sprouted from the milk of Hera, the queen of the gods. • As the flowers most often associated with funerals, lilies symbolize that the soul of the departed has received restored innocence after death. • According to the ASPCA, cats are allergic to lilies and ingesting even a small amount will cause kidney problems. Type: Opium Poppy Sybolic Meaning: Sleep • They occur in temperate and subtropical climates. • Fruit from the opium poppy exude latex when scratched or cut. Once dry, this latex can be scraped off of the fruit and consumed raw or processed chemically to become heroin. • The opium poppy also produces seeds and oil that can be used for culinary purposes. Type: Pansy Symbolic Meaning: Thought, remembrance, togetherness, union • The name pansy is from the French word pensie, meaning thought or remembrance. • Pansies are fragrant and edible blooms are desirable in gardens. • Pansies are one of the earliest flowering plants, blooming right alongside the spring bulbs. Type: Forget-Me-Not Symbolic Meaning: Remembrance • There are around 50 species of forget-me-nots. • King Henry IV adopted the forget-me-not as his symbol during his exile in 1398 and kept it throughout his reign. • In 15-century Germany forget-me-nots were worn to ensure that the wearer was not forgotten by their loved ones, while in 1926 the Freemasons adopted the flower as a reminder to remember the poor and desperate.

SUSAN STEWART Biography and On Longing Susan Stewart is a poet, critic, and translator. Her five books of poetry include The Forest (1995), which received the Literary Award of the Philadelphia Atheneum; Columbarium (2003), which received the National Book Critics Circle Award; and, most recently Red Rover (2008). Her books of literary criticism include On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (1984), and Nonsense (1979). She currently teaches in the poetry department at Princeton, University. (http://poetry.princeton.edu/susan-stewart/) On Longing Susan Stewart’s book, On Longing, is particularly important to the plot of The Lily’s Revenge. Stewart’s book revolves around what she calls “the social disease of nostalgia” by investigating the Miniature, Gigantic, and the Souvenir (i). The Miniature is a “metaphor for the interior space and time of the bourgeois subject,” while the Gigantic is “considered as a metaphor for the abstract authority of the state and collective, public, life.” The Souvenir “may be seen as emblematic of the nostalgia that all narrative reveals – the longing for its place of origin.” (xii). The chapter “The Imaginary Body” touches on one of the central themes in The Lily’s Revenge when Stewart discusses the role of the “trickster” in society. Later, she deconstructs the concept of a “freak of nature” and concludes that the word choice is incorrect and should rather be called a “freak of culture,” which expresses the function of the Trickster/Lily more elegantly. (109). The Trickster continually violates the boundary between nature and culture; he is part animal, part human (often a “talking” animal such as the crow or coyote, or a producer such as a spider), part man and part woman (often coupling either sex indiscriminately), and a violator of cultural taboos… (106) The characters Susan and Time both quote from the following passage in the chapter “On Description and the Book”,” (49, 134): Nostalgia is a sadness without an object, a sadness which creates a longing that of necessity is inauthentic because it does not take part in lived experience. Rather, it remains behind and before that experience. Nostalgia, like any form of narrative, is always ideological: the past it seeks has never existed except as narrative, and hence always absent, that past continually threatens to reproduce itself as a felt lack. … The prevailing motif of nostalgia is the erasure of the gap between nature and culture, and hence a return to the utopia of biology. (23)

This passage is where we find Stewart’s thesis: we are holding onto something that never existed. There is a difference between memory, looking back fondly on your life, and holding onto the past via nostalgia. We use nostalgia to reconcile things that are beyond our control—nature and culture—which is a dishonest manner of recalling the past. The miniature, linked to nostalgic versions of childhood and history, presents a diminutive, and thereby manipulatable, version of experience, a version which is domesticated and protected from contamination. It marks the pure body, the inorganic body of the machine and its repetition of a death that is thereby not a death. (69). The miniature is the means to contextualize the past through the lens of nostalgia. Stewart points to two subjects that typify the miniature: the toy and the dollhouse. She says that the toy “presents a projection of the world; [it] is miniaturized and giganticized… to test the relationship between materiality and meaning,” (57). It is an object that you play with and look at that you can manipulate. It has no death because it is static: a toy cannot change. In this same way, the dollhouse is “the most consummate of miniatures”. Stewart links the modern dollhouse to the origin of the crèche (i.e. the nativity scene made up of full-sized dolls) and believes that, “the dollhouse was originally an adult amusement.” It’s not to be played with, it’s a tool for its dominant motif: nostalgia. Like the toy, it is an object that you can manipulate that lets you indulge in your imaginary childhood because it “offers a world clearly limited in space but frozen and thereby both particularized and generalized,” (48, 61). We are enveloped by the gigantic, surrounded by it, enclosed within its shadow. Whereas we know the miniature as a spatial whole or as temporal parts, we know the gigantic only partially. We move through the landscape it does not move through us.(73). It would stand to reason that the gigantic is the opposite of the miniature, but to Stewart their relationship is symbiotic. You could describe both “through metaphors of containment–the miniature as contained, the gigantic as container,” (71): one necessitates the other. The gigantic is architecture, commercialism, and commodity. Unlike the miniature, the gigantic is something that we cannot manipulate. Stewart says that the “most typical gigantic world is the sky,” a space that is so big we cannot entirely fathom it. One of the most popular uses of the gigantic is in the nostalgic retelling of the “New World” and the use of the tall-tale in North America. The purpose of exaggeration is to make the story bigger, to make it gigantic, in order to devour the miniature and the less interesting (74, 99). These two necessitate the other and Stewart explicitly defines how they interact, “The miniature represents closure, interiority, the domestic, and the overly cultural, the gigantic represents infinity, exteriority, the public, and the overly natural,” (70). Again, we are trying to navigate the space “between nature and culture” via these terms and through the lens of nostalgia. We are trying to create and recreate something that was never in existence. What Stewart espouses in On Longing is that nostalgia is something to be obliterated; it holds us to a past that is only an ideal, and we desire it because we desire a simpler time.

Fertilizer 4 Thought:

1. Why did Taylor Mac choose to include Susan Stewart as a character? 2. Pick something from this article that you have a question about, or is unclear, and research it further. 21

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