New blood pumps through the fragile heart of a beloved, centuries-old tale by Megan Reichelt “The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast, stand this afternoon on the corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the traffic light to change.” –Joseph Campbell From its inception, Rorschach Theatre in Washington DC has been exploring the idea of undying love. The Scarlet Letter gave us the chance to wrestle with the forbidden love between Hester and Dimmesdale. Living Dead in Denmark tackled literal undead romance and what can be forgiven after death as Hamlet and Ophelia clash during a zombie uprising. The Minotaur showed how even love preordained by myth is not always the best path.
photo courtesy of C. Stanley Photography
In our newest play, Glassheart by Reina Hardy, we explore a love story so treasured and so often retold that it is stitched into the very fabric of our culture: the story of Beauty and the Beast. Even before Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve wrote the first published version of the tale in 1756, the idea of a beast and his beautiful bride reverberated throughout history: Cupid and Psyche from Greece, East of the Sun and West of the Moon from Norway, the Monkey Son-in-Law from Japan, and many more. In all of these tales, a woman must live with a beast, often to save her family, and over time she comes to love him. It is a story that has been adapted over and over again, changing its form or symbolism or time period to fit the culture, but it never changes that essential core. Fairy tales have a way of speaking directly to our blood, giving shape to the patterns we repeat throughout our lives and throughout time. A woman falls in love with a man that others do not think deserves her love. A man has such self-loathing that he sees himself unlovable. Two people are paired together through outside powers and must navigate each other until they finally click. We feel the truth in fairy tales because they have been tossed and smoothed through the waves of history, wearing them down to that emotional core that speaks to all ages. Author Catheryne E. Valente calls them “the best-edited stories of all time... boiled down, espresso-like stories that go straight to the back of your reptile brain." Glassheart recognizes that. This story carries the weight of all the Beauty and the Beasts that have come before. We know how the story is supposed to go. And yet Beauty has not come. After almost 500 years of waiting for her, the Beast’s one remaining servant, a devoted lamp, uproots the reluctant Beast, sells the castle, and moves him to Chicago in a desperate attempt to find a woman to break the curse. The lamp struggles to keep him -46-
