REFLECTING THE TIMES - BY CARRIE WILLIAMS
“An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.” - Nina Simone
These days, all I want to do is tell rowdy stories.
Like most creative people, I am accustomed to wearing multiple hats* in all aspects of my work. Over the last several years I’ve been focused on directing, so working on Elephant’s Graveyard as an actor has been a soul-filling reminder of how much I love (crave, even!) working within an ensemble.
Regardless of which creative hat I’m wearing, every play that I agree to work on these days contains some element that resonates as True. Whether I’m directing, performing, or producing, SOMETHING within the piece has got to rile me up, give me a new way to process the present moment. How does it Reflect the Times? Or…“how rowdy is it?”
Rowdiness, for me, is simply a way of describing my personal emotional reaction. One of the Chekovian guideposts that we use in rehearsal is the Feeling of the Whole - a sense of totality, of completion, of blending different elements into one cohesive narrative experience. Now that we’re rehearsing nearly every day, there are certain themes in Elephant’s Graveyard that I am constantly considering - trust, collective responsibility, American bloodlust, technological progress at the expense of all things - all of which bring my awareness and curiosity to the Wholeness of these elements as they are unfolding in the world.
For example: What happens when a group puts their trust in a figure who can’t protect them? What are the many ways that American culture is (and always has been) ruled by violence? What is justice? How do we remove ourselves from the racist carceral systems at the heart of our society? What technology actually helps the planet, and what harms it? What is the actual human cost of convenience?
A casual observer may see this play only as a story about a tragic event that happened in 1916, but I can’t stop connecting parts of it to all the tragedies that are happening right now, today, on unimaginable scales - genocides in Palestine, Congo, Sudan; ChatGPT and other AI consuming staggering amounts of energy and water (not to mention potentially making people less aware and more gullible every minute); lack of healthcare and housing; stagnant wages; our government actively warring against its people, leaving millions of Americans without hope and feeling powerless.
And next thing you know, I’m feeling rowdy! Is it useful in rehearsal? Sometimes! These questions and connections remind me why I was excited about this story in the first place. At the end of the day, large groups of people have more power than they realize, and history - like this play - has plenty of examples of that power used for ill. Maybe we’ll tell the story differently this time.
*Sometimes it’s a hat, sometimes it’s a pith helmet, sometimes it’s a monstrosity of paper and cardboard with “HAT” scrawled upon it in crayon, held together with tape and wishes.