Love: Tom Stoppard's Preoccupation

-
By Elspeth Sweatman

A.C.T. Artistic Director Carey Perloff at the first rehearsal for The Hard Problem.
Photo by Shannon Stockwell.
"It's a fascinating thing to have a long, ongoing relationship with a writer," said A.C.T.'s Artistic Director Carey Perloff at the first rehearsal for Tom Stoppard's The Hard Problem. "What you realize is that everybody has their own life preoccupations, and they make art in order to try and wrestle with them."

The Hard Problem is the eleventh Stoppard play Perloff has directed at A.C.T., giving her a unique perspective on this playwright's work. In her view, one of Stoppard's preoccupations is the nature of love. "In Arcadia, he toys with the way in which love is an anarchic emotion that spreads chaos amongst seemingly reasonable people. People don't always act in their own reasonable interests because love enters the universe, and then all hell breaks loose."

"In this play, The Hard Problem, love is particularly focused on mother love. The question of what mother love is, and why that's so profound and why the protagonist, Hilary, can't get over it. Another character, Spike, says that mother love is just 'mother maximizing gene potential.' And he is unbelievably embarrassed at the thought that there is actually a real thing—maternal love—that trumps neuro-scientific analysis."

In The Hard Problem, Stoppard even extends his preoccupation with love to the financial markets and the 2008 crash. "Woven into this question about consciousness is a question about the financial markets and why all these brilliant psychometric, algorithm-driving quants were unable to figure out the market was going crazy. He finally says, 'It's like falling in love.' It's like the market has fallen in love, and the market that behaved predictably has now gone haywire."

"I think Tom's a little bit of an anarchist at heart, and he's really interested in chaos, and chaos comes from internal emotional chaos, that comes from love and desire and sexuality."

The Hard Problem begins October 19 and runs through November 13. Click here to purchase tickets.

Popular posts from this blog

“To Be or Not to Be”: The Iconic Speech’s Origins, Interpretations, and Impact

-
Image
By A.C.T. Publications Staff The opening line of Hamlet ’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy is theater’s most iconic, most referenced quote. What’s less known is the famous speech’s history, with Hamlet ’s earliest publications offering varying versions of its language. Also questioned is its meaning—is Hamlet contemplating suicide or is he weighing the consequences of murder? Though definitive answers are unlikely to arise, the questions “To be or not to be” asks have kept audiences, scholars, and actors engaged for centuries. Hamlet ’ s "To be or not to be" speech as it appears in the three original editions of the play. Photo by Georgelazenby. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons. The first edition, or First Quarto (Q1), of Hamlet was published in 1603. Because the text is much shorter than later editions and its language is less poetic, it is nicknamed the “Bad Quarto” by scholars. “To be or not to be” in Q1 reads as: To be, or not to be—ay, there’s the point. To die,
Read more

The American Sound: The Evolution of Jazz

-
Image
By Cecilia Padilla There is nothing so uniquely American as jazz music. In its simplest form, jazz embodies the essence of the American people: bold and inventive. The improvisation of the jazz ensemble can even be seen as a metaphor for the American democratic ideal: musicians playing solos have the liberty to express themselves as long as they adhere to the overall structure of the tune—individual freedom but with responsibility to the group. The evolution of jazz music also carries with it the social development of our nation from slavery to the swinging songs of World War II. Musically, jazz contributed immensely to the way contemporary musicians approach instrumentation, composition, and vocal arrangements. It is difficult to find a popular tune today that does not derive from such jazz icons as Joe Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Thelonious Monk. Jazz is the great equalizer; for more than a hundred years, it has been the common ground between blacks and whites, me
Read more

A Hell of a Businessman: A Biography of Joe Glaser

-
By Simon Hodgson Born in 1897, Joe Glaser was the son of a successful Russian Jewish physician in Chicago. He originally intended to follow a similar career and entered medical school, but after passing out in the operating room, he realized he wasn’t cut out to be a doctor. He started off in business selling used cars, but found better luck managing prizefighters. In his biography of Al Capone, Laurence Bergreen notes, “Glaser’s power to fix fights earned him a reputation as a sage of boxing, especially among reporters.” With advanced word as to which fights were fixed, Glaser could predict the results—and even the number of rounds—of many bouts in Chicago. His connections with organized crime continued in his next career change, when he began running nightclubs and whorehouses in the South Side for the Chicago Outfit, the powerful underworld gang led by Capone. Glaser’s tendency toward illegal action nearly ended his career. In 1928, he was sentenced to ten years in prison for
Read more