SLO REP‘s recent one-weekend-only production of The Designated Mourner was dramatically read by actors dressed in black standing at microphones. It was the latest Ubu’s Other Shoe staged reading—the season’s first in a series of cutting-edge plays presented without full sets, costumes, or extensive props.
I hadn’t been to a staged reading in years, so it took me a good 20 minutes to get comfortable with the format. But I let my imagination listen and the story come alive in my mind’s eye.
Wallace Shawn’s play—directed at SLO REP by Michael Siebrass and Jill Turnbow—was set in a not-so-distant future society that is succumbing steadily to fascism—but gradually enough that most people don’t even realize it’s happening. Three characters, essentially archetypes, tell their stories.
Michael Simkins played Howard—a father, an intellectual, and a writer whose past work is noticed by the new political regime. He is harassed and eventually imprisoned for his “seditious” writings.
Christina Diaz portrayed Judy—Howard’s sweet, loyal daughter—as a loving idealist.
The third character in this trio was played by Martin Hewitt, who astutely played Jack as a smarmy tag-along who long ago relinquished his own potential as an intellectual outsider, but who still has an inherent charm and charisma in spite of himself. Jack is the most enigmatic of the three; while Howard and Judy are clearly idealistic intellectuals, Jack seems to be something of a poseur—a man caught up in a reality he doesn’t seem to fully understand but goes along with as long as it’s not too difficult for him.
Though Howard and Judy speak, Jack is really the one who self-deprecatingly unfolds the story, something like an apocalyptic Nick Caraway. He witnesses everything with his close observation skills and somewhat interesting critical insights.
Jack is also the title character, the designated mourner—a person selected to witness and grieve the social group and culture and tradition of a tribe that has died away or has been wiped out. He is something of a lazy Satan in the group.
During the course of the play much does pass away as the political climate becomes more reactionary and fascist. Eventually their bourgeois circle of intellectual hipsters is destroyed, and Jack flitters on, considering how very few people could once read and understand John Donne (yes, the metaphysical poet) like Howard did, and like Jack had the potential to understand, but now that understanding has passed away, too.
I look forward to future Ubu’s Other Shoe productions and the thought-provoking worlds that are invoked . . . “
The house was full the night I attended, and I heard conversation all around me. Theatre goers were polite, but I couldn’t help reflecting on their remarks with some irony. One nice, friendly woman remarked that AI had told her that she probably wouldn’t understand The Designated Mourner.
Another small group of audience members agreed at intermission that they would understand it better once ChatGPT explained it to them. I wondered if any of them would take a stab at reading John Donne’s The Flea or Batter My Heart, Three-Person’d God without resorting to AI for an explanation of the passions and themes within those pieces.
I felt a strange empathy and compassion for my fellow audience members as we exited into the downtown San Luis Obispo night. I wondered how far we have gone without even knowing it. In the days since attending the play, I’ve thought about it and my audience peers often, and they will linger in my shadowy thoughts for a while.
I look forward to future Ubu’s Other Shoe productions and the thought-provoking worlds that are invoked by a few actors in black standing before microphones creating stories in a dark theatre’s full house.