Third

[frameofmind6]

Well, I had to order a back issue of American Theatre Magazine to do it, but I finally found a copy of the play Third, by Wendy Wasserstein. Never thought it would be that difficult to locate, since she's a relatively well-known playwright, and the show played Off-Broadway, and I saw a production of it at the Guthrie just last year (which was why I knew it existed in the first place)--but apparently the only place it's ever been published was in the April 2006 edition of American Theatre Magazine. Crazy. I suppose things were complicated by the fact that she died shortly after writing it though--maybe it never got published more formally because she wasn't around to have it done, or something.

Anyway, I'm really glad I finally found it. I need a couple of monologues and scenes and things to bring to my acting class this semester, and that play has some really great ones--monologues, especially. It's about this ultra-feminist, liberal college professor who suspects one of her students (a handsome, athletic young man who strikes her as right-wing, and basically a symbol of all that's wrong with the world) of cheating, and basically ruins his life because of it. What I really love about the play is that I can identify with both sides of the conflict. I mean, the boy definitely questions some of her comfortable, ultra-feminist ideas (things like some rather extreme interpretations of classic literature and so forth), but he definitely doesn't strike me as being super-conservative (and as you know if you've been reading my entries lately, I'm not exactly pro-conservative myself... *grin*)--just curious and open-minded. He makes some very good points, and not in a way that makes it seem like he's pushing an agenda--he's just trying to figure things out himself. And she totally shuts him down, because she sees him as some kind of anti-intellectual, anti-feminist icon--she makes snap judgements based on small details about him, and magnifies them to turn him into a stereotype. On the other hand of course, I can see where she's coming from. She spends half the play complaining about Bush and the conservative right and the war in Iraq (most of this to her analyst--these are the monologues I'm looking for), and I totally agree with her on pretty much everything she says, and I sympathize with her anger, and I can even understand why she fights so hard against Third (the student) once she decides that he's this symbol--and yet, she's blinded by this righteous anger. Because, as it turns out, he's not the symbol she thinks he is. She's just so wrapped up in her ideals (which, after so many years of fighting, have grown a bit too comfortable, a bit too stale, and a bit too out of touch with the current reality) that she can't let go of the idea. Ultimately, she has so much anger bottled up about things she's in no position to change (like the war, and the president...) that she ends up focusing it all on this poor kid who was unlucky enough to give her the impression of being a symptom of those things.

Anyway, it's a really interesting play. It's horrible what she puts him through, but ultimately I never came to hate her--I knew too well where she was coming from. I think she'd be a really interesting character to play--I hope that magazine arrives soon, so I can start picking the play over for material (*grin*). In the meantime though, I'd better find a different monologue for next week...