In Defense of the Dark

Apparently, some Israelis make jokes about suicide bombing. After running with friends in The Race for the Cure in D.C., a survivor of breast cancer hosted a Not Dead Yet party. A good octogenarian playwright friend of mine – maybe he’s septuagenarian, not sure; either way he’s alluded he’s up there — makes frequent jabs at his age, using terms like ‘hospice care’ and ‘coffin’ with the same ease as I use ‘venti.’ Is he scared of dying? Don’t know. Am I scared he’ll die? Absolutely. But my concern won’t coat him in immortality any more than someone in the Middle East or the terminal ward can affect safety from his neighbor and her body by worrying.

So how do you survive day to day in a dark world?

By laughing your head off.

When someone is so deeply entrenched in a certain way of life – a dark life, let’s say, in a sinisterly magical basement apartment — she finds whatever treats lay in the trash and transforms them into tricks. They become armor, an arsenal. They become the stuff of dark humor – ways of diffusing the soul-shrapnelizing sadness of life without numbing yourself to its truth in the process. At one point in Mouse in a Jar, one of the sisters considers the most efficient vehicle for the rat poison she hopes her unresponsive mother will finally feed her husband:

Hey, Ma, dumplings?, I know those

you just like stuff, seal, ‘n sew

but sausage?    Spikin sausage?

That’s  like, expertly-hard-to-pull-off though

He eats that first  so

‘Could shave a couple minutes off. I think. Ya know?

…

Hey, maybe you could bread it? Like, into it? Like mix some bread crumbs ‘n some rat-kill ‘n like roll the thing like, into it?

There’s nothing funny about the man who fathered you asphyxiating on your kitchen floor. And what laughter could possibly come from witnessing the bruised body of your mother at his hands? But Mouse in a Jar is not a murder plot. Nor is it “about” domestic abuse. With respect to diverse people with diverse histories in diverse situations, the play doesn’t make light of the world’s terrors. But you certainly didn’t need me to tell you that abuse is wrong. Compassionate, humane person that you are, you know that. Why would anyone over age five attend a play featuring the alphabet? Well-orthographically-versed person that you are, you know B follows A and C follows B so why in the world see a play set in a kindergarten classroom?

Because there may be a kid in there with a story to tell you.

Mouse in a Jar has a story to tell you.

And it’s not that abuse is bad.

I hope to see you in the audience. Unless I explode in the plane to Chicago. Or go blind mid-show. Kidding.

Stumble it!