The Elusive "Hades & Persephone"

Since high school, I've been trying to create a play adaptation of "Hades & Persephone," but have continually failed to wrap my head around the material or figure out "how" to actually proceed. At first, I tried to craft a Rock-Opera with very disastrous effects. Failure 1.

Then, I tried making it a children's play. My mind is too far in the gutter to write for children. Failure 2.

Then, maybe just a musical. And it's been sitting around as a musical idea, musical comedy in the vein of "Rent" meets "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum." But without any lyric-writing talent, I failed yet again.

This year, I've been exposing myself to the work and writings of Bertolt Brecht who longed to create a theatre that was rowdy and styled after a boxing match, where the audience had a chance to take part and root for certain characters. Brecht used music as a way to puncture the play and get down to the subtle ironies within the plays' ideas. Thinking about this, and while taking a workshop with playwright Melanie Marnich, I was able to get some wonderful ideas for how to create "Hades & Persephone" into a play that is fun and has a bite to it. What was essential was that I get into Hades' head and investigate his mental and emotional journey.

The source material for "Hades & Persephone" is, at its core, about a grown man, isolated and lonely, who, for the first time, has to deal with desire and love for a woman. I mean, come on, imagine this: You're like thirty and you’ve never had an erection in your life and suddenly, your penis gets hard, goes erect, you start blubbering, you look at this thing, this woman across the way and you need it, you NEED it! Imagine trying to decipher it as an adult who has already figured out most of the questions for yourself. I know who I am, I know what I want in this world, I know what my life is about, and I got no worries, cuz’... But when love or lust come into it, when you got this thing going for some hot chick, everything has to shift.

Well, you think that you can still be yourself and have this other person in your life, in your house, but then you realize this other person is another person with all her own damn baggage and there’s this one thing, or tons of little things that don’t match with your world order, they don’t mesh with your whole world, and now you’ve got this person in your house that you don’t want there. What the hell do you do with this person? You’ve satisfied your lust, so the NEED isn’t quite so strong as it used to be and you’re just left with, oh, there’s a person in my house that is around and what the hell am I going to do with this person?

And this person starts changing your world around, and it’s like, hey, don’t touch that! That’s mine! Or, don’t move that there, that’s been over there for ten years! Don’t throw that out, that’s mine! You have to make concessions and revisions and compromises that you don’t want to make. You start to doubt who you are, and somehow, in the midst of everything, you’ve begun to define yourself as yourself with that other person. You’re not just you, you’re you AND her. You’re a couple. A set. A pair. You’re no longer an individual, you’re part of a half.

Oh my God, and if that person goes away, who the hell are you then?! You’re not you. You AND her. Other people start defining you as a couple. Hell, they want to see you, but what if they don’t feel like having her around, too? Then, well, shit, they don’t invite you because you can’t come on your own because you’re you AND her, not just you anymore! And how do you get back to you? Maybe you can dump her, get rid of her, knock her off, kick her out, do something to get her out of your life and get yourself back on track, back to you. But! But if you ever did get rid of her, she’d end up taking a piece of you with her. What piece, I don’t know, but some piece, she’d make off with some part of you, some part of you that she’s made her own, something that you are ONLY WITH HER. And if you were on your own or with someone else, you wouldn’t be the same guy.

Maybe you should have just left well enough alone. Because sure, sometimes nights are lonely, but at least you were you and knew who you were, but now, you have someone, but you’re not completely sure where she leaves off and you begin. And she doesn’t hold up her part of the bargain somehow. You can’t control her. At least with the TV, you can mute it or turn it off or record something and watch it later, but she’s this thing with ideas and thoughts and feelings of her own, and damnit, she will make them known, she will tell you and there’s no mute button, there’s no off switch, there’s no way that you can tell her “Later, damnit! Just tell me later and get the fuck off my back right now because I don’t want to hear it! I’m not in the mood!” Fuck your mood. Your moods are moot. The second you start saying what you’re really feeling, you’re going to push her away and you’re back at losing some piece of yourself. And this piece, it’s not going to be like the woman takes your TV or takes your car or your fine china, she’s going to end up with something like your fucking dignity or self-worth, and she’s going to put it in her pocket and walk out that door with it. And late at night, when you’re crying because you only feel like half a man, and you really will be only half a man, at those times, she’ll take whatever she stole from you out of her pocket, and she’ll hold it in her pretty hand and laugh. Laugh at you and what she’s taken. But here’s a good part. You’ll have stolen something from her, too!