Reading the Alethiometer

I was speaking to my wife today about reading plays and giving comments and criticism. "You don't like when I give you feedback, do you?" she asked. In truth, I love when my wife gives me feedback. However, when I ask for feedback, I'm often looking for something deep... I couldn't find the words to describe it.

Then, I remembered the alethiometer, better known as The Golden Compass in the His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman. The name comes from "alètheia," Greek for "Truth." So, in essence, it's a measurer of truth. Here's a description of the device from the novel:

"It was very like a clock, or a compass, for there were hands pointing to places around the dial, but instead of the hours or the points of the compass there were several little pictures, each of them painted with extraordinary precision... There was an anchor; an hourglass surmounted by a skull; a bull, a beehive... Thirty-six altogether... There were three little knurled winding-wheels... and each of them turned one of the three shorter hands... You could arrange them to point at any of the pictures... The fourth hand was longer and more slender, and seemed to be made of a duller metal than the other three. Lyra couldn't control its movement at all; it swung where it wanted to, like a compass-needle, except that it didn't settle."

Okay, what does this have to do with reading/seeing a play? I'm getting to that. In order to get into it, I have to expand on the thought of reading the alethiometer itself. You ask the device a question, maneuvering the three knobs to point the hands to different symbols. Then, the answer comes from the fourth hand as it whips and spins to different symbols, giving the answer. Each symbol "stands for a whole series of things. Take the anchor, there. The first meaning of that is hope, because hope holds you fast like an anchor so you don't give way. The second meaning is steadfastness. The third meaning is snag, or prevention. The fourth meaning is the sea. And so on, down to ten, twelve, maybe a never-ending series of meanings..."

But it's not just the symbols that create the answer; it's also the frame of mind of the reader that helps the answer come to light. You have to be able to hold all the symbols in your mind and then see down to the depths, through all the levels of meaning behind each symbol. The books describe this as an almost trance-like state of mind.

I believe that plays are, themselves, alethiometers, each with their own "symbols" and levels of meaning to be interpreted and understood. Some are able to reach an understanding through intellectual means, research and the like. Some come to understand meaning in a more intuitive way. When I came to this realization, I was able to tell my wife that I respect her feedback, but now see that when I ask for her it, I expect her to immediately see to the very deepest level of understanding of my plays, and become impatient when she can only see the surface meanings at first. I need to cultivate patience to let her catch up.

Melanie Marnich once said that a play begins when a question is asked and ends when the question is answered. I agree, but the answer a play comes to shouldn't be simple, shouldn't be given in a happy package. The question should lead you into the murky depths of perception and understanding. The answer won't be clear. As in reading the alethiometer, you have to actively engage in it if you are to witness the flash of epiphany, the gust of comprehension that quickly and almost imperceptibly flows through your mind.

What do you think of this?

Teaching

In a fit of odd desperation at work, I went to a "huddle room" (rooms with little tables and chairs and dry erase boards for small meetings) and I started to teach a class on playwriting. To no one. Like a young girl has a tea party with stuffed animals, or how I used to play "Mass" when I was a kid, dressing up in one of my father's T-shirts and using grape juice and Lays Potato Chips as communion. Of course, since my congregation consisted of myself, I ate a lot of chips as a kid. I still feel a twinge of sacredness when I have a bag of Lays...

Anyway, so I was teaching this class, starting with Aristotelian principles and Freytag's Triangle. I broke this down further into a basic three-act structure, using terminology gained from Christopher Nolan's film The Prestige: The Pledge, the Turn, and the Prestige.


I then moved into a discussion of how this structure works in Caryl Churchill's Far Away, moving from something ordinary to something exceedingly outrageous and unexpected.

I told my imaginary students that another name for "The Prestige" was "Perception Shift," which was taught to me by Sherry Kramer. (We would be investigating this throughout the semester.)

They could also look forward to our session on adaptations, (my forte, my calling as Sherry Kramer decreed one night, "I know what you should do with your life! Adaptation!") and we would be going over such plays as Tallgrass Gothic by Melanie Marnich (one of those other playwrights who have pushed me into a better understanding of myself as a playwright).

My class was cut short by the end of my break, and, sadly, I have left my imaginary students out in the cold. I haven't had a chance to start our workshops, see what they're writing. I'm way behind on my syllabus... Hell, I haven't even created my syllabus!

I'm a poor excuse for an imaginary playwriting professor.