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Confronted with a crisis, what is the artistic impulse?
Is it to dive headlong in, and record suffering for future generations?
he continues, Or is it to make us forget the crisis?
To fill us, either by beauty or laughter, with the will to live.
Or or or, is it a rejection of art entirely, a mere fight for survival?
A turning away from the luxury of fiction?
If youre currently thinking, Oh, its one ofthoseplays, Harrison has anticipated your groans.
But as Creighton went on, I found myself won over.
A clever performer whose Who, me?
Weve traveled all the way through irony and come back around to earnestness.
The question playwrights are always asked, quips Creighton/Harrison, is, Where did the play come from?
And we are annoyed at this question.
Probably because were afraid that the minute we start answering it, well be making the whole thing smaller.
Not a way out, but a way through.
Its as if Harrison is searching for a defamiliarized-yet-still-accessible medieval vernacular and hasnt quite nailed it yet.
The result is that the characters feel rather … character-y.
Larking, the pompous director; Brom, the diffident do-gooder; Rona, the acerbic harlot.
Of course, the rub is that Harrison may well want it this way.
Shes staring to ask Why?
Shes starting to step out of pop in to become Human.
Or a nail that bleeds for us, so that we can be healed?
Do we deserve it?
Does it leave us complacent?
Should we be allowed to leave a theater these days feeling hope?
The Amateursis at the Vineyard Theatre through March 18.
