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"A Body of Water" looks at a body of memory
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Edward Herrmann stars in "A Body of Water" as a man who wakes up with no memory...and a woman in bed next to him. (Photo by Michal Daniel)
What would you do if you woke up one morning, and didn't recognize where you were? Not only that, you didn't know WHO you were? A new Lee Blessing play at the Guthrie Lab in Minneapolis called "A Body of Water" explores the fluid nature of memory.

Minneapolis, Minn. — Playwright's Center Director Polly Carl had to read 500 plays last year, 300 of them as candidates for the center's annual Playlab Festival.

She says one piece stood out.

It reminded her of a story she heard during the recent Tsunami disaster. A couple were at a seaside resort, sitting at a café enjoying cocktails. Suddenly they were holding hands 30 feet under water.

"That's sort of what 'Body of Water' feels like," says Carl. "It feels like a couple that one minute knew who they were and what they were, and the next minute had absolutely no idea what turn their life had taken."

In Lee Blessing's play an elderly gentleman walks into an elegantly furnished living room wearing a silk dressing grown, a coffee cup in his hands. He looks out of the tall windows onto a body of water that appears to surround the house on all sides. Soon a woman joins him.

They both seem delighted, but also confused. Each finally admits they have no memory of who or where they are. Blessing says he started writing the play soon after his divorce, when he was asking himself some fundamental questions. How well do we really know ourselves? Or each other? Is it sometimes better to forget, than remember?

"I woke up one morning while I was writing a completely different kind of play with the premise for this play in my head," says Blessing. "It was a such a different kind of play, and since I didn't have to write it for anybody except myself - the other play was a commission - in a way it became the relief from the other play."

Blessing is known for telling topical stories, dealing with homophobia, politics, and AIDS. But this play is more abstract.

As it continues, the characters are forced to construct their own identities.

As he finished his early drafts Lee Blessing realized he had a problem. He says he knew where he wanted to start the story, and he knew how he wanted to end it, but he was concerned about how well he was getting there. Which is why he submitted "A Body of Water" to the Playwrights' Center. "After you've written a play for a while you really can't hear it anymore," says Blessing. "You know you can read it and its fine because it suits all the synapses in your brain but the problem is you're not writing it for you."

The Playwrights Center accepted the play and, as luck would have it, the Guthrie Theater had already chosen it for its upcoming season. It had also chosen Ethan McSweeny to direct. McSweeny says the summer Playlab Festival allowed him to start work early with what turned out to be some tricky material.

"Since one of the central questions of the play is how much are we constructed by our memories and who are we if don't have our memories," says McSweeny, "It's very difficult to come at the play in the usual fashion you would with actors about understanding the characters background story because these people are born every day with none."

At the playlab, actors read the play as Blessing and McSweeny watched and listened. Blessing ended up completely changing two acts. Then, he changed them back. Along the way he developed a better understanding of how his characters react to their situation. Their lack of memory transforms seemingly normal situations into fear-filled confrontations.

McSweeney says workshopping the play allowed him to discover the dramatic moments between the characters, which informed his design for the show. Usually a director is expected to come up with a design for a play before rehearsals even start. And McSweeny says it helped solidify what he calls the strange ritual of transferance that happens with a play.

"I mean there's a period where Lee knows the story he's telling better than anybody else. And then there's a period - and we're kind of getting to that now - where actually I as the director know the story that the production is telling better than anybody else," says McSweeny, "And then we're going to pass it off to the actors in a few days time and finally they will know the characters in the story they're telling better than anyone else."

The transferance will be complete when the audience shows up to see "A Body of Water." Then they will know the experience of the play better than the playwright, director or actors. Playwright Lee Blessing says he hopes that experience informs their own view of the world.

"I think it's good to alert the audience to the fact that we may all be chugging along in what we think of as reality but we may be missing enormous parts of life and perspectives on life that are really pretty crucial to have," says Blessing.

And that's something we should all remember. "A Body of Water" stars Michael Learned, Edward Herrmann and Michelle O'Neill.

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