So last weekend, Derek forgot we had rehearsal - although he did spend the morning intensely practicing his lines, his dialect and trying to get into character - and while this could have been a further drawback to my already sleep-deprived Saturday morning, it actually turned out to be a very good thing, giving me three solid hours to work on lines, discuss some of my questions with Bryan, and reflect on the script.
One of the things Bryan and I talked about was the character structure of Marisol: namely, there are only three characters with actual names in the script (Marisol, Lenny and June, as opposed to Golf Club, Ice Cream, Furs, Scar Tissue and Angel), and those three seem to represent the three most essential elements/capacities of the human spirit - Compassion (June), Faith (Lenny) and Power (Marisol). Each character, throughout the course of the play, explores the extremes of each of these elements (a rather trite example: Lenny's incredible faith in his belief system and personal story; everyone else's complete lack of faith in Lenny; then Lenny's faith completely destroyed).
My underlying question in this conversation had to do with why this play is about Marisol; why not June? Why not the next guy off the street? As we talked about the way playwright Jose Rivera structured these characters, I began to realize that part of the answer to this question has to do with Marisol representing Power: Faith and Compassion are great and essential things, but if there is no Power underlying them, they have no weight - it is not possible to put your Faith in something without using your Power to make a choice, to throw your Faith in one direction or another. Our power, and how we choose to use and direct it, is central to being human; that is why Marisol, representing the human element of Power, is the central character in this play.
Another, perhaps more obvious reason that the play is written about Marisol is the etymology of her name: "Marisol" means "sea and sun" (or "sea and sky"), quite literally encompassing all of creation. "Marisol" is also a form of the name "Mary", referencing Mary as the mother of Jesus, and thereby the mother of a new creation; in this play, Marisol serves the same role of ushering in a new creation. Marisol is also a person that almost all human beings can identify with - she is just another person on the street in some ways, middle class, easily placed in the generic categories of "female" and "minority", no family connections and no friends (besides June) to complicate our picture of her or make her a distinct character that we might have more trouble connecting with, typical in the way she looks to her job, her religion and her environment to identify herself; in some sense, she is a modern "everywoman".
The image above is a picture I drew on a napkin at Hacienda as I tried to explain my recent revelations about Marisol to my husband. Sometimes I think better in pictures than in words, so for those of you who are the same way, try to focus on the napkin drawing and don't try too hard to understand my rambling :)
One of the things Bryan and I talked about was the character structure of Marisol: namely, there are only three characters with actual names in the script (Marisol, Lenny and June, as opposed to Golf Club, Ice Cream, Furs, Scar Tissue and Angel), and those three seem to represent the three most essential elements/capacities of the human spirit - Compassion (June), Faith (Lenny) and Power (Marisol). Each character, throughout the course of the play, explores the extremes of each of these elements (a rather trite example: Lenny's incredible faith in his belief system and personal story; everyone else's complete lack of faith in Lenny; then Lenny's faith completely destroyed).
My underlying question in this conversation had to do with why this play is about Marisol; why not June? Why not the next guy off the street? As we talked about the way playwright Jose Rivera structured these characters, I began to realize that part of the answer to this question has to do with Marisol representing Power: Faith and Compassion are great and essential things, but if there is no Power underlying them, they have no weight - it is not possible to put your Faith in something without using your Power to make a choice, to throw your Faith in one direction or another. Our power, and how we choose to use and direct it, is central to being human; that is why Marisol, representing the human element of Power, is the central character in this play.
Another, perhaps more obvious reason that the play is written about Marisol is the etymology of her name: "Marisol" means "sea and sun" (or "sea and sky"), quite literally encompassing all of creation. "Marisol" is also a form of the name "Mary", referencing Mary as the mother of Jesus, and thereby the mother of a new creation; in this play, Marisol serves the same role of ushering in a new creation. Marisol is also a person that almost all human beings can identify with - she is just another person on the street in some ways, middle class, easily placed in the generic categories of "female" and "minority", no family connections and no friends (besides June) to complicate our picture of her or make her a distinct character that we might have more trouble connecting with, typical in the way she looks to her job, her religion and her environment to identify herself; in some sense, she is a modern "everywoman".
The image above is a picture I drew on a napkin at Hacienda as I tried to explain my recent revelations about Marisol to my husband. Sometimes I think better in pictures than in words, so for those of you who are the same way, try to focus on the napkin drawing and don't try too hard to understand my rambling :)
Leave a comment