Another thing I spent a lot of time thinking about Saturday morning was the structure of the script itself. Jose Rivera uses a lot of repetition in words and images throughout both acts of the play, and I kept trying to figure out how those moments of repetition match up and what they mean. After sitting there deep in thought for a while, I drew myself a little timeline/picture that looked like this:
ACT 1 ACT 2
Golf Club (almost attack) - Furs (almost attack) ...repeated lines and images
Angel visitation - Marisol/Furs discussion of angels* ...image repetition
Ice Cream (set a man on fire) - Scar Tissue (was set on fire)
June as the burner of Lenny's dreams - June as the physical burner of dreams
Lenny/Marisol rape - Lenny/Marisol birth
Marisol's moment of complete un-compassion - June (Compassion) reawakened
*note: this is also the first time that Marisol admits, out loud, to
another human being that the Angel's visitation was not just a dream
Paralleling things between Act 1 and Act 2 like this, or laying Act 2 over the structure of Act 1 and seeing where things line up, we come to the end of Act 1 (with Marisol's un-compassion/moment of violence), but we still have a little bit left in Act 2. For the sake of blog-readers who are coming to see the show and don't want the ending completely spoiled, I won't go into detail about this last part of Act 2, except to say that it is in this final section that Marisol finds "restoration"/the "hope" that she has been searching for amid the decay of the world throughout the rest of the play.
Now get this: I again drew a picture (on the left) of this, trying to explain to Danny what I had been thinking about. Before I finished, Danny (who took a class on Eschatology in college 5-ish years ago, and consequently knows all these interesting and really cool things) got this really intrigued and excited look on his face. He patiently waited for me to explain how interesting it was that Act 2 has this extra section of restoration before throwing in his two cents:
That blows my mind.
ACT 1 ACT 2
Golf Club (almost attack) - Furs (almost attack) ...repeated lines and images
Angel visitation - Marisol/Furs discussion of angels* ...image repetition
Ice Cream (set a man on fire) - Scar Tissue (was set on fire)
June as the burner of Lenny's dreams - June as the physical burner of dreams
Lenny/Marisol rape - Lenny/Marisol birth
Marisol's moment of complete un-compassion - June (Compassion) reawakened
*note: this is also the first time that Marisol admits, out loud, to
another human being that the Angel's visitation was not just a dream
Paralleling things between Act 1 and Act 2 like this, or laying Act 2 over the structure of Act 1 and seeing where things line up, we come to the end of Act 1 (with Marisol's un-compassion/moment of violence), but we still have a little bit left in Act 2. For the sake of blog-readers who are coming to see the show and don't want the ending completely spoiled, I won't go into detail about this last part of Act 2, except to say that it is in this final section that Marisol finds "restoration"/the "hope" that she has been searching for amid the decay of the world throughout the rest of the play.
Now get this: I again drew a picture (on the left) of this, trying to explain to Danny what I had been thinking about. Before I finished, Danny (who took a class on Eschatology in college 5-ish years ago, and consequently knows all these interesting and really cool things) got this really intrigued and excited look on his face. He patiently waited for me to explain how interesting it was that Act 2 has this extra section of restoration before throwing in his two cents:
First, he drew me a picture - that's the lines and dots at the bottom-right of the image above - of the structure of the book of Revelation (which, may I point out, is the Biblical story of the end of the world; Marisol is a non-Biblical story of the end of the world...). Revelation is broken into seven sections, each of which contain a progression of elements that are repeated in each section. As the book progresses, each of the seven sections becomes more compact, but still repeats the pattern. This is interesting in comparison to Marisol, which, in Act 2, repeats the pattern of Act 1, but in a more succinct (i.e. without scene divisions; more free-flowing) way. So this play parallels Revelation. Very cool.
Then he told me that, in the New Testament (and more specifically, in the book of Revelation), the number seven symbolizes God, divinity, perfection, etc. The number six signifies humanity (short of divinity, perfection, etc.). Danny had noticed in my little timeline that Act 1 has six elements; Act 2 has seven. So it makes sense that Act 1 builds upon the imperfection of the world, the depravity, if you will, of humanity, while Act 2, by the end achieves a type of divinity.
That blows my mind.
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