Love in a Time of Lonely: Plays to Get You Through- Part 1, Burn This
It is a truth selfishly recognized, that I’m on some bad day bullshit. Ask anyone who knows me semi-intimately and I’m usually on some sort of bullshit. However, this bad day bullshit has been nothing but a perpetual slime covering nearly aspect of me. It coats me like scum and mold on a shower curtain, like unbrushed teeth, sleep sour and furry with bacteria. Bad day bullshit makes it difficult to feel like a writer, like a storyteller. Bad day bullshit draws a sickly green and grey veil over things that always used to bring me joy, that now, only make me feel useless, unproductive, and just plain loserly…see? Can’t even find a decent adjective; just bastardized some poor noun into an adverb-jective.
Like many others feeling isolated bad day bullshit, I am turning to the one thing that has ever cut through any bad feelings, I have, bullshit or no. I am turning to theater, particularly stories of grief, trauma, and loneliness overpowered, and these stories have been my saving grace. They remind me a person’s moments of unbearable loss and isolation can be over come and soothed by connecting and loving another. Love stories where that connection comes from the recognition of two very distant people finding each other and helping each other transition into their most tender often still healing but hopeful selves. The story that has been the greatest salve when I need it is Lanford Wilson’s Burn This. A love story born from the death of a mutually important person to both protagonists’ lives. Though not in the same way.
We follow Anna. A seasoned dancer/new choreographer, and woman who ‘hasn’t had to make her own way much’ grieving the death of her best friend, roommate, dance partner, collaborator and muse, Robbie. Anna has returned from spending the night with Robbie’s family who did not know him at all. This feeling becomes fact when Robbie’s brother Jimmy (though everyone calls him Pale), blows into Anna’s apartment in the middle of the night, coked out and ready to pick a fight. Together, they work out their feelings of loss over someone neither of them seemed to know completely. Through expressing these big vulnerabilities to each other, this loose connection becomes and inevitable bond both struggle to bring to fruition. Whether it be because they are ‘apples and oranges’ or because of Anna’s being ‘afraid to feel something’. The play ends when both are set up to see each other and are finally honest with how deeply their feelings for each other go and their love and connections bring the audience a satisfying and joyful conclusion. In order for that end to happen, we still have to meet the characters where they are. With Anna, we immediately understand why she want’s to be alone, because…
“ ANNA: I think if I have someone to cry on I’ll fall
apart completely.” (Wilson, 6)
Anna chooses to cloister herself because she feels Robbie’s absence so deeply. If she actually expresses herself, she doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to push forward. We know this is what Robbie wanted for her, though she’s frightened since her driving force has left her alone ‘at this late date, by myself’ (Wilson, 8). Another reason she isolates herself from the beginning is rooted in her anger at Robbie’s family. They didn’t give her room to say goodbye at Robbie’s funeral, and she didn’t get the closure to assist with her moving on.
“ANNA: I’m just so annoyed with myself because all
I can feel is anger.” (Wilson, 24)
While Anna is left alone with this rage over Robbie’s death, who comes in a tantrum of nuclear proportions, expressing all that pent up rage Anna has just felt a page before?
“PALE: Goddamn this fuckin’ place how can anybody
live in this shit city?” (Wilson, 25)
Pale’s literal entrance reflects everything Anna says she feels in the previous scene; they share in each other’s anger. Then when the audience and Anna least expect it, Pale realizes just how great the loss of his brother is for him. He begins to cry and appear to have a heart breaking panic attack in front of an almost complete stranger.
“PALE: (sobs again) I don’t do this, this ain’t me. Aww,
shit. I’m trying to imagine him here.” (Wilson, 37)
Through Pale’s ignorance of Robbie’s adult life, Anna gets to remember and both realize they are going through the exact same feelings of rage and grief. This realization is how these two very solitary people escalate the scene into an emotional expulsion that includes Pale ‘crying all over Anna’s hair’ to both holding each other, stumbling into a physically intimate moment, and both characters can begin to transition from this dark grief.
With this bond fostered, these characters begin moving on without Robbie. We see this as Anna gets a choreography job all on her own. This is progress, however she is still afraid of bringing her personal life and feelings to the stage. She is still choosing isolation because she is still afraid to show anyone ‘who she really is’ (Wilson, 53). This can frustrate the audience, especially when we immediately see Pale literally fall into the apartment reeling from a bender, staying the night with Anna, and then asking her if she wants to pursue a relationship with him. When Anna is scared to give up her safety for fear of losing something personal, we see Pale call her out.
“PALE: I’m not dangerous. You don’t think I’m dangerous.
You’re afraid of me is what you think.
ANNA: Okay, fine.
PALE: Why? You’re afraid you might get interested. Have to
feel somethin’.” (Wilson. 85)
This is the heart of Pale’s argument. He knows Anna and he are cut from the same cloth. He knows they both need and was change. He knows they should be taking it on together. It is only when Anna says she doesn’t feel anything for him that Pale leaves because he takes it for the truth. The shocking thing is, with his exit, Anna goes through a huge loss all over again, and we see Anna actually feel grief in sorrow instead of anger that she can’t point at anyone but herself.
“ANNA: Ohhhhh! I feel miserable.” (Wilson, 88)
We hear all about Anna’s loneliness without Pale. How she’s only expressing her feelings through the dance she’s creating. Then we finally get to see her and Pale recognize the frightening aspect of coming together.
“PALE:…I never felt like this.
ANNA…I…uh…I haven’t either.
PALE: I don’t know what to do with myself here.” (Wilson, 98)
When they both express this, they both take the first step toward actually transitioning into a new life with each other, and that they are gonna love and support each other through it, no matter how long that is, they will get through it, because they are gonna get through it together.
It is that type of love and unity in this love story that has been able to cut through my bad day bullshit. It shows me that if I can push through loneliness, if I can look for people who feel similarly when adversities and hard transitions come, there will always be people who will hold your hand and cry all over your hair.
Sources
Wilson, Lanford. “Burn This”. 2019. Theatrical Script.
