Jeffrey Sweet–Making the Scene

When I teach playwriting, I talk a lot about objects. (There’s a chapter on it in my book, The Dramatist’s Toolkit.) One of the things I discuss is how, for example, two people negotiating over an object in a scene may reveal an enormous amount of what is going on between them under the surface. The subtext.

There is only one performer in Ed Schmidt’s Edward (Schmidt himself) but there are more than two dozen objects. And in passage after passage, Schmidt’s work illustrates my theory in action. (I should emphasize that, as far as I know, Schmidt is not aware of my theory, so I doubt it was his intent to do so.)

So, what are these objects? There are three books (Shakespeare, the Bible and JD Salinger), some maps, a postcard, a drawing, a Hummel figure, a baseball glove, a political button, and a dozen or so other things. Schmidt has a prepared speech relating to each of these and how each figures into the life of the fictional character, Edward O’Connell. Yes, I know – Ed, Edward – you can’t help but wonder how much autobiographical stuff is in there. Afterwards, I heard Schmidt say that maybe 5% came from his life and the rest was indeed fictional. Anyway, the Edward in the play spends most of his life teaching English in a private high school in New England. Each object reveals another aspect of Edward’s life. Some of the objects have only a meaning for him, a meaning that will die when he does. Some of the objects (the Salinger, a watercolor, the Hummel) are imbued with meaning because they were objects that also had meaning to others, and they illuminate his relationships to them.

For instance, the Salinger. Edward has taught Catcher in the Rye for years. A fellow member of the English department thinks it’s time to retire the book. The world and time Catcher illuminates are too remote to contemporary students, she says. She thinks a newer book might work better. In a faculty meeting, Edward rises to defend Catcher. He speaks of it so eloquently and with such passion that, surprisingly, when a vote comes, he prevails. After the meeting, the woman who proposed retiring Catcher takes him out for a drink. The meaning of her gesture doesn’t have to be articulated or analyzed by Schmidt. We are allowed to evaluate it ourselves. Schmidt trusts us to do that.

Though the speeches are written and memorized, the order in which they are performed varies from night to night. This sets up a huge number of possible orders in which the speeches may be performed. The order of the speeches is determined by the audience. Schmidt points to an audience member, who chooses an object, and the speech related to it is given. As soon as that passage is over, Schmidt points to someone else, who chooses another object, and he begins another speech.

The consequence is that what is foreshadowing one night is a callback another. The night I saw it, the first object chosen was a medical instrument, and the result was that the first speech told of events late in Edward’s life. This cast a sense of mortality over all that followed.

Schmidt’s attitude is not dissimilar to that of the Stage Manager in Our Town (a play that, I gather, has been referenced in some of Schmidt’s other work). Schmidt is sympathetic to Edward, but he is also a little detached. He reports on Edward’s missteps with an air of objectivity. But then, if Edward goofs up occasionally, so do we all, yes? The story of this obscure schoolteacher is very specific to the world of New Hampshire, but my expectation is that much of it will resonate with anybody. The only times I disengaged watching Edward were when I found Schmidt had unexpectedly reminded me of some issue in my life, and I couldn’t help but go there for a few lines before returning to the play.

And I’m guessing that that was intentional.