nurtured hopes that one day the play might be programmed by the Shaw Festival; this, owing to my passion for the period, as well as my enduring regard for the Festival itself, then under the direction of Christopher Newton. Alas, the mandate had yet to be expanded to include works such as mine that were set but not written during Shaw’s lifetime – just as well, for
The Arab’s Mouth
had some critical evolutionary transformations to undergo before it became
Belle Moral
.
After
The Arab’s Mouth
premiered, I knew that it was not quite finished and, in keeping with my experience as a playwright and collaborator, I fully expected to return to it. I got distracted, however, by another project which I thought would be a play but turned out to be a novel.
Fall On Your Knees
developed many of the themes and images that I had touched on in
The Arab’s Mouth
, and I came to see the play as a progenitor – or, to change metaphors, as a kind of sketch book for the novel. Years went by and I sought to lay to rest the little voice at the back of my mind insisting, “What about me?”
The Arab’s Mouth
had become a ghost that would not rest, and no amount of fiction, or indeed other theatre work, would quiet it. Thus, when Jackie Maxwell invited me to revisit the piece, I was completely delighted and my initial inner response was, “No.” Writing is hard. Rewriting is harder. And I was scared to look that deeply into my creative past, having never glanced at the script in all those intervening years. What would I find upon re-entering that abandoned house? Would the ghosts be angry? Spoiling for a fight? Or in the mood for a party? And what would my much younger self have to say to me now, an experienced writer striding in to turn it all upside down?
The first step was to read the play again after almost fourteen years. I did so, looking and listening for one thing – a heartbeat. There is a good reason why certain ghosts refuse to rest: they’re not dead. There was indeed a heartbeat. A strong one. I was put in mind of a young race horse, all bony, and pounding with vitality, panting with the passion to run, bursting from the starting gate inall directions at once. It was all over the map, but it was alive.
I did much more work on the script than I, or I think Jackie, expected. Characters and elements of plot that I had once thought of as structurally and thematically integral went the way of the demolition crew without a tremor, clearing the way for new characters as well as new – if certainly fewer – story elements. A great deal had happened in the world and in my life as an artist since 1990, and my world-view had grown. Whereas
The Arab’s Mouth
was an almost truculent assertion of the primacy of the irrational and the relativistic,
Belle Moral
reaches out in two directions to reconcile the extremes of rationalism and romanticism, in an attempt to re-envision and to articulate afresh those core Enlightenment values that engendered the freedom and equality that we take for granted at our peril. Today, the forces of fundamentalism threaten to undo that civilized and precious mess we call democracy, substituting simple answers and ruthless solutions in the place of plurality and debate, promoting superstition and prejudice over curiosity and courage. The Scopes Trial is being replayed in North American schools even as real-life chimeras are being created in labs – and moral vacuums – around the world; this mixture of backward thinking and highly sophisticated technology is potentially explosive.
But I’m essentially a comedian. Which is to say, an informed, jaded, jaundiced, optimist. Theremay be unhappy endings to stories, but all stories are happy, because as long as there are stories, there is hope. If even one person – or indeed, creature – is able to emerge from the rubble of our own making to say, “I remember what happened. Listen, and I’ll tell you,” that’s a happy ending. Bearing witness can
The Arab’s Mouth
had some critical evolutionary transformations to undergo before it became
Belle Moral
.
After
The Arab’s Mouth
premiered, I knew that it was not quite finished and, in keeping with my experience as a playwright and collaborator, I fully expected to return to it. I got distracted, however, by another project which I thought would be a play but turned out to be a novel.
Fall On Your Knees
developed many of the themes and images that I had touched on in
The Arab’s Mouth
, and I came to see the play as a progenitor – or, to change metaphors, as a kind of sketch book for the novel. Years went by and I sought to lay to rest the little voice at the back of my mind insisting, “What about me?”
The Arab’s Mouth
had become a ghost that would not rest, and no amount of fiction, or indeed other theatre work, would quiet it. Thus, when Jackie Maxwell invited me to revisit the piece, I was completely delighted and my initial inner response was, “No.” Writing is hard. Rewriting is harder. And I was scared to look that deeply into my creative past, having never glanced at the script in all those intervening years. What would I find upon re-entering that abandoned house? Would the ghosts be angry? Spoiling for a fight? Or in the mood for a party? And what would my much younger self have to say to me now, an experienced writer striding in to turn it all upside down?
The first step was to read the play again after almost fourteen years. I did so, looking and listening for one thing – a heartbeat. There is a good reason why certain ghosts refuse to rest: they’re not dead. There was indeed a heartbeat. A strong one. I was put in mind of a young race horse, all bony, and pounding with vitality, panting with the passion to run, bursting from the starting gate inall directions at once. It was all over the map, but it was alive.
I did much more work on the script than I, or I think Jackie, expected. Characters and elements of plot that I had once thought of as structurally and thematically integral went the way of the demolition crew without a tremor, clearing the way for new characters as well as new – if certainly fewer – story elements. A great deal had happened in the world and in my life as an artist since 1990, and my world-view had grown. Whereas
The Arab’s Mouth
was an almost truculent assertion of the primacy of the irrational and the relativistic,
Belle Moral
reaches out in two directions to reconcile the extremes of rationalism and romanticism, in an attempt to re-envision and to articulate afresh those core Enlightenment values that engendered the freedom and equality that we take for granted at our peril. Today, the forces of fundamentalism threaten to undo that civilized and precious mess we call democracy, substituting simple answers and ruthless solutions in the place of plurality and debate, promoting superstition and prejudice over curiosity and courage. The Scopes Trial is being replayed in North American schools even as real-life chimeras are being created in labs – and moral vacuums – around the world; this mixture of backward thinking and highly sophisticated technology is potentially explosive.
But I’m essentially a comedian. Which is to say, an informed, jaded, jaundiced, optimist. Theremay be unhappy endings to stories, but all stories are happy, because as long as there are stories, there is hope. If even one person – or indeed, creature – is able to emerge from the rubble of our own making to say, “I remember what happened. Listen, and I’ll tell you,” that’s a happy ending. Bearing witness can
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