Iphigenia

I saw this very awesome play at Signature Theater this weekend called Iphigenia 2.0. It provided both subtle and anvil-like commentary on modern American life (one such example: "Is it all a matter of distance, then? If you were an old man sitting at home by the fire you would tsk tsk the war even as you went out to dinner and the theatre you might even be appalled by it but not for more than a moment or two before you got on with deciding which wine to have with your fish."). The basis in greek theater and mythology hilighted the timeless, universal qualities of present day struggles.

The full script, by Charles Mee, is available here, but I am posting part of the play's first monologue.

AGAMEMNON
I see that there are acts
that will set an empire on a course
that will one day
bring it to an end.

Because, we see from the histories of empires
none will last forever
and all are brought down finally
not by others
but by themselves,
from the actions that they take
that they believe are right or good
or necessary at the time to do.

Sometimes they are brought to ruin
by no more than the belief
that something must be done
when in truth
doing nothing would have been the better course.

To be sure,
an empire
cannot refuse to defend itself from absolute devastation
and so it will arrange to have the capacity
for self defense.
It will preserve itself first from extinction
and, as well, from lethal damage or great harm
and then, too, from hurt and ill-treatment
that could, if left unattended, lead to devastating injury,
and, so by degrees,
an empire will reason itself to a need to be immune even
from insult
responding, finally,
to the anxieties and nightmares
that arise from within,
and so: striking out
at the phantasms of its own dreams.

Of course, it will know that a nation must protect its borders
and, in order to do that,
must secure its periphery
and so it will come to attend to conditions just beyond its
outermost bounds
and thus, by increments,
its interests will grow,
until they will have been extended beyond an ability to defend them.
They will have created new enemies along the way.
They will have created the causes of wars
where there were none before.
Even if an empire begins with no ambition
with no desire for conquest
no wish to grow
even so, it will feel it must grow or die
and so it grows
and thus it dies.
Ruin, it would seem,
is inherent in the nature of empire.

Might this fate be avoided
or at least
postponed?
Might something else be done?
Are there no precepts to follow in this murky,
unpredictable world?
Often, it seems,
men of affairs think that moral laws
offer no useful guide to behavior
that they are not meant for the practical business of the world
forgetting
that moral laws are nothing more nor less
than the accumulated folk wisdom
of millenia of human experience.
And so it will happen
that some moral law of an unforgiving nature is violated--
a law against boundless desire,
or cruelty
a law against coercion
or indifference to the humanity of others
a law against initiating violence
or being required,
in the pursuit of some goal,
to commit an act that anyone might see
is heinous
something finally is done that is so deeply wrong
that the world must rise and crush it
in order for the world itself to go on.

We may have felt some qualm about our behavior along the way
but we will have dismissed it
thinking it is a secondary thing
lesser,
insignificant in the context of the great demands
we have placed upon ourselves
and yet this qualm we feel
will have been sent to us by our deepest wisdom.
It is a warning to us.
We ignore it at our peril.


I've been seeing a lot of new theatrical works lately-- off-broadway, at fringe festivals, etc. Really makes me want to get back to my roots and start writing plays again.