This monologue is from Long Day's Journey Into Night, by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. Although the play was first published in 1956, it was written more than ten years earlier -- on the brink, and during the first few months, of the United States' engagement in World War Two. This particular piece resonates both in the familial sense and in the historical sense: A dying young man grapples with his place within his family, within his country, within his own skin. While the piece is set in a particular time and place, the themes represented are timeless: dysfunctional family, the notion of being a bastard child, addiction, deep-rooted fear, death.
"I have always been drawn to the bastard children of theater, starting with Shakespeare's Edmund. This piece resonated with me as a modern take of the notion of bastardization, that is, of someone whose place in the world exists outside of what is considered 'normal,' someone who exists in the feeling of being "alone, and above and apart." As a transgender person, such a feeling of bastardization is enacted in my daily existance. And, like O'Neill's Edmund, I find solace and belonging in the natural world."
"The natural world is full of rebirth and death and rebirth. There is comfort in the cyclical nature of things. In this time that we live in, too, we are surrounded by loss. We have all lost people over the past couple of years, whether to the virus, or to political strife, or to other illnesses that take people too young. As it is, we must always be familiar with -- and "just a little bit in love with" -- death." -Fionn Shea
15 сен 2024
