#christopher shinn

[some-trace-of-her]

[moonwest]

Against - my thoughts

Do you think I came to bring peace on earth?  No, I tell you, but division.

Luke 12:51

I hadn’t realized Christopher Shinn quoted this before the play, but it works perfectly in terms of how Luke impacts people as he starts his project.

I would argue though that division, and violence (whether physical, emotional, manipulative or even just implicit) are a part of most of the interactions between the characters, despite their best intentions to bridge those gaps of understanding, support or intimacy.  Oftentimes, despite their best efforts, they hurt the very people they are trying to help. So while it’s not all on Luke, his “calling” sets in motion a train of events and interactions that seem inevitable.

Luke points out that we avoid thinking about violence – about its potential within ourselves and why it happens in the first place.  There are no easy answers and in most cases it is, as he says, frightening, confusing and painful.

Tom’s shooting of his classmate and suicide are unfathomable; his father can only make sense of it all by dismissing his son as being “born bad” and one of the “losers of the world”. This sentiment is echoed to some extent by Tom’s friend Tim.  Neither can imagine their role or admit possible culpability in Tom’s anger and subsequent acts of aggression, and while Dan is willing to talk to Luke, and later to Tom’s mother, his father refuses to engage or even ascribe any good intentions to Luke, and this inability to talk about it results in his leaving Tom’s mother in an attempt to start over.  She, on the other hand, wants to understand and reaches out to Luke and her community but in the end she is unable to offer Tim any forgiveness for rejecting her son and likely setting in motion his terrible actions..

The play shows this over and over again; despite anyone’s best efforts, no one can be all things to all people; someone will always be left out, hurt, misunderstood, manipulated.

Melvyn and Tracey move haltingly into a relationship but her past (while unsaid, we can assume she was a victim of abuse and finds it difficult to believe anyone would ever want her outside of sex) make it seemingly impossible.  Chris wants Dan to overcome his addiction and sees his potential, but at the same time he supplies Dan with the very drugs that are ruining his life.  

Anna’s professor wants to help her – he’s clearly keen to support her talent as a writer and encourage her growth as a human being and member of a diverse society, but his own agenda, personal priorities and inner pain prevent him from really understanding what she’s trying to say.  His counselling eventually (certainly as their scenes are played) causes her great distress and to doubt herself.  And this is repeated in his debate with Luke; he has some very valid points to make, and is passionately sincere in condemning how society treats sex workers, but his zeal and desire to confront Luke results in  misunderstanding, aggression and finally an inability to continue the conversation.

 Luke genuinely wants to help people, but in an effort to be fair hurts a mother and son dealing with cancer and a father unable to understand how Luke can sympathize with criminals when his son has been so grievously hurt.  He cannot (until much later) allow himself to feel and offer Sheila the intimacy she craves and even his relationship with his mother is strained.

As the play progresses we witness more characters increasingly unable to accept or even deal with violence.   While Luke confronts the shooter, Jon escapes, Sheila remains but is unable to watch the livestream,   Anna accepts Chris’s offer of drugs so she can forget, and even Tom’s mother turns off the news.  Even the shooter’s targeting of Luke comes from his refusal to accept his changing world and his need to find someone to blame who must be punished.

Only Luke, it seems, has the courage to confront violence (though he is increasingly dismayed as he realizes his best efforts only seem to make everything worse), as he tries to change the world, ending in his meeting with the shooter to save him from hurting others, but also, one senses, to save him from himself.  

Throughout the play, Luke speaks of the guilt and sense of responsibility we carry within ourselves for the violence we influence, enact or just witness and says that “the more we accept such feelings, the greater the chances that we can transform them into something good – into forgiveness and love.”

Kate’s forgiveness of Luke gives him the impetus to finally connect with Sheila and create a plan to address violence that might actually work.  Luke is flawed and despite his intentions not always sympathetic, but the very act of forgiveness and sacrifice he extends to the shooter prevents another suicide, and opens the door for Melvyn and Tracey to hope they can build a meaningful relationship.

The play itself presents these ideas and situations to the audience, and much like the characters provides no real resolution or easy answers.  And so it’s understandable why reactions have been mixed.  Many of the scenes are uncomfortable to witness.  Why have some acts of violence (repeated daily on our society) been addressed, but not others?  Has the playwright lost the script when he stresses the need for diversity and acceptance while at the same time seeming to criticize “political correctness” gone too far?  Does some of the dialogue seem more like a teaching moment than realistic? I’m not sure it works as a narrative journey so much as an exploration of ideas.  But I do know that two weeks after seeing it, I’m still thinking about what it all means.  And I can understand why Ben Whishaw was drawn to the challenge, much like Luke was.

[wonderfulwhishaw]

Mark Rylance and Hayley Atwell attend first night of Against

[themuller13]

AGAINST

Christopher Shinn: Discussion and Signing

The Drama Book Shop is pleased to welcome back acclaimed playwright Christopher Shinn (Picked, Teddy Ferrara) to celebrate the release of his new play Against, and his latest collection Plays: 2 from Methuen Books on Tuesday, October 10th at 5:00pm. Shinn will sit down with playwright and Drama Book Shop Events Manager Steven Carl McCasland for a discussion about his plays and read from his latest work. Copies of both books will be available for purchase, and the discussion will be followed by a signing. Admission is free and open to the public.

Event date:

Tuesday, October 10, 2017 - 5:00pm

Event address:

The Drama Book Shop, Inc250 West 40th StreetNew York, NY 10018-1511

The event is live tweeted:

https://twitter.com/MethuenDrama/status/915247178129518592

@a-forger-and-a-point-man

[willstafford]

For

AGAINST

Almeida Theatre, London, Saturday 16th September, 2017

  Luke is a billionaire whose companies are at the forefront of technological development: IT, space travel, you name it.  When he receives a ‘message from God’ he decides to change his ways and become more pro-active in changing the world for the better.  There are shades of Bill Gates’s philanthropy here, along with touches of Elon…

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[thefrogsennaneverfound]

So no one’s really talking about “Against”...

After “Hamlet” opened at the Almeida the Andrew Scott tag was full to bursting with enthusiastic talk about it; tomorrow’s the last night and everyone’s still talking about it and marvelling over how amazing it is. 

I’ve been keeping an eye on the Ben Whishaw tag to see what people have to say about “Against” and there’s been hardly anything. Most of what I’ve seen has either conveyed disappointment or just talked about having met Ben when going to see the play. 

Does anyone have anything good to say about it? I certainly don’t. In fact, I’m angry. I went to see this play with my sister, who’s written several plays. I’m not be biased - they’re good. They’re well written, entertaining, full of drama and humour and well-round characters. But she knows no one in the business so can only submit blindly, along with thousands of others, to the small handful of companies that accept scripts from unstaged/unpublished writers. This pile of utterly abysmal excrement got an incredibly prestigious platform with a very highly regarded lead actor yet she can’t get further than the huge pile of anonymous scripts that get read by someone who’s already ploughed through a dozen other plays that day and it probably pretty jaded by it all. I’m not saying hers are the most amazing plays in the world but they’re infinitely better than the pointless tosh that Christopher Shinn spewed out and the Almeida chose to stage and Ben Whishaw chose to star in. 

I don’t often put my head above the parapet on Tumblr but I’m so frustrated that such unbelievably bad writing got such a high profile staging when there’s so much out there that’s so much better. It just really really pisses me off and I had to say something. 

[some-trace-of-her]

[some-trace-of-her]

Ben photographed by Nadav Kander for Almeida Theatre.