by Will Dunne
• How would the story be different if the character had more power? Less power?
SPIRITUAL REALM
The spiritual realm can have a powerful influence on characters in a dramatic story. Spiritual factors include beliefs, activities, and events related to God, higher powers, faith, religion, the afterlife, the supernatural, the occult, reincarnation, ghosts, angels, miracles, psychic phenomena, and anything else above and beyond the natural plane.
In John Pielmeier’s Agnes of God, for example, a novice nun gives birth and claims that her pregnancy was the result of a miracle—an immaculate conception. In José Rivera’s Marisol, a woman’s guardian angel leaves her to join the other angels in a revolution against God. In Rajiv Joseph’s Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, ghosts roam the streets of Baghdad in search of the meaning of life. Sometimes it is the lack of spirituality that most affects a character, as in Tennessee Williams’s The Night of the Iguana, where a defrocked minister’s crisis of faith drives him to self-destructive behavior.
■ DOUBT: A PARABLE
The world of Doubt is governed by the Catholic Church. The religious beliefs and operational principles of this age-old institution fuel the certainty with which Sister Aloysius approaches everyday life and the duties of her job as the principal of St. Nicholas school. Armed with a credo that is both comprehensive and ironclad, she has no room for doubt. This credo is what will be undone by story events and lead to the final scene, where she begins to question not only the authority she has trusted but also the actions she has taken under its rule.
For a story dominated by the clergy, there are few demonstrations of religious practice. Aside from the attire of the characters, the only observable evidence of religious ritual are Flynn’s two sermons from the pulpit. We see no signs of other religious activity, such as praying or participating in sacraments. The role of the Church in modern life is debated briefly in scene 5, but spiritual topics are rarely discussed. Two exceptions occur in that same scene, when Sister James expresses her love of the Nativity and when Aloysius condemns the song “Frosty the Snowman” as pagan and heretical. The most direct biblical reference can be found in scene 7, when Flynn cites “the message of the Savior” to convince James of his innocence.
One spiritual idea that recurs in the play is the notion of being “close to God.” It leads to one of Aloysius’s final speeches: “In the pursuit of wrongdoing, one steps away from God. Of course there’s a price.” Aside from these brief references, spirituality is more implied than stated, residing between the lines in the subtext of the play.
■ TOPDOG/UNDERDOG
Topdog/Underdog brings us into a secular realm of two brothers who are barely surviving in an underfurnished single room and exhibit no interest in spiritual matters. If any element of this world has transcendent power, it is the playing cards that Booth tries so eagerly to master and Lincoln struggles so desperately to resist.
■ THE CLEAN HOUSE
In a New York Times interview, Ruhl described The Clean House as “a play about cleaning as transcendence, spiritual cleansing.”1 Her comment highlights the importance of spirituality in the lives of the characters. While the dramatic action begins with a focus on dusty tabletops and dirty floors, it rises to a metaphysical plane that includes the aching heart and damaged soul.
Through Matilde, humor is presented as a powerful tool for cleansing at this higher level. “A good joke cleans your inside out,” she tells Virginia in act one, scene 10. This belief explains Matilde’s relentless need to think up jokes and elevates it to a quest with spiritual dimensions. By thinking up the perfect joke, Matilde believes she can heal herself after the loss of her parents. Since her mother died from hearing a perfect joke, however, Matilde worries that she is endangering her own life by tapping into so potent a force. Laughter and death are thus paired in a cosmic relationship that keeps them closely bound throughout the play.
The love between Charles and Ana introduces another spiritual element: the concept of the bashert, or soul mate. According to traditional Jewish teachings, God pairs you with your soul mate while you are still in your mother’s womb and you must spend your life trying to find him or her. Charles first learns about this midrash on public radio and uses it to justify his relationship with Ana, even though he is not Jewish.
During the story, the characters discover ways to clean spiritually for each other. For example, Lane forgives Ana and nurses her through her final days. Virginia helps Lane recover from her failed marriage. Matilde grants Ana’s final wish to die laughing at a perfect joke. By the end of the play, as Lane bathes Ana’s body with water, the three surviving women have learned how to share their lives, not unlike the women of old who, in Virginia’s words, “would gather at the public fountains to wash their clothes and tell stories.”
Though mentioned only once in the play, prayer is also presented as a tool for spiritual cleansing. After Ana dies, Matilde tells Virginia to pray: “A prayer cleans the air the way water cleans the dirt.”
ANALYZING YOUR STORY
Explore the spiritual realm of your story.
KEY SPIRITUAL BELIEFS
• How dominant are supernatural beliefs in the world of your characters?
• What specific beliefs do most characters have about God, higher powers, or the afterlife?
• What beliefs and attitudes do most characters have about organized religion?
• What beliefs do most characters have about miracles, the occult, extrasensory perception, or other paranormal phenomena?
• What people, places, or things, if any, are considered sacred in this world, and why?
• How do spiritual beliefs, or the lack of them, influence everyday life here?
• Have spiritual matters ever played an important role in the history of this world? If so, what happened and how has that affected your characters?
IMPACT ON STORY EVENTS
• Who among your characters is most spiritual? Least spiritual?
• What significant actions, if any, do your characters take during the story as a result of their spiritual beliefs or religious practices?
• Do spiritual matters contribute in any way to the conflict of the story, and, if so, how?
• How would the story change if any of the characters had different spiritual beliefs? If certain characters were more spiritual? Less spiritual?
BACKSTORY
The secret of a great story is a great backstory that is always suggested but rarely explained. The backstory includes everything that happened in the lives of the characters before the play begins. The only parts of this history that matter, however, are those that affect how the play unfolds.
A basic challenge for any dramatic writer is figuring out how to reveal critical information about the past without intruding upon the present. Facts about the offstage world tend to work best when they support a character objective, as in Yasmina Reza’s Art, where Marc informs Ivan that their friend Serge recently went to an exclusive art gallery and paid two hundred thousand francs for an oil painting of white stripes on a white background. Marc reveals this backstory fact because he has an objective: he wants to convince Yvan that Serge has become a snob.
An explanation about the past or anything else that cannot be observed here and now is called “exposition.” How a dramatic writer handles it is a sign of professionalism. Exposition can be a vital and powerful part of a dramatic story when used judiciously to expose important facts about the offstage experiences of the characters.
■ DOUBT: A PARABLE
The past experiences of the characters remain unknown, with a few exceptions.
Sister Aloysius
Husband who battled evil. Before joining the Sisters of Charity, Aloysius was married to an American soldier who died in World War II, which she describes as “the war against Adolph [sic] Hitler.” This is all we learn about her life outside the convent. It is first revealed in scene 4, when she and Sister James are discussing Mother Seton, the founder o
f the order, who was also married prior to taking religious vows. Aloysius’s objective is to startle James, who seems to know little about life and its complexities. The Hitler reference is also a foreshadowing of the evil that Aloysius will perceive in Father Flynn and the war she will wage against him. Since this reference to her marriage is her only disclosure about her personal life, it stands out in the mix of who she is, even though it is barely mentioned.
Similar trouble at another school. Aloysius is worldly enough to know that, despite their halos, some priests may be far from saintly. Eight years ago, when she worked at St. Boniface school, she learned that one of the priests was a child abuser and succeeded in having him removed. The knowledge she gained from this incident will contribute to her campaign against Flynn. It is in scene 4 that Aloysius reveals the past encounter with a pedophile priest. The revelation is motivated by James’s report that Flynn may have given wine to an eighth grader. Aloysius’s objective is to convince James that her success at Boniface was due to a reliable monsignor and that they will have to take matters into their own hands now, because they have no such ally at St. Nicholas.
Disturbing sight on the first day of school. At the start of the school year, Aloysius saw a young boy named William London recoil from a touch on his wrist from Flynn. Though she witnessed nothing more, she has secretly suspected the priest of wrongdoing and has been eager to prove her intuition correct. This eagerness is stoked in scene 4, when James first reports her concerns about Flynn, but the London incident is not revealed until scene 8, when Flynn asks why she always treats him with mistrust. Her objective is to convince him that she has no doubts about his corrupt nature. She sums it up in three words: “I know people.” This proclamation helps us understand that Aloysius operates more from instinct than from fact and that her conclusions make deep and lasting impressions.
Father Flynn
Childhood friend with unclean fingernails. One of the only facts we learn about Flynn’s personal history is that a childhood friend supposedly died of spinal meningitis for reasons related to unclean fingernails. Flynn makes this claim in scene 3, when he is trying to convince the boys on the basketball team to take better care of their nails. The dramatic function of this exposition is to draw attention to Flynn’s preoccupation with his fingernails, an idiosyncrasy that could help explain his innocence or guilt, depending on how it is viewed.
Three parishes in five years. We also learn that, since he became a priest five years ago, Flynn has been assigned to three different parishes. This transiency is brought up in scene 8 by Aloysius, who believes his transfer from parish to parish is a sign of misconduct. This backstory fact provides more circumstantial evidence in the case against Flynn and helps us understand why Aloysius is determined to bring him down.
Sister James
Sheltered life. Outside of her role as the new eighth-grade teacher at St. Nicholas, Sister James also remains an enigma. We learn little about her past except that she took her religious vows at an early age. She reveals this to Aloysius in scene 2 because she needs to make the point that she does not have enough life experience to talk to girls about how to be a woman. We also learn that James previously taught at an all-girls school named Mount St. Margaret’s. These backstory facts help paint the picture of James as an innocent with little knowledge of the world.
Brother in Maryland. The only other fact we discover about James’s personal life is that she has a sick brother in Maryland. She reveals this in scene 7 as she tries to get Flynn’s sympathy. This backstory fact explains why she will request a leave of absence and not be present when Flynn’s transfer to St. Jerome’s occurs. As a result, she—and the audience—will need to be told about what happened to Flynn after he left St. Nicholas.
Mrs. Muller
Gay son. During Mrs. Muller’s brief time in the play, we learn something important about her son’s backstory but little about her own. Our key discovery is that Donald is gay and has been beaten up because of it by his father at home and by his public-school classmates the previous year. Mrs. Muller reveals these facts in response to Aloysius’s allegation that Flynn is having an improper relationship with the boy. Her objective is to convince Aloysius that the priest is the only one who has been kind to her son and that she chooses not to think ill of him. Her backstory helps us understand her unexpected reaction to Aloysius’s charges.
■ TOPDOG/UNDERDOG
To explore family wounds and healing, the play relies heavily on the past to inform the present.
Lincoln and Booth
Dysfunctional family. Lincoln and Booth share a history of being raised by parents who, in their pursuit of the American dream, moved from a substandard apartment to a modest house with a mortgage and soon found themselves under increasing financial pressure that led to their estrangement. Moms eventually ran away. Two years later, Pops did the same. As a result, the teenage boys were forced to rent a room downtown, do odd jobs to pay the bills, and rely on each other for survival and support. This background set the stage for their current symbiotic relationship and for the difficulty each has maintaining personal relationships.
Booth
Mother’s infidelity. According to Booth, Moms had a “sideman” who came to the house on Thursdays, when no one else was around. Booth learned of this one Thursday when he cut school, returned home earlier than usual, and discovered his mother having sex with a strange man. It was an affair that led to a pregnancy, an abortion, and then one day the running motor of Mr. Thursday’s car waiting outside to take her away. All of this is revealed by Booth in scene 6, as he and his brother bare their souls and rev up for their final duel. The mother’s infidelity is one of many family experiences that have led Booth to mistrust everyone around him, especially those who are supposed to be closest.
The day mother left. The mother’s flight from the family was for Booth a day that still haunts him and remains present in the form of a tied-up nylon stocking holding five $100 bills. This bundle—his “inheritance”—is what Moms gave him just before she left home, with the warning to keep the cash secret from Lincoln. The stocking endures as the last physical trace of her, a treasure that Booth not only keeps hidden but also has never opened. The history of the stocking becomes important in scene 6, when Booth loses it to Lincoln in a game of three-card monte and sees his brother about to cut it open. The backstory helps us understand the sacred nature of this inheritance and Booth’s impulsive decision to protect it by killing Lincoln.
Life with Grace. For two years, Booth dated a woman named Grace, who broke up with him after he had a “little employment difficulty.” Though not much about that period is revealed, we can infer from story events that it was for Booth a happy time that he longs to regain. His dream now is to win Grace back and live with her happily ever after. This is what fuels his desire to become a rich card hustler (scene 1) and triggers his heartbreak and rage when Grace fails to show up for their dinner date (scene 5).
Lincoln
Father’s infidelity. According to Lincoln, Pops had not one but many women on the side. To bond with his eldest son, he would bring Lincoln along to introduce him to “the ladies” and would sometimes even allow him to watch their lovemaking. Lincoln claims that he was occasionally more than a passive observer. “One of his ladies liked me, so I would do her after he’d done her. On thuh sly, though,” Lincoln tells Booth in scene 6, as they share untold secrets from their childhood. By showcasing his infidelities, Pops provided his teenage son with a model for how to ruin a marriage, a lesson that would contribute to the breakup of Lincoln’s own marriage.
The day father left. Two years after Moms fled, Pops took off as well and secretly gave Lincoln ten $50 bills in a clean handkerchief with a warning not to tell his brother about the money. Pops took nothing with him when he fled, not even the fine suits hanging in his closet. Lincoln’s response to the abandonment was to burn the suits and squander the money. This backstory fact sheds light on Lincoln’s longing for com
panionship. It may also explain his attitude toward money. By spending it as fast as he can, he can continue to rebel against the father who thought that a parting gift of cash would excuse his running away.
Life as a dealer. One of Lincoln’s most important backstory experiences was his life on the street as a three-card monte dealer. He claims that he used to earn a thousand dollars a day and enjoy the attention of many beautiful women. All of this glory ended when his partner Lonny was murdered. Fearing for his own life, Lincoln swore off the cards and vowed to earn an honest living. This backstory fact fuels a central conflict in the play: Lincoln’s resistance to partnering with Booth in a new card hustling scheme.
A failed marriage. Unlike Booth, Lincoln managed to get married. It was not, however, a happy marriage, nor was it a long one. His wife, Cookie, threw him out after he lost interest in her and, like his father, began pursuing other women. Booth at times uses Lincoln’s failure with Cookie to get the best of him. In scene 6, for example, in a heated moment that leads to their deadly showdown, Booth claims that Cookie seduced him. This emotional jab contributes to Lincoln’s decision to get revenge by conning his brother out of his inheritance.
■ THE CLEAN HOUSE
Except for Matilde’s idyllic imaginings of her parents, the past lives of the characters are rarely revealed. One fact the four women share is that none has had children, even though three of them have been married. Only Virginia and Ana address this fact. Virginia claims that her husband is “barren” and that she wouldn’t want children anyway because the world isn’t good enough for them. Ana says that her husband was too wild and crazy to be a father. The absence of sons and daughters may contribute to the women’s need to rely on one another as they reach out under stress for the kind of support that a family might provide.
