After the readings were over . . .
Today is the summer solstice, the longest day and the shortest night of the year. It is one day after the final reading of SECRETS, last night for a group of thirty or so members of the Knickerbocker Yacht Club of Great Neck, New York. This audience promised to be a tough and telling one. They were all seasoned and accomplished professionals, ranging from medical doctors to writers to owners of retail businesses and high level administrators. They would not hold anything back, and would speak their minds, one way or another.
I was more than a bit nervous, as the well dressed, animated group filed in. The cast of SECRETS and I had not had a rehearsal in nearly ten days. I had spent the entire day, until midnight, in a studio with Danny Tannenbaum, the 22 year old music prodigy who had improvised and composed the incidental music for SECRETS. Now it was time to record it and have it on CD in case we needed to send the script with the music to would-be investors, producers and directors. It was the ninth public presentation of the new drama about the intense, soul-searing relationship between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung during the years 1907-1913. After the readings were over, attended by about 200 people all together, certain questions remained, certain issues unsettled, certain problems were clarified for the playwright to solve on the next step of sculpting the final script.
For the playwright, there is nothing more exciting or sobering than having the play on its feet in front of an audience, especially one that is composed of other playwrights, producers, directors and, in this case, analysts and psychiatrists. There is a rush of adrenaline plus a queasy trepidation as the actors read the words and express the emotions and feelings under the words. Just by sitting around the table reading the script, you don't get the "feel" of the play as you do when there is an audience in the seats.
You can tell from the back of the room what is working and what is not just by the body language of the audience, whether or not they are reading the program or looking at their watches. From the first staged readings in late February and early March to the last ones in late May and early June, 2006, only two or three scenes remained the same as first written. Twenty or more were revised, cut, expanded or re-positioned. More re-writes are still to come, but here is where we are right now.
The acid test came when I went to dinner down the block at Sylvia’s, the famous soul-food restaurant. When I walked into the private dining room, the members of the Knickerbocker Club began to applaud, catching me very off guard. I sat at two different tables during the mean, engaged in lively discussion. The verdict was uniformly positive and up beat. They enjoyed the performances, feeling that the acting performances were authentic, real and, most of all, touching. I was there for two hours in the restaurant, listening and discussing what the next steps could be. The people in this group were exactly the ones would buy tickets on Broadway, possibly be investors to the show. They seemed to get a kick out of being present so early in the game. It was extremely gratifying to work with the actors and to receive so much encouragement and positive feedback from the audience, but there is more work to do. Not finished yet. Everything, I believe, can and will get better from here. These are some of the points that were discussed at Sylvia’s with the Knickerbocker Yacht Club members
1. Why did Freud and Jung break up? What drove them to such a heart-wrenching and bitter "divorce?"
It is now clearer than ever that the focus or arc of this play follows the "courtship-honeymoon- divorce" pattern of most romances that do not work out in the end. In the early years of 1907 - 1909, both Freud and Jung put their best foot forward, seeing in each other what they thought they were missing and needed in life. They projected onto each other Mr. Right, the fantasy "other" who was what they always wanted and needed but did not have. The one to make your life thrilling, exciting and worthwhile for all the years to come.
The Perfect Partner who would complete their lives, and with whom they would live happily ever after. Each was ready to give to the other time, energy, effort, attention as they made plans for a glorious and fulfilling future.
As sometimes (often) happens, on the honeymoon, when they spent so much time together away from the routine business of everyday life --in this case the steam ship journey across the Atlantic ocean from Bremen, Germany to New York and back when they gave the now famous lectures at Clark University -- certain issues began to surface, suddenly, quite astonishingly, neither was for the other what they thought they would be. As focused in the dream sharing scenes, both caught a glimpse of the other side of each other -- the shadow side -- and the fantasy of the perfect "marriage" -- until-death-do-us-part variety -- began to get a hard dose of reality.
Once the illusion began to fade, the long, slow, painful divorce proceedings began. Each began to blame and shame each other for not doing or being what each was "supposed" to be or do. By the time the final papers arrived -- Freud's letter to Jung on January 3, 1913 -- there was no turning back, no reconciliation possible. What had been whole and complete was now broken and fractured beyond repair. Freud and Jung each had to pick themselves up, healing the scalding wounds and start all over again.
What had started out with so much passion, hope and desire for a long and happy association left both Freud and Jung deeply wounded and in dark depression. In this play, at least, the main reason Freud and Jung broke up was not primarily due to philosophical or theoretical differences. The main reason they were torn apart was INCOMPATIBLE COMPLEXES.