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In the first section (Laughing
Wild) a Woman addresses the audience.
“I want to talk to you about life,” she says. “It’s
just too difficult to be alive, isn’t it, and to try to function?”
She tells of her difficulty buying tuna fish in the supermarket,
and her frustration that a man was standing in front of the tuna fish she
wanted. 
Though she
doesn’t ask him to move, she becomes enraged he doesn’t sense her need to
reach the tuna fish, and she eventually hits the poor surprised man on the
head. She then tells of her
troubles with a taxi driver, and about a stay in a mental institution, and
about joining AA for companionship but then attempting suicide… she’s
smart and makes interesting comments, but she’s also unbalanced and a
bit scary as we get to know her better.
She has a startling loud laugh she likes to do at parties, but she
also bursts into tears unexpectedly. She
curses the audience at the end of her speech, but then apologizes.
She tries to do her loud laugh to lighten the mood, but is too
tired. So she just says the
word “laugh” instead. “Laugh
laugh laugh. Laughter is a
tonic. So forget crying.
Cry, and you cry alone. Laugh
and you… cry alone later.” As
her last thought to the audience, she urges everybody to breath, which is
the key to existence. “Even
if I stop,” she says, “you keep breathing out there.”
The second monologue (Seeking
Wild) initially seems to
have nothing to do with the Woman. A
35-ish man comes out, friendly and anxious to give prepared thoughts of
things he learned about positive thinking from a “personality course”
he took. The Man is smart, but
clearly has trouble maintaining his positive attitude, his thoughts keep
spiraling off into fears and irritations and angers at injustice.
He finds other people difficult, and tells us of a strange woman he met at the tuna fish aisle in the supermarket who attacked him for
no discernible reason. He tries to think of ways he might have acted
differently so she wouldn’t have hit him, but he’s not too convinced these other ways
would have worked. He also
tells us about his job at a magazine, and about his bisexuality, which he
brings up kind of by accident.  “I am attracted to women and to men.
Though more frequently to other guys, which I find rather
embarrassing to admit to publicly. Why
do I bring it up publicly then, you may well ask.
Well… I don’t know. All
my relatives are dead, and those that aren’t I’m willing not to talk
to.” This topic brings him
to discuss Christians who think God was punishing gay people by creating
AIDS, and about a notorious anti-gay Supreme Court decision (Hardwicke v.
Bower). And finally he tries
to return to positive thinking again, talking about some New Age event he
attended called the Harmonic Convergence, and ending with urging the
audience to join him in “just breathing.”
 The
third piece (Dreaming Wild) has
the Woman and Man interacting. First
they re-create their scene in the supermarket,
trying out different scenarios of how else they might have behaved –
though all the scenarios end badly.
They
then tell the audiences dreams they’ve been having, some of which seem
to overlap and impinge on the other person’s dreams.
The Woman dreams she has killed Sally Jessy Raphael and taken over
her talk show; and the Man dreams this as well, appearing as a guest on
this talk show, dressed as the Infant of Prague, a religious figure the
Woman has never heard of. The
Infant is a very difficult guest, and the Woman tries to kill him, but he
is a religious icon and can’t be killed.
Then
she dreams about the Harmonic Convergence, which she’s also never heard
of – “something’s wrong
with my dreams, I keep dreaming about things I’ve never heard of.”
She now seems to be in the Man’s dream – he’s the one who
spoke about and attended this New Age event – and in the dream he is
suddenly entrusted with talking to the crowd, but the Woman misbehaves
horribly and makes his life miserable.
Then the Convergence becomes the supermarket, they fight over tuna
fish again, the sky darkens and the Woman, finding the tuna fish to be all
poison anyway, weeps uncontrollably. The
Man makes a conscious choice to communicate to her, and they reach a kind
of calm between them. The dawn
comes up at the Harmonic Convergence, and they both lead the crowd in the
act of breathing.
This
is a very unusual play by Durang, and it was received in a mixed fashion
at its premiere. Its
popularity and stature has grown over the years, however.
The play is much funnier than the description above; it’s a
difficult play to describe – it’s two part monologue, and then the
third part is very unusual. The
theme of the two characters struggling to make sense out of life seems to
continue to resonate.
In
February 2003, Playwrights Horizons (where the play premiered) opened its
new theatre building with staged readings of four of its past productions,
three musicals (Falsettos, Floyd
Collins, Violet) and one play (Laughing
Wild). Christopher Durang
and E. Katherine Kerr, again directed by Ron Largomarsino, recreated their
roles; and the play went extremely well with the audiences.
A few topics are worth mentioning.
THE
TITLE: the phrase “Laughing Wild” occurs in Samuel Beckett’s play Happy
Days, in which Winnie is buried up to her waist in sand but is
otherwise trying to be positive. And
she’s always trying to remember her “classics” and says: “Oh,
well, what does it matter, that is what I always say, so long as one…
you know… what is that wonderful line…. Laughing wild…. something
something laughing wild amid severest woe.”
Beckett
and Winnie in turn are quoting Thomas Gray and his poem Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, in which the something
something is “and moody Madness laughing wild amidst severest woe.”
 The
Infant of Prague: Luckily the picture
at right can show you what the
Infant of Prague looks like.
This particular costume was designed by the wonderful designer
William Ivey Long, and it was based on the various pictures and statues
that exist of this religious icon.
From
Durang:
When I was growing up Catholic, the Infant of Prague statue was in
some Catholic Churches, and in some people’s houses, and on some
people’s dashboards.
It
was never discussed much and was not very central to the faith, unlike,
say, statues of Christ on the cross or of the Blessed Mother.
As
a child I was told that the Infant of Prague was the Christ child,
which it turns out is correct. When
I was researching the Infant for this play, I asked many Catholics what
they thought the Infant of Prague was, and about 50%
thought it was some other saint, they didn’t quite know who.
Reading
about the creation of the image, I learned that the image of this richly
bejeweled (and I’m afraid pampered looking) Infant is indeed a
“representation” of the Christ Child.
Since Christ lived in a poor family, we’re told, He obviously
would never have been dressed that way; so it’s an inner state of the
Divine Christ Child that is being celebrated.
The clearest reference to the statue goes back to the 17th
century when Princess Polyxena of Lobkowitz gave the statue to the
“Discalced Carmelites” in Prague.
(Ignoring, I guess, any Carmelites who were only Calced.
Just kidding, I don’t the meaning of most of these words.)
In
any case, in my Catholic childhood the Infant of Prague was kind of mysterious
and in the “rich child, pampered look” kind of “out of date.”
I
thought it would be funny to interview this “entity” on a talk show
(in a dream, after all). And
I wanted an “out of date” religious icon to spout the church’s
out-of-date, but tenaciously held onto, beliefs about why birth control
is supposedly wrong.
So
that’s who the Infant of Prague is, and why he’s in
the play.
Re:
Updates
Like
several other Durang plays, Laughing
Wild has references to people and events that were current when the
play was written. (In
this play’s case, 1987). In
the Dramatists Play Services acting edition, there are author notes at
the end where some references from that period have been changed.
References
to Ronald Reagan in the original script were mostly dropped.
References to the Meese Commission have been changed to something
more generically understandable. References
to New York Mayor Ed Koch and “Westway” were dropped; they barely
registered with audiences back then, let alone later.
So
it is hoped if you do the play, you’ll get the DPS acting edition to
look at those suggested cuts and changes.
However,
there are many other references it isn’t possible to change.
The play intuitively feels right in its late ‘80s setting.
So it is Durang’s belief it is best to do the play as a piece
set in its own time period of late 1987-88.
For
more discussion of this issue, click on Essay on
Updating.
Click
Here to read Essay on The Supreme Court
Note: the Playwrights Horizons 1987 production was taped and may be watched at the Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library with
permission.
Cast size: 1 male, 1 female
Rights: Dramatists
Play Service
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