In Defense of Wonder

I occasionally find myself returning to Robert Hayden’s poem, Monet’s Waterlilies, which he wrote amid the social, political, and existential turmoil of the 1960s. It’s one of the most meaningful and exquisite pieces of writing I’ve ever come to know. The first stanza, with the utmost simplicity, grounds us in the poem’s moment and basic premise. The second stanza draws us, through the poet’s eye, into the world of Monet’s painting. Once there, Hayden employs the third and final stanza to give us his full-throated testimony:

Today as the news from Selma and Saigon
poisons the air like fallout,
I come again to see
the serene, great picture that I love.

Here space and time exist in light
the eye like the eye of faith believes.
The seen, the known
dissolve in iridescence, become
illusive flesh of light
that was not, was, forever is.

O light beheld as through refracting tears.
Here is the aura of that world
each of us has lost.
Here is the shadow of its joy.

I return to the poem for a number of reasons. The beauty and power of the final stanza is, perhaps, reason enough. Another reason is that I deeply admire Hayden’s poetry in general; his combination of passion, precision, and restraint is something I aspire to emulate. Yet another reason is that I take comfort in the recognition that works of art are more important, not less important, in times of great trouble. 

After seeing Abe Koogler’s play Staff Meal I reached back, again, almost reflexively for Hayden’s poem. At first, I wasn’t consciously aware of the connection between the two, but the essential association came quickly to light: The play is deeply concerned with the nature of the relationship that, to my understanding, sparks such a poem. Embedded within Staff Meal’s intricate plot structure, lurking behind its delightful surprises, unsettling turns, and buoyant humor, is an unrelenting challenge to anything and everything that might come between the beholder and the beheld, between the speaker and the listener, and, indeed, between the play and the audience. 

It strikes me now that Hayden’s poem could never have been birthed from a passive, judgmental, or otherwise distance-preserving encounter with Monet’s painting. He met the work, as it were, eye-to-eye, and made the conscious choice to immerse himself in its expression. And this was a relationship that developed over years. Hayden came back to the painting, presumably, again and again—just as I continually come back to his poem. How, I wonder, can a play cultivate in a public audience, meeting it for the first time, the desire to step forward into the blurry unknown? 

Staff Meal gives us a cast of (mostly) strangers who come to know each other in profound, hilarious, and surprising ways. Initially, a meet-cute between new acquaintances Mina and Ben is our familiar point of reference; as the relatable premise of two lonely people who need each other becomes refracted through the play’s strangeness and unpredictability, our foundational color palette emerges. 

Everyone we meet in Staff Meal is fighting desperately, urgently, incessantly, to find, or preserve, or rescue their sense of the wonderful, the mystical, and the beautiful. In turn, they are seeking to form authentic connections to each other, and to us, that might transcend the reliable but unsatisfying integrands of want, need, and circumstance. Most inspiring to me, personally: through great external and internal resistance, they find ways to catalyze their own and each other’s sense of wonder. 

I think it’s also important to recognize that the characters in this play seem not to be entirely confined by the play’s world and plot. Wait, what? you might be asking. One of the many utilities of strangeness is that the tools one normally employs to create meaning become less useful. We are more likely, then, to wonder, and thereby more primed to receive new understandings, which often we find buried within our own selves.

I love to wonder. How big is the universe? I wonder. I wonder not because I’m seeking a definitive answer, but to revel in the knowledge that the universe is big beyond my ability to fathom. When I wonder, I feel more alive, more properly arranged in space and time, more capable of handling the problems of the day, and more receptive to unexpected inspirations that might come from any conceivable source or direction. 

The space to wonder, the capacity to be awed, the predisposition toward amazement, are prerequisites for the spiritual growth that art can engender and sustain. But what happens to our individual and collective wonder in an age of deep, ubiquitous, and well-earned cynicism? How can we create and support art that will shelter our humanity from aggressive consumerism? More complicatedly: to what extent are the values and standards we hold as theater-makers shaped by this environment, and how (or how much) can we push back? Staff Meal has much to say about these questions. And in attempting to answer them, it is unafraid to ask something of its audience, to reset our expectations, or to take sudden turns in directions plays don’t typically go. 

This play not only asks us for our trust, it models the behavior it wants to see us emulate. I’m talking about the play structure itself. Staff Meal opens itself up to us. It pulls at its own seams, exposes its own heart. Like Monet’s Waterlilies, the play is impressionistic, allowing life’s colors and feelings to break out of their expected forms. Unlike Waterlilies, it is not a painting and does not have to wait passively for our approach. It asks, even insists, that we step away from “the seen, the known” and into its “illusive flesh of light.”

Nathan Alan Davis’s plays include The Refuge Plays (Roundabout/NYTW), Nat Turner in Jerusalem (NYTW), The High Ground (Arena Stage), Eternal Life Part 1 (Wilma Theater), Origin Story (Cincinnati Playhouse) and Dontrell Who Kissed the Sea (NNPN Rolling World Premiere). He is the Director of MFA Playwriting at Boston University.