Loving the Monster
I’ve known Jordan Harrison for over twenty years. Like me, he began his association with Playwrights Horizons as a literary intern, and then he entered Brown’s prestigious MFA playwriting program under Paula Vogel’s vaunted tutelage. By the time he graduated from Brown, he had already accumulated an impressive body of work, clearly the handiwork of a purebred theater geek. Unconventional narratives, fluid time structures, eccentric characters, and brainy themes abound; but most importantly, he creates purely theatrical worlds that could not possibly exist in any other media. I produced four of his plays while I was artistic director at Playwrights and am so proud of his steady growth in that time. But I am especially proud of the confidence he attained which has emboldened him to assay ever more audacious and intricate formal structures.
Jordan’s latest play, The Antiquities, is in many respects, his most formally ambitious play yet. Like Jordan’s masterpiece, Marjorie Prime, it considers the effects of AI on humanity’s future, but The Antiquities’ point of view is more harrowing. The play starts in the early 1800s, then takes us bit by bit ever closer to the present, then skips forward inexorably to a humanless future. But Jordan does not seem intent on concocting a cautionary tale about the dangers of letting AI take over our lives. That interpretation, especially in light of his other work, seems a bit obvious. No, I think the play asks us to look a bit deeper, to give it a second look. And that’s exactly what the play itself does — when it reaches its midway point, it reverses course and revisits the scenes from the first part. We begin to see things anew, and consider the telling clue to unlocking the play he leaves us in the play’s epitaph, a quote from Oscar Wilde: “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.” That is to say, I’ve always found the key to Jordan’s work lies in its humanity, not its formalism.
After repeated viewings, I’ve found that the most intriguing question the play raises stems from the purposeful ambiguity regarding its authorship. Did a computer write this play, but in the voice of a human it can only hypothesize? Or was it written by a human imagining the narrative of its own extinction? Death is everywhere in this play, often portrayed as the fundamental anxiety and defect of being human. But just as often, it portrays death as the source of all human wonder and invention. I sometimes wonder if the inspiration for the play came from Jordan’s desire to write a play that a computer wouldn’t “think” to write. Computers never die, say the anxious people and their computers. But then, neither does a play. And it’s hard to imagine anything other than a human voicing the ecstatic, transfiguring ode to life expressed by the sublime, adventurous Claire in the play’s final scene. The Antiquities: take your time with it. We’ve only scratched the surface.
Tim Sanford
Tim Sanford’s thirty-seven year tenure at Playwrights Horizons began as a literary resident in 1984, after which he became Literary Manager, then Associate Artistic Director, and was appointed Artistic Director in 1996 in which capacity he served until 2021. Under his tenure, Playwrights Horizons built two new theaters, The Sharp and the Judy, and increased its number of productions to six and expanded to seven through its acclaimed Redux series. From the beginning of his tenure, the theater demonstrated its commitment to diversity, achieving gender parity in its programming in 2007. In recognition of this advocacy, Sanford was named the first Miss Lilly in the Lilly Award’s inaugural ceremony in 2011. After leaving Playwrights, Sanford co-founded (with Aimée Hayes) The Tent, a theater dedicated to supporting and advocating for established Elder American playwrights and theater-makers. The Tent mounted its inaugural production of Tina Howe’s last play, Where Women Go, at HERE Arts Center in February 2024 and will present Len Jenkin’s How Is it that We Live or Shakey Jake + Alice at A.R.T/NY’s Jeffrey and Paula Gural Theater in February 2025. Under his tenure, Playwrights Horizons earned four Pulitzers, 17 Obies, four Susan Smith Blackburns and several others. Mr. Sanford was a Board Member of Theater Communications Group (2013-2020), Chair of Governance and Nominating Committees, and member of the Executive Committee. He has a B.A. and an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Occidental College and a Ph.D. in Dramatic Literature from Stanford University.