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From the Artistic Director

Notes on Catch As Catch Can

by Adam Greenfield

Playwrights Horizons is... a strange name for a theater. It’s not easy to type, nor does it roll trippingly off the tongue. Also, it’s composed of two plural nouns. So awkward. ...And yet, Playwrights Horizons is also the perfect name for this theater, because our name is precisely our mission. 

“Playwrights” very pointedly puts the playwright in first position – not just one playwright, but a broad, inclusive plurality of writers. And of course, there’s the critical “gh,” because plays are not written so much as they are wrought, like ships or iron.

“Horizons.”  Well, if you’re a theater, and you call yourself Playwrights Horizons, then you’d better be sure that horizon line is in front of you, not behind you in the rear-view mirror. The horizon is what we’re chasing, always too far in front of us to catch up with, always leading us into the future. And plural “horizons,” because there’s a different route for every artist.

The project of Playwrights Horizons is to remain in constant pursuit of the visions and inquiries forged by playwrights. Each of the plays in our 2022-23 season doggedly exemplifies this spirit of exploration in its own way, whether that means stretching our narrative expectations, testing the limits of stagecraft, or treading the thin ice of our moral convictions.

I remember precisely where I was sitting the first time I read Mia Chung’s play Catch As Catch Can: a rented apartment in Stockholm, that time of afternoon when you can see dust floating still in the light. Some plays are so indelible that, for as long as you know them, they continue to recall the time and place you first encountered them.

There isn’t, to my knowledge, another play that behaves like this one, that bends and molds itself with such agility to deliver its story. Mia’s writing takes full advantage of the plasticity of the stage, manipulating our relationship to the play as it careens through the story of these two families, the Phelans and the Lavecchias.  And as each of the play’s six characters confronts their sense of identity, the play itself, its form, seems to take the same journey.

In making a play, especially a new play, the creative team faces an infinite number of variables. The color of the walls, the sequence of the plot, the pacing of the scenes, the sensibility of the cast, the blurb on the promo postcard that audiences get in the mail. And we hope these guesses accumulate in a way that allows the play, as a live event, to meet its greatest potential. 

But perhaps the most important choice is made by the playwright, at the dawn of the process, when the story begins to organize into a shape, a structure. 

I’m reminded of the book Exercises in Style, by Raymond Queneau, who crafts ninety-nine different ways that a simple, single story can be told:  

A fairly straightforward variation, which Queneau dubs “Narrative.”

One day at about midday in the Parc Monceau district, on the back platform of a more or less full S bus (now no. 84), I observed a person with a very long neck who was wearing a felt hat which had a plaited cord round it instead of a ribbon.  This individual suddenly addressed the man standing next to him, accusing him of purposely treading on his toes every time any passengers got on or off.  However, he quickly abandoned the dispute and threw himself on to a seat that had become vacant.

Another one, “Logical Analysis.”

Bus.
Platform. 
Bus platform.  That’s the place.
Midday.
About.
About midday.  That’s the time.
Passengers.
Quarrel.
A passengers’ quarrel.  That’s the action.
Young man.
Hat.  Long thin neck.
A young man with a hat and a plaited cord round it.  That’s the chief character.
Person.
A person.  That’s the second character.
Me. 
Me.
Me.  That’s the third character, narrator.
Words.
Words.
Words. That’s what was said.
Seat vacant.
Seat taken.
A seat that was vacant and then taken.  That’s the result.

And another, “Alexandrines.”

One midday in the bus–the S-line was its ilk—
I saw a little runt, a miserable milk-
Sop, voicing discontent, although around is turban
He had a plaited cord, this fancy-pants suburban.
Now hear what he complained of, this worm-metamorphosis
With disproportionate neck, suffering from halitosis:
-- A citizen standing near him, who’d come to man’s estate
Was constantly refusing to circumnavigate
His toes, each time a chap got in and rode,
Panting, and late for lunch, towards his chaste abode.
But scandal was there none; this sorry personage
Espied a vacant seat—made thither quick pilgrimage.

Cleverly choosing a bland story to show off his gymnastic skill, Queneau’s book illustrates not just the plasticity of a story’s content, but that the form a writer adopts to deliver that content changes the impact of the story itself.  A glass of water takes the shape of the vessel that's carrying it, and the shape of that vessel changes its function. How different Death of a Salesman might be had Arthur Miller set the play in one location over the course of one night, or if he had chosen to begin the plot in Willy Loman’s early childhood. How different A Strange Loop might be had Michael R. Jackson not delivered it as a musical. The What and the How of storytelling – equally powerful, and equally variable – and the way a playwright marries these – whether by intuition or dogged experimentation — are critical to the efficacy of the play.

In Catch As Catch Can, Tim Phelan returns as a prodigal son to New England, to his mother and his old friends, in search of home — but home, he finds, is elusive. With uncanny sensitivity, Mia Chung writes six characters, each forced to confront the slippage of their sense of self; her character-writing alone is a testament to her chops. But what boggles the mind, and enters this play into an endlessly fascinating hallway of mirrors, is her invention of a new form to deliver this story perfectly, such that the play itself begins to mirror this slippage — and to carry us along with it.

It's rare that Playwrights Horizons programs a new production of a play that already premiered elsewhere in New York. Catch As Catch Can received an impeccable staging by Page 73 Productions in 2018, rooting itself in the imagination of everyone lucky enough to see it — or at least, in mine. I'm continuously awed by this play, by the labyrinth of questions it leaves me with and by the virtuosity of its construction. As our Artistic Staff began to discuss a second incarnation of Catch As Catch Can, we considered how this play bears multiple interpretations, opening itself to new layers of meaning depending on who's performing it.  As our Literary and Community Engagement Associate May Treuhaft-Ali examines in her accompanying essay "The Compulsion to Perform," our choice to cast Cindy Cheung, Jon Norman Schneider, and Rob Yang to tell this story raises questions about the performance of identity — specifically whiteness, and its relationship to the Asian-Americans onstage.

For years, I've been jumping in excitement around the office (figuratively), planning to get this play on our stage. I'm so grateful to finally share it with Playwrights Horizons' community.  I like to think of our production in conversation with the artists at Page 73 who created its premiere — two viable angles on the same play. Whether you're seeing it for the first time or the second, I hope that its complex theatricality strikes you as it does me, as a significant accomplishment in playwriting and stagecraft — and as an invitation to consider what the theater is capable of.

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