For The Time Being: Review by Regina Mauricio

FOR THE TIME BEING, a somewhat autobiographical and metalinguistic play that metaphorically explored interesting concepts of astrophysics, made me certain, on that evening of January 5th, that a perfect collaboration of artists resulted in a surprisingly brilliant constellation of multitalented stars, as they shined bright on the stage of the NY Winterfest 2020, at Hudson Guild Theatre.

While I was waiting on my audience seat, admiring the beautiful and suggestive playbill illustration, made by Marina Zurita (Director) and Alexandre Coscodai, and reading the delicate thankful note that Ana Moioli (Playwright and actress) had addressed to all VIP spectators, the director came to announce that the show would have to count on an unexpected understudy, Giorgia Valenti (Stage Manager), since one of the actors, Martin Drop, had undergone an emergency surgery that morning. It seems that on the two previous performances he hadn’t realized that he was under a severe appendicitis crisis and, to everyone’s shock, had performed brilliantly even so.

Fortunately, everything went far beyond my expectation: the acting, in spite of the unforeseen difficulties, was so exceptionally competent, the directing was so insightful and sensitive, the lighting design (Brendan Warner) and set design, despite their simplicity, were so remarkably well conceived, and the plot was so pleasantly intelligent and amusing, that I simply levitated, in awe of the show.

In the play, the speeches of the three characters Maria (Ana Moioli), Rachel (Devlin Stark – or perhaps I should say Star-King, the sovereign star) and Drew (Martin Drop / Giorgia Valenti) are intrinsically connected, since they – to use some of the play’s metaphorical language – orbit around a common barycenter (or ‘navel of the dream’, according to Rachel’s mother, a psychoanalyst) – a Brazilian dog about whom the three of them had bad dreams. Figuratively speaking, such dreams compose a sort of ternary star system, described by similar trajectories, however representing different temporal situations: past, future and present, respectively.

Maria is still linked to her past, missing her dog, Nouba, who she left in Brazil a few years ago, when she came to the U.S. to study Drama. In her dream, the dog was ‘shaking’ and ‘singing her a lullaby’, apparently tripping on drugs; until, to Maria’s despair, she turned out to be in the verge of death. Although she just wanted to have some fun with her dog, Maria is now feeling guilty for intoxicating Nouba, who in the midst of hallucination ended up tragically falling off a cliff. She feels as if she lost the connection with her pet, and all that was left of it was “a sensation of gravity” in her chest. 

Throughout the play, it seems that homesickness, lack of maternal reception, guilty, insecurity, fear or anxiety are always associated with a symptomatic oral fixation, mostly expressed by the craving of a treat, which never is or never can be fully satisfied. In the first scene, Maria overwhelmed with her post-nightmare insomnia, decides to eat a paçoca (Brazilian candy made with peanuts) and bring some to Rachel, her roommate – even though it’s 4 a.m. in the night before the opening performance of the show they’ve all been rehearsing for –, who aggressively rejects it. In the second scene, by a sort of dreamlike assimilation, Rachel, who also had a bad dream about her dog (actually, the same dog), wakes up Drew – again, at 4 a.m.  – with a box of brigadeiro (Brazilian candy made with chocolate and condensed milk), though she does not eat it herself until the very end, guilty it would ‘make her fat.’ On the other hand, Drew’s greediness – specially for the candy, but not only – as we soon realize, reveals a certain compensatory mechanism to, perhaps, relieve the tension brought on by his fear of facing the challenges of an adult life.

Rachel is always focused on the future, premeditating all the professional objectives she hopes to achieve. Therefore, any unpredictable situation that may divert her from her desired route makes her very uncomfortable, as if she can only handle what is written on the ‘script’ she has taken for her own life. Even though she seems very self-confident with her acting, that night, anticipating their show the next day, she dreamed she was already on stage and could feel the audience was not engaged, and in her desperation to catch their interest by searching for something genuine inside of her to express, something quite absurd caught her by surprise – she realized her dog was ‘coming out of her vagina’. After hearing about her dream, Drew encourages her to be more spontaneous, as he believes great artistry comes from surrendering to the present moment. This builds up to an amazing but tense dialogue between the two, where he accuses her of being too harsh on herself and of not opening up to experiences, and she blames him for being careless and irresponsible – that is, a ‘kid’, a term they often call each other throughout the play, inferring the existence of a maternal gravitational field surrounding all three characters.

It’s still 4 a.m. in the third scene. Maria and Drew are awake in their beds, and by now they have both accepted that there’s an undeniable reason for their insomnia. Interrupting the predominantly naturalistic style of the previous scenes (in spite of clearly absurdist components), Drew spills the candy he attempts to eat, realizing it had been plastic-made prop food the whole time – breaking not only the fourth wall, but also his preceding impulsivity related to his oral fixation. It is time for Drew’s dream: the dog he also had in Brazil (the same one!) was... barking. But of course the absurdist element is yet to come: the dog was barking inside of him; but thinking deeper, he adds: “it was more like I was the dog.” While trying to talk to Rachel about his ‘gravitational force’, i.e. the romantic attraction he felt for her, Drew started barking: “I was trying to speak, but couldn’t.” Maria then urges him to speak, as if this exhortation could throw him back deep inside his dream, compelling him to figure out – within himself – what he had left unsolved.

At this point of the play, considering that none of them can go back to sleep, they decide to analyze their dreams, probably because speaking about their uneasiness and anxieties could be more effective than eating dainties or taking any harmful substance. “I asked my mom what she does when her patients tell her their dreams, and she said we have to find the navel of the dream,” Rachel says. They end up inferring that this means there is something in the dreams that connects them to the past, to their childhood. It really makes sense if we remember that the navel is a remnant, i.e. the scar left by the detachment of the umbilical cord.

All of a sudden, the illustration of the playbill came to my mind. It really had a bit of a childish aspect, with a what looked like an umbilical cord uniting and surrounding the three celestial bodies (each of them inhabited by one of the characters), with a small white dog seated on the extremity of the cord. Soon I realized that this simple illustration summarized – better than my almost 2.000 words in this review – the whole story that was being told. As we know, Maria has been far away from home for years, but still gravitates around it, hanging on that orbiting umbilical cord, and holding tight her long-held baggage. Drew looks comfortable in his inertia, lying on the ground, enjoying the pleasures of idleness. In turn, Rachel, leaning forward and accelerating her pace, keeps her eyes focused on what lies ahead.

Besides the metalinguistic references, the third scene presents a fun and unlikely combination of psychoanalytic and astrophysical explanations. It may seem strange, but it’s known that when we look at the stars, we are seeing their past – if a star is too far away, it may have already died, only its light is still visible to us. So, “how can we be stars now? (…) Aren’t stars illusions, anyway? (…) What’s the point of pursuing something unreal?”, Rachel ponders. As we saw before, she’s willing to become a successful actress and spares no effort in pursuing her purpose. However, she is always questioning her own talent, wondering if she isn’t deluding herself and “following the shine of a dead star.”

Drew, taking advantage of his sparse knowledge of the general theory of relativity, but eager to impress and comfort Rachel, explains that the universe is a four-dimensional block (three space dimensions united to one time dimension), and “the fact that the stars are dead doesn’t make them unreal”, since we can still see their existence even though they are far away from our present moment. So, if there is a coexistence relation in space-time, “the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion”, Maria concludes. But, all these very scientific explanations made me remember the famous time definition of Saint Augustine, emphasizing its psychological and linguistic dimension, that is, its subjectivity. If we can speak in the present of past or future things, it is because we have the capacity to preserve the memory of the past and the hope for the future. In this sense, time is a distention of man’s inner life:

There are three times; a present of things past, a present of things present, and a present of things future. For these three times do somehow exist in the soul. Otherwise I would not see them: present of things past, memory; present of things present, sight; present of things future, expectation.

Finally, FOR THE TIME BEING is the result of the pulsating inner life of six young artists – Moioli, Zurita, Stark, Drop, Valenti, and Warner, recently graduated or graduating soon, who courageously permitted themselves to speak, through their multiple forms of talent, about the love for their crafts, which keeps them full of hope, despite the fears and uncertainties provided  the highly competitive professions they chose to pursue – “We all made sacrifices to be here, Maria. We love our craft, so nothing else matters”, says Rachel. Two of them are natives, the other four left the comfort of their homes abroad; but probably they all have significantly constrained their families’ budgets, due to the high cost of their excellent universities, NYU Tisch School of the Arts and University of North Carolina School of the Arts. That is a burden they will all have to deal with, just like the characters in the play – as Rachel says, “We’re graduating soon. You can’t just be a kid forever.”

At least, for the time being, they can count on their reciprocal loving solidarity – which was pretty evident during the show – to face this challenging endeavor: “I’m sorry. Do you want a hug?” I wish I could hug them all, and I hope they are already feeling embraced, since their lights are still shining in my memory.

Winter, 2020

Regina Maurício

Regina Mauricio is an Art Historian, Philosopher, Theater and Literature critic from Sao Paulo, Brazil. She holds a B.A. degree in Architecture from Mackenzie Presbyterian University and a M.A degree in Art Philosophy from USP – University of Sao Paulo. She has taught Art History at SENAC Center of Communication and Arts – School of Photography, and Visual Poetics at USP – School of Fine Arts. As an art critic, she has published some articles and the book A Poetica Fotografica de Paul Strand (The Photographic Poetics of Paul Strand), published by Edusp, where she analyzed the photographer and filmmaker's production, including his relationship with The Group Theatre in the 30's.