When I first saw Women and Wallace, I was captivated by the feelings of loss, love, and desire that Jonathan Sherman was able to cultivate within the relationships of his characters. Through my interpretation, I believe that Jonathan Sherman was trying to articulate the desire we all have to be seen and to be known by the people we love. For most of our lives, we wander, and try to accomplish things that we think will make our lives more meaningful, that can range from making a career and becoming extremely wealthy, to being well educated on art and culture in our society. Society is always quick to remind us, however, that having love is an integral part of that success. We can only obtain so much fulfillment from our accomplishments, until we feel a pang of wanting someone to share those accomplishments with. When we do find this love that we are desperate to have (whether it be from family, friends or a romantic partner) it can be scary to open ourselves up to someone and show them our flaws. We sometimes do not know what to do with this affection and throw it away, especially if we have had terrible experiences in the past. Sherman throughout the play questions how our past traumas can influence how we accept love from others. Especially by looking at a boy who experiences the loss of the woman who is suppose to love him the most, Sherman digs into how the psyche can be damaged for any future relationship.
Throughout the show we see Wallace wandering, trying desperately to hold onto the love that he once felt from his mother. He looks for it in his relationship with his grandmother, his absent father, and all of his romantic partners, but to no avail. We see him stumble and fall, and continuously manufacture relationships with women, even if they are not right for him. We have all felt the ache that Wallace experiences. So often we try to connect with others, only for so many of them to walk away. I think that is where the beauty of Sherman’s message comes into play. The idea of giving and receiving love seems so simple, yet trauma can close us off to the faintest idea of it and distort it. Our desire to be known and understood by another person is what makes us crave romantic and platonic love. Although experiences may jade us from love, we keep seeking it, as Wallace does throughout the play. Sherman wants to remind his audience what it was like to be lost and craving love and the simple origin of where this craving comes from.
When trying to find my spine for the show, I went through many different versions. They all centered around how love can be a healing force and the role that trauma plays in our decisions for the future. I was interested in the themes of love, loss, mental illness, and the idea of repeating mistakes because of past trauma. I finally settled on “Opening up ourselves to the right love helps us move past our trauma”. Although no one can love away depression, anxiety, or any other kind of products of experiencing traumatic events, our loved ones can support us through it. They can offer their physical affection, listen to our fears and doubts, and make us feel that we are not going through anything alone. This support is not found or accepted easily. Often times, we push away support from loved ones because we do not think we are worthy or we do not want to be a burden. We think that we can handle our struggles alone and bear our trauma in silence. Other times we do open up to someone and they react poorly or make us feel unheard and invalidate our feelings and experiences. Before we have processed the trauma we have faced, we simply do not even know where to begin in expressing how we feel or do so through unhealthy ways (such as when Wallace breaks glass to release his anger). This is why I included the idea of “opening up ourselves” in my spine because I believe that throughout the show, Sherman is showing us that in order to receive love we must make the active choice to accept it. We must have the mentality of wanting to be understood and loved in order to fully feel another’s support.
I then follow opening up to the concept of the “right love”. I wanted to keep it vague, because I feel that the right kind of love differs from relationship to relationship (maternal versus paternal, platonic versus romantic) and from person to person (extrovert versus introvert, controlling personality vs relaxed personality). For Wallace, the right love in the play means someone who will listen to him and acknowledge his trauma. It’s someone who will not pass judgement on what he has been through and love him anyway. However, Wallace also needs someone who is not afraid to be tough with him when he needs a reality check. We see this with both his grandmother and Nina. Both women listen to him and love him, but also put their foot down when Wallace gets lost in his own head or messes up. The right love can also change over time. The type of love we want and need as children completely changes as we get older. The love we want to receive at age 13 is not the same type of love we want to receive when we are 30. The right love is not only dependent on the person and the relationship, but also on the age of the person and the phase of life that there are in.
Finally with the last part of my spine “helps us move past our trauma”, I wanted to convey that love can be a healing force. After we allow love and support into our lives, we can begin to rely on those around us who have offered their help. We can use them as sounding boards, or as shoulders to cry on. I included the word “helps” because love from others cannot erase our trauma. We can accept the support but we must do the work in order to actively move away from our trauma and relearn healthy behavior. We see a glimpse of Wallace trying to help himself when he goes to see his therapist. However, we do not see anyone to hold Wallace accountable for going to his therapy sessions. Support would mean someone helping Wallace get to his therapy sessions, but not acting like his therapist. Love can also be a strong motivator to work past our trauma because we want to get better for those around us. Wallace wants to be a better man for Nina and with her support, he can begin to take steps to do so. Although Wallace’s mother’s death will always be apart of his history, by allowing love into his life, it does not need to define him anymore and he can finally begin to heal.
I want to direct this play because of how relatable Wallace is as a character. Growing up, we create ideas of what love is from our parent’s marriage to the media we consume such as video games, TV shows and movies. It is something we are desperate to feel, yet we could not identify the feeling easily. Children’s love is written off as puppy love and teenagers are told that their infatuation with their boyfriend or girlfriend is not real love and will not last. Adults swear that they are the authority on what love is, but divorce rates have never been higher in the United States. I think that we are all just stumbling along trying to figure out what love is. Wallace’s pursuit, though at times clumsy and awkward, is genuine and I think that is something we can all identify with. We all want to be cared for and made to feel seen and important by someone we love. We want to feel stable when they are around us and like they will stick around for a long time, through our good and our bad. The idea is simple and uncomplicated, yet other’s opinions, our past traumas, and a thousand others factors seem to make love a distant concept. It was comforting for me to relate so much to Wallace. It made me feel as though my stumble to find love, no matter my mental health, my sense of self worth, or where I currently am in finding out who I am, was not silly. It is something that Wallace felt in the 70s and 80s and something that my friends and I feel today in the 2000s. I want to direct this show because I want the students watching the piece to remember that their feelings are validated and I want parents and professors to remember what it was like to feel scared and unworthy of love at times even when they so desperately wanted to feel it.