Make It Feel Real

by Bailey Williams – playwright and Clubbed Thumb Literary Associate

A young dancer named Alexander won’t come down for dinner. He shows his exasperated mother, Mo, what he’s been working on. We watch Mo watch him, as he is made visible to us through Crystal Finn’s finely tuned expressions. She’s proud, she’s embarrassed, she’s confused. She’s all of the above, at once. “It’s… it’s very nice,” she says.

A woman named Ella is dying of cancer. She hires a local reporter, Joy Mead, to help her write her obituary. But first, Ella would like to hear more about the cult Joy Mead joined in her youth. It was wonderful, “to be connected to God all of the time.” It was weird, to have sex with Robert, the cult leader with a micropenis.

A group of Islanders meet in a community space, assembled by Mayor Annie, exercising her only power, the power of assembly. Nobody can do anything about anything really. Not the whales nor the hybrid wolf-dogs nor each other. Everybody is full of just the worst ideas imaginable and nobody knows the words to “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” Everybody is infuriating!

John, who used to run an art gallery, hires “Homeless” Gary, who walks around the Island with a chainsaw, to chop wood. Does John pity Gary? Does John like Gary? Does John simply need wood? Gary refuses the offer to stay at his place. “There’s actually lots of ways to live,” Gary tells him.

Leslie-for-long writes a poem for her long distance lover. It’s called “Life.” Life is a bitter fruit with sweet seeds. It’s hard to find but it’s very tasty. This is a bad poem, but it’s also a good poem because simultaneously, across multiple dimensions, Joy Mead says that Robert once said that it is in the room. And if you’re very quiet, you might hear it.

“What is it?” Ella asks. Joy Mead does not answer because you can’t really answer this question. Not without sounding like Leslie.

But really, Ella doesn’t want to write her obituary. She wants her new friend Joy Mead to attend her assisted death. For a moment, you pulse in narrative anticipation. Here it is, at last. The story of friendship. The story of changing a person’s life. The story of holding someone’s hand as they die. But Joy Mead says no. She can’t do that. They actually just don’t know each other very well.

That’s life!

Everybody is lonely. Everybody tries to feel less alone by calling their exes. It doesn’t work. But they’re all right there, they could all just—

Ella gets sicker. Ella writes her own obituary. Some years, some places, some highlights. It’s short and it’s simple. It’s devastating. It’s her life and it isn’t. It’s the facts of her life. But what about everything else? What about a can of soup in the grocery aisle and the stranger you’re ignoring? What about the visit to the pharmacy for sunglasses? What about the car rides to the hospital and mac and cheese dinners and terrible days with your horses and..

A few years ago my best friend died. I went to his funeral. I sat there and told myself: this is your best friend’s funeral, so that I could feel the gravitational collapse of grief and change. Really feel it, you know? But I didn’t. I felt weird, like: is this my life? Was that his life? Is this real life?

You are waiting for a narrative to sweep you into meaning, for the set pieces to assemble around you to propel you into action, into change.

A whale shows up. Turns out the whales have gone missing because they are doing something different this year. The whales are just out there, living life. That’s it. Mystery solved.

But then… the whale leaps. Alexander dances. Something, un-described, un-performed, maybe even un-noticed happens to Ella. We see nothing but the expression on Mo’s face. She is incandescent. It’s right there! The house goes to black and for a moment, just before the applause, silence. It’s right there! Can you hear it?