Book Description

The main characters of these five plays by Christopher Bollas struggle to survive in a post-"Catastrophe" world. As they go about ordinary life, it is clear that something insidious has both preceded their existence, colored it, and is everywhere and nowhere. Like the existential universe of some plays of the 1950's-Ionescu, early Pinter, Beckett-human meaning is in meager supply, but Bollas's work-clearly following in this tradition-examines existence in the 21st century through a new lens. He explores a damaged self that strives to find a way to live in a world devoid of meaning. One lives to fulfill a function. The absurd context in which many of the characters live seems eerily premonitional, as if some rough new character formation is slouching towards us all. Theraplay and Other Plays includes pieces such as: a theatre company which has one day to change the life of a damaged man; a friendship that comes to an end on grounds so petty that causation is up for laughs; a dinner party that descends into madness; a man assigned the task of interviewing people for a job that has never been explained to him; and a farce about a rock collector who visits a psychoanalyst to sort out the rock's object relations. These plays are dark, oddly amusing, and deeply moving. Bollas finds redemption within human frailty. His characters' bewilderment in the face of absurd conditions becomes an embarkation point for recovery from social disaster.