Echoes of Performance: Writing and the Play of Pedagogy

Prelude: Consequences of Distraction

In the recent Soho Rep production of Lucas Hnath’s play A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney,¹ as one may be able to discern from the title, actors perform as if they are at a screenplay reading, only in this case the screenplay reading is managed by Walt Disney himself and the role of “Walt” is played by Disney, who also supposedly penned the screenplay. (Walt is played by Larry Pine in the actual production.) The reading feels as highly controlled as a meeting with Walt might. Walt sets the pace, reading both his part and the stage directions. The latter are distinguished by the use of the microphone. Thus, often in the play, Pine switched between a mediated reading of the stage directions and an unmediated passionate expression of his character’s desires for power and control. In one scene, Walt (who obviously passed away before cell phones played an invasive part in our lives) speaks to his wife on his 2013 cell phone. His wife does not appear physically or vocally in the play; we hear only Walt, navigating between speaking into the cell phone and the microphone:

WALT:

(into cell phone)² Hey so I wanted toYeahWanted to tell you aboutThis(into microphone) cut to(into cell phone) Just wondering if(into microphone) cut to(into cell phone) Thinking aboutFutureThinkingHeard of(into microphone) cut to(into cell phone) There’s this Guy in Irvine(into microphone) cut to(into cell phone) He freezes the bodiesHe freezes, well, just the head andNo, it’s not gross, it’s beautifulit’s beautiful, it’s(into microphone) cut toNot that I’m dying anytime soon [and, by the way, he is dying](into microphone) cut to(into cell phone) Not that I’m dying anytime (into microphone) cut to(into cell phone) Not that(into microphone) cut to(into cell phone) No, just(into microphone) cut to(into cell phone) the futureand wondered…

The language spoken is fractured, in part by the interrupted speech of a telephone conversation, but perhaps more by the mediation of both the digital (rather than wired) phone and the use of the microphone to remind the spectators that we are indeed at a screenplay reading. The layers of construction—actors playing roles who, in turn, play themselves in a larger “unproduced” production—inspired a beyond-Brechtian “alienation effect” apropos for a mediatized twenty-first century. Throughout the production, we see that Walt’s dreams are never to be (fully) requited. His quixotic approach appears frustrated by his inability to connect with others, but also by the layers of mediation—cell phone, microphone, reading of a screenplay—that he seems to throw between himself and others. In the play, Walt’s inability to effectively communicate leads to a kind of fracturing of his personality: a desire to be everywhere at once—in control of the reading and in touch with his wife, while in control of the meeting and in control of the representation of his life—all accomplished through a mediatized presence that powerfully captures the diminishment of Walt’s personal relationships. Jennifer Parker-Starbuck comments on the consequences (both theatrical and real) of systemic mediatization on the body: “When technologies seem to be becoming ubiquitous the cyborg emerges; as we slip further into an age of integrated technologies, perhaps the physical body can more easily be thought of as fragmented or multiple, and with this the need to hold on to the whole will fragment as well” (2011, 3).³ Walt’s mediatization, along with his expressed desire to become posthuman through cryogenic freezing,⁴ constitutes Disney as cyborgian character. Hnath has created a posthuman Disney throughout the play, resurrecting Walt through a staged reading as the talking head that he desired to become. The play also offers a glimpse of the complications associated with corporeal fragmentation: Disney’s dispersion over too many commitments yields a persona who can no longer communicate empathetically with those...