Charles L. Mee, Jr.: The Theatre of History

interview CHARLES L. MEE, JR. The Theatre of History Charles L. Mee, Jr. is a playwright and historian whose books include the recent Rembrandt's Portrait, The Genius of the People, nominated last year for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Meeting at Potsdam. He wrote the text for Martha Clarke's production, Vienna Lusthaus. Four recent plays comprise The American Century: The Constitutional Convention, The Sequel; The Investigation Into the Murder in El Salvador; The War to End War; and The Imperialists at Club Cave Canum. Mee's The Investigation Into the Murder in El Salvador is published in PAJ's Wordplays 4. The following is taken from conversations that took place between Alisa Solomon and the author in New York in February, 1988. I want to begin by talking about the treatment of history as a subject in the late '80s in America, and the different forms it takes. Writing both historical theatre pieces and dramatic history books, you've often treated the same subject matter in disparate ways. For instance, you've recently published a book on the Constitutional Convention and you also have a play called The Constitutional Convention, The Sequel. What's their relationship? The book is called The Genius of the People. It's a narrative history of the Constitutional Convention during the summer of 1787. I let the delegates speak for themselves, using the dialogue that was preserved in the notes 67 that Madison made from the convention. The book is meant to provide the setting and the context so that you can understand what those arguments are about, and then draw out of that a general argument which is that this is the story not so much of a few great men making history, but of a few representative people who are created by history as much as they create it. The history by which they are created is the 600 years of English history generally, and that is a set of political beliefs and instincts that's really in the bones of the people who were in America at that time. During the convention a delegate would sometimes say to one of the others, "Well, you may wish you could establish a House of Lords in this country, but this would not suit the genius of the people," by which was meant the spirit of the people-so that's where the title comes from. It means a certain developing democratic spirit, and beneath it, the understanding that everyone in a society is safest, in their lives and the sanctity of their beings, when political power is most thoroughly dispersed throughout the society. They were forced to fall back on this principle because they themselves really were not a homogeneous body of people. They were all male and white, but some were slave owners, some were large plantation owners, some were small farmers, some depended on international trade, some on the openness of the frontier. No one wanted any one group to be able to dominate that government, so they were forced constantly in their arguments to the dispersion of power. That then puts into the fundamental design of the constitution a momentum toward true democracy from which the country can never escape unless it throws out the Constitution itself. Some of the themes you describe here-the idea that history is not created by a few great men, but that they are as much products of the historical moment ; your insistence on, even preoccupation with, the process of democracy-are elements of your play, The Constitutional Convention, even though it takes a wildly different approach and form. How are they connected? While I was working on the books, thinking about constitutions and conventions and rules and laws, I was thinking about these same things in a more general and modern way. The play is about conventions and rules of all kinds: social rules, rules of politeness, rules between partners in sadomasochistic relationships. The play is meant to make you think of the many rules you live by, most of them unconscious, and the way those rules constrict our freedoms. Rules of what is done and what isn't done...