Tag: Happy Mess

Mama: Oh, baby girl. I’m happy enough.
Young Bella: What if that isn’t enough happy for me?
Mama: You’ll find it.
Young Bella: What if I don’t?
Mama: Well, you’ve always loved cats.
Young Bella: Mama!--Happy Mess by Ian Paul Messersmith

Ian Paul Messersmith wrote Happy Mess as an exploration of happiness. So, it will come as no surprise that during the workshop, we talked about happiness.

Coming out of the explorations: some people had a surplus of happiness in their lives and others a dearth of it. Happiness was sometimes described as an object, something physical to be held in your hands. A scarce commodity. You took what happiness you could get. And that idea has stayed with me past the workshop. Prior to this project, I hadn’t thought of happiness as something I took.

I never gave much thought to happiness. I knew I wanted it and was glad when it was there and sad when it left but beyond that I had not reflected on the idea of what happiness was and the role it plays in our lives. (As a writer, I tend to write about different permutations of love- rarely do they guarantee never-ending happiness.)

Assembling the dramaturgy packet for Happy Mess, I’d looked over a few theory articles but ended up not including them. They weren’t the right tenor for where we were headed and wading through them wouldn’t have helped the new script.

The philosophical articles were opaquely worded and deeply nuanced–pretty much what I remembered from college. I’d arrived at university with a lower reading level then the texts I was given. Theory was yet another level of difficulty. To this day, researching theory does not make me happy but getting through it and understanding it, as Carolyn Hitt says, is an opportunity to “Impress Myself.”

And as an aside to my developing dramaturgical process, there are always some items that don’t go into the packet but end up proving useful during rehearsals. Or I might end up ruminating on an item and writing about it later.

Only thoughtful discussions of the true meaning of happiness and prosperity will awaken people to what it is that really fulfills them and will give them the words to describe it. --Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

My ruminations led me to Martin Seligman’s writings on happiness. He broke happiness down into three different types of happy lives: The Pleasant Life, The Good Life, and the Meaningful Life. Combining the three could create a full life (Townsend).

The Pleasant Life were activities that you enjoy doing: going to the movies, eating pizza. Activities that had an emotion you felt at the time and could easily describe, “raw feels.” The happiness they gave only stayed with you for a short time (Seligman).

These Seligman differentiated from activities that you liked doing because they were gratifying: helping at a soup kitchen, rock climbing, playing bridge. “[I]t is the total absorption, the suspension of self-consciousness” that made describing a feeling at the time difficult. He wrote that the presence or absence of a feeling at the time determined if the activity was pleasing or gratifying. The happiness derived from these activities were found to stay much longer and were the Good Life (Seligman).

The Meaningful Life was the

"Good Life, but with one further ingredient: identifying and using your highest strengths in order to belong to and serve something larger than you are (Seligman)." 

Things larger than yourself Seligman called Positive Institutions. And could be communities or civic groups. I imagine a classic example is religion. With Christianity, there is the manifold paradox of God being both internal and external to the believer. There is the promise joy and life beyond death. Christianity also emphasises a focus on the Good Life and doing gratifying activities while here in the world.

The character of Mama, who I would argue underwent the most change in the story, is a devout Christian. A couple of the other characters exhibit spirituality but not to the depth that Mama demonstrates.

There are, without a doubt, other cultural lenses to examine this script through and having recently worked on This Random World, I had a few thoughts about looking at it through Shintoism. But Happy Mess examines happiness through occidental ones and I’ll confine my ruminations to that as well.

The Good Life and the Meaningful Life reminded me of a story I’d heard that to be a good citizen in ancient society you had to contribute to that society. I found this reflected in Townsend’s quote below.

Aristotle thought happiness was the goal of human activity. For him, true happiness was something more than simply "Eat, drink, and be merry," or even the honor of high position. Real satisfaction didn't depend on the pleasures of the senses or what others thought of you. You could find genuine happiness only in a life of virtue and just actions.-- Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

Three characters demonstrating Aristotle’s happiness in Happy Mess are Bella’s father, Daddy; her former lover, Ms. Harvey; and the town florist, Mr. Johnson. Mr. Johnson designed a community park and uses dialogue to reinforce and further interconnections between residents of Bridge Water.

Daddy’s a builder. He “speaks” through making and gifts. He admits that he’s not very good with words. We see his letter to Mama when he couldn’t speak what he wanted to say nor build it.

Daddy constructed the post office and the library and when his own barn burnt, the community helped raise a new one. He also designed a water tower which is no longer in use. His activity and presence was integral to bringing the residents together as a community. He built the family home which still shelters them and a tree house for Bella.

Ms. Harvey saves the community’s history, encouraging her students to discover their own past and their places in their family and their community. Through the course of the play, Bella’s family questions Ms. Harvey’s motivations with her newest project, to save a water tower -Does it have less to do with history and more to do with getting closer to Bella?

Seligman might value the three types of happy life equally but that is not true of the characters in Happy Mess‘ world-nor need it be. It points up the challenges we all face trying to define happiness for ourselves.

Before the play takes place, Mama had a full life with a balance of Seligman’s three lives but her husband’s death threw everything out of true. She has broken with her faith and struggles to find her way. She returns home after several years focused entirely on a Life of Pleasure which she confesses has only brought her misery.

Daddy’s presence is felt throughout the story despite only being seen on stage in few flashbacks. There are three objects connected him that are destroyed through the course of the play: The water tower, a statue, the letter.

The water tower is a relic of the past and waiting to be pulled down when Ms. Harvey mounts her campaign to save it. Daddy gifted Mama religious statues through their relationship and one is broken during an argument. And finally Daddy’s letter.

The letter is one of the few times where Daddy put his feelings into words. Mama decides to destroy the letter at the urging of Bella’s wife to free herself from the past. Bella’s indifference to the shredding of her father’s last words in the face of Mama’s euphoria provides a cacophony of emotions for the audience. It propels the story to the finale in the house that Daddy built.

Townsend’s article focused on the pursuit of happiness in relation the founding of the United States. Her argument was that happiness lay in personal agency.

People were happy when they controlled their destiny, when their voice was heard, when they participated in public events, when the government did not do things to them, or even for them, but with them.--Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

Which returns me once more to Seligman and Happy Mess. The interconnected members of Bella’s family (and I’m including Ms. Harvey in this) are brought under Daddy’s roof after the systematic destruction of the past: the discarding of the water tower, the statue, the letter.

The players are the prodigal mother, Bella, her wife, and Bella’s jilted lover; Bella’s daughter and her lovers. The final scene encompasses Seligman’s full life as well as the script’s title Happy Mess. All the players in each one’s Pleasant, Good, and Mindful Life are together and engaged. They have reached a point where they can talk about what happiness means and have agency for themselves. And perhaps find the happiness each wants.

Townsend, Kathleen Kennedy. “The Pursuit of Happiness: What the Founders Meant—And Didn’t” The Atlantic. June 20, 2011. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/06/the-pursuit-of-happiness-what-the-founders-meant-and-didnt/240708/

Seligman, Martin E. P., “Can Happiness Be Taught?” Daedalus, Spring, 2004, Vol. 133, No. 2, On Happiness (Spring, 2004), pp. 80-87. Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20027916.

In October, Happy Mess had a staged reading, giving an opportunity to share the company’s work on the script and receive feedback from several audiences before it moves into a next phase: preparation for an anticipated spring production.

Due to the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, the workshop process was moved to a Zoom format. A byproduct of this was that the company was able to include members from outside of Moscow, living in Boise, Virginia, and Tennessee. The playwright, Ian, is a distance learning student residing in Utah.

Each actor had their own performance space and were their own tech support. We helped each other online as best we could but David Harlan, who is adept as a technician and a performer, remarked on the unique stress of having to be both during the Zoom work.

Much of the tech involved troubleshooting wi-fi and network problems. We ultimately relocated three actors to spaces in the theatre department to remedy the problems. We also worked with room acoustics and lighting to get a balanced look and sound between actors. Once a baseline was established, performers would contribute to further the telling of Happy Mess.

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Costumes were pulled from actors’ personal wardrobes as well as the few props they would need for the reading.

When I started thinking about how different this was from the performances we were accustomed to at Hartung or Forge, I asked Jeanna for photos of her performance area. Her character, Mama, had the most props in our reading. One thing that was rather startling when I saw her photos was how isolated the actors were. When I see them, they’re always “together.”

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During the rehearsals, they talked about the characters and the relationships which is part and partial of working on a show and developing connections with each other as actors. It’s something theatre makers fret about when doing Zoom shows. How to bridge those little boxes. To have character emotionally tethered.

And to see the pictures Jeanna sent me, I suddenly see the actors reaching out through that little dot on the top of their laptops.

It’s all they have connect through. They have all these tools sitting around them to help them with the performance, and its precious few compared to what they had on a physical stage. Only so much will fit in that dot. And the only feedback they get from the others they are working with is through that black square on the screen somewhere in the vicinity of their script.

Happy Mess is in development at the University of Idaho Theatre Arts Department through the Fall 2020 semester.

TOPICS

• Water Tower
• LGBT+ CEOS
• Coming out after 30
• Small Town
• Mattering
• LGBT+ & AA

Happy Mess takes place in the town of Bridge Water which swiftly grew from 15 families to a municipality in a little over three generations. This unique history sets it apart from other communities in its imagined valley. It serves as the ground the characters root in as they face the challenges that life brings.

Robert Wuthnow studied small town communities and people’s interaction within them. He found the connections they made helped them focus on the future.

“[C]ultural heritage connects us to our histories, our collective memories, it anchors our sense of being and can provide a source of insight to help us to face the future.”

Robert Wuthnow

One of the themes of Happy Mess is living with values from the past in the present. The heritage of Bridge Water brings some of the aforementioned values the characters cherish into their lives.

In larger cities, people tend to socialize who those who are like them. One of Wuthnow’s interviewees remarked that in the metropolis:

“…birds of a feather … flock together. In a rural community, you can’t do that….You can’t retreat into a world of your own making….You have to deal with everybody.”

Hanging out with people like yourself is not always an option in small towns. Limited venues will cause more interaction with the populace than a person might ordinarily make left to making their own choices. People who don’t know each other by name come to recognize each other.

One of the interviewees in Knox and Mayer’s Social Construction of Space—Small Town Sustainability felt the interactions leveled social classes and made everyone feel and interact like neighbors (Knox). Wuthnow argued that these encounters in shared spaces gave people opportunities to act in the interest of their collective well-being. “This is one meaning of community” (Wuthnow).

In the play, Ms. Harvey, a teacher in Bridge Water, talks to her students about people who made an impact on their town.

Ms Harvey: … Mr. Johnson formed the Gardening Society here in Bridge Water. He helped open the McGregor family grocery store over 40 years ago. And still sells flowers out of their business to this day. The park just across the street was designed and planted by his hands alone. By doing these simple tasks he has brought jobs, money, hope, and joy to many lives….Now those flowers didn’t save 200 hundred people from a train crash or write the Declaration of Independence. But they did change the very fabric of our community. The way we see one another. How we celebrate the good times and even the bad. Those flowers. His life’s work. It truly is a major contribution to our lives.

Ian Paul Messersmith, “Happy Mess”

These small communities shape and influence how their residents see the world. Another example is seen in a video from the Latah County Historical Society. Guest storyteller Jamie Hill talks about her hometown of Weiser, ID and one of its prominent citizens Frank Mortimer.

A sense of community, especially in small towns is gained from routine encounters and shared experiences. Knox and Mayer found that for this to occur there needed to be plenty of opportunities for community members to meet and talk.

“This requires plenty of opportunities for casual meetings and gossip; friendly settings in which to eat, drink, or linger; street markets; and a sense of historical and cultural continuity.”

Paul Knox and Heike Mayer

Knox, Paul, and Heike Mayer. “Social Construction Of Space—Small Town Sustainability.” Small Town Sustainability: Economic, Social, and Environmental Innovation, Walter de Gruyter. ProQuest Ebook Central. 2009.

Wuthnow, Robert. Small-Town America: Finding Community, Shaping the Future. Princeton University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Happy Mess is in development at the University of Idaho Theatre Arts Department through the Fall 2020 semester.

TOPICS

• Water Tower
• LGBT+ CEOS
• Coming out after 30
• Small Town
• Mattering
• LGBT+ & AA

I was rather surprised to discover that most of my knowledge of alcoholism and alcoholics comes from Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). That a person had to hit “rock bottom” before they would look for help; that alcoholism was a disease. AA was the group putting out the pamphlets that got these ideas into the mainstream consciousness.

Since its beginnings in 1935, AA filled a void in treatment for heavy drinkers. It taught that alcoholism was a disease which the American Medical Association wouldn’t attest to until 1956. At that time, AMA setup detox wards but still there was no treatment. Most recently the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) classified it as a spectrum under the new term “alcohol use disorder (AUD)” (Glaser). The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism describes AUD as

“a chronic relapsing brain disorder characterized by an impaired ability to stop or control alcohol use despite adverse social, occupational, or health consequences.”

Approximately 15 million people in the United States have it (NIAAA). Some of a person’s vulnerability to AUD is also hereditary (Glaser).

Over the years little in AA’s treatment of AUD has changed even though there are medicines available now and cognitive therapies. It relies on abstinence, group support, and faith in a higher being. Some participants only see partial success and others leave dissatisfied (Glaser).

In AA’s beginnings, there were no studies done for its efficacy or the accuracy of its pamphlets. AA was doing its best with no resources available. It taught alcoholism was a disease with an unavoidable fate. Glaser writing for The Atlantic found research to the contrary that some drinkers were not doomed:

… a federally funded survey called the National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions show[ed] that nearly one-fifth of those who have had alcohol dependence go on to drink at low-risk levels with no symptoms of abuse. And a recent survey of nearly 140,000 adults by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that nine out of 10 heavy drinkers are not dependent on alcohol and, with the help of a medical professional’s brief intervention, can change unhealthy habits (Glaser).

It is difficult to track AA’s effectiveness since it keeps no records (a key part of the name Alcoholics Anonymous) but various studies have claimed it has anywhere from a 5-33% success rate (Glaser). A 2014 survey that AA conducted on itself found that of the entire membership

27% spent less than a year sober.
24% spent 1-5 years
13% spent 6-10 years
14% spent 11-20 years
22% spent 20 or more years sober
 Also 62% of its member were men and 89% were white (membership survey)

When it was created in the 1930s, AA was designed for chronic, heavy drinkers. Now it is used by a wider range of people—Some that have been sent there by court order (Glaser). So while being intended for a very discrete part of the population, its abstinence program is now being used at large.

In Happy Mess, Devon joins AA to deal with her drinking problem. Through it she has seen success in bringing her drinking under control.

Studies calculate substance abuse in the gay and transgender populations to be around 20 -30%. This contrasts with about 5-10% percent of the general population (Hunt, Murray). Researchers believe alcohol is selected as a maladaptive coping mechanism to deal with stress from discrimination and control anxiety (Murray, Hunt, Lewis).

Another challenge is that gay and lesbian culture in the U.S. developed a practice of meeting in bars. Often, it was the only safe place to meet. After quitting drinking, older gays and lesbians find it difficult to create safe networks of friends that do not revolve around drink. This, in turn, makes it harder to to control alcohol abuse (Rowan).

An advantage to AA is it helps create networks away from alcohol. AA is open to gays and lesbians and has groups for them if members don’t wish to attend a general meeting. The pamphlet for the “Gay/Lesbian Alcoholic” is no different from the general one except the prologue has a different set of endorsements.

…In most respects we are no different from other A.A. groups. We no longer have to feel unique simply because we are gay. We can now concentrate on the similarities between us and other alcoholics rather than the differences.

prologue, A.A. and the Gay/Lesbian Alcoholic

Alcoholics Anonymous. “A.A. and the Gay/Lesbian Alcoholic.” 1989.

Alcoholics Anonymous. “2014 Membership Survey.” https://www.aa.org/assets/en_US/p-48_membershipsurvey.pdf. Last Accessed: August 20, 2020.

Glaser, Gabrielle. “The Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous. “The Atlantic.” April, 2015. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-irrationality-of-alcoholics-anonymous/386255/ Last Accessed: August 20, 2020.

Hunt, Jerome. “Why the Gay and Transgender Population Experiences Higher Rates of Substance Use Many Use to Cope with Discrimination and Prejudice” Center for American Progress. March 9, 2012 https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/lgbtq-rights/reports/2012/03/09/11228/why-the-gay-and-transgender-population-experiences-higher-rates-of-substance-use/

Lewis, Robin J., Tyler B. Mason, Barbara A. Winstead, Melissa Gaskins, and Lance B. Irons. “Pathways to Hazardous Drinking Among Racially and Socioeconomically Diverse Lesbian Women: Sexual Minority Stress, Rumination, Social Isolation, and Drinking to Cope.” Psychology of Women Quarterly. 2016, Vol. 40(4). pp 564-581. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5270712/. Last Accessed: August 20, 2020.

Murray, Krystina. “The LGBTQ community is more impacted by alcoholism than most. Luckily, awareness is growing, as is the number of LGBTQ-specific treatment programs.” April 28, 2020 https://www.alcoholrehabguide.org/resources/lgbtq-alcoholism/

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/alcohol-use-disorders. Last Accessed: August 21, 2020.

Rowan, Noell L. “Older Lesbian Adults and Alcoholism: A Case Study for Practitioners.” Journal of Aging Life Care. Spring 2012 https://www.aginglifecarejournal.org/older-lesbian-adults-and-alcoholism-a-case-study-for-practitioners/ Last accessed Aug 13, 2020.

• Water Tower
• LGBT+ CEOS
• Coming out after 30
• Small Town
• Mattering
• LGBT+ & AA

I am still finding things about water and water towers that strike my fancy so I’ve added a second page to the Water Tower section.

During the first table reading there were a couple of questions about the symbol of the water tower and the town being named Bridge Water. Ian said there was no intentional use of water as a symbol. I grabbed a couple of my notes on water from This Random World just for fun. 🙂

Water represents spirit and connections. It is transience, dynamic. Water purifies. Water is life. Water represents one and all. It is a drop, a puddle, a stream, a lake. Fluidity. Water is transition.

On an episode of Star Talk, Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about water towers. This was uploaded in 2018 and you can really feel the date. At the conclusion, the co-hosts quips about never washing his hands which sounds weird in these pandemic days we live in.

Happy Mess is in development at the University of Idaho Theatre Arts Department through the Fall 2020 semester.

TOPICS

• Water Tower
• LGBT+ CEOS
• Coming out after 30
• Small Town
• Mattering
• LGBT+ & AA

An important part of the human condition is the need to matter. A team of writers in 2004 writing for the journal Self and Identity defined mattering as:

…the perception that, to some degree and in any of a variety of ways, we are a significant part of the world around us. Surely, it is central to our sense of who we are and where we fit in to be able to say that others think about us (at least occasionally), seek our advice, or would care about what happens to us (Elliot).

In the Happy Mess script, Tommy is initially dismissed by his teacher, Ms. Harvey until she discovers his artistic skill. She begins nurturing that talent and supporting him. When he sees that he is important, that he matters, his self-esteem improves (Elliot).

Studies have found that people demonstrate a lower level of depression, fear, anxiety, and academic stress when they feel valued. They have higher levels of self-esteem and social support. This in turn results in healthier and happier lives (Lemon, Paputsakis).

It may seem to a simplistic concept but it is woven into the heart of Happy Mess which is a meditation on sacrifice. Mattering will power much of the motivations and how the characters connect and support each other through the challenges they face. Not to mention the delight they share in being together.

Elliot, Gregory C., Suzanne Kao, Ann-Marie Grant. “Mattering: Empirical Validation of a Social-Psychological Concept.” Self and Identity, 3: pp 339–354, 2004. Psychology Press.

Lemon, Jan Cummins. “An Investigation of The Relationship Among Wellness, Perceived Stress, Mattering, And At-Risk Status for Dropping Out Of High School,” dissertation, Mississippi State University, Mississippi, 2010.

Paputsakis, Rachel Jo. “Adolescent Gender Differences In Perceived Interpersonal Mattering,” dissertation, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH, 2010.

Happy Mess is in development at the University of Idaho Theatre Arts Department through the Fall 2020 semester.

TOPICS

• Water Tower
• LGBT+ CEOS
• Coming out after 30
• Small Town
• Mattering
• LGBT+ & AA

In the play Happy Mess, Bella is invited to speak at the Young Leader’s Organization about her childhood and becoming a business owner in Bridge Water. The company is an economic anchor for her hometown. Bella doesn’t talk about it, but start-ups are difficult to make a go of and attest to her tenacity and savvy to make her ad agency a viable concern.

Fortune Magazine generates an annual list of the highest revenue generating corporations known as the Fortune 500. Currently on this list there are three openly gay CEOs:

Tim Cook with Apple,
James Fitterling of The Dow Chemical Company, and
Beth Ford who in 2018 became the first female CEO of Land O’Lakes, and the first openly lesbian CEO to run a Fortune 500 company (Carpenter).

There are currently 37 women running Fortune 500 companies (Connley).

On Ford’s appointment to CEO, Carpenter wrote that there are very few role models for women in business. The corporate world is still dominated by straight, cis-gendered leaders. A Human Rights Campaign survey showed that nearly half of all LGBT+ Americans aren’t out at work (Carpenter).

In an article for The Atlantic, Levenson found that Corporate America has become more accepting of LGBT+ workers in recent years, adding stronger non-discrimination policies and same-sex marriage benefits but at the same time it has not led to increased activism at the top. The rationale for this is fear of a consumer boycott if they learned the company is headed by a gay CEO (Levenson). This is echoed by Miller who wrote that discrimination can be hidden as a business strategy “— We’re tolerant, but our customers might not be.”

There is the possibility of change with Ford already being out when she was appointed. Carpenter interviewed Matt Kidd, executive director of Reaching Out MBA, a nonprofit organization for the LGBTQ MBA and graduate community:

“Where we can kind of measure success is with mid and lower-level employees, seeing an increase in LGBTQ representation there,” he says. “They’re going to be out their entire careers, and the presumption is they’ll rise up as others have, and what we want to look closely at is if someone is starting their career as out, is that in any way hindering them as they advance?”

Carpenter, Julia. “A new first for LGBTQ business leaders” CNN Money. July 27, 2018. https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/27/news/companies/lgbtq-ceos/index.html. Last Accessed: August 16, 2020.

Connley, Courtney. “The number of women running Fortune 500 companies hits a new high” May 19, 2020. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/19/the-number-of-women-running-fortune-500-companies-hits-a-new-high.html#: Last Accessed: August 16, 2020.

Levenson, Eric. “Corporate America Doesn’t Have Any Openly Gay CEOs. Or Does It?” The Atlantic. May 16, 2014. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/05/corporate-america-still-doesnt-have-any-openly-gay-ceos/371049/. Last accessed July 28, 2020.

Miller, Claire Cain. “Where Are the Gay Chief Executives?” New York Times. May 16, 2014. https://nyti.ms/1gJLwum. Last Accessed: August 16, 2020.