{"id":184,"date":"2019-09-12T06:35:30","date_gmt":"2019-09-12T06:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/?p=184"},"modified":"2019-09-12T06:35:30","modified_gmt":"2019-09-12T06:35:30","slug":"the-clean-house-purity-danger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/2019\/09\/12\/the-clean-house-purity-danger\/","title":{"rendered":"The Clean House: Purity & Danger"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo by Daniel Haley<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Riffing off Sarah Ruhl, my posts on dramaturgy are not necessarily faithful descriptions of my process but rather views of certain aspects of it from just to the left of the experience.\u00a0<\/em>

After\u00a0<\/em>The Three Keys of Captain Hellfire\u00a0opened my director, David Lee-Painter (DLP) asked if I would dramaturg his next project,\u00a0<\/em>This Random World\u00a0by Steven Dietz in the fall. The idea of researching someone else\u2019s play was vaguely terrifying. I knew nothing about how to do it. In the past, I would\u2019ve fled. This time I said, \u201cYes.\u201d<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it was that\u00a0I began<\/a>\u00a0learning dramaturgy and researching<\/em>\u00a0The Clean House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the fun parts of researching Ruhl\u2019s The Clean House<\/em> is that I got to bust out a couple of my anthropology books that I haven\u2019t touched since grad school. On this post I wanted to share some of Mary Douglas\u2019 text Purity & Danger<\/em> which uses beliefs on purity to compare different religions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For her purposes, Douglas\ndefines dirt:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we can abstract pathogenicity and hygiene from our notion of dirt, we are left with the old definition of dirt as matter out of place. \u2026.It implies two conditions: a set of ordered relations and a contravention of that order. Dirt then, is never a unique, isolated event. Where there is dirt there is system. Dirt is the by-product of systematic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involved rejecting inappropriate elements\u2026.[For example, s]hoes are not dirty in themselves, but it is dirty to place them on the dining table.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Douglas continues:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is no such thing as absolute dirt: it exists in the eye of the beholder\u2026.Dirt offends against order. Eliminating it is not a negative movement, but a positive effort to organize the environment.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

These ideas are reflected in The Clean House<\/em> where Lane expects order. Activities within her home must follow a routine or a system. Virginia, Lane\u2019s sister, see cleaning (organizing the environment) as progress. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beliefs about pollution are\nused within societies to influence behavior through social pressure. These\nimplied perils are intended to keep would-be offenders within accepted norms of\nbehavior (Douglas). To step outside of these boundaries causes the transgressor\nto enter a transitional state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDanger lies in transitional states, simply because transition is neither one state nor the next, it is undefinable. \u2026.The theme of death and rebirth [transitional states], of course, has other symbolic functions: the initiates die to their old life and are reborn anew (Douglas).\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Transitional phases for\nMatilde are seen when she is mourning and the scene of her birth. For her\nmother when she dies. For Ana, her surgery\u2014a liminal state where you are\nneither living nor dead\u2014and then when Ana dies. Lane\u2019s old life dies and a new\none is born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cleaning is also a method of\ncontrol. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not uncommon for people\nin transition to be quarantined, shunned or marginalized (Douglas).\nMarginalized people are also outcasts who sometimes live near those who have\nbanished them. Matilde is an immigrant, a lower-class worker, and speaks a\nlanguage none but Ana understands. Ana is also in transition and marginalized\nat first for breaking up Lane\u2019s marriage and later during her struggle with\ncancer until the other women readmit her into society. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the second act, cleaning\nbecomes cleansing. More juxtaposition abounds here. The cleansing needed for\nLane\u2019s ordered and sterile world requires that all become dirty. The ripples of\nher husband\u2019s affair into her life rain down as apple cores. Her sister\nphysically makes a mess in the living room during an argument. And when Ana\u2019s\ncancer returns, her polluted body is brought into Lane\u2019s home. It is there Ana\nprepares to end her transitional state and, in the process, cleanses the other\nwomen. In a neat reverse, after Ana clutters their lives with the messiness of\nbeing alive, they clean her body which is now out of its transitional state (Al-Shamma,\nHeller, Schmidt). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From clean to messy to\ncleanse, the women learn \u201cto accept the chance collisions of life, the pull of\ndesire, and the inevitability of death (Heller).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lines from an early poem of Ruhl\u2019s called \u201cAdvice from a Father to His Daughters\u201d:
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But have a good tantrum once in a while \u2013
throw a bowl of olives against the wall.
Then conjure grace and drink plenty of tea\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Both the play and the poem\nrecognize that a mess is a part of the process of confronting our deep-seated\nfears of disorder. Something deeper is at work here as well, as the play\u2019s\nconclusion reveals: a cleansing mess is a step on the path to letting go of the\nworld more completely (Heller).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Al-Shamma, James Zuheir, \u201cGrief and Whimsy in the Plays of Sarah Ruhl,\u201d dissertation, UC-Santa Barbara, 2008.
Heller, Jennifer, \u201cTo Follow Pleasure\u2019s Sway: Atomism in Sarah Ruhl\u2019s The Clean House,\u201d Modern Drama<\/em>, Volume 60, Number 4, Winter 2017.
Schmidt, Heidi, \u201cSarah Ruhl\u2019s Women: Gender, Representation And Subversion In The Clean House, Eurydice And In The Next Room, Or The Vibrator Play,\u201d dissertation, University of Missouri-Columbia, 2010. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Riffing off Sarah Ruhl, my posts on dramaturgy are not necessarily faithful descriptions of my process but rather views of certain aspects of it from just to the left of the experience.\u00a0 After\u00a0The Three Keys of Captain Hellfire\u00a0opened my director, David Lee-Painter (DLP) asked if I would dramaturg his next project,\u00a0This Random World\u00a0by Steven Dietz … Continue reading “The Clean House: Purity & Danger”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6,11],"tags":[10,9,15,29,24,13],"class_list":["post-184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-dramaturg","category-theatre","tag-dlpanotherfinemess","tag-dramaturgy","tag-livingthedream","tag-lovemesomeresearch","tag-the-clean-house","tag-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192,"href":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions\/192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}