The Orphan Sea

The Orphan Sea is unlike any play I have ever directed. Chances are, it is different from any play you have ever seen. Because it is a new play that has been written specifically for us, I am often asked, “What is the play about?” The difficulty in answering this question is that Svich’s play, although rooted in classical themes, breaks almost every “rule” of narrative drama that has ever been derived from Aristotle’s work on tragedy.

The story is contained within a poetic, choral structure that revels in a free-flowing sense of character and a recasting of narrative that has come to characterize Svich’s work over the last several years. Instead of telling a linear story from A to Z, the play challenges us to piece together fragments from the ruins of the Poetics. In this way, the play is less of a traditional story and more of a meditation on the archetypes of Penelope and Odysseus, mythological characters from Homer’s Odyssey.

The setting of the play is “Now. And a memory of times before (mythic time).” In contrast to many plays that are set among the ruins of the ancient Athenian civilization, this play breaks out of the typical ruins-as-tragedy trope to end in a rhapsody of optimism and utopianism. Rather than individual protagonists and antagonists, three choruses share the stage: the Odysseus Chorus, the Penelope Chorus, and the Chorus of the City.

Unraveling the tapestry thus woven is a daunting task, for a director as well as audience. Rather than struggling to find the “meaning” of the play, I suggest that you sit back and let the waves of meaning wash over you. There are many ideas buried in the strata of the play. Some of the recognizable themes are related to borders, including contemporary preoccupations like immigration and war, personal categories of identity, and the way that technology isolates us by creating borders between one another, the media dividing humanity into “us versus them.”

These elements swirl in a whirlpool of dramaturgy that includes methods of technological mediation that are worked into the play to emphasize the themes, such as isolation, division, and reunion. Sometimes these methods are purposefully distancing, but more often are meant to immerse the audience and sweep them up into the world of the play.

The metaphorical structure of the play blinks in and out on several levels, ranging from the romantic, poetic rapture of love to a contemplation of the post-modern nausea of isolation. Yet, in the end, our couple is reunited, daring us to dream about the ways that some of the best things in life emerge from ruins. Thus, there is an inherent optimism in the work, a hope that humanity will be one day reunited with itself, despite being separate for so long.

In the words of the late, great poet Mahmoud Darwish from his collection Memories of Forgetting: “Hallowed be your hands, which, all by themselves, raise mountains from the ruins of the orphaned sea.”