The Donn B. Murphy One Acts Festival is a celebration of Georgetown’s own aspiring playwrights. The festival features two readings of original student works-in-progress: “Finch/Robinson” by Jack Schmitt (COL ‘15), which examines race relations through the lens of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and “Family Pictures” by Lydia Brown (COL ‘15), which tells a tale of high-profile family drama surrounding the indictment of the director of the CIA for war crimes.
The main act of the night, however, is Spiritual Ecstasies by Katie Mitchell (COL ’15) and directed by Kathleen Joyce (COL ’15). The work takes its name from a line inOscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, when a character becomes engrossed in a book and describes the experience as “one hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some medieval saint or the morbid confession of a modern sinner.” Drawing inspiration from this line, the play endeavors to imbue three disparate narrative voices with the passion of spiritual ecstasy.
The play features three unnamed characters who are arranged in an arc facing the audience. Props are minimal; the characters are seated isolated from one another upon a plain bench, chair, and stool, respectively. They never interact, but rather take turns addressing an unseen male character upon whom they unleash alternating tirades which deal loosely with transcendent human experiences.
On stage right is an amicable young hockey player in a bright red jersey. He’s attempting to justify his life as a full-time hockey player to his nine-to-five desk job brother. Describing the rush of the game, he experiences transcendence by becoming the game, by becoming in his words “a hard right turn” and sending the puck smoothly, powerfully, and naturally into the net.
At center stage is a furrow-browed priest addressing a young parishioner who has brought his newborn baby for baptism. Clutching the bible and staring unwaveringly at the audience, the priest laments the disorientation and alienation of modern city life. Transcendence for the priest is achieved through breaching distracted minds and creating a sacred mental space for peace.
To stage left is an earnest and sensual young photographer addressing the object of her long-suffered and unrequited love. She explains how she counts her life in images like the moment a green-winged Luna Moth landed on a red-rusted window frame by his neck. Transcendence for her is realized through delicate attunement to one’s body and expression of one’s physicality.
With understated staging and passionate verbal expression the play conveys three distinct experiences of athletic, spiritual, and sensual transcendence. A smartly written and ardently acted play, Spiritual Ecstasies isn’t quite out-of-body, but definitely exceeds expectations.
