I don't believe the word 'love' has ever meant the same thing twice

[kaberett]

I have talked before about Callisto and how amazing it is; it's just finished another month-long run at the Arcola, and I'm sorry I didn't point it out to you all here before, er, one hour after the end of the closing performance. However! The script is now available for sale, in paperback, it's a tenner, and I have a lending copy.

Having seen it three times in Edinburgh and once during its week-long run last year, I went to see it twice this year -- once on opening night, and once halfway through, when the performance was followed by a Q&A. Opening night contained a fantastic fumble during the Tammy sequence (Harold dropping the gun and subsequently asking Lola for a glass of soy milk; the overall effect was much more threatening and gaslighty, and the actors recovered superbly); there were a few variations in how it was acted and directed that I thought were fascinating and, er, got invited to e-mail the poor director about. I'M SORRY I'M LIKE THIS, but also here is my e-mail reproduced in full For Posterity and also in case any of you lot like it. There Are Spoilers. You're welcome.

("GIVEN that you've mentioned past productions," I said, beginning my question, "I'm assuming close readings of the text are okay, SO, without going into egregious detail about my own interpretations--" -- or something like that, anyway; whereupon I got the response "No, I'd like to hear them!" -- "Okay, but the rest of the audience might not!" "... fair point." "-- well...")

Hello!

Thank you so much for the script (and also the SPACE ENVELOPE) and apologies that I've taken so long over actually sitting down to write this -- family stuff has been eating me a little...

To recap, my question at the Q&A was, broadly, I was really interested in the change from "Cal and Lorn not touching at all until the final kiss" (as I recall!) to "Cal and Lorn being really handsy throughout", and what you all were intending to do with that.

For me, Lorn carefully avoiding touching Cal implied that, while Lorn was telling stories, he didn't think Cal *was* Theo, or a substitute for Theo, and was keeping the distinction between Cal and Theo very clear at all times: the story-telling is because this is how you do education of AIs, this is how you do social interaction. For me, that makes the kiss -- do *this* -- an unambiguously happy ending: Lorn isn't kissing Theo, or someone he's moulded into a shape enough like Theo. He misses Theo; he mourns Theo; and he's also, to his own astonishment, fallen for Cal: a person in their own right, if an unconventional one, to be loved in their own right. This interpretation hung together really well for me with the love-d, love-d, love-d: where Cal takes a step too far toward Trying To Be Theo (by Lorn's interpretation, because he's not at that point doing a very good job of identifying his feelings) Lorn rejects it and steps away.

In contrast, the lots-of-touching version of their interaction seemed to me much more like Lorn *wasn't* making that distinction between Cal and Theo -- like he was, to some extent, very deliberately and selfishly using Cal as a substitute for his own comfort, without really seeing Cal as an individual. "Love-d, love-d, love-d" can then be read as Lorn getting cross with Cal for presuming, if you like -- for "laying claim" to an emotional intimacy that Cal has no right to, and for providing a reminder that they're *not* Theo. Which in turn makes the kiss at the end less of a triumph and more of a resignation -- Cal thinking that this is the best they're going to get, and accepting playing the part of someone else in return for that someone else being loved by someone Cal loves; Lorn deciding that Cal is a better substitute for Theo than the Bliss. That seems much more complicated and sad to me -- much more that, even 250 years in the future, Alan Turing's ghost is reaching for someone who will never be Christopher, instead of -- per Isobel -- moving on.

This is obviously only one interpretation and does not mean that I in any way think it's a wrong or bad or what-have-you direction decision to have made; however, I sort of suspect it isn't what you were going for, hence my question. I very much appreciated the answer -- that's an intent that also hangs together for me (perhaps hinging more on Lorn feeling disloyal to Theo's memory? -- but obviously there's a million ways that could go, too). As ever, I love seeing all the ways the show changes (and in so doing changes itself), and the ways that meanings intersect and interact and refract -- as I keep saying pretty inarticulately, I adore it & I think it's amazing & I love finding new and (or!) different things it has to say (characters echoing each other across the ages!). I am also *very* much enjoying the ways that expanding the script gives us more on the characters -- I'm particularly thinking here of Isobel on the topic of the goats, and her being allowed her own melodramatic statements.

(I am also delighted that dressing up in blue for Q&A night meant I got to be the trigger for a lighting change, and was very pleased about having dressed entirely in grey for opening night -- colours that have made their point all day -- I absolutely didn't expect anyone to notice but I was quietly pleased with myself because it was ~clever~, natch >_> -- & I thought you might collectively be amused too.)

On the topic of yelling overexcitedly about a different storyline: I was also really interested by the decision to change the (awful, intrusive, horrifying) examination of Amy from suggestion-and-implication (that carried through the "thirty ugly women who just wish they had cocks" line from Tammy's story) to concrete in-yer-face on-stage undressing. I thought I should probably only ask the one question but I'm definitely interested the-author/director-is-not-dead thoughts on that one too, if you have sufficient time/energy/inclination to go into it...

All best for the new year, and with much gratitude for your continuing indulgence of my enthusiasm--

-a.

Comments

[kaberett]

It is possible I have acquired a special interest.

[alexseanchai]

:-D

[sebastienne]

aaahhhh callisto

what was the intent for the new Cal/Lorn staging that was given at the Q&A?

[kaberett]

Tom (director) said, approx, that he thought that perhaps the not-touching -- which he didn't remember! -- was him lacking confidence as a director, and thinking that the way to build sexual tension on stage was to avoid physical touch; but that actually Cal and Lorn really did fancy each other all the way through, and he'd wanted to show that, and make space for physical interaction, and let them have that.

(One audience member pointed out that "gay" and "lesbian" and "queer" never get used in the script, and everybody went "... wait WHAT"; one of Isobel Morcom's descendants turned out to be in attendance the night of the Q&A; there was lots of interesting stuff about decisions made when portraying real people, especially real people about whom relatively little is known -- Amy Hunt!; plus a question about queering the process of making theatre, and what the process of making Callisto had been like, in addition to... portraying queer characters.)

[sebastienne]

That's interesting! I think I remember commenting after my first viewing that I wasn't entirely pleased with the disparity between all the physicality in Tammy/Lola and Arabella/Amy, versus the almost-complete lack of physicality in Alan/Christopher and Cal/Lorn. So I can see where the urge to fix that came from - but yeah I don't think it works as well for me this way.

I am SO interested in the "queered theatre" question! Did you buy it / their answer?

[kaberett]

I mean As We Know I am not actually great at the ~theoretical~ side of this stuff, but broadly (here combining answers to the "queering" and "process" questions, because I think they interlock)--

Callisto was initially conceived as four monologues, but was developed with Forward Arena into The Play We See Today, via essentially a feedback loop -- Hal (playwright) apparently collaborated pretty heavily with Forward Arena & the actors on "this doesn't really work for us, this really does, a bit more here maybe?", and is (a) very willing for more people to put the show on and (b) very willing to work with other companies on the scene order, according to what the individual company wants to emphasise. There was stuff about how the roles get shared out (both "the overall effect of playing this set of people" and "having to swap between them so quickly, to be so many different people"); there was stuff around the nature of playing real people; there was stuff around integrating new cast members. But I am struggling to dredge it out of memory, sorry. :-s