Summer and Smoke
Vision Notes
Experiencing physical intimacy is as primal a pursuit as understanding the higher being who created our existence. And though these pursuits need not be mutually exclusive, all too often in our society (historically right up to today) the pursuit of physical intimacy is deemed beastly, licentious, and ungodly. Frequently young persons brought up within the church are trained to deny, loathe, and expunge their sensual impulses. While matters of sexuality and intimacy need be heeded by young and old alike, attempting to purge these inherent passions from impressionable youth threatens to create a raging inner war in each resulting in a well of exorbitant suppressed energy. This is where we find Alma. Williams tells us “her true nature is hidden even from herself.” The result of her upbringing as a Minister’s daughter and her responsibilities in the rectory, Alma does not realize the passions of the body and the spirit can co-exist until it is too late. The window of opportunity for John and Alma to connect has closed and Alma’s spirit is crushed. Tragically, all that remains for Alma is the spiritless, corporeal intimacy she so feverishly fought to avoid. Despite a 21st century pop-culture more and more inundated with sexuality, the unfortunate plight of Alma is not so eccentric or antiquated as one might imagine. In fact, this barrage of gratuitous sensuality has amped up the war against physical intimacy – loving, respectful, dare I say spiritual intimacy in addition to lustful, self-serving intimacy – among the devout. Thus, Summer and Smoke is not only contemporary to our Midwest audience, but also absolutely essential. Our secular audience base can also learn much from the journey of John, who comes to realize there is a higher plane of intimacy to be experienced in the union of two souls rather than merely two bodies. Williams reworked the text of this play many times (eventually coming back and rewriting an entirely new play, Eccentricities of a Nightingale, in its setting). We will be using the text currently published by Dramatists Play Service that does not include a prologue scene introducing Alma and John as children. More importantly, this text does include a scene between Alma and John’s father, her physician, which helps us understand Alma’s perspective on relationships at her present age. John’s father also serves in this scene to provide a mature, accepting point of view regarding physical intimacy that is lacking in any of the other characters until John’s change at the end of the play. His reproach of John’s lifestyle early in the play outlines the distinction between acceptable and irresponsible intimacy. It is crucial that this distinction be made, lest the audience believe Williams to be advocating John’s promiscuous lifestyle simply as the lesser of two evils, which is certainly not the case. In the design of our production, we will be taking to heart Williams’ note on the setting and creating a unit set where the rectory, doctor’s office, and park will always be present. This allows for a more fluid transition between scenes along with keeping the audience aware that both corporeal and spiritual forces are constantly at work in the world of the play. The outlining structure of the interior spaces will be solid while the walls will be made of translucent scrim. Rather than a painted backdrop, a cyclorama will be used upstage. Color will be used on both the cyc and the scrim surfaces to aid and suggest the emotional atmosphere of the playing area. These colors will be subtle, but present. While there is no soul depicted on John’s anatomy chart because it cannot be seen with the human eye, we bring the struggles of the soul throughout the course of the play to light through this influence of color that can be seen through the eyes of our audience. The sound design of the piece will also have a significant effect, utilizing music to underscore much of the struggle of Alma’s soul to express itself and be intimate. By the end of the play, her soul crushed, the final scene with the traveling salesman is played with no music at all – blackout and curtain in silence. Back to Writing Page