| I often don’t have a clue where a play is taking me
until I stumble across something that crystallizes it for me. In the case
of Gravitation and Ascent, that something was an old alchemical
engraving of an eagle in flight, struggling to break free from a chain tethering
it to an enormous stone on the earth below. |
| Daniel wants nothing more than to break free from the wretched
flesh that tethers him. He’s beyond weird—and painfully aware
of the effect his unsettling behavior has on others. He seeks transformation—the
realization of his “innerness,” as he puts it, “the luminosity”
of his being. But being lifted up can be truly terrifying |
| As love would have it, Daniel meets Thomas—cerebral,
cultured, and so above it all. But Thomas’s elevated existence is
a far from happy one. He’s desperate to understand how people “fall—into
bed, into love, into sin. Into each other’s arms.” Humanity—his
own, Daniel’s—is a terrifying and alien thing. Yet, in the surreal
muck of Daniel’s weirdness, Thomas senses “this grace in him.”
And he wants “to save him. It. Fuck. Myself. Is that a recipe for
disaster or what?” |
| If Thomas is air, his long-time friend Sam is earth. She’s
grounded, open-hearted, matter-of-fact—and a middle-aged woman mired
in a messy divorce. She’s also most reckless precisely where he’s
most reserved. She risks losing custody of her children by falling—with
the very effortlessness Thomas so envies—into a passionate affair
with Jimi, a rock-star wannabe fifteen years her junior. Jimi is, however,
more than he seems. His sexy, laidback charm masks a struggling composer
of serious music so wounded by “sweet art, that pierced me through,”
that it threatens to undermine even Sam’s deep and so very down-to-earth
love for him. |
| The catalyst that brings the two pairs of lovers together
is Biraj, a brilliant twenty-something guy with the clueless open-heartedness—and
lack of inhibition—of a large dog. He’s been Daniel’s
only friend since childhood and idolizes Jimi (although unlike Jimi, he
aspires, in his talentless but infectious way, to true rock-star shallowness).
But what drives his action more than anything is an attraction to Thomas
the transcends all recognizable categories—and gives even Biraj pause. |
| What sums Gravitation and Ascent up best are the eagle and
the stone of the alchemical engraving—the stuff above us we long for
and aspire to, the stuff below us that drags us down and grounds us. But
most of all it’s about the tension of the chain that binds the two.
Escape isn’t the answer, but we struggle nonetheless. |
| “Brilliantly evocative language...wonderfully human
characters...the play is smart, hilarious, and heartfelt”—Bryan
Fonseca, Producing Director, The Phoenix Theatre. Gravitation and Ascent
was a finalist in The Phoenix Theatre’s Festival of Emerging American
Theatre. |
