Mud - Maria Irene Fornes

Mud is the most haunting play I have yet to read. In my attempt to further understand the complexity yet subtlety of the characters' motives, pains, desires, I came across a review of the play's performance in England in 2003. Despite it's composition date of 1983, the play remains relevant to urban and rural poverty and a woman's struggle for independence.

Everything about Mud is so dauntingly peculiar to me. While I understand Mae's desire for some form of independence and her persistence for an education to achieve such a freedom, everything else about her life. Or Lloyd and Henry's, for that matter. (And it's not just because I can read a pamphlet pretty damn well.)

Oh, I just found another review.

The most interesting aspect of the play is how Fornes constructs scene changes.


At the end of each scene a freeze is indicated. these freezes will last eight seconds which will create the effect of a still photograph.

Exactly eight seconds. I suppose this goes back to how specific a playwright can be with stage directions, or even character description. And as a music major, I can wrap my head around this better when I relate this to composers, especially composers of twentieth century music. (George Crumb, to name one composer who is extremely specific with what he wants from the performance, includes dictation on how the performers should be set up onstage, how many seconds the performers should pause, how many seconds a note should last, etc.).

There is such simplicity in the entirety of the play. The dialogue and dialect of the characters is simple - it is every day conversation. There is so much underlying complexity, however, and it is obvious in the bickering between Mae and Lloyd, and the simple gestures and phrases of affection between her and Henry. Underlying the simple sentences and is Mae's struggle to grab hold of something worthwhile, something that won't tie her down, something that won't make her a slave to the only two men in her life.

It is interesting to me Forne's choice of excerpts from which Mae reads; a hermit crab (Henry), and hermit crab's new home in the shell (Lloyd), and a starfish (Mae). It is an obviously deliberate choice for these animals and readings, and this detail serves to highlight the characters' qualities and motives.

Mae's pursuit is tragic, and in her last desperate attempt to find independence she is taken from that light she sees by the man who barred her from it all along.

I live in the dark and my eyes see only a faint light. It is faint and yet it consumes me. I long for it. I thirst for it. I would dies for it. Lloyd, I am dying.