Notes on 'Strange Attractors'

Image by Lindsey Estep for the University of Idaho Department of Theatre Arts.

We started rehearsing this play sometime in mid-January, and it ran February 3-7 as the capstone for its workshopping process.

Synopsis

Brinn Greene, an amateur novelist from Spokane, Washington, is forward and firm but not confident enough in herself to publish her books or to flee her less-than-healthy relationship with Dillon, her current boyfriend.  Dillon has constructed not only a strict trip plan and budget, but also a list of actions Brinn has to take if she marries him.  When the play opens, Dillon is driving Brinn across the state to Bellvue in her camper to live with her bright, saucy mother, Louise.  While Brinn swats at a housefly in the moving camper, Dr. Layne Arvin, a motion-sick math professor and freelance chaotician, stumbles in from the camper’s bathroom.  He has, in a bizarre moment of severe disorientation, mistaken her camper for his motel room.  Brinn stops Layne from vacating the moving vehicle by discussing chaos theory with him.

At a gas station, Brinn convinces Dillon to drive Layne to Bellevue, where they can put him on a flight home.  Layne loses his wallet and laptop, however, and will have to stay at Louise’s house.  Upon arrival in Bellevue, Layne meets Louise, who has painted what he recognizes as a fractal on her ceiling.  Louise wants to pray over dinner, and Dillon tries to humiliate Layne by asking him to say the prayer.  Layne has no objection.  He simply says, “We are thankful for the events that accumulated in our safe arrival, and please help us not to mess anything up.  Amen,” and discusses with Louise his views on science and religion.  Dillon vies for Louise’s attention but is only able to get it when he asks her to leave the room with him.  This gives Layne the opportunity to dance with Brinn in the living room and talk to her about science, mathematics, Dillon, and societal phenomena.

The next morning the family wants to go out, but Layne can’t put his shirt on right-side-out because he still feels ill.  Brinn helps him with his shirt and he and she bond while he demonstrates chaos theory in spitting and telescopes.  Dillon walks in on Brinn and Layne together and is furious, but he is willing to forgive Brinn and asks her to marry him.  She says no.  This makes him even angrier with Layne, and he is determined to secure Brinn for himself by taking her on an outing.  While Brinn and Dillon are out, Louise tells Layne that he is the best person for her daughter, but Layne doubts himself and states that Brinn is too smart to want to be with him.  Louise gives him Brinn’s late father’s notes for an essay he was writing and asks him to add his notes about chaos theory to it.  Layne is honored by the gesture and enamored by the essay, so he puts on a music CD while he reads it.  After a moment, Layne discovers that Louise has died during the song. 

After Louise’s funeral, Dillon confronts Layne with his long-awaited plane ticket, but now Layne doesn’t want it; he wants to stay with Brinn.  Dillon starts a fight with Layne.  Brinn comes in and stops it.  She breaks up with Dillon again and he leaves.  Brinn tells Layne she has to move out because her brother has inherited the house.  She wants to move to his hometown.  Layne objects, saying he will be a burden to her because of his condition, but Brinn helps him to retrace the events that led him to her, solidifying their love for one another.  They repeat the prayer Layne said at dinner, and they embrace. 

The play ends.

The Writing Process

Strange Attractors relates to the fields of science and technology primarily through the significance of chaos theory in the script, story, and structure.  Not only do the characters discuss the basics of chaos theory, these basics become the foundation for the events that occur in the play as well as the existence of the universe and of the characters themselves.  I refrained from dividing the play into specified acts because I wanted to preserve the continuation of the action to show the relationship of events as appearing random but being connected by tiny variations in initial conditions. The play illustrates the technological age we live in, too, not only by showing our reliance on cellular phones and laptops, but also by its relation of chaos theory to computer science’s innovations.

The process of Strange Attractors has been scientific, artistic, and spiritual.  In late 2008 I directed a short play mentioning the Pioneer and Voyager spacecrafts.  Research for the play led me to a science symposium, where I was intrigued by the basics of chaos theory.  I soon found characters who could articulate what I found so profound about it; people who were parts of me: the unpublished author; the anxiety-ridden, motion-sick intellectual; the insecurely demanding human being; and the intrigued listener.  I had visited the Spokane and Bellevue areas that year, and I had nearly purchased a camper to live in, and in these events I found the settings for the play.  I wrote Strange Attractors in my Moscow, Idaho apartment, listening to a variety of music and reading through a stack of mathematics and physics books.  During the process I also directed the above-mentioned short play, which helped me connect emotionally to Strange Attractors.  Another emotional factor in the unfolding of Strange Attractors was the passing of Aunt Janis, one of the most enlightened people in my life.  After I finished the first draft, I was able to loosen my emotional attachments and enter the script into a workshop under the mentorship of Associate Professor Robert C. Caisley at the University of Idaho, where it received a staged reading directed by M.F.A. candidate Anthony B. Brinkley in April of 2009.  That June, Strange Attractors received a staged reading in the Play Lab at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference, coordinated by Dawson Moore in Valdez, Alaska.  From these readings to the present, I have performed further research and revisions.

Future Aspirations

As the author and an avid theatre practitioner, I envision Strange Attractors as one day being available to the international public both onstage and in script form so that it will reach as many people as possible and help them to further understand the sciences.  This is also why I plan to make sure that any scientific discrepancy in the script will be promptly resolved before production and/or publication in order to preserve accuracy, and why I plan to make the dialogue in the script more accessible to everyone.  Because science has always been my favorite area of learning, I strive to never willingly separate it from my artistic endeavors.  Therefore, I envision Strange Attractors as bringing to pass the collaboration of the arts and sciences in a way that invites and encourages everyone to appreciate the arts and sciences equally and more fully.  When I imagine the play’s future, I see Strange Attractors as telling the story, through theatre, of how art and science meet and fall in love every day.

The UI Workshop Production Process

The first drafts came about by a combination of factors that included camper shopping, a directing class, an apartment full of flies, a symposium on science and religion, a box of pecan cookies, and the passing of my aunt.  Yet I was looking for something deeper than cookies and symposia.  I wanted insights into how the universe works and how the individual fits into it.  Through the production process of this play, I have found it: Everyone who has contributed to this project is part of an equation, and human connection is what makes us who we are as individuals, an ensemble, and a species.  The combined effort and love of everyone involved in this play has renewed my faith in mankind and our potential.  

Thank you, everyone.  Thank you.




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