Ohio Impromptu echoes Footfalls and perhaps Eh, Joe (though I'm less sure about the latter because it was a bit too "out there" for me). The play shows a man being read to by his double. The story the double reads seems to be a summary version of the man's life and revolves around the loss of a love. I plan to use this as one of the texts for my final paper, but here are a few thoughts (which will be more fully developed there).
One of the questions I had that isn't explained in the text is exactly what happened to the person the listener/reader loved. Did the woman die? Did she just leave him? The text tells us that he "moved from where they'd been so long together" (285) and that the loved one left him "unspoken words" (286) that "my shade will comfort you" (286). Shade implies death, but… There's nothing in the text that says that the "dear one" is a her, or even a person. Trees cast shade. So do buildings. Building have façades. Façade derives from the same root as "face". What if this loved one was a building whose façade was changed dramatically. Or a tree whose bark looks like a face -- or even not like a face at all, but only in the man's mind? Perhaps that's a stretch, but the text is ambiguous on this point. Why not? The "dear one" is always using "unspoken words" and sends an emissary instead of coming his/her/itself, wouldn't a ghost speak?
Another question is, which is the "real" person and which is the figment of the real person's mind? Is the listener the real person? Is he trying to hold back the end of the story with his knocks that cause the reader to stop and go back? If he wanted to drag out the story, why doesn't he let the reader turn back when he references "the fearful symptoms described at length page forty paragraph four" (286)? Surely going back and reading the paragraph again, perhaps several, would delay the end even longer? Or, is the reader the real person? Is he confessing to the listener, the figment, in an attempt at self-catharsis? Are the knocks he places where the reader subconsciously feels a need to reiterate a point?
Is the story even about the listener/reader? Or is the reader an author editing his work, reading it aloud to himself? Is the listener the manifestation of the editing part of the author, the knocks a pause to review words and make sure they're the right words. If the reader has been reading this story to the listener night after night for a long time, as the story suggests, why does he stumble on part of the text? "After so long a lapse that as if never been. [Pause. Looks closer.] Yes, after so long a lapse…" (286). Surely after reading the text the implied dozens of times he wouldn't need to double check words like that.
Finally, we watched a filmed production of the play in class. I think the film may have missed something by causing the reader to fade out at the end leaving the listener alone. The text does not either by stage directions or implication in the story told suggest that the reader disappears at the end. The story ends with the reader and listener sitting together, silent. The stage directions do the same. We can say that the stage directions are constrained by the limitations of theater vs. film, but why is the story likewise constrained? Couldn't the story end saying that after they sat for a while the reader disappeared? I think this ambiguity is in the text precisely to raise some of the questions above about which is the real person, and what's really happening in the story and play.
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