Tag Archives: The Value

How to Perform Risk by Saying Words

How to Perform Risk by Saying Words

The Dramatic Fulcrum of the Action

Risk is inherently dramatic. This can be demonstrated through a familiar example. If you drive through town at thirty miles an hour, following the rules of the road, little drama results. If, however, you drive through town at a hundred miles an hour, drama lies in wait around every corner. You will, with Shakespeare’s Brutus, say: “Fates, we will know your pleasures” (Julius Caesar 3.1.98). The reason is that, by weaving through traffic at inordinate speeds, you are taking maximum risk. Around every hairpin turn, you dance on the edge. An unexpected pothole or a blowout at thirty miles an hour is manageable. At a hundred miles an hour, a deer leaping out of the woods is less manageable. Risk is inherently dramatic because it exposes you to unexpected, low-probability, high-consequence events. The more risk you take, the more you expose yourself to loose gravel, fresh tarmac, drivers around you deviating from the line. At high enough speeds, the hand of God could strike from any direction.

Because risk is inherently dramatic, playwrights have made, in many tragedies, risk the dramatic fulcrum of the action. In Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, Oedipus is going too fast trying to solve the riddle of the regicide. By taking on inordinate risk, Oedipus triggers the unexpected, low-probability, high-consequence event: he finds out that he himself is the regicide he seeks. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Romeo and Juliet are going one hundred miles an hour too fast. As a result, they die when the post is delayed: when risk is elevated, one letter can make the difference between life and death. In Emily McClain’s Children of Combs and Watch Chains, husband and wife Jim and Della Young find out that the more risk they take to become parents, the more reality twists and forks in unexpected paths.

Action is what triggers the risk events that audiences look forward to with anticipation and apprehension. Drama, from the Greek drān is “to do” or “to act” (LSJ s.v. dráō). By killing Duncan, for example, Macbeth triggers unexpected, low-probability, high-consequence events: Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Hill. In other words, it is by the act of casting the die that the die is cast. In this essay, however, I want to look at the verbal components of risk. The first verbal component of risk is the use of words and speech to highlight, accentuate, and draw attention to impending risk events. The second verbal component of risk involves using dialogue to draw taut the string of suspense. Finally, the third verbal component is where words themselves perform actions. Let us explore the ways of performing risk by saying words.

The Very Firstlings of My Heart

One way to signal to the audience that events of great daring are forthcoming is to tell them. Macbeth, for example, announces his intentions before storming Macduff’s castle:

MACBETH. Time, thou anticipat’st my dread exploits.
The flighty purpose never is o’ertook
Unless the deed go with it. From this moment
The very firstlings of my heart shall be
The firstlings of my hand. And even now,
To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done. (4.1.143–48)

Antonio in Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi also tells the audience to watch out for dramatic fireworks. Before risking all on a doubtful reconciliation with the Cardinal, who has murdered his wife and children, he announces the enormity of his task:

DELIO. What course do you mean to take, Antonio?
ANTONIO. This night I mean to venture all my fortune—
Which is no more than a poor, ling’ring life—
To the cardinal’s worst of malice. (5.1.60–63)
In the event that the audience missed Antonio’s first declaration, Webster has Antonio repeat himself a few moments later. He is definitely throwing caution to the winds:
ANTONIO. Come, I’ll out of the ague;
For to live thus is not indeed to live.
It is a mockery, and abuse of life.
I will not henceforth save myself by halves;
Lose all, or nothing. (5.4.45–49)

By daring to “venture all my fortune” and wagering to “lose all, or nothing,” Antonio signals that he is on the verge. Because he has taken on inordinate risks, he can no longer cover his position, leaving himself exposed. The scene, therefore, is set for the low-probability, high-consequence event to surprise the audience. The audience will not be disappointed: as Antonio sneaks into the Cardinal’s chamber, he will be struck down by the very friend who has come to save him.

Because audiences are unaware when the risk event takes place, playwrights give audiences a heads up that the dramatic fulcrum approaches: anticipated moments are memorable moments. In the past, the cue took the form of highly artificial forms of speech. Though Macbeth is ostensibly talking to Lennox when he says: “The very firstlings of my heart shall be / The firstlings of my hand,” his words really are thoughts spoken out loud for the benefit of the audience. The same is true when Antonio tells Delio “This night I mean to venture all my fortune.” It is spoken as a sort of soliloquy. Certainly, when Hamlet says to himself: “O, from this time forth / My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth,” it is part of a soliloquy proper (4.4.64–65). In an age, however, where more naturalistic patterns of speech are preferred, the playwright can embed the announcement in dialogue. McClain adopts this technique in Children of Combs and Watch Chains. Della, rejected at the adoption agency, lights the dramatic wick when her nurse, Esther, tells her of a promising but unlicensed fertility clinic:

ESTHER. I can give you his contact information. But you have to promise me that you won’t mention my name or how you found out about him to anyone. Not your husband, not anyone! I could lose my nursing license!
DELLA. Esther, of course not. I won’t say anything. I just—I’m ready to try something different. My current treatment isn’t working and I—I can’t look back on this as another opportunity I screwed up by being overly cautious. (155)

Ostensibly, Esther shares with Della her contact at the unlicensed fertility clinic. The audience, however, hears a dramatic subtext in their conversation, hears Della throwing caution to the winds. When the audience hears her go risk on, they sit on the edge of their seats, expecting the unexpected, low-probability, high-consequence event to happen at any moment.
Because risk is the dramatic fulcrum of the action, playwrights have at their disposal various ways of drawing attention to the impending risk event. A direct method involves having characters say that they are going all-in by speaking their thoughts out loud in a soliloquy or an aside. Alternatively, the declaration of risk could take place indirectly in the dialogue between characters. Either way, through speech and voice, the audience is primed for what is to come.

The Dialogue of Rising Risk: Stichomythia

Not only can words signal risk, words can also themselves set off risk. A common example of how speech elevates risk is stichomythia, from the Greek stíchos “line of verse” (LSJ s.v. stíchos) and mūthos “speech” or “talk” (LSJ s.v. mūthos). In stichomythic speech, two characters exchange rapidly alternating lines while voicing antithetical positions. In Sophocles’ play Antigone, after Creon sentences Antigone to death, Haemon (Creon’s son and Antigone’s fiancé) attempts to persuade Creon to change his mind. Stichomythia begins as Haemon’s attempt breaks down:

CREON. Why, you degenerate—bandying accusations,
threatening me with justice, your own father!
HAEMON. I see my father offending justice—wrong.
CREON. Wrong?
To protect my royal rights?
HAEMON. Protect your rights?
When you trample down the honors of the gods?
CREON. You, you soul of corruption, rotten through—
woman’s accomplice!
HAEMON. That may be,
but you will never find me accomplice to a criminal.
CREON. That’s what she is,
and every word you say is a blatant appeal for her—
HAEMON. And you, and me, and the gods beneath the earth.
CREON. You will never marry her, not while she’s alive.
HAEMON. Then she will die…but her death will kill another. (831–43)

In alternating lines, the characters lay down antithetical standpoints. While Creon emphasizes his position of authority as king and father (“your own father,” “my royal rights,” “You will never…”), Haemon points out that Creon, by sentencing Antigone to death for burying her brother, is going against what the gods want, which is for the dead to be buried. By rapidly alternating the dialogue between antithetical positions, stichomythia raises, through words and speech, tension to the point of breaking.

Though an artificial device to raise the tension, stichomythia, by closely approximating patterns of speech in everyday life, is a versatile device. Consider, for example, how easily it makes the transition from ancient to modern drama. Here is an example from Gabriel Jason Dean’s play In Bloom. Dean’s play examines power, imperialism, and privilege. In this scene, British-Indian professor Kashi Jones awards American writer Aaron Freeman the prestigious Sommerville Prize, but not before asking the hard questions before a packed Cambridge auditorium. As she presses and Aaron resists, the dialogue goes stichomythic:

AARON. Doctor Jones, I gotta be honest, I’m feeling a bit sabotaged up here.
KASHI. I’m sorry, but I hope you’ll understand. I can’t let your achievements or your confessional book get in the way of asking important questions.
AARON. Are you Hindi?
KASHI. I suppose you mean Hindu.
AARON. OK. Yes, I beg your pardon. Hindu. Are you?
KASHI. I don’t see how this is relevant.
AARON. Come on. You read my book. You know everything about me. Are you Hindu?
KASHI. Culturally yes. Spiritually no.
AARON. Are you Muslim?
KASHI. No.
AARON. You’re an Indian woman, living and working in Britain, judging by your last name, Doctor Jones, you’re probably married to a Brit, which I think means you know a thing or two about imperialism—
KASHI. Mr. Freeman!
AARON. And your work is about women in Afghanistan. What qualifies you to tell their stories? You’re not Afghan.
KASHI. I’m not a storyteller. I’m a scholar.
AARON. So academics get a pass?
KASHI. No, that’s not what I’m saying—
AARON. Is my perspective on this irrelevant becasue I’m not brown…enough? (48)

As Kashi and Aaron spar over right, privilege, social justice, identity politics, and cultural appropriation, the risk of their debate exploding increases. Stichomythia, by allowing two antagonists to concentrate their positions in the alternating lines, takes them towards a point of no return. With each line, they dig in, raising the stakes. The rising pitch is unsustainable: something will give, and, when it does, the repercussions will be consequential.

How to Make Risk with Words

Risk is associated with physical actions. In Pierre Corneille’s The Cid, for example, the Count makes risk by performing the physical act of a slap. Don Diego, who has received a promotion, meets the Count, who feels the promotion was his. They argue:

THE COUNT. The honour then was due to me alone.
DON DIEGO. Who was not given it deserves it not.
THE COUNT. Deserves it not! I?
DON DIEGO. You.
THE COUNT. Your impudence,
Reckless old man, will have its due reward.
[He gives him a slap.]
DON DIEGO [drawing his sword]. Go on and take my life after this slight—
The first at which my line has bowed in shame.
THE COUNT. And what, old weakling, could you hope to do?
DON DIEGO. O God! my failing strength abandons me! (222–30)

The physical act of the slap marks the moment the die is cast. A chain reaction of events ensues: Don Diego’s son, bound to defend his father’s honour, will to duel the Count to the death. Unfortunately, Don Diego’s son is also betrothed to the Count’s daughter. The physical act of the slap is the trigger of unexpected low-probability, high-consequence events.
Although risk is associated with action—a slap, casting the die, crossing the Rubicon, dropping the gloves—in his 1962 book How to Do Things with Words, philosopher J. L. Austin defined and explored a class of words which are performative in nature. Utterances such as “I do” (during a marriage ceremony), “I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth” (while dedicating a vessel), “I give and bequeath my watch to my brother,” (in a will), or “I bet you sixpence,” argued Austin (1968, 5), are activities that are done with words. Because these utterances constitute actions, he called them “speech acts” (Austin 168, 40). As risk is associated with action, speech acts make it possible to make risk with words.
Nicholas Dunn, in his play The Value, makes risk with words. Nickel-and-dime criminals Ian and Zoey discover that the painting they stole is a modern masterpiece worth much more than tens of thousands they were hoping for. They have a buyer that can give them, right here and right now, tens of thousands. Zoey wants to take the buyer’s certain offer. Ian wants to hold out for more, but could wind up with nothing. Zoey, preferring the bird in hand and tired of Ian’s “woulda,” “coulda,” and “shouldas,” issue him an ultimatum:

ZOEY. No! Ian, no one understands when you talk like that! If you’re after more money just fucking say it!
IAN. I’m not talking about money! You guys think money is the end of all this, but it’s not. It never is! I been hustlin’ my whole life and it just bets me to the next one and the next one. This is about means. This is about access. About power. About the ability to go up. Beat. ZOEY looks at VICTOR, who remains shrunken against the wall.
ZOEY. Did that make any sense to you?
VICTOR doesn’t reply. She turns back to IAN.
ZOEY. My turn. And listen how easy this is, to communicate, when the concept is plain and simple. This is about need. The three of us need money. And the three of us need each other. Those are the things we need to survive. You know that, don’t you? That we need each other? I thought you did know that—finally—but maybe you forgot again when McEvoy told you what we had. But the painting is nothing. It’s fucking splotches of color on cloth. Soon, one way or another, it’ll be gone. And when it disappears it makes no difference. But I’m here. You’re here. And that does make a difference. It doesn’t have to disappear. It can stay. This is an opportunity. To fix things. To survive together. To maybe get to a place where having something is just as good, just as fulfilling as wanting it. I came here for you. I did this for you. I risked everything for you. Because we are kin. Now we can sell this useless thing to McEvoy, make his fucking life complete, and walk away with enough money to go somewhere, somewhere different, and start over. I need that. You need that. [Pause]
IAN. Zoey…
ZOEY. You need me. The question is, do you know it. Do you finally know it? If you do, you’ll sell the painting and we’ll be unstuck. If you don’t this is it. This is the last time we see each other. This isn’t a hustle, it’s the goddamn truth. So make this right. There. See how straightforward that is?
There’s a soft know on the door. Beat.
ZOEY. Well? What will you do?
Pause. Another knock.
ZOEY. Ian? [Beat]
IAN. I. Can’t. Settle. (128–29)

Ian’s “I. Can’t. Settle” is a performative utterance. It commits him to a course of action. It is the exact opposite of saying “I do” in a marriage ceremony. By saying it, he irrevocably rejects Zoey. By a toss of words, the die is cast; there is no return. It is like a slap. By performing risk with words, Ian triggers unexpected low-probability, high-consequence events: Zoey, speechless, exits and goes deep into the underworld to find another buyer for the painting, one who will leave Ian with nothing. In the speech act, the word is equivalent to the physical act. With speech acts, one makes risk by saying words.

Why Risk?

In drama, the relationship between words and risk is threefold. First, words may be used to announce that the risk event is imminent. When Hamlet says: “O, from this time forth / My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth,” he is telling the audience that he is ready to take on danger, and the unexpected events that come with danger. Second, words may be used to set off the risk event. Stichomythia, by rapidly alternating between antithetical positions, is a verbal device that quickly escalates tension. Third, words may be used in lieu of actions to perform risk. A class of performative utterances—“I dismiss,” “I convict,” or “I bet” (Austin 1968, 152–57)—are able to engender risk the same way as physical acts. Speech acts are spoken with power.

Today is a fascinating time to explore risk because risk is the basis of my new theory of tragedy. I introduced my theory in a 2019 book called The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected. In this book, I likened the thrill and rising action of theatre to the delirious wagers gamblers place at the no-limit tables. The book then became the centrepiece of an international playwriting competition inviting playwrights to make risk the dramatic fulcrum of the action (risktheatre.com). The response was overwhelming: playwrights from seventeen countries have participated. Then, in early 2022, the second risk theatre book came out: When Life Gives You Risk, Make Risk Theatre: Three Tragedies and Six Essays. The second book is an anthology. It brings together a sampling of plays from the competition: Gabriel Jason Dean’s In Bloom, Nicholas Dunn’s The Value, and Emily McClain’s Children of Combs and Watch Chains. Along with the plays are six new essays on the intersection between theatre, probability theory, chance, and risk. These essays respond to the criticisms of the first book—that it had too little engaged with existing theories of drama—and lay out a new path forwards for writers, students, and teachers to engage with risk. By bringing together risk theatre plays and risk theatre essays, the goal of the book is to bring together the practice and theory of drama in a new unity.

The first four years of the competition have brought about two milestones: playwrights discovered they love working with risk and audiences discovered interpretations based on risk unlock drama. These are still the early days of exploring how risk functions as the dramatic fulcrum of the action. Much of the grunt work is still to follow. This essay on how voice and speech on stage anticipates and triggers risk events represents a start, the next leg of the journey into researching risk on stage. Many pathways, and unexpected, are opening up. Let us see where they lead.

References

Austin, J. L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford.

Corneille, Pierre. 1975. The Cid. In The Cid, Cinna, The Theatrical Illusion, translated by John Cairncross, 23–109. London: Penguin.

Dean, Gabriel Jason. 2022. In Bloom. In When Life Gives You Risk, Make Risk Theater: Three Tragedies and Six Essays, edited by Edwin Wong, 5–80. Victoria: Friesen.

Dunn, Nicholas. 2022. The Value. In When Life Gives You Risk, Make Risk Theater: Three Tragedies and Six Essays, edited by Edwin Wong, 77–146. Victoria: Friesen.

McClain, Emily. 2022. Children of Combs and Watch Chains. In When Life Gives You Risk, Make Risk Theater: Three Tragedies and Six Essays, edited by Edwin Wong, 143–97. Victoria: Friesen.

Shakespeare, William. 1984. Julius Caesar. Edited by Arthur Humphreys. Oxford: Oxford.

– – -. 2016. Hamlet. Edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor. London: Arden Shakespeare.

– – -. 2015. Macbeth. Edited by Sandra Clark and Pamela Mason. London: Arden Shakespeare.

Sophocles. 1984. Antigone. In The Three Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, translated by Robert Fagles, 33–128. New York: Penguin.

– – -. 1984. Oedipus the King. In The Three Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, translated by Robert Fagles, 129–251. New York: Penguin.

Webster, John. 1997. The Duchess of Malfi. In Six Renaissance Tragedies, edited by Colin Gibson, 243–347. Houndmills: Palgrave.

Wong, Edwin. 2019. The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected. Victoria: Friesen.

Wong, Edwin, Gabriel Jason Dean, Nicholas Dunn, and Emily McClain. 2022. When Life Gives You Risk, Make Risk Theater: Three Tragedies and Six Essays. Victoria: Friesen.

Edwin Wong is a classicist and theatre researcher specializing in the impact of the highly improbable. In 2019, he launched the Risk Theatre Modern Tragedy Playwriting Competition (risktheatre.com). The competition invites playwrights around the world to explore risk. He is also the author and coauthor of two books examining the intersection between theatre, chance, and probability theory: The Risk Theory Model of Tragedy (2019) and When Life Gives You Risk, Make Risk Theatre (2022). He was educated at Brown University and lives in Victoria, Canada. Follow him Twitter @TheoryOfTragedy.

– – –

Don’t forget me. I’m Edwin Wong and I do Melpomene’s work.
sine memoria nihil

My Experience Workshopping and Directing Nicholas Dunn’s THE VALUE

Poster for Nicholas Dunn's THE VALUE, courtesy of Emily Armstrong at Starling Memory Designs

Poster for Nicholas Dunn’s THE VALUE, courtesy of Emily Armstrong at Starling Memory Designs

Clockwise from top: Leslie Appleton, Edwin Wong, Wayne Yercha, Vishesh Abeyratne, Nicholas Dunn, Alissa Grams, Anthony Gaskins

Clockwise from top: Leslie Appleton, Edwin Wong, Wayne Yercha, Vishesh Abeyratne, Nicholas Dunn, Alissa Grams, Anthony Gaskins

The more you read, the more ideas come to you. In the preparations leading up to the workshop and performance of Nicholas Dunn’s The Value, winner of the 2nd annual Risk Theatre Modern Tragedy Competition, I’ve been reading. Mark Bly’s book New Dramaturgies: Strategies and Exercises for 21st Century Playwriting inspired me to run the workshop around a series of questions. I would divide the play into thematic units and pose questions for the actors to explore. The questions would be mine; the answers would be theirs. You can see below how I’ve divided The Value into sections for the creative team to explore.

A concern, however, lingered: what if their answers diverged from my own ideas about the play? While reading George Sapio’s book: Workshopping the New Play: A Guide for Playwrights, Directors, and Dramaturgs the answer appeared. At the end of the book, Sapio  writes:

Bear in mind that the closer the play gets to opening night, the more redundant the director becomes, as well. I may catch hell for saying so, but it’s true. In the beginning, the actors follow the director’s ideas. They work with them, adjust to them, fine-tune them, and then make them their own. The director has the overall vision of the play and was chosen to direct because of that vision.

What a brilliant observation. Although it’s self-evident that the director has the overall vision of the play, Sapio’s words woke me up. I could start the workshop by communicating my vision of the play. This would establish a baseline around which we would explore The Value. My series of questions could be designed to tie back into my overarching vision of the play. By coming up with answers together with the actors may produce a more convincing reading. After all, it is the actors and not the director who will be presenting the dramatic vision to the audience. If the actors are themselves invested in the dramatic vision, they have skin in the game. Skin in the game, it’s all about having skin in the game.

That seemed to me to be a good start. If anyone is interested, here are my notes from the workshop. Enjoy!

My Vision of Nicholas Dunn’s The Value

Have you looked up the German expressionist painter E. L. Kirchner? He’s a real guy. 1880-1938. But Kirchner’s painting in the play, Summum bonum, is unattested. Summum bonum is Latin for “the highest good.” Philosophers from Cicero to Augustine and Kant have wrestled with the idea. The name of the play is called The Value and the dramatic fulcrum of the play is that the characters all try to value Kirchner’s painting. In other words, Dunn has them all trying to value “the highest good.” Brilliant. Through a crime drama—and a fun crime drama—Dunn explores a hard-core philosophical idea, namely the price that the highest good exacts on you. This exploration is the play’s kernel. How much is the highest good worth, in both dollar terms and human terms?

Through laborious training and sacrifice, Kirchner pays the price to create the painting. But notice that he doesn’t assign a price to it. Instead, he gifts it to McEvoy’s grandmother. The highest good changes hands the first time as a part of a gift exchange. We do not know what McEvoy’s grandmother gave in exchange for the painting, nor does it matter. It is enough to know that she did not give in exchange greenback dollars.

In Ian I see a clever, talented, and driven individual who didn’t get the opportunities most people enjoy. Society has crushed him down and spat him out. He’s been at the bottom too long. He’s willing to lay everything on the line to climb the food chain. And that means turning everything into cold, hard cash: he capitalizes on his relationship with Zoey, he capitalizes on this mysterious opportunity, he has a conscience, and for a second thinks about returning McEvoy’s heirloom back to its rightful owner, but he sells that out too. 

I think the play asks: “What if he gets millions? Will he have enough?” Or, once he climbs the food chain and gets his millions, will he then start feeling the poverty of a single-digit millionaire in the company of double- and triple-digit millionaires? He’s got the Midas touch.

In McEvoy I see a man haunted by the image of the highest good. He has insight into the value of art. He disagrees with Ian, who is quick to put a dollar figure onto the highest good. He understands the labours of the artist and the difficulty of valuing the aesthetic realm. With McEvoy, however, I think the play asks: “Is that a legitimate use of the highest good to keep it locked away?” Because that’s what McEvoy’s going to do. He can’t ever hang the painting. He can’t ever show it, or even let anyone know that he has it. What’s the value of the highest good if one person hoards it, locks it away in a cupboard?

In Zoey, I see a woman who’s willing to sell the highest good to create her own highest good. Her highest good is family. Whereas McEvoy looks at the highest good as something to possess and Ian looks at the highest good as something that can be converted into greenback dollars, Zoey understands that the value in the highest good is that others will pay money for it, and this money, in turn, can bring family back together. With Zoey, the play asks: “Can one give away the highest good to achieve a human good?”

So what’s my vision of the play? I think Ian, McEvoy, and Zoey each champion a certain truth about human value. I may have a position on who I like. And Dunn probably does as well. But Dunn doesn’t tell you what’s best. He invites you to consider these different standpoints on value. And that’s what makes this play extraordinary. A family person would understand Zoey’s position. An art lover would understand McEvoy’s position. And someone down-and-out for too long would see Ian’s point of view. My vision of the play is that no one’s right or wrong. They all take gambles and go all-in to get their heart’s desire. Their gambles are all reasonable, what someone in their position would do. But, just like in life, the unexpected happens. The crappy painting happens to be valued at $24 million. What were the odds? The unexpected throws down the best-laid plans of mice and men. Let’s see if we can capture this vision from page to stage.

Sections and Questions (divisions are my own)

1.1.1 IAN ALONE pgs. 1-3

Ian: “This is what happens…” Ian speaks similar lines on pg. 28, the flashback on p.64 and his closing lines. What’s going through his mind? Though he’s oppressed, beaten down, he feels a sense of destiny, like he was meant for something big. Born to lose but live to win. When he speaks these lines, he can sense his destiny unfolding. He speaks these lines with the fiery energy of destiny. Nothing will stop him. Nothing can get in his way. He is a character fascinated with himself. Can be played many ways. He reminds me of Shakespeare’s Richard III in his charisma.

1.1.2 THIS IS AN ART HEIST! pgs. 4-8

Zoey: “We pulled it off. Like, a heist! Like the guy in the, um, the Thomas Crowne affair.” Misdirection. In the “shitty newer one (Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo),” the characters overcome monetary issues to reunite. Brosnan could run, but he doesn’t: “Suppose I did run, then what would you have? Not the painting, not the $5 million, and not me.”  Moral of the story: Ian isn’t a billionaire playboy like Thomas Crown. This is a difference between theatre and the silver screen. Pg. 6, Victor’s first drink.

1.1.3 SO, WHAT’S IT WORTH? pgs. 8-12

Zoey: “Even a pawn shop has security—” Ian: “Yeah, probably better security than most museums. You’d be surprised.” How does Ian know so much about security? Ian: “Don’t use your phone.” A symptom of Ian’s fierce independence. He doesn’t want to be connected by phone. He doesn’t want to be connected by internet. He doesn’t want to be connected to the people who love him. He ran away to be by himself. Why is he so individualistic? Call this the Ian “fiercely individualistic motif.” 

1.1.4 IAN AND ZOEY pgs. 13-15

Zoey: “What, is this some kind of way of getting back at me?” This comment and back rubs and knowing looks. Something has happened between Zoey and Ian in the past, but what?

1.1.5 IT LOOKS LIKE A FIVE-YEAR-OLD’S FINGER PAINTING! pgs. 16-20

Victor sees mountains, deer, trees, and a cougar whereas the others see globs of colour. Is Victor seeing this for real? Ian: “We’re climbing the food chain. Tonight.” What does Ian mean when he says “climb the food chain?” Insatiable appetite? They discuss perceived value of painting. Pg.16, Victor’s second drink. 

1.1.6 BROTHER AND SISTER ALONE pgs. 20-25

Zoey: “He found him though. Put the guy’s face through a window.” Ian does the right thing and pursues vigilante justice in the case Zoey talks about. But he doesn’t do the right thing when McEvoy asks him to return the painting to the rightful owner. Why? Pg. 21, Zoey’s first drink.

1.1.7 ZOEY AND IAN ALONG pgs. 26-34

Ian: “This is what happens.” Then catches Zoey looking at him, looking at him at his moment of destiny. Zoey’s wager: I did this to be with you, for family. Ian’s declaration that “I left for me.” Recalls the Ian independence motif. Pg. 33, Zoey’s second drink. Pg. 34, Victor’s third drink.

1.1.8 MCEVOY CALLS AT DAWN! pgs. 34-35

Zoey: “Everyone has their issues.” What are Victor’s issues? Compare this play to Ibsen’s Ghosts or O’Neill’s A Long Day’s Journey into Night. In those two plays the playwright gives us the prehistory. But in this play, their prehistory is shrouded. Is there a dramatic advantage of shrouding the past? Pg. 35, Zoey’s third drink and Ian’s first drink.

1.1.9 LET’S TALK ABOUT RELATIVE VALUE! pgs. 36-42

Ian: “Right, it’s a chance! An opportunity. They’re rare, and sudden, and yeah, usually a gamble. But that’s how we get ahead. You afraid?” What do each of the characters wager and why?

1.1.10 MCEVOY ARRIVES! pgs. 43-50

Has anyone ever been so fascinated by something or someone as much as McEvoy with the painting? Think of Gollum and “my precious” from Lord of the Rings. Pg. 44, Zoey’s fourth drink: she’s ahead of Victor and Ian now! Divergences between the text and reality. The text points to Victor as the hard drinker. But in reality, Zoey drinks harder than Victor.

1.1.11 IT’S A SUMMUM BONUM BY E.L. KIRCHNER! pgs. 51-53

What’s the significance of the name, which translates to “the highest good?” How do we incorporate the irony of negotiating over the highest good into the action? Note how the highest good was the highest evil to the Nazis: like the expressionist art form of jazz, it was “degenerate art,” had to be destroyed.

1.1.12 LET’S TALK MONEY pgs. 54-59

Stage direction: “Victor dives to the floor and begins to gather the money stacks.” How do you picture this stage direction? Desperation, savagery, animal-like, or? Notice Victor’s affinity with the animal realm: he see coyotes in the painting, he talks about Lucky, his childhood dog, later, Ian refers to him as a runt. Irony of pricing out the highest good as though the highest good could be understood in terms of money. It can only be understood in terms of sacrifice, which is what all the characters do: Kirchner sacrificed himself to make it, Ian sacrifices Zoey to get the most value for it, McEvoy sacrifices his integrity to get it back… McEvoy: “I thought… thought you were something different.” Ian is a chameleon. What did McEvoy think Ian was, exactly?

1.1.13 WHAT?!? IT’S WORTH $24 MILLION? pgs. 60-61

The first act ends swinging on the dramatic fulcrum of the play: the unexpected low-probability, high-consequence event.

2.1.1 FLASHBACK pg. 62

Ian: “…And we’ll just…see what happens.” Similar to opening lines. Is this spoken with a sense of destiny, when he expects the rays of the Fates too converge on that one moment?

2.1.2 I’M FUCKED! pgs. 63-67

Victor: “Whenever people are obsessed with something and something bad happens they always say: ‘That’s like Hitler’, or ‘it’s like the Nazis’ … These cartel assholes are like Nazis. About their money. They’re gonna murder me like the Nazis.” The irony of selling the highest good, the Summum Bonum portrait, to pay off the lowest of the low, the cartel assholes who are “like the Nazis.” The highest good, through the market process, is converted into the sustenance of the devil.

2.1.3 YOU REMEMBER LUCKY? pgs. 67-69

Does Victor identify with Lucky, looking at himself like a chained up dog? He also sees a coyote in the Kirchner. Affinity with animal world, he himself is savage, see 1.1.12.

2.1.4 PICK UP THE PHONE! pgs. 69-71

Zoey: “Wait, you don’t think there’s any chance that…” Victor: “What?” Zoey: “No. There’s no way.” Victor: “What?” What’s going through Zoey’s mind here?

2.1.5 NO SALE pgs. 71-73

Ian: “We caught a break! We caught that bit of fate, that kind of lucky chance that you can’t buy or, or work your way into. We caught it by accident. We have to use it!” This line ties into Ian’s opening and closing lines (“This is what happens”), full of a sense of destiny as a recompense for all he has suffered.

2.1.6 ZOEY’S REBUKE pgs. 74-75

Zoey: “This is an opportunity. To fix things. To survive together. To maybe get to a place where having something is just as good, just as fulfilling as wanting it … I risked everything for you. Because we are kin … Well? what will you do?” Ian: “I. Can’t. Settle.” These lines break my heart. Why can’t Ian settle? Does it tie back to the opening epigram by cultural anthropologist Marshall Sahlins: “Modern capitalist societies, however richly endowed, dedicate themselves to the proposition of scarcity”? That is to say, Ian cannot have, he can only want?

2.1.7 CAN A $24 MILLION PAINTING BE WORTH $60,000? pgs. 76-78

Was it fair for McEvoy to offer $60,000 for a $24 million masterpiece?

2.1.8 IT WAS GRANDMA’S PAINTING pgs. 78-79

Why did Kirchner give this to McEvoy’s grandmother? This painting was originally a gift. Does its transition from a gift (priceless) into a commodity (worth x dollars) change the nature of the painting? Is it more “mercenary” now? Is there a secret McEvoy has kept to himself?—he seems intimately aware of the painting’s history. McEvoy: “It [Summum Bonum] is humanity at its basest and its most glorious. It is Kirchner.” Why does McEvoy say that the painting is also humanity at its basest? Because of the painting’s association with the Third Reich?

2.1.9 APPEAL TO IAN’S SENSE OF JUSTICE pg. 80

How close is Ian to capitulating? Remember that in the case of Derek and the orphans, he had done the right thing, and at considerable expense to himself.

2.1.10 GIFTS THAT ARE WORTH EVERYTHING AND NOTHING pgs. 81-82

McEvoy: “You can’t auction it, you can’t advertise that you have it. You don’t know who to look for to sell it illegally. It is now only worth what someone like me can give and what people like you can find.” McEvoy, Zoey, and Victor all think Ian should close the deal at $60k. Is Ian’s case that he can get more than $60k a strong one?

2.1.11 GOODBYE MCEVOY pgs. 83-85

Ian: “You are what people see, what people think you are worth.” McEvoy: “You are what you do! What you do. Nothing more.” Ian talks of other people evaluating an actor’s actions. McEvoy talks of the actor reflecting on his own actions. Ian’s point recalls the behaviorist psychologists—led by BF Skinner—who thought the brain was a black box: what’s inside doesn’t matter. It’s a functional view of action. It’s how you appear to others that counts. McEvoy’s point recalls the state of the mind as it reflects on itself. It’s an expressionist view of the mind. Expressionism, after all, attempts to communicate the subjective state of the mind to an outside viewer.

2.1.12 FIGHT! pgs. 86-93

Zoey: “Just give it to them, Ian, Because it doesn’t matter. With a shit-load of money or none, you’re the same. You’re nothing. You’re no one.” Would Ian be nothing were he to get his millions? Say his plan works and, down the road, he gives Zoey and Victor their share. What then?

2.1.13 pgs. 94-95 THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS

His face becomes stern, confident, almost welcoming. His eyes alight, determined. He drinks in his new reflection. Ian: “This is what happens.” This ties in the beginning, middle, and end of the play with a sense of fate or destiny.

Special Bonus: Opening Comments Prior to the Show

Hi everyone, I’m Edwin Wong, thanks for joining us.

The second annual Risk Theatre Tragedy Competition is upon us! Today we present the winning play, Nick Dunn’s The Value. Risk theatre is a theory of tragedy I developed. I wrote a book on it. It’s like Aristotle’s Poetics, except, instead of pity and fear—which is so fifth century—risk is the dramatic fulcrum of the action because risk is one bad ass 21st century idea. This competition promotes a new brand of tragedy, one where low-probability, high-consequence events thrill audiences, one where the characters pay the price when they are struck down by the highly improbable. When you see the play, think on your own life, and how you interact with the improbable.

Nick Dunn’s The Value, dramatizes risk and the impact of the improbable. There’s nothing like it that explores value in art—absolute value, perceived value, relative value, and intrinsic value—in such a sustained attack. An all-star cast will be performing the play. Anthony Gaskins plays Ian. Leslie Appleton plays Zoey, Vishesh Abeyratne plays Victor, Wayne Yercha plays McEvoy, and Ali Grams narrates. There’s so much action we have no time for intermissions. Running time is 2 hours, 10 minutes. The show is co-produced by Theatre Carpe Diem—thank you Kara and Anton—and streamed to you by The Canadian Play Thing—thank you Janet! This is Zoom, glitches are going to happen. Dropouts are going to happen. And we’re going to power on through because risk theatre is theatre in love with risk. Stay with us after the show for an audience talkback.

Nick, so glad you participated in the competition and congratulations on taking the $9000 prize. Did you want to say a few words about the play before we dive in?

– – –

What a fireworks way to end year two of the Risk Theatre Modern Tragedy Playwriting Competition. Onwards into year three!

Don’t forget me. I’m Edwin Wong, and I do Melpomene’s work.

THE VALUE, a Tragedy by Nicholas Dunn – 2020 Risk Theatre Winner

Later this year I’ll workshop and direct a staged reading of Salt Lake City playwright Nicholas Dunn’s The Value, the winner of the second annual Risk Theatre Modern Tragedy Playwriting Competition. Out of 135 great plays, jurors Kelli Fox, Anthony Giardina, and Anthea Williams nominated The Value for the grand prize.

This will be my first time workshopping and directing a play. Why am I doing this? I’m doing it to align myself with the risk theatre project. The project evolved in three phases, and in each phase I had to adapt, and in different ways. The first phase involved putting my thoughts into a form that could be shared. My book, The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected accomplished this. It was a good start. But insufficient: people needed a reason to read it. This led to the second phase of the project: The Risk Theatre Modern Tragedy Competition. By creating an international competition around the book, I gave people a reason to read it. This was good. But insufficient. The goal of the risk theatre project is to invite people to consider the impact of the highly improbable. By dramatizing unintended consequences and the impact of low-probability, high-consequence outcomes, theatre could become a microcosm of life, could show us the possibilities. That was the goal of the risk theatre project: to show how intertwined life is with probability and chance. To accomplish this goal, not only was the book and the competition necessary, it was also necessary for me to direct the play to make risk palpable.

In the workshop and staged reading, I could focus on black swans, fat tails, the impact of the highly improbable, complexity, unintended consequences, low-probability, high-consequence events, probability, chance, and all else that falls under the rubric of risk. This would be a one-of-a-kind workshop and staged reading. With its laser focus, the bonds between drama, chance, and uncertainty would be revealed.

When the competition first started, I projected that, after ten years, risk theatre would become a household word. Hey–if you’re going to start something, you need to believe. Looking at things probabilistically (which is my favourite way of looking), I thought there would be a good chance that, after ten years, a few of the winning plays would have entered the canon. Once they became classics, they would–due to the “halo effect”–raise people’s awareness of the risk theatre theory of tragedy. Today I don’t believe that anymore. I think I was wrong.

Over ten years, it may be that many of the plays entered in the competition would go on to find success. Of this I’m sure. Powerful movers and shakers in the theatre world have heard of, and follow the competition. They like what they see from Gabriel Jason Dean (last year’s winner) and Nicholas Dunn. They talk with their friends who are also gods of theatre and at some point, something’s going to happen. But something else will also happen: over time, the ties that bind risk theatre to the winning plays would also fade. Risk theatre would become a footnote in the play’s history, one of its many accolades and prizes. I will be forgotten.

If I wanted people to associate the winning plays with risk theatre, I couldn’t wait for people to make the connection: “Ah, this is why this is a risk theatre play.” I would have to write essays and articles on why I thought these plays were paradigms of risk theatre. People would then discover these essays and articles in tandem with the plays. And then, and only then, would risk theatre gain traction.

Would you like to know a secret? It explains why I’m going about the way I do. I didn’t discover Sophocles’ Oedipus rex or Shakespeare’s Hamlet first. I discovered Aristotle, Nietzsche, and other writers who wrote about Oedipus rex and Hamlet first. It was Aristotle and Nietzsche who turned me onto drama. Just as the fame of Oedipus rex grew in tandem with Aristotle and is inextricably tied with Aristotle, perhaps the fame of The Value and the future winners of risk theatre will also grow in tandem with the risk theatre theory of tragedy. That would be my wish.

A question: what’s the difference between the best plays written today and the best plays written of the past? What’s the difference between Dunn’s The Value and, say, Aeschylus’ Oresteia or Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus? It’s not the theme, as each play examines an issue in depth: Dunn examines value in art and in life, Aeschylus justice, and Marlowe the limits of salvation in the face of a hardened heart. It’s not the writing, as each play has its purple passages, from Cassandra’s meditation on human frailty:

Alas for human destiny! Man’s happiest hours
Are pictures drawn in shadow. Then ill fortune comes,
And with two strokes the wet sponge wipes the drawing out.

to Faustus’ eleventh-hour plea:

See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!
One drop would save my soul, half a drop: ah, my Christ!-
Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!
Yet will I call on him: O, spare me, Lucifer!-
Where is it now? ’tis gone: and see, where God
Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows!
Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of God!

to McEvoy’s paroxysm of emotion as he lays eyes on the German painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Summum Bonum:

Oh. I … I can’t believe it. Just how… The color, the looseness, the fluidity of line, the harsh–almost violent–application of hues. Vibrant and dark at once. It’s the blue… The blue raging against yellow… (sighs) No second-guessing. And it’s here. My god, it’s in this room.

If not the theme nor the writing, then what is it? The difference between the best plays written today and the best of the past is that there is a considerable body of scholarship examining yesterday’s plays.

When playwrights write, I don’t think their aim is to create a classic. Of course, I can’t be sure, but a thousand other things likely come to mind during the creative process than: “I must create a masterpiece that will endure forever.” Maybe there’s a character that’s been haunting the playwright’s imagination. “Will she fit into this play?” the playwright wonders. Maybe there’s a local theatre or artistic director that is looking for a certain type of play. Maybe the play has complex casting requirement and the playwright wonders if actors are available. Perhaps the playwright is concerned about raising with funds to workshop the play. There are a thousand things the playwright could be thinking about other than entering the canon. Classics are not consciously created. This begs the question then: how are classics created?

Achilles was a great warrior. But where would Achilles have been if Homer had not sung of his tale in The IliadWithout Homer, Achilles would have been forgotten. E. L. Kirchner was a great artist. But where would Kirchner have been were it not for McEvoy’s devotion? Without McEvoy, Kirchner’s renown would have been less. Convention has it that the author creates the classic. I wish to reexamine this. If Aristotle hadn’t written The Poetics, perhaps Sophocles’ Oedipus rex would not even have survived. In truth, while the artist creates the masterpiece, it is the interpreter who transforms the masterpiece into the classic. Canadian pianist-interpreter Glenn Gould transformed the works of Sibelius and Orlando Gibbons into classics. Catalonia cellist-interpreter Pablo Casals transformed Bach’s Cello Suites into a classic. If Casals had not wandered into a Barcelona thrift shop, the Cello Suites would have languished in obscurity. The relationship between the doer and the interpreter was succinctly captured by Alexander the Great when he visited Achilles’ tomb in 334 BC. He pronounced Achilles fortunate in getting Homer as the herald of his fame to posterity. Classic works of art are born when writers write about works of art.

Mind you, that someone thinks about and writes an essay or gives a talk on your work doesn’t always mean that your work is on its way into the canon. Far from it. But there’s two telltale signs that you’ve made it. The first is when you get roasted. And the second is when academics start speculating on the odds and ends in your work. What a delight it must be for artists (unless you’re Bob Dylan) to see people studying their works and to see critics staking their careers on conflicting interpretations. With that, let’s turn to The Value.

The Price is What You Pay, The Value is What You Get

Dunn announces that The Value will examine the idea of value–whether human, material, artistic, or societal–in a pair of opening epigrams:

Modern capitalist societies, however richly endowed, dedicate themselves to the proposition of scarcity. –Marshall Sahlins

and

… when the dominant myth is not “to possess is to give” but “the fittest survive,” then abundance will lose its motion and gather in isolated pools. –Lewis Hyde, The Gift

The first epigram hints that the play explores how characters react within the capitalist structure to the proposition of scarcity in the face of plenty. Ian fulfils this opening pronouncement as the play progresses. While the meaning of the second epigram isn’t as obvious as the first, it also foreshadows how the quartet of characters will react with one another.

Although I haven’t read Hyde’s book, I looked it up. I’ll run down to Munro’s Books to pick it up. It looks fascinating. The idea behind The Gift is that by giving we increase abundance and by self-interest we foster scarcity. Taken together, the quotes imply that it isn’t capitalism, but altruistic acts within the capitalist structure that make the land flow with milk and honey. Inversely, selfish acts within the capitalist structure strips away society’s riches, even should modern society be richly endowed. The idea behind The Gift resonates with me on a personal level: since establishing The Risk Theatre Modern Tragedy Competition three years ago, I find myself working harder and making more money for the express purpose of giving more money away in the competition. If I had been working for my own ends, I would have generated less abundance. Let’s see how these ideas play out in The Value.

In form, Dunn’s The Value is an example of what risk theatre calls a parallel-motion tragedy. The distinguishing feature of parallel-motion tragedies is that multiple protagonists strut their stuff on the stage. Parallel-motion tragedies entertain by dramatizing the feedback between different characters’ intentions. Feedback loops in turn bring about the unexpected ending. Examples of parallel-motion tragedies include Corneille’s Cinna and, more recently, O’Neill’s Strange Interlude.

Four characters acting at cross-purposes interact in The Value. There’s Ian, a tradesperson by day, perhaps one of these types who’s a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. Perhaps he’s a failed electrician who wires low-voltage security systems. In the opening scene, we see him changing out of his work clothes. As he changes, he steps outside of himself, is no longer the tradesperson. He imagines himself meeting a lady at swanky party. In their imaginary conversation, he acts out their encounter:

Ian: What do do? Oh, I’m a… investor. An entrepreneur. I’m a banker. Wall street, you know, stock market bullshit, insider trading, fucking up people’s retirement, fraud, hookers, blow, typical American dream stuff…

As he goes on, he quickly ramps up from the likely to the unlikely. In a few words, Dunn conveys Ian’s primary trait: appetite. Ian wants more. And there is something uncanny about his appetite: what Wall Street trader, when introducing himself, brags about engaging in illegal insider trading? First impressions are critical, and in Ian’s first impression, he lets off that there is something crooked in his understanding of the American dream.

Then there’s Zoey, a few years younger than Ian. Her and Ian have had something in their past. Exactly what is left unspoken, but clear enough. What we do know is that while she screwed up, it was Ian who left:

Zoey: But you fucking left.

Ian: Yeah.

Zoey: You left us! That wasn’t an accident. That wasn’t a mistake. That was a choice. To abandon.

Ian: Of course I left. Why the fuck would I hang around? I’m not your caretaker, or your brother’s or anyone else–

Zoey: We depended on you.

Ian: You think I was gonna stay there forever, running dope or some whit my whole fucking life?

As the play progresses they address the unfinished business between them.

The third of the four characters is Victor, Zoey’s brother. Like the others, he’s a small time criminal. He’s underrated and belittled. The runt. His want of self-esteem marks his reactions to the others:

Victor: I’m fuckin’ sick of being pushed around.

Zoey: We all are!

Victor: I loved that dog. I coulda taken care of him. Isn’t that why we got him? God, I’m not a fucking idiot. Okay, I’m not stupid!

He’s volatile and explosive, the perfect character to put a twist into the action.

The final character is McEvoy, the museum curator. He’s the one who sets the play in motion by asking Ian to steal back a painting with an unusual provenance and name. The painting, by German expressionist painter Kirchner, had once belonged to McEvoy’s grandmother. Confiscated by the Nazis, it was to be destroyed as “degenerate” art. But it somehow survived. McEvoy requested the Kirchner exhibition for the museum. He got it. When the crates arrived, Ian happened to be wiring the security system. With his knowledge, he could steal crate #32. But since he was working at the museum, he couldn’t steal it himself. That’s where Ian brings in Zoey and Victor. He would tell them how to get in. They would steal it. They would split the money. The catch, however, is that McEvoy and Ian never agreed beforehand to a price. This crack gives Dunn a springboard into examining not only the value of art, but the value in knowing what is enough.

Risk theatre argues that the fundamental structural unit of tragedy is the troika of temptation-wager-cast. Something motivates the character to act. To fulfil the heart’s desire, a wager is formulated: the milk of human kindness for the crown would be the example from Macbeth. Then the die is cast. That’s the point of no turning back. In a risk theatre reading of The Value, one of the first things we’d do is to analyze characters’ motivations in terms of how they formulate their wagers. What they’d be willing to lay on the line is telling.

In Macbeth, one of risk theatre’s paradigm plays (the other being Aeschylus’ grandiose and belligerent Seven Against Thebes), the witches tempt Macbeth. In The Value, it is McEvoy who tempts Ian by asking him to steal the painting in crate #32 (which is incidentally, if you’re from Salt Lake City, Karl Malone of the Utah Jazz’ retired number). For Ian–as for Macbeth–the payout is uncertain. To cash in, he has to take risks:

Zoey: You know, there seems to be an awful lot of guesswork in you plan here tonight!

Ian: Right, it’s a chance! An opportunity. They’re rare, and sudden, and yeah, usually a gamble. But that’s how we get ahead.

That’s what Ian’s after: to get ahead. As we see in the opening scene where he pretends to be a high-roller, Ian’s tired of himself, tired of who he is. “We’re climbing the food chain. Tonight,” he says with an exclamation point. Ian bets that McEvoy will pay them out and that Zoey and Victor can steal the painting. It’s a pretty good bet. There’s no hubris involved. Anyone in Ian’s position would have made the same wager.

For Zoey, it’s not about money or climbing the food chain. For Zoey, it’s a chance to start afresh with Ian after their former turmoil and separation:

Zoey: I just… I know that… I hurt you and I don’t know–I don’t know if–

Ian: Don’t… don’t worry. It’s me.

(He sits on the edge of the bed, closer to her. Pause.)

Zoey: I was glad when you asked me. I’m glad that you trusted me to do this. It feels good to do this together. To go all “whatever” on these motherfuckers.

Her bet is that the heist will bring her, Ian, and her brother back together into a family unit. Again, it’s a likely bet: she is attracted to Ian and Ian to her.

More mercantile aspirations guide Victor. Whereas for Ian, the money represents the chance to “climb the food chain,” for Victor, money is simply what it is. Hellhounds on his trail, the heist gives him the chance to pay back debts beyond his more honest abilities.

If more mercantile aspirations guide Victor, less mercantile aspirations guide McEvoy. Kirchner’s painting Summum Bonum (“the highest good” in Latin, more on its fascinating name below) has haunted McEvoy’s imagination since a child. The painting belonged to his family, was stolen from his grandmother. To possess it again is to reconnect with his family and that sense of fascination, wonder, and awe. He bets that Ian, for a price, can help him. But at what price? And so, we come across the kernel of Dunn’s tragedy:

McEvoy: This piece. This is the one, the only one, that… that I would go to such lengths to acquire. Not for any kind of monetary justification or, or, or prestige associated with possession. But for, for reasons that… motivations that I doubt the three of you could comprehend.

Zoey: What do you mean by that?

McEvoy: I wouldn’t be here, I wouldn’t have thought of doing this for anything off the wall. This is the only one I would even think–

Ian: I get that, but why?

McEvoy: I’m not interested in the price.

Ian: I am.

The painting over which they’re negotiating is called Summum Bonum, or “The Highest Good.” Clever. How much is the highest good worth?

The real-life Kirchner–the founder of the artistic movement Die Brücke (The Bridge, an allegorical bridge from old to new) along with Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff–was, just like Dunn’s Kirchner, a painter in pursuit of a new artistic mode, a painter searching for an impulsive reaction to life. Primitivism rather than clinical technique underlie his paintings. A Google search brings up many of Kirchner’s works. There’s a Self-Portrait as a Soldier (1915) and a late-period Archers (1935-37). One of his paintings, Berlin Street Scene (1913) sold for $38 million in 2006. But no record of a painting Summum Bonum comes up.  While the painter Kirchner and his mode of expression are real, perhaps the painting at the center of The Value is Dunn’s invention? It would be an ironic twist on the characters’ attempts to negotiate a price–they are negotiating a price for ostensibly a painting, but really, they are arguing about what the highest good is worth. The title of the painting, if it is Dunn’s devising–and even if it isn’t–immeasurably deepens the play’s philosophic stage. The title is a brilliant device.

Ian, Zoey, and Victor have no idea what they’ve stolen. They know it’s a painting. They know it’s in crate #32. They know McEvoy wants it. But here’s the kicker: Ian and McEvoy had never agreed to a price. It was one of those: “If it gets done (and I’m not sure it will), let’s talk about it then” transactions. This allows Dunn to launch into a discussion of value in art and in life.

The discussion of value begins in the motel room where the thieves are holed up. They try, at first unsuccessfully, to get onto the internet. Their ignorance of what a powerful plaything they’ve stolen complicates things. To them, Kirchner’s Summum Bonum looks similar to the thrift-store landscape painting in their room. Even after they get onto the internet, without the artist’s name and the name of the painting, how would you search? The thieves start speculating:

Victor: I had a paint by numbers book as a kid that looked like this. Remember Zoey? That’s what this looks like! You think this is worth thousands of dollars?

Ian: Tens of thousands.

They start speculating on two threads: 1) the painting is valuable enough to make it into the museum and 2) the painting is valuable enough for McEvoy to hire them. On that hunch, Victor guesses that, even though it looks like “a five-year-old’s finger painting” it’s worth thousands. Ian, more in tune with the risk McEvoy has taken in requesting the exhibition and hiring them, guesses that it must be worth “tens of thousands.” For good measure, even though Victor believes it’s only worth thousands, he also adds that rich folks will likely offer them a premium. To Victor, that’s how the rich and famous work:

Victor: Yeah, these rich pricks spending all this money on shitty art you can’t do nothing with. They’ll probably pay more than it’s worth, right? I’ll be he would. I’ll bet.

To Victor and Ian, the painting has a perceived value: McEvoy wants it, wants it bad. McEvoy wanting it gives the painting value. To both Ian and Victor, the painting is without any intrinsic value: it’s a “piece of shit,” as Victor puts it. By going on perceived value, all they can conclude, however, is that “they’ll probably pay more than it’s worth.” But, with perceived value, the question comes back: what’s it worth?

That’s the best the trio can do until they get the internet working. Once they connect, it’s still a problem though: it’s hard searching for an image without knowing the artist and the name of the piece. Zoey comes up with the idea:

Zoey: We just find a way to compare it to something else out there that has a dollar sign attached. If the search is, you know, generic enough it shouldn’t matter, right?

They see something that looks similar, an expressionist painting from the same era:

Ian: Right here. Right here. Let’s see… 1909 modern expressionist… blah, blah, blah, at Phillips de Pury, New York… sold to… some asshole for sixty thousand dollars.

By comparing Kirchner’s piece to others of a similar vintage, they’re able to establish the relative value of Summum Bonum: if a similar painting sold for sixty thousand, then it too should fetch a similar amount. While perceived value is based on perception, relative value is based upon comparing like specimens. Perceived value and relative value are just the beginning. There are other means as well. As they compare and contrast art pieces to determine its relative value, they then stumble onto a third means of valuation:

Victor: Holy shit! Sixty grand. For a picture! This guy has that kind of cash?

Ian: He’s stuffed up, believe me. And as bad as he wants it, he knows it’s gonna cost him.

Zoey: What if it’s worth more than that? It could be couldn’t it? Or what if it’s worth less?

Victor: Worth less?

Ian: It could be, I don’t know. How can you tell with these? But with the risk we took, and what it is, yeah, I think we can make that work.

In this third means of valuation, Ian wants to be compensated not for the work of art itself, but for the troubles he’s taken to obtain it. Ian comes close to a kind of absolute means of valuation: they are to be remunerated for their time planning and executing the heist as well as for danger they put themselves into. If they are caught, there could be jail time, community hours, and lost opportunities elsewhere. They are to be remunerated for the next best thing they could have done that night, had they not carried through the heist. There is an opportunity cost of the next best thing that is lost when they chose to break into the museum. In this third means of valuation, the painting is like a diamond buried deep in the ground. Its worth is to be understood absolutely in terms of the resources that are required to extract it from the ground: equipment, labour, some sort of safety premium from the dangers in excavating, remediation of the mine, and so on.

In the negotiation, McEvoy sits across the table from Ian. Their physical, cultural, and social differences couldn’t be starker. Ian is tough; McEvoy is scholarly. Ian labours with his hands; McEvoy works behind a desk. Ian lives on the fringes of society; McEvoy comes from an old family which receives gifts from painters of renown. These differences manifest themselves in the negotiations.

To McEvoy, Summum Bonum is priceless. That’s its perceived value–not too useful for exchange. Relative value also fails as a means of establishing worth. To McEvoy, it’s one of a kind, there’s nothing like it:

McEvoy: The painting is more than, than just pigment and canvas. It is blood. It is… It is feeling. It is hope and despair. It is humanity at its basest and its most glorious. It is Kirchner. It is refugees and prisoners and graves. It is my family. It is mine!

That leaves absolute value. He will pay not for the painting–which is priceless–but for the services rendered in obtaining the painting:

McEvoy: But, but we never discussed–I mean, we only agreed that–

Ian: We agreed I could get it, and you could pay for it.

McEvoy: I–Pay you for the act of doing it! And when we talked, it was only you. Just you, no one else!

Ian: Yes.

McEvoy: You said that was on your end. That it doesn’t–

Ian: It doesn’t. I’m not talking about the number of people, I’m talking about the deal. The exchange. For the painting, prized, prestigious, an appropriate price.

McEvoy: (getting heated) And what do you deem appropriate? You, what? Broke a window? Disabled a security camera?

Both McEvoy and Ian agree that the painting should be valued in absolute terms–a good start. For doing the deed, McEvoy is prepared to pay $20k. When Ian balks, McEvoy increases the offer to $25k. At this point, Ian counters with $70k, anticipating that McEvoy will settle at $60k, which he does. McEvoy, however, has $25k on hand. He’ll have to round up another $35k, and come back the next day. This delay gives a chance for the unexpected to creep into the play. Just after McEvoy leaves, the headline of the heist breaks. They see it on the computer. And they see that the headline announces a fourth method of valuation. The market value of the painting, the headline announces, is $24 million.

The market value is the price an object of exchange can fetch on the open market. An open market is one in which all the buyers have equal access. The painting, of course, can no longer be sold on the open market: it has been stolen. So, it’s not quite worth its market value any more. But it likely can fetch more than the $60k McEvoy and Ian agreed to.

When McEvoy returns a little later, impossibly with the $60k, Ian drops the atom bomb: the price has jumped up to approach the market value. Ian doesn’t even name the price. It simply is beyond what McEvoy could ever hope to raise. McEvoy counters with another basis of valuation, the concept of net present value. Net present value is the idea that certain money today is worth more than uncertain money tomorrow. And, what is more, net present value takes into account the value net of all considerations, a major one which is the painting no longer exists on the open market. The range of buyers has dwindled. And whoever buys it will never be able to sell it on the open market, or even display it:

McEvoy: You can’t auction it, you can’t advertise that you have it. You don’t know who to look for to sell it illegally. It is now only worth what someone like me can give and what people like you can find.

Ian: People like–

McEvoy: It won’t be millions, I promise you.

Ian doesn’t bite. Maybe we won’t get $24 million. But he’ll take his chances. McEvoy, sensing defeat, tries one last time to draw the negotiation back to the painting’s absolute value, the price it takes to acquire it:

McEvoy: Sixty thousand for the, for, for your services. For your…access. For the act of, or acquiring it. Not for the painting itself. The painting is what am after, not you, and sixty was the price that you named.

McEvoy’s last-ditch plea falls short against Ian’s obdurate power play. He’s sent packing, and the play pivots from an examination of artistic value to an examination of human value.

A central tenet of risk theatre is that tragedy examines the opportunity cost of choice. When we choose, we lose the next best thing we could have done. The opportunity cost of choice is expressed in tragedy through the hero’s wager: for a chance to obtain the heart’s desire, the hero must lay down something dear, something human. The pivot to human value allows Dunn to explore the human price Ian is willing to pay to climb the food chain. Tragedy, according to risk theatre, is a valuing mechanism. By dramatizing the hero’s wager, we learn what our humanity is worth. Shakespeare did it in Macbeth. How much is the milk of human kindness worth? Who knows? The milk of human kindness–otherwise the emotion of compassion–isn’t like milk, which can be bought for $4.69 for a gallon. But in Macbeth, we find out that the milk of human kindness is, in fact, worth a Scottish crown because that’s what Macbeth antes up for a chance at the crown. In The Value, Dunn sets up a similar wager. This wager invites the audience to consider what human relationships are worth. It is questions such as these that make tragedy the greatest show on earth.

If Ian’s wager is that he can go up the food chain, Zoey’s is that, by participating in the heist, she can make Ian feel her love. Despite their lovers’ hurts, Ian is her man; Ian is family, family in the same sense that the characters in The Fast and the Furious franchise (who also live outside society) understand family: family is a sacred obligation:

Zoey: Family means … where you come from, who your people are, what you have to do to make it. Those bonds are…they’re sacred.

In the same way, as, say, Abbie Putnam in Desire Under the Elms wagers that her sacrifice can make Eben feel her love, Zoey puts her and her brother Victor at risk by trusting Ian. But when she senses that Ian won’t settle for $60k, she rebukes him, and explosively:

Zoey: My turn. And listen how easy this is, to communicate, when the concept is plain and simple. This is about need. The three of us need money. And the three of us need each other. Those are the things we need to survive. You know that, don’t you? That we need each other? I thought you did know that–finally–but maybe you forgot again when McEvoy told you what we had. But the painting is nothing. It’s fucking splotches of color on cloth. Soon, one way or another, it’ll be gone. And when it disappears it makes no difference. But I’m here. You’re here. And that does make a difference. It doesn’t have to disappear. It can stay. You’re right. This is opportunity. To fix things. To survive together. To maybe get to a place where having something is just as fulfilling as wanting it. I came here for you. I did this for you. I risked everything for you. Because we are kin. Now we can sell this stupid useless thing to McEvoy, make his fucking life complete, and walk away with enough money to go somewhere, somewhere different, and start over. I need that. You need that.

Ian: Zoey…

Zoey: You need me. The question is, do you know it. Do you finally know it? If you do, you’ll sell the painting and we’ll be unstuck. If you don’t this is it. This is the last time we see each other. This isn’t a hustle it’s the goddam truth. So make this right. There. See how straightforward that is?

In this explosive rebuke, Zoey hits upon a fundamental tenet of risk theatre: material items have a dollar cost and spiritual concerns have a spiritual cost. One cannot buy spiritual concerns and other affairs of the heart with money. One cannot put a dollar value on spirit, the all-too-human, heartache, longing, joy, and courage. These human concerns can only be exchanged for other human concerns. Tragedy exists, argues risk theatre, to dramatize this truth. It is a counter-monetary art.

The painting exists in the realm of spirit, in the realm of the all-too-human. It’s true value, as McEvoy argues, is to be measured in terms of the sacrifices Kirchner underwent to create it:

McEvoy: And you’ll never appreciate it for what it represents, and what it cost–beyond money–for the artist who achieved it. You do not know who he was, what he endured. The hours of study and practice, of the pressure required to be the one to create it.

In the end, Kirchner paid the price by committing suicide. The true value of the painting exists in the realm of spirit insofar as Kirchner gives up his life to give it life. Whether $20k, $60k, or $24 million, cash is an inappropriate means of valuing Summum Bonum, the highest good. But if Ian exchanges the Kirchner to make the family whole, he would recognize its true value. Kirchner gave his life so that other lives may be made whole. Is this not a beautiful conceit and the very soul of drama?

Tragedy, says risk theatre is about a gamble, a wager, a bet. Ante up for a chance to win. Go all-in. Make a delirious bet. Dunn’s characters go all-in, each of them. The bet is good, argues risk theatre. Why would rational characters deliberately sabotage themselves by making a stupid or boastful bet that attracts the wrath of the heavens? And so, we see that the bets Dunn’s characters make are reasonable. But something happens. This is tragedy, after all. Something happens, says risk theatre, because of risk. Risk is the pivot. Characters, says risk theatre, trigger the highly improbable because they take inordinate risks. The low-probability, high-consequence event happens when the thieves discover what they’ve stolen in a low-budget smash and grab: a $24 million dollar modern classic, thought to have been lost forever. What were the odds? They were surely low. But the consequences rock Zoey, Victor, Ian, and McEvoy’s worlds. And the audience is left asking a question we would do well to ask ourselves: “How do you price Summum Bonum, the highest good?”

In answering this question–and this is how I’ll direct the play–I’ll take the side of McEvoy: its true price is the human price Kirchner paid to paint it. Everyone who assigns it a cash value gets it wrong: that’s the tragedy. McEvoy understands its true price, but cannot unlock its value. If he obtains the highest good, he’ll lock it up in a cabinet-prison, bringing it out every so often to feel its power. He’s a hoarder. That’s his tragedy. Ian, who understands the price of everything but the value of nothing, can’t get it right either. He doesn’t know who he is, what he has. He’s a pretender, standing on one peak, already envisioning himself on the next. He would do well to hear an old story between writers Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and Joseph Heller. The story takes place at a private Shelter Island party, hosted by a Wall Street banker:

Kurt: Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel CATCH-22 has earned in its entire history?

Joseph: I’ve got something he can never have.

Kurt: What on earth could that be, Joe?

Joseph: The knowledge that I’ve got enough.

That Ian doesn’t get it that Zoey and Victor can get him “enough” is his tragedy. Zoey, unlike the others, can unlock the value of the highest good: the price Kirchner paid to paint it is the cost of what it takes to reunite her family. Give up the painting and make the family whole. That’s a legitimate use of the highest good: Kirchner’s sacrifice makes good her broken family. Suffering for suffering. Just as risk theatre theory predicts, human concerns can only be paid in the currency of blood, sweat, and tears, either our own, or that of others. The highest good can only be exchanged for other intangible goods that also are of the highest order. These are the human, all-too-human goods. But she lacks the power to make it happen. That’s her tragedy.

“What can the highest good get you?” That question, I think, encapsulates the reasons why the jurors nominated The Value for the grand prize. I feel its power. Now the task is to take this message from the page to the stage.

Don’t forget me, I’m Edwin Wong and I do Melpomene’s work.