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Dionysian Elements in a Melancholy Play

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            Sarah Ruhl is one of the premier playwrights of this generation. In her works, she explores emotion and being in ways that may at first appear bizarre or unintelligible, but upon reflection, they clearly display the delineation of Dionysian performance. In particular, Melancholy Play acts to portray these aspects of Dionysus in a fabulous theatre performance. This paper plans to prove three central concepts of the play that are in and of themselves Dionysian.  The first point will be to show how Dionysian music is a major part of Ruhl’s play. Then, it will explain how the ‘melancholy’ experienced by the characters was not in fact an emotion but rather an elaborate and imaginary experience as if one  is on drugs. To conclude the argument, this paper will display how the liminality that is core to the Dionysian element is prominent throughout the play.
            Music has long been said to be food for the soul and through music one can find peace and unrest, simplicity and complexity.  Friedrich Nietzsche explained that “Dionysian music keeps such an element of gentle caution at a distance, and with that turns music generally into emotionally disturbing tonal power, a unified stream of melody, and the totally incomparable world of harmony.” From this it is possible to extract “emotionally disturbing tonal power” from the quote and apply it to Melancholy Play. Throughout the performance, Julian the musician played a cello in the background to add feeling to the entirety of the piece. The tone and pitch varied throughout, illustrating the emotional atmosphere of the piece, adding to the poignant experience of the audience.
            It can be interpreted upon reflection, that the “melancholy” spoken about and portrayed in the play was merely a symbolic depiction for the effects of drugs and alcohol, which can be seen as the supreme essence of what Dionysus stood for in Ancient Greece. Tilly was the first character to display vital characteristics of melancholy, and as such I relate her to a narcotics supplier. As she interacts with the other characters, they begin to act different than their characters original behavior, as if she gave them the drugs. An example of this is Lorenzo, who proclaims “It is I: Lorenzo the unfeeling, The Unfeeling Lorenzo.”  When he interacts with Tilly, he eventually falls in love/lust with her as noted by his persistent questioning of her in ways such as “It is normal to fall in love with me. It is ‘okay.’” This is far beyond his original motivations of being “unfeeling.”  Towards the end, they believe themselves to actually becoming almonds; this I believe to be merely a psychological and physiological illusion being contrived from the crescendo of the “melancholy” effects derived from the mutual interactions of all the characters as the play progressed.
            As a final note, liminality is a “sensory threshold” or “of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition” as stated in Merriam-Webster. The essence of this definition is a state of being where one is between two states of sensory ability. This also relates to the drug effects of the “melancholy” in that they are in a state between reality and fiction. The liminality of Dionysus is clearly and visually demonstrated by the wall located in the background of the stage where the windows and door are found. Julian and the music he plays are found behind the wall, on the side symbolizing the full-effects of the drugs. After Frances “becomes an almond,” she interacts with the audience via the doorway. She never fully enters the main-stage area while speaking initially but instead, stands in the threshold, clearly exhibiting her status of liminality. At the end, when Julian joins the cast of “almonds” on the other side of the wall and dances, it shows a complete entrance of the cast into a full delusional state of euphoric drug-use illustrated by the transfer of the musician, who previously acted in the complete realm of pure emotion and joins the cast in a revelry of drug-induced dance, being swept away by the disillusion of reality and institution of unadulterated sensation and passion.
            Melancholy Play clearly demonstrates a state of euphoric illusion that is paramount in the concepts of Dionysus. Music encompasses the entirety of the work, helping to exemplify the emotion of the mood. Drug use is symbolized throughout the totality of the performance, a concept wholly Dionysian. Combining these two concepts, the liminality that is Dionysus at its foundation, is displayed and prevalent. It is utterly certain that Sarah Ruhl instituted the rudiments of Dionysian facets to display an emotional and ecstatic state that is both a novel and exemplary piece of theatre.
 
Works Cited
Johnston, Ian. “Friedrich Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy”. Johnstoniarecords.viu.ca/~johnstoi/Nietz…. Vancouver Island University, n.d. Web. 21 February 2011.
Ruhl, Sarah. Melancholy Play. n.p.: n.d. Print/E-book.
The Purdue OWL. Purdue U Writing Lab, 2010. Web. 25 February 2011.
       

Academic analysis of Sarah Ruhl's Melancholy Play and the Dionysian elements that it contains. 
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