Chapter 34 – Bridge Over Troubled Water (2)

Tuesday.

The highlight of the week thus far for Eppie was the affirmation of her future plans via Dr Kirby. After a very public warning from their English professor that Eppie’s momentary celebrity status was no excuse for distraction, their deep dive into Act III of Titus Andronicus began.

“Where is Lavinia now? What’s her condition, if I may ask? Madison?”

“Her hands have been cut off,” Eppie’s prior rival said. “They also took her tongue.”

“Indeed,” Dr Kirby’s voice remained neutral. Eppie gets it. It’s a sensitive topic, especially to a class of mostly young women. “Marcus, her kin and uncle, finds her in the forest.

What stern ungentle hands… have lopped and hewed and made thy body bare of her two branches?

“He asks, then he speaks of the hands she used to possess, not in horror but with beautiful prose.

lily hands, tremble lily aspen leaves upon a lute.

Why? Why this cruel reminder? Eppie?”

“Peripeteia,” Eppie replied effortlessly. “The reversal.”

“Yes,” Kirby ticks her name for the answer. “We are reminded of what had come before, and what befalls her now. All the more pity for Lavinia. As a woman, she has been silenced by masculine violence and patriarchal politics. What remains is the next logical step. How does a silenced woman speak?

Indeed, Eppie asked the same question in her mind. How could we get Mio to speak?

She feels the cogs of her [Script Analysis] turn.

Lavinia, the forest, Ovid in her arms, the staff held between her stumps.
Mia, the locker room, the recording she may yet have in her possession.

Was this what the [System] wanted her to do?

“Our tragic protagonist arrives too late,” Kirby followed up on the plot. “His way of dealing with everything is, of course, for the worse.”

“I am the sea. He says. His grief is as boundless as the Argentean. Then, he is met by Aaron the Moor, and Aaron deceives him, telling him that if he lopped off one of his hands, his sons, Lavinia’s brothers, would be spared by the Emperor. We don’t believe Aaron; we are sure that Titus does not believe in the words of a knave either, but why does he agree? Thomas?”

“He has nothing left to lose,” Thomas said. “He’s grasping for straws.”

“It’s because he wants to believe,” Madison added. “Surely, there’s enough vengeance by now. Surely, there is a limitation to man-made greviences? Titus was like that. He would have stopped after that, because his duty, his piety, was done.”

“Both are foolishly true,” Kirby shook her head. “A scene later. Aaron returns Titus’ hand with the head of his two sons.”

And this is why we don’t give in to sociopaths. Eppie reminded herself. Lim must instinctively know this, because he was pumping the brakes on William long before Mio.

“This, we call Crisis. Not the English term as you know it, but a moment of decisive rupture, the turning point in which the situation is utterly irreversible. Imagine a hinge, it turns this way and that and now, it is stuck, the angle is set. All trajectories are now locked in.”

Dr Kirby stopped pacing beside her desk. “How does Titus respond to Aaron’s… trolling?”

“He laughs.” Eppie grinned at her teacher’s use of youthful vernacular. Sometime in the future, she might have to say that Aaron had mogged Titus via tragedy-maxxing. Isn’t language a wonderful thing? “Sometimes, that’s all a man can do.”

“He laughs indeed,” Kirby gave her another approving nod. “He laughs because the alternative is stark acceptance rather than stark absurdism. Titus has reached his psychological limit. From here on out, he will have blood.”

Eppie took her notes with perfect handwriting and colour-coded annotations. Somewhere inside the chamber of her virgin thoughts, a plot of vengeance began to gestate.

Thursday.
The lesson continues.

Dr Kirby marks down “III.ii” on the board. “Act Three, Scene Two. The intertextual scene.”

Below the play, she writes Philomela.

“Who knows what this is?”

It’s a loaded question. They were made to read the extract on Wednesday.

“Atkinson. Explain.”

“Philomela,” their Production Manager said, “is from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. She is raped by her sister’s husband, Tereus, who then cuts out her tongue so she cannot tell anyone what he has done to her. She finds a way to communicate anyway. She weaves what happened to her into a tapestry. This parallels Lavinia’s state, being handless and tongueless. She takes a copy of Philomela’s story and uses it. Her uncle reads it, and he knows what happened.”

“Then? Arthur.”

“She uses a staff, and she uses it to write three words. Stuprum. Chiron. Demetrius. It’s a record of those responsible for what happened to her.”

“Well done.” Kirby turned to the next slide. “We call this intertextuality. There’s another phrase here of interest and for homework: Mythological mirroring. It’s a technique we often see in today’s movies, in the Hero’s Journey and in the recurring structure of Aristotelian Tragedies. It is also ekphrasis, the expression of one art form to invoke the message of another. The silenced Lavinia weaponises the mythological against her tormentors.”

Kirby pauses for a moment, then her voice fills Eppie’s ear.

“Literature prevails where justice fails. This is not unusual in the history of our world. Artistic testimonies have commonly righted wrongful history. The common tragedy of Atticus Mills composed against the House Un-American Committee and the dark age of the Hollywood Ten are all evidence of why theatre, art, and storytelling must remain unfettered and uncensored. What is legal is not always just, and sometimes it takes the public court of men’s hearts to punish evil. It’s not enough, but it’s a good start.”

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Eppie made her notes.

Literature prevails where justice fails.

She liked that. She liked that a lot.

Mio. Theatre. Ovid.

Within the recesses of her scheming mind, Frankenstein’s monster stirred in the murk.

The play’s the thing!

She was sure of it now.

With the Gala drifting closer, Costello was no longer running exercises, but scenes. The walk, the spatial vocabulary, and the movement were now poured into the performance. Minute changes were added to the script daily. The Chorus and the technical crew rapidly matured their techniques through practice. Her teachers paid special attention to Eppie, not because of her fame, not because of Burton’s reminder that they cannot afford another bullying incident so close to the school’s public opening, but because Eppie was now the hinge of the production. In theatre theory, all were equal, but in real life, altrustic intent bowed to fame, skill and fortune. It was a silk screen, and woe unto the sinner who poked a hole through the backdrop.

Every other night, Eppie rehearsed with Zara, first in “In the Pines”, then “Dream a Little Dream of Me.” The tempo, the key, the resonance, the spontaneous variations, everything was coming together for the special arrangement.

On Friday evening, in the aftermath of her practice with Zara, her phone buzzed, then slid from her duffel.

“One sec,” Eppie gingerly replaced the guitar and went to check her phone. Like Zara, she was barefoot and in her easy tees. As a theatre major, barefoot anything just felt more natural.