Burn Down The House

I had a teacher in high school who knew just about every play that was ever written. As an assignment, he asked me to write an essay on Edward Albee and focus in on a few pieces of his work in correlation of the Aristotelian six elements of drama. When I asked him what plays I might read, he told me to try The Goat and only said, ‘good luck’. To this day, this the only piece of writing I have ever read to make me physically ill and a little emotionally scarred.

The Goat or Who is Sylvia is a tale of a married, middle-aged architect, Martin, his wife Stevie, and their son Billy, whose lives crumble when Martin falls in love with a goat.

Martin is getting ready for a TV interview that will highlight his successes in business and in life; he is a recent Pritzker Prize winner. Like most characters in the first five minutes of a play, they seemingly have perfect lives. Our idea of Martin is destroyed, however, when he vulnerably opens up to his friend Ross, who is conducting the interview, that he is having an affair. Ross decides to inform Stevie and Billy, and therein lies the central conflict of the script. Even worse than having an affair, Martin admits that it is with a goat named Sylvia, who he also happens to be consensually in love with.

This play also features many language games and grammatical arguments in the middle of catastrophes and existential disputes between characters. The name of the play refers to the song ‘Who is Silvia?’ from Shakespeare’s play The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Proteus sings this song hoping to woo a Silvia. It is also referred to in Finding the Sun (1982), an earlier work of Albee.

The idea of bestiality is rarely discussed in general, let alone in modern media, making Albee’s work controversial and absurd. We are called to question our moral judgment of social taboos when trying to empathize with Martin. Additionally, this play focuses on the limits of an ostensibly liberal society. Other themes include American suburban culture, heterosexuality, woman’s lives in homes, narcissism, unconditional love, and convention vs. unconventional.

This is an absurd play. Martin Esslin in his book Absurd Drama (1965) writes:

“The Theatre of the Absurd attacks the comfortable certainties of religious or political orthodoxy. It aims to shock its audience out of complacency, to bring it face to face with the harsh facts of the human situation as these writers see it.”

Jerome P. Crabb wrote about it: “Whereas traditional theatre attempts to create a photographic representation of life as we see it, the Theatre of the Absurd aims to create a ritual-like, mythological, archetypal, allegorical vision, closely related to the world of dreams.”

There are three scenes in The Goat and each one descends in the order of comedy to drama to tragedy. I think this could give way to potential unique design choices when producing this script for the stage. Personally, I would give this set a 1950’s, all American look in the beginning to really emphasize the suburban, perfect family culture. I would also want this exemplified by the actors; their actions completely muddled by confusion, grief, and unresolve. By the end of the play, I would somehow want the set emptied as their understanding of convention becomes spoiled. I want their emotions boiled down to raw and uninhibited, which is what I believe Albee invites of actors with his words. “The shedding of easy solutions, of comforting illusions, may be painful, but it leaves behind it a sense of freedom and relief. And that is why, in the last resort, the Theatre of the Absurd does not provoke tears of despair but the laughter of liberation” (Esslin).

Oftentimes, absurdist works end unresolved, uncertain, empty, and meaningless. By the end of The Goat, the characters have not resolved the issues with one another, but have rather formed new ways to cope. Stevie drags in a dead Sylvia - bloodied and lifeless. It is at this point where Stevie looks like she could almost laugh: laughter of liberation. The last words of the play come from Billy asking, “Dad? Mom?”, leaving us with utter confusion.

I see a version of this 1950s styled, nuclear production following the soundtrack of Talking Head’s Speaking in Tongue. I know I’m transcending multiple genres, styles, and time zones but please, bear with me. There’s something so avant-garde about David Byrne’s songwriting that just makes his music so fitting for the Theatre of the Absurd. In This Must Be The Place, Byrne describes himself as “just an animal looking for a home / and share the same space for a minute or two” which just feels comparable to Albee’s interpretation of what an animal means. Byrne’s album is also just filled with genre-breaking funk that ranges through strong hyper eccentric emotions.

Byrne says about his song: “‘Burning Down the House’ wasn’t a song about arson…When I wrote the lyrics in 1982, the title phrase was a metaphor for destroying something safe that entrapped you. I envisioned the song as an expression of liberation, to break free from whatever was holding you back. As for the rest of the lyrics, there are no hidden meanings. There’s no logical, linear connection. They aren’t telling a story or signifying anything. I simply combined aphorisms and nonsequiturs that had an emotional connection.”

Martin continually ‘burns down the house’ in every metaphorical (and possibly physical - let’s get some SFX onstage) by breaking the boundaries that entrap him into a nuclear family lifestyle. A lot of my research argues that his sexual deviances which throw his entire life into flames represent the experience most queer people lived. Albee takes the extreme of bestiality to represent the violence, confusion, and hatred people expressed towards the LGBTQIA+ community. It is essential to not judge Martin for his decisions, but rather to see it as a form of his survival. He must burn down his house in order to be liberated.

Girlfriend is Better (Stop Making Sense) off the album simply speaks for itself. The song is an evaluation of a relationship which breaks societal expectations, maintains excitement and the pure anxiety of what it means to stop making sense of it all.

“I got a girlfriend that’s better than that / She has the smoke in her eyes / She’s coming up, going right through my heart / She’s gonna give me surprise”.

One of the strongest vignettes of the script to me is when Martin discusses Sylvia’s eyes. He describes them as, “pure…and trusting and…and innocent; so…so guileless” and that he “melted, I think. I think that’s what I did: I melted”. It’s really a wonderful description of what it’s like to be so intoxicated by someone’s eyes which Byrne also touches upon.

There’s so much love and joy tucked away inside this play, despite its nauseating themes and eventual, tragic ending. This is a longtime favorite of mine that pursued me to read more of Edward Albee and have the Theatre of the Absurd as an essential in my creative work.