November 29, 2025 – Recalling with melancholy and exultation the life and works of Tom Stoppard, who died today,
I thought of the production of ARCADIA that the Department of Theatre & Dance presented sixteen years ago at Montclair State University, directed by Susan Kerner, with production design by Erhard Rom, my dramaturgy; and our stellar student cast, four of them in this exquisite photograph by Mike Peters: left to right, Joshua Dela Cruz as Septimus Hodge; Haleigh Adams as Chloe Coverly; Kelsey Burke as Thomasina Coverly; and Devin Johnson as Gus/Augustus Coverly…
…and sharing my dramaturg’s note to the actors after opening night:
From the opening “carnal” question to the final waltzes, and everything in between, the watchword of last night was lucid.
Lucid. Clear. Transparent. Crystalline.
Like a well-polished, multifaceted gem.
Like a Swiss watch, with every gear and cog and mechanism interacting almost flawlessly (after
all, if it were perfection, there would be nothing left to strive for during the next three days).
There were laughs where I never thought of them before, and they made me laugh, too.
The transitions – evanescent, quiet, imperceptible lighting; evocative, mood-setting music;
balletic movement – were magical.
The two casts coexisted in the same mystical space, ghostly apparitions materializing into actorly
flesh.
Aside from theatrics, however, another very crucial point:
We had talked so often about how you as actors have to come across as if you know what you are
talking about otherwise the audience would lose the story.
Last night you did not “seem” to know what you were talking about; rather, you actually did
really know what you were talking about, so that even when I did not understand the science, the
math, or the philosophy, it no longer mattered.
What mattered indeed was “wanting to know.”
There was such energy, drive and purpose to your various quests, whether they were significant
or trivial.
Who can judge in the final analysis what the actual degree of a quest on stage is “worth?”
Such a sense of desperation to explain, communicate, reach out to each other even across time
and space and social class and discipline, from penicillin to poetry.
That’s what made the temporary successes so relieving and the relationship failures so poignant.
Who would have thought that bearing witness to the process of learning could be so emotionally
rewarding?
Who would have thought that all sides of an argument could be right?
…That the universe of disparate knowledge could expand, irrespective of whose path was being
followed?
…That a fifteen-foot-long table could act as such a reliable visual metaphor for what connects
and also divides us; strewn, as it was, with the detritus of reading, measuring, writing, reading,
and burning — stages in the life cycles of unquantifiable intellectual and physical worlds?
–excerpted from NB’s Arcadia: Dramaturg’s Letters, p.220 ff., in The LMDA University Caucus Source Book, Volume 4, edited by Kathleen Jeffs, Bryan Moore, and Roxanne Ray, August, 2011.