“I’ve never felt at home in the theater.”

Posted by Jack Flynn

This week as I was reading, another line with meta-meaning caught my attention and triggered a whole new line of thinking for me relating to the play. On page 104, Mary laments, “I’ve never felt at home in the theater.” How funny, Mary, because you are a fictional character who exists only in the theater. Tough break.

But the line really got me thinking about whether or not anyone does really feel at home in the house. In the Intro to Production Design course that I’m taking right now, one of the big concepts we’ve discussed is that when designing spaces for actors/characters, you have to think about who “owns” what spaces.

Mary obviously doesn’t seem to feel she has ownership of the house, considering the fact that she’s always bringing up the fact that it’s never felt like a proper home. Edmund and Jamie certainly don’t seem to have ownership in the house in a literal sense and seem more like (horrible, awful, alcoholic) guests. That leaves Tyrone, but I think O’Neill’s stage directions show that he doesn’t own the space either, considering the bookshelves are full of Nietzsche and Marx which he hates.

To me, I think the idea that none of the characters really own the space is a helpful one. Things like the presence of anarchist authors on the bookshelf become physical manifestations of a passive aggressive territory war. And because no one is truly on home turf, it’s more of an even ground which makes the fighting more interesting.