The following is the dramaturgy note created by "Everybody" dramaturgs Liz Bazzoli and Artemis Westover.
Everybody is about death and dying, something we all know about, something inevitable. Death has been a constant presence in our minds as, in the past year and a half 675,000 Americans have died of COVID-19, with thousands of others dying in the social upheaval during the pandemic. It is in times like these that making art about death is especially important. It does seem counterintuitive -- when all that fills your newsfeeds and TV screens is talk of death -- to intentionally let the consideration of mortality enter your mind. Or maybe you feel that you are already thinking about death constantly. Despite its constant presence in our society, American culture refuses to dwell on death. We avoid grief. We are asked to put our jobs, our schoolwork, our social commitments before our grief. Just like you, Everybody begins this play as a stranger to death until they confront it. We ask you to sit in this theatre and witness Death, to live in the discomfort and breadth of emotion our society tends to ignore. As the play says about death, “Everybody has to do it. So you have to do it, because you’re Everybody.”
Woodblock prints such as these were popularized during the Middle Ages as a response to the influx of deaths brought about by the Black Death.
As you will hear several times throughout the play, Everybody is a contemporary adaptation of the fifteenth-century morality play Everyman. Written in Medieval England, Everyman reflected the concerns of a society preoccupied with death. The Black Death had just ravaged all of Europe, killing hundreds of millions of people, as much as half of the continent. By the time of Everyman, Europe had undergone a cultural reckoning with mortality and was still processing its collective trauma. Europe’s sudden confrontation with so much death – inexplicable before modern science led to the tradition of the “memento mori”, an artistic reminder of the imminence and unpredictability of death. Memento mori took on a Christian perspective in Medieval England, as seen in religious morality works like Everyman. The Black Death showed Europeans that God was merciless and could strike humanity at any time for no apparent reason. For Christians, reminding oneself of death was a way to avoid earthly sins and focus on good deeds so as to reach heaven upon dying. Morality plays like Everyman instructed audiences to renounce fleeting Earthly pleasures in pursuit of doing good deeds and living by the words of God. The dance macabre was another form of memento mori that arose in post-plague Medieval Europe.
In Roman celebrations and processions, a slave would whisper into the celebrated's ear, telling them to "remember [they] are mortal." This was to humble those in power, reminding them that their power, just like their life, was only temporary.
These “dances of death” saw performers portray characters from different walks of life (a king and a peasant, for example) dancing with a figure representing death. The goal of the dance macabre and the morality play was to process human mortality and to explain the great mystery of death. Beyond the Middle Ages, memento mori is seen in ancient societies like Rome and Greece and in Eastern Buddhist traditions. In contemporary America, responses to mass tragedies like the current COVID-19 pandemic look like memento mori. There was recently an installation on the National Mall of 600,000 white flags, each symbolizing an American life lost to COVID-19. You may remember the image of newly-elected Joe Biden and Kamala Harris standing before the candle-lit memorial pool from earlier this year. Even something as mundane as the nightly news serves as reminder of life’s transience in a time of unprecedented tragedy and grief.
Often contemporary memento mori takes the form of memorials. Pictured here is a display of 600,000 white flags on the National Mall, each flag representing a casualty of COVID-19.
We would like you to consider history. How much art is about death? How much art is made in the wake of death? What can be gained from watching a play about death that cannot be found when reading the news or doom-scrolling? Everybody is part of a tradition of processing the impact of death through storytelling and the theatre is an especially impactful place to do it. Tonight, as you watch somebody go on a journey towards the afterlife, consider the somebodies in the audience with you, consider yourself, and the journey humanity has always and will always have to take.
Artemis Westover (they/them) is a BFA2 Dramaturg. Everybody was their first show at The Theatre School and was one of the most impactful learning experiences they have had. Looking ahead they are excited to continue to tell stories that are intricate and magical.
Liz Bazzoli (they/he) is a dramaturg, writer, filmmaker, self-identified dweeb from Cincinnati, Ohio. Liz has a passion for art as a collective tool for social change and advocates for a more accessible theatre. Liz is interested in work that attempts to subvert or revolutionize the capitalistic culture of theatrical consumption. And maybe they like a little spectacle. As a treat.
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