I am writing a cycle of plays about Americans and language — how we use it, what we believe about it, the politics, power, and perversion of it. The first in the cycle is Complete, a comedy informed by my watching my own childhood lexicon change to reflect a philosophy that takes our American obsessions with self-making and self-reliance to an extreme by claiming that we “create” everything in our lives. The second, The History of English, is a comedy about dialect difference in the US. The play I’m writing next addresses the death of Native languages in North America. While I write shorter plays on a variety of themes, language is the focus of most of my current work.

My experiences in est were long ago, and in writing Complete, I thought I got them out of my system. But I wonder whether my early exposure to extreme jargon still feeds my curiosity about language. When Werner said we should be open to the beingness of being, what did he mean? When Werner said… anything… what did he mean?

In the special assistants’ pre-meeting with Werner, just before the special Werner event, in a time before Werner had left the country: “Who else would like to share?” Werner. Oh, Werner! Perched on his tall director’s chair on stage, leaning back in a diagonal, legs crossed, fingers on chin, soaking us in. Here was my chance. In this room of 250 assistants intending to connect with our source, I raised my hand. Time and again I was passed by. I must not really be intending to share with Werner, I must not really be intending to share with Werner, I must not really be intending–

I stood on my chair.

The microphone came to me. I took a moment to get into my space.

“I’m so happy t- to meet you, I’m so happy to share with you, I, I wanted to tell you, that you, the difference you make, the, I wanted to tell you, how- how special- you- I did the training when I was nine, my first adult seminar when I was twelve, I assisted at the office, on the phones, at the nametag tables, at seminars, I wanted to meet you, and the Forum for est graduates, the, when I was sixteen, two years ago and I wanted to tell you how, how special, you are, how, I wanted to– thank you. Thank you. Because… I grew up with you.”

Werner looked at me with that sexy Richard Gere confidence. “You know what,” he said.

“What?” I was beaming! What was he going to say? What was Werner going to say to me?

“I grew up.

With you.

Too.”

(Silence.)

…Hmmn?  I’m sorry, I don’t think I underst… I mean, I don’t think I know wha… I’m not sure I get…it… I’m not sure I… Oh god I’m still standing here, I’m still– microphone in my hand, staring at– but did he hear what I said? I’m not sure he understood, because what I said was, I really grew up wi– I said I grew, you made a difference in my, I said–  oh god I’m still– he’s not saying anything, it’s just– the room, the– I don’t know what to, I don’t–

Me, into the microphone: “I know what you mean.”

Then the applause of Werner and the room.

I handed back the microphone. I sat down. Someone else shared.

As an undergraduate I studied linguistics; I focused on syntax, the order of words in sentences, and semantics, how we make meaning from those words. Later, I started to write plays about language.

Complete was born from my impulse to examine the philosophy and teachings of a well-known American “large group awareness training,” to document the speech patterns and rituals of this community, and to observe them in the context of the life of a young character who has no control over her environment. The fictional “training” in the play maintains that all individuals, including children, create every experience they have. While recent popular discourse – reflected in best-sellers such as The Secret and widely viewed television programs such as Dr. Phil and The Oprah Winfrey Show – shows that it can be useful to consider to what extent our intentions “create” outcomes, the extreme philosophy of the training, as well as its repurposing of language, invite inquiry.

I wanted to bring the perspective of language science to this inquiry, as well, and have syntactic and semantic analyses of the training’s jargon performed on stage. I wanted to see how these three worlds – the training and its jargon, a child who has no control over her environment, and linguistic analysis – resonate on stage together. What do we discover from their combination?

I also wanted to see how the training’s jargon and philosophy are set into play with adult characters, and how that might differ from a child’s experience. And all throughout, I wanted to look at the “grayness” of human experience. A character who feels herself to be repulsed by the training is simultaneously attached to and obsessed by it. I wanted to create a play that lives in the world of “both… and…” as differentiated from “either… or…”

And of course I wanted farcical elements, fainting, and public outbursts. I wanted instantaneous scene changes, humiliation, and wrestling. Characters whose needs and fixations precipitate comically shameful behavior. And a nine-year-old harassing the whole theater with her steadfast certainty that we can each create ourselves being any way we want to be.