Some Thoughts about Ghosts

I've just finished revising one scene of Hungry Ghosts, a scene in which all the ghosts are whispering at once, all telling their own private, urgent stories. As I wrote the ghosts' monologues, I wondered how I could explain the scene to the cast, and I thought about the various theories I've heard to explain hauntings. One theory is that a haunting is essentially a film loop, a moment so painful or traumatic that it is permanently burned upon the air, endlessly repeating itself for anyone who can see or hear it. Another theory ties the haunting to unfinished business, the restless ghost's need to apologize or avenge. Another is that ghosts belong to those people who are too scared to leave this existence so they're stuck, neither here nor there. Personally, I'm a fan of the "friendly visit" theory, the idea that in the afterlife we can pop in on the people and places we love, check up on them, hanging out like the last guests to leave a very long party.

For me, ghosts are like stories. We need to hear them, and they need to be told. We're haunted by the things we've left undone, but even more by words unsaid. Ghost stories are a portal, a path through the dark, frightening woods, with a glimpse of light at the end.

Finally in the swing of things

Last night's rehearsal was the first chance I've had to hear the play all the way through since the first read-through, and it was really a pleasure to be able to really get into it and start making some edits. I cleaned up some of the clunky transitions and added a bit more texture. But at the same time, it's frustrating, because I realize that I can't make too many more changes before the performance. The actors need time to assimilate the changes and work on the timing, which is so crucial to this piece. It really is an ensemble play, far more than anything else I've written. During tomorrow's rehearsal I'll probably make some more edits, and then I'll let it go. At least until after the first performance... (fair warning, cast!)

The cast deserves so much praise. May Lee Lockhart as Alice, Soo Jin Park as Isabelle, Noelle Hardy, Tovah Hicks, Dan Wachter, Callie Munson and Brandon Little as ghosts. This group really has wonderful chemistry, and they are all so joyful about playing and experimenting and finding new nuances in the story. I think this could be a frustrating play to work on. Most members of the cast play multiple characters, and there are a lot of quick transitions. Timing is crucial; as Noelle pointed out, if one line is dropped, the whole thing can unravel quickly. That means the actors really need to rely on each other. And they can. It's genuinely a pleasure to watch. Even in rehearsal, there are moments when I can simply be an audience member, enjoying fine actors on stage, instead of the playwright agonizing over clunky exposition or unclear plot. And that's fully a credit to the cast and to Laura Blegen, the director.

TRAILER: Hungry Ghosts

Here's your chance to catch a sneak peek of HUNGRY GHOSTS by M.E.H. Lewis, one of our five new plays featured in LeapFest 6.

Unfortunately, I still haven't figured out (nor have YouTube and Blogger, it seems, between themselves) how to get a 16:9 video to fit on a blog page. Hmmm... so feel free to click here to get to the full video on YouTube. Be sure to click the "HQ" button to see the higher-quality video. Enjoy!

Death in the Street & Chicken-Eating Ghosts

The Hungry Ghost is a Buddhist concept that is common to the beliefs and cultures of many Asian countries, including Vietnam. The Hungry Ghost is the spirit of someone who died in unsatisfied or insatiable need. This could be someone who died of starvation or thirst, but it could also be the spirit of someone who suffered impossible hunger, like addiction or unrequited love. In death, they wander restlessly, endlessly seeking the sustenance they couldn’t get in life. In Asian art, the Hungry Ghost is often depicted as a creature with a huge empty belly and tiny constricted throat, so that each swallow causes great pain.

In traditional Vietnamese culture, ancestor worship is an extremely important part of the belief system. You continue to respect and serve your parents, grandparents and other long after they die, and in return, they bring you prosperity and blessings. Every home has a lovingly maintained ancestor altar, where they make daily offerings to the ancestors.

In addition, most homes have a “street side” altar, a smaller altar or spirit house in the garden or by the front door, where they can make offerings to spirits who are not part of the family, including wandering or hungry ghosts. Unhappy spirits, or those who don’t receive proper respect, can cause terrible bad luck. One of the worst things that can happen is “death in the street,” which means death away from home and family, especially violent death.

It is even worse if a person doesn’t receive proper burial. People who die away from homes, people who die violent deaths and do not receive proper burials and ancestor worship become restless, unhappy, often vengeful ghosts who can wreak havoc on an entire community. Vietnam was at war for hundreds of years. From the American War alone, there are about 30,000 US servicemen still missing, and more than 300,000 Vietnamese servicemen. That doesn’t include the thousands of civilians who died. That’s a lot of angry ghosts wandering the countryside.

There are many stories about hauntings and possessions. One of my favorites is about a house haunted by the ghost of an American soldier, a boy from Tennessee. The family’s grandmother, a 75-year-old woman who had never left Vietnam and spoke no English, suddenly started acting strangely. The family brought in a medium, who told them that the grandmother was possessed by this ghost. In perfect, Southern-inflected English, the grandmother demanded fried chicken and biscuits. When they provided this meal, the Tennessee ghost, speaking through the grandmother, said thank you and left the house. The family was never bothered again.

In this country that has been so torn apart by war, they have found a way to appease the many ghosts who haunt them. They make offerings to all the strange spirits, the American and Vietnamese soldiers who died in battle, and to the civilian victims of bombs and massacres and the horrors of war. The countryside is filled with small shrines, some as simple as a soda bottle holding a few sticks of incense. People even stop in the street to burn a votive or offering. These ghosts and their stories become part of a family, part of a community. After so much pain and loss, the culture heals itself by accepting and healing the spirits of everyone who suffered, even those who caused the greatest pain.

A woman in the street, burning votive offerings to restless spirits

LeapFest production blog--initial thoughts

This year my play Hungry Ghosts will receive a workshop production, directed by Laura Blegen, as part of LeapFest. This is my third time to participate in the festival, and I’m going to write about the experience in this blog. Here are my first thoughts as I get ready for the first rehearsal I’ve been able to attend.

On April 11th, there was a staged reading of Hungry Ghosts at Chicago Dramatists, directed by the lovely Hallie Gordon. This was a wonderful experience, and very informative for me. I’m learning more and more about this play as I work on it, and I love that process, the process of discovering a play through the voices of the characters, the interpretations of the actors, the smart insights of directors and audience members. This play, even more than my others, has truly been a process of exploration and discovering, uncovering the hidden shapes within it.

This play was initially inspired by the essay “Across the River Styx,” which was published in The New Yorker in 2005. The essay profiled a mission to recover the remains of American Gils who died in Vietnam. The US military spends millions of dollars recovering the remains of lost American servicemen from wars going back to World War I, and in locations as remote and inaccessible as the Himalayas. In one case, the team actually emptied an entire lake seeking the relics of a plane that crashed during the Vietnam War. They then had to refill the lake and minimize their impact upon the landscape. They recovered a single finger bone and a class ring. I was fascinated by the noble, extravagant immensity of this mission.

My early attempts to write this play focused primarily on the archaeological and military aspects of the mission. The initial working title was Last Known Alive, a term which refers to the last information about a serviceman who is missing in action, the last time and place he was seen alive. And the military aspects of the mission are fascinating, including translators, mortuary specialists who care for the remains, unexploded ordinance technicians who defuse the grenades, landmines and other explosives found during an excavation. (During one excavation, they encountered an average of five landmines a day.) Amazing, absorbing stuff, rich in dramatic possibility. And yet, and yet… somehow it wasn’t quite right. A ghost crept into the mix, the ghost of an American soldier. I knew that might be a bit clichéd, but I didn’t care because I’m a sucker for ghost stories. I liked this character. But I was still a bit stymied by the play. So I set it aside. I was absorbed in a production of Creole at InFusion Theatre.

And life in general got in the way, as it has a tendency to do. I had a few too many brushes with mortality, my own and those of loved ones, a rough time that I won’t discuss here.

Then last summer, I enjoyed a residency at Ragdale, an artists’ retreat in Lake Forest. While I was there, I worked on Hungry Ghosts, which I also workshopped with Infusion Theatre and the DCA Incubator Series. Long days of research and intense writing, with long walks on the prairie, interspersed with hectic workshop days. According to lore, Ragdale House is haunted, so maybe I had a visitation. Whatever the reason, the original ghost of the play was soon joined by more, many more. The original military aspect of the play retreated, and the story was overrun by ghosts.

I’ve figured out that the play is about ghosts and stories---ghost stories told by ghosts—and somehow, in a way I can’t quite explain, ghosts and stories are the same. They are where we come from, what we are made of, our substance and our soul. Joseph Campbell says that the world is made of stories, that stories are how we carry our cultural DNA, and this play is about the stories that comprise a tiny village in a country that has more ghosts than most.