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81 UMKC L. Rev. 833 (2012-2013)
Stumped, by Debora Threedy: A Playwright's Perspective

handle is hein.journals/umkc81 and id is 855 raw text is: STUMPED, BY DEBORA THREEDY: A PLAYWRIGHT'S PERSECTIVE* Aden Ross, Ph.D.** As a professional playwright and former creative writing professor, I would like to offer some literary perspectives on Debora's play. Even if you only hear it as a reading, you can sense its possibilities as live theater, from its complex dramatic structure to its suggestive symbolism, from its foil characters to its exploration of pertinent legal issues. Structurally, the play would loosely be termed meta-theater, that is, theater which is highly conscious of itself as theater.' As audience members, we are not asked to pretend that we are voyeurs looking through a transparent fourth wall, sympathetically eavesdropping on characters' lives; rather, we are distanced from the action in order to think about it rationally. Stumped achieves this both through the time alternation between the present and the 1970s and through the interjections of Karen, the contemporary narrator-character, into the inside, earlier action. The play opens with Karen directly addressing the audience and explaining both her situation and the law to us, convenient for placing her in time and space and for providing vital exposition for those of us unversed in legal proceedings. We then watch as the legal case she is studying takes on a life of its own, the characters coming alive and acting out their situation in the 1970s. A third break in conventional theatrical structure occurs when Karen steps into the inside action, cross-examining Judge Stump. Here she learns that while she might be the director of the play within the play, she cannot change its legal outcome. Furthermore, the judge accuses her of playing a role as a law student, reinforcing the meta-theatricality of the piece. Finally, the play starts over, this time with Karen standing in for the original victim and enacting a vengeance she deems appropriate. But the circular structure, common in meta-theater, can either indicate rebirth and renewal-like the cyclical seasons-or an endless and inescapable cycle of repeated actions.2 Structurally, the ending is thus left for the audience to judge. * This piece is part of a four-part symposium. See also Debora Threedy, Introduction to Stumped: The Story of Stump v. Sparkman, 81 UMKC L. REv. 787 (2013); Debora Threedy, Stumped, A Play in One Act, 81 UMKC L. REV. 791 (2013); Laura T. Kessler, Stumped, by Debora Threedy: A Legal and Historical Context, 81 UMKC L. REV. 813 (2013); Kristin Kalsem, A Law and Literature Approach to Stumped by Debora Threedy, 81 UMKC L. REv. 825 (2013). Aden Ross is a playwright, poet, novelist, and educator. Twenty-five of her plays have been produced nationwide and in Canada. She wrote the libretto for the Utah Centennial Opera, Dreamkeepers, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. 1 See generally LIONEL ABEL, METATHEATRE: A NEW VIEW OF DRAMATIC FORM 59-61 (1963). Outstanding examples of metatheatre occur within the plays and theories of Bertolt Brecht's Epic Theatre. See BERTOLT BRECHT, BRECHT ON THEATRE: THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN AESTHETIC 33-41, 70-71(John Willet ed., trans., 1957). 2 Circular structure often occurs in theater, but the Theatre of the Absurd carried it to new levels to indicate the general hopelessness of the human condition, the endless repetition of meaningless behavior. See especially the work of Antonin Artaud, Jean Genet and Samuel Becket. In America, The Emperor Jones, by Eugene O'Neill, offers a good example of the structure. See generally

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