BREAKING WOOD
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The program note on Whitney Empire, the author of Breaking Wood, reads: “Although sharing the same past, Whitney Empire no longer resides in Susan MacNeil’s body” (MacNeil is the actor in this one-woman show). MacNeil, according to the program, has a black belt in kyokushin karate, a Korean-based school of martial arts that emphasizes body contact and the breaking of objects. MacNeil also, it says, “devotes a good portion of her time to Esoteric Studies in Psychology and the Ancient Universal Mysteries.” Even without these notes, however, we know this will be no ordinary theatrical narrative–MacNeil’s crystal talisman and the obvious seam in the board she “breaks” in the course of the play are sufficient.
This could still make for interesting theater if this woman’s life had been in any way extraordinary, but her experiences are painful only in their banality. She has a father with an illness that is never named, she discovers the body of her grandfather just after he’s died, she refuses to marry her first boyfriend, she has an affair with a married man, she drinks liquor and smokes dope. None of these experiences is explored in any depth–indeed, all these hardships seem only hurdles she’s destined to overcome. Eventually, she learns to dance: “Being physical is so pure and natural,” she says, pirouetting around the stage to show as well as tell us. Then she comes to realize that her chronic back injuries are psychosomatically induced, and discovers that “Wealth is inside of me.” But since we know so little of where she’s traveled, there is nothing to make us care about where she’s arrived.
