Seascape

Today was a work sponsored holiday where our area was bussed out to lunch and a play. The play was Edward Albee’s “Seascape”, and from a purely entertainment / acting point of view was “just fine”. I checked up on it and it won a Pulitzer prize, so at least someone thought it was good.

The play centers on a middle aged human couple on the verge of retirement where the man would like to “just relax”, and the woman would like to “be active and find adventure”. The dialogue is sometimes witty and funny, but the subtext is that the basic meaning of life is “having a good time”. Certainly no “higher purpose”, or even “serve your fellow man”.

Just before intermission, a pair of odd looking lizard creatures shows up. The second half of the show is a dialogue between the human couple and the lizard couple. The lizard couple are “highly evolved” (for sea lizards), and are ready to graduate to life on the surface. A good deal of time is taken up trying to show the absurdity of any “human superiority” … we are merely “animals with clothing”. Strangely though, rather than reason, the thing that sets the humans apart from the lizards is emotion. While less well versed in key things like “what is an airplane”, the lizards seem quite reasonable.

In retrospect, this was the part of the play I found the most objectionable. Possibly I’m just a foolish pet lover, but I feel somewhat certain that animals know emotion. They certainly seem “happy” to see a person on arrival, fearful of the vet, “bored” when nobody wants to play, and “sad” when it is obvious that the family has packed up and they are going to be left alone for some period. I see less evidence of “reason”, although I hold out some reservations that cats work to train their owners to provide them with an optimum life ;-)

Cat training aside, reason is the separator. Many an animal can throw just as good a hissy fit as a Hollywood director, but they aren’t likely to do higher math or even write a program that says “Hello Reality” anytime soon.