Unifying Images/Phantom Pains

Kirlian photography is a process by which objects and people can be photographed to reveal auras created by the release of electron particles around the form. Some photographs of partially torn leaves show that the object retains an electron field around the missing section. A ghostly image remains intact around the torn edge, suggesting that the object still believes or yearns for the physical presence of the missing piece.

The characters in A Weekend Near Madison are unaware in any conscious way that something is missing. They seem at first like assertive, thoughtful (if not downright creative and successful), and generally well adjusted people. This is not altogether true. More deeply, especially in Jim, Sam, and Nessa, we see a yearning for something either missing or undervalued in the world of the play: the existence of an intimate relationship that retains aspects of the traditional love we have been taught to seek as children. It doesn't matter that this "tradition" is a dream; they still covet it. Film and literature offer iconic examples that contain only a surface reality void of any substance. We all create scenarios in our minds of how love and intimacy should unfold in our lives but the truth is vastly more complex. First of all, EVERY person has a DIFFERENT and equally UNREALISTIC set of expectations. Most people are torn between what they WANT and what they SHOULD want. Secondly, how can we become COMPLETE when we are trying to simultaneously conform to society AND find intimacy with someone whose screwed up ideas about love match our own? Nessa and Sam have managed half of the equation---their relationship appears to be a paragon of sensitivity and communication--- but this intimacy comes at a price. The non-traditional nature of a lesbian relationship makes a traditional pregnancy problematic. Nessa wants to get pregnant the "old fashioned way” and that's a tall order in this "new fangled" love match.

Jim can't put his finger on what is missing in his life and he is stuck fretting about the byproduct of this mysterious absence---this hole he feels in himself. His clunky paintings come from his inability to articulate what he yearns for. As Nessa wrenches and diminishes him further by asking him to be a sperm donor---not a LOVER or FATHER but simply a DONOR, he is only able to draw up a memory of cutting wood and watching Nessa and Doe wave from the kitchen window. This is his ideal---a simple and traditional vignette of men and women fulfilling their roles in life together. He feels guilty for wanting it too because it is a socially unacceptable and politically incorrect fantasy, especially in the woman- dominated world in which Nessa and Sam live. So he longs for inclusion, intimacy, and love and cannot see an acceptable way to get them.

The characters in A Weekend Near Madison all live life with only a casual regard for tradition, yet below the surface they ache for something substantial, some way to feel connected and complete.