Jumping into the schemata of Stoppard

Author: Eleanor Johnstone

On May 1, 2 and 3 Wright Theater will host a production of one of the most complex and challenging plays to grace any British or American stage. As the culminating theatrical experience in a three-year interdisciplinary grand symposium entitled "The Pathway to Religion in the Arts," the Middlebury Theater Department's production of Tom Stoppard's "Jumpers" promises to attract philosophers, theater majors and math whizzes alike.

First written and produced in London in 1972, the play is one of Stoppard's major accomplishments. Revered for its excellent interdisciplinary dialogue, the work's witty statements create comedy while addressing philosophical concepts in a way that has generated its own term - 'Stoppardian.' Highly philosophical and distantly autobiographical, "Jumpers" tackles the question "what do we actually know" in the context of a disturbed household and a morally backwards society. George Moore (Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre Alex Draper '88), a moral philosopher at a second-rate university, is submerged in his own mental search for moral integrity while his wife Dotty (Allison Corke '08) attempts to get his attention first by sexual allure and, when this fails, with yelps of "murder," "rape" and "help." Kicked off with the murder of an acrobatic Jumper whose corpse passes a significant portion of the show in a wardrobe, the show unfolds on George's obsession with his coming lecture on the question, "Is God?" while his wife Dotty grows increasingly insane in the company of the corpse and her perhaps-lover, and George's boss, Archie (guest actor James Matthew Ryan).

Though unsettled by the murder, Dotty is more disturbed by the manned lunar landing as it takes place on her television. One of the play's various threads of social awareness, this element deviates from the actual notion that a manned lunar landing would ruin the moon as a poetic trope and would possibly diminish human moral values. Stoppard's fictional interpretation of this historical event is partially based on the story of Captains Robert Falcon Scott and Lawrence Oates and their fatal 1901-1904 Discovery expedition to the South Pole. Though all members of the crew perished, Oates is recorded as having been the only one to choose his own death in the hopes of saving his friends, saying, "I'm just going out. I may be gone for some time," before leaving. This line reappears in a news broadcast that plays on the TV set in Dotty's bedroom. Manned by two men called Scott and Oates, Stoppard's landing goes awry and the captain saves himself with the spacecraft, leaving his mate to die alone. Such absurd takes on life, death and morals form the backbone of "Jumpers," most notably in Archie's line, "Murder isn't immoral. It's antisocial."

While this human disaster throws Dotty into hysterics, George pontificates on God in the vein of logical positivism. A combination of empiricism and rationalism, this philosophy was developed by the Vienna Circle in the 1920s and 30s. This group of philosophers distinguished themselves with two fundamental beliefs - experience is the only source of knowledge, and logical analysis performed in conjunction with symbolic logic is the preferred approach to philosophical problems. These concepts are fundamental to George's questions on the existence of God. They also alienate him from the very existence he questions, drawing up the query of whether or not he, as an inquirer, may therefore exist.

How did such a play land here? Even Professor of Theatre and Women's and Genders Studies Cheryl Faraone, the play's director, is surprised by her project. Despite having directed four other Stoppard plays, and even after teaching this particular work with Associate Professor of Math Steve Abbott, she never expected to be able to bring "Jumpers" to a college stage.

"George and Dotty are roles that are just too complex for most college students," she explained.

This awareness has brought Draper and guest actor James Matthew Ryan to the stage, a choice that is sure to intensify the performance for students accustomed to seeing only their peers on stage.

All the same, Faraone sees the play as a timeless piece. "It's a continuous destabilizing of truths," she said. "Religion is a hotter topic now, in the sense that we are asking, 'What does it mean?'"

"Jumpers" encourages this dialogue and pushes it beyond the black and white of thought and emotion. Entertainment need not be purely emotional, nor should emotion exclude intelligence. "The play is not so much a cross disciplinary work as it is a showing of how these things are all interrelated," said Faraone. "He [Stoppard] gives you permission to be intelligent."

"Jumpers" is a dizzying dialogue of the senses. What is essentially a murder mystery becomes intertwined with commentary on marital life, human existence, language, religion and morality. Whether a major in studio art or biology, all of us are intrigued with the human condition and with our own existence. We just look at these questions through different lenses. Armed with a cast of guest and student actors and a troupe of newly trained acrobats, the Theater Department's production of "Jumpers" promises to fascinate and compel audiences.