Wit

Wit, a play by Margaret Edson, has been one of my favorite plays since I read it years ago, perhaps because it is the perfect collision of my two, sometimes seemingly opposite, worlds: theater and medicine. It is the creative analysis of the scientific world. I've learned in my years of theater that opposition is intriguing. My favorite director has been known to say, "It's not interesting to watch someone act drunk. It IS interesting to watch someone act like a drunk trying to act NOT drunk." It is not interesting or brilliant or creative to watch someone bawl their eyes out, but it is fascinating to watch someone who is utterly broken try to hold themselves together. This is human: to feel one thing, while trying to portray something completely different. And this truth of humanity is wholly fascinating. 

So perhaps this is why Wit is so special. In all ways, it acknowledges the opposites in life. It openly admits that we are feeling one thing, but saying another. Throughout the play, Vivian's monologues allow the audience to see the little child (at one point literally) inside her. We see her hurts, hear her private thoughts, share her most intimate memories. And yet, to all other characters in the play, "she is tough." In one scene that, if I'm not mistaken, was actually cut from the movie, Vivian's student gets it. She gets it brilliantly! "Why does he hide behind all this Wit? Why doesn't he just say what he means? If he were really not afraid of anything, he would just say it more simply." She has stumbled upon not only the brilliance of poetry, but of Vivian herself.

Fear can be paralyzing. We, as humans, have a deep, God-given desire to be known. Its why we long for intimate friendships and why we pour ourselves endlessly into relationships of all kinds. Not because we want to know others, but because we want someone to know us, in every sense of the word, and accept it all. But that outpouring of ourselves often leads to deep hurt as well. So we put build fences or walls or chasms between ourselves and the world, longing all the time to be known, but too terrified to allow it. In Vivian's case, and in mine as well, this chasm is called wit. Wit can either mean intelligence or humor, but either applies. Both are defenses, and quite adequate ones, to prevent discovery.

When the student begins to ponder the use of wit as a mask to hide behind, the audience may believe for an instant that Vivian's mask will be shattered as well. Until, of course, Edson uses wit itself to provide for escape. "So far, so good," says Vivian with an all-knowing grin. "But they (undergraduate students that is) can think for themselves only so long before they begin to self-destruct." At this, the girl begins to stumble over her thoughts. She stares at the page of her text-book for a moment, and all is lost. Wit, the ultimate protector, triumphs again, leaving Vivian and I to our reverse isolation, where there is nothing to fear but loneliness. And at least that is expected.