Ak mak Ak mak Ak mak

I re-read Circle Mirror Transformation yesterday as I put together a scene breakdown. I feel incredibly grateful to be working on this project and I still cannot actually believe that I get to. The last time I touched this play was at Bennington, junior year, and I was on the fringe of the production. I had just finished Mahagonny (a project that  sucked the life right out of me and left me filled with Jean-Randich-light instead) and I agreed to tech Jean's Directing I class because, at that point, I would have washed her stinky laundry for her if she'd asked me to. In re-reading it, I was surprised by how utterly heart breaking it is.
My memories of it are all light and happy but I'm thinking now those are memories of how I felt to be working with those people and not of the actual piece. Circle Mirror is, in fact, terribly sad. It's moving and it's real and it's magical and it's funny and it's sweet and it's very very sad. I finished it and I felt kind of hollow inside, like I often feel after I've cried for a long time.
Circle Mirror is about how people hurt each other without meaning to, and about how those hurts can last. There is a scene where two characters are doing a theater exercise and are speaking repeated gibberish words at each other: "goulash goulash" and "ak mak ak mak". Slowly, just by repeating these sounds, James and Theresa come to understand one another. They share a moment when the absurd realization dawns on them both that, somehow, they've managed to communicate through this gibberish, and all the while Theresa's spurned love interest watches them. When I re-read it yesterday I felt the beauty of the ak mak goulash game, but I also felt Schultz's sadness as he sat apart, watching them. Theresa didn't mean to hurt Schultz by finding someone to connect with in James, but she did. They all hurt each other, over and over again in this play.
Tonight, Andrew told me that one of Annie Baker's major influences as a playwright is Chekhov and that she is writing an Uncle Vanya adaption. This only makes a ton of sense to me. I'm interested in what she's doing now but I'm going to wait to dig any further on that particular piece - I have a feeling this one will be breaking me a bit for just a while yet.