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the ur international theatre program
artistic director nigel maister
production manager gordon rice
administrator katie farrell
assistant technical director sarah eisel
production assistant & props master carlotta gambato
costume shop manager nadine brooks taylor
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a note about the program
Program content is compiled by the production’s Assistant Director, Alex Rozansky, and edited by Nigel Maister. For a complete list of sources and works cited, please contact the Theatre Program. The program and its printing is supported in part by
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the university of rochester international theatre program presents
by pierre corneille
freely adapted by tony kushner
directed and set design by nigel maister
costume design by arnulfo maldonado
lighting design by thomas dunn
sound design by will pickens
fight direction by j. david brimmer
production staff
production stage manager ........................................................ jeff englander
assistant production stage manager ................................... jonathan isaacs
assistant stage managers ..................................................... scott ames/lights
.................................................................................... catherine crow/run crew
............................................................................. cassandra donatelli/run crew
............................................................................... meagan gorham/costumes
............................................................................... camber hansen-karr/props
master electrician ................................................................. erica greenbaum
assistant m.e. .............................................................................. david moiseev
audiovisual engineer ............................................................... bruce stockton
assistant lighting designer ........................................................ david moiseev
assistant director ......................................................................... alex rozansky
fight captain ................................................................................... esty thomas
costume construction .................................................. nadine brooks taylor
............................................................................................................ julie clark
.................................................................................................. melanie weekes
costume design assistant ................................................................ tracy klein
This production has been made possible through the combined efforts of
ENG 170 & 270 (Technical & Advanced Technical Theatre) ENG 290 (Plays in Production)
Ashlee Bickley - Emily DaSilva - Chris Futia - Anna Garcia
Jake Gardner - Julieta Gruszko - Samantha Hayes - Latoya Heron
Annie Imperatrice - Jonathan Isaacs - Morgan Jaffe - Mercedes James
Gun Tae Kim - Min Kim - Jay Kong - Jun Pyo Kong - Anna Kroup
Mike Lee - Steve Lehner - Alex McCrory - Stefanie Milner - Ashley Nguyen
Elvis Njoku - Val Pyon - Aquella Robinson - Raquel Stephen - Teresa Zaffarano
the illusion
runs 2 hours and 15 minutes with one 15 minute intermission
Pierre Corneille
P
1606-1684
ierre Corneille was born on June 6, 1606
in Rouen, France. Educated by the Jesuits,
Corneille was initially a lawyer serving as advocate to the King. Although he served as a
member of the Rouen parliament for 21 years,
Corneille would later become recognized as one
of the “Fathers of French Tragedy.”
While Corneille is remembered for
pioneering French tragedy (along with Jean Racine, 1639-1699), his interest in literature started
with comedies. In the 1620s (the exact year is
unknown), Corneille wrote his first play, Mélite,
a comedy that became a great success when
it was taken up by a traveling theatrical troupe
in Paris. At this early point in his career, Corneille produced approximately seven comedies
including Clitandre (1630-1), La Veuve (1631),
La Galerie du Palais (1631-32), La Place Royale
(1633-34) and L’Illusion Comique (1636).
In 1634, Corneille was personally selected to write verses for Cardinal Richelieu
(Chief Minister to King Louis XIII from 16241642) on his visit to Rouen. Richelieu founded
L’Académie française, or the French Academy,
which is the official authority on the French
language. A major patron of the arts, Richelieu chose Corneille to join Les Cinq Auteurs,
translated as ‘The Five Poets’ or ‘The Society
of the Five Authors’. This group also included
Reason and love are sworn enemies.
Guillaume Colletet, Boisrobert, Jean Rotrou,
and Claude de Lestoile. These five playwrights
were selected to cater to Richelieu’s appetite for
“virtuous” drama. Richelieu would present ideals that the writers were contracted to realize in
dramatic form. Corneille found these guidelines
too restrictive, which led to tension with Richelieu. As soon as his contract ended, Corneille
left Les Cinq Auteurs.
After this break, Corneille produced his
most renowned piece, Le Cid, a tragicomedy. Le
Cid, based on the legend of Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, a military figure in Medieval Spain, is perhaps
most famous for the literary debate it spawned
referred to as the “Querelle du Cid.” (The Argument about The Cid). Despite the plays’ immense
popularity and success, both it and the playwright became the subject of a heated debated
over the its apparent flaunting of dramatic rules.
Love is a tyrant sparing none.
L’Académie française, the authority headed and
founded by the embittered Richelieu, argued
that the play was both technically defective and
also immoral. The Academy argued that the
play did not follow the Classical rules of unity of
time, place, and action. This attack was further
propagated by a pamphlet campaign that criticized Corneille so harshly that he withdrew from
the public and returned to Rouen.
After his theatrical sabbatical, Corneille re-emerged in 1640 greatly impacted by
the “Querelle du Cid.” Corneille’s plays that
followed adhered strictly to classical rules of
drama and the playwright even wrote revised
editions of Le Cid that reconfigured it to better follow the conventions of neoclassical tragedy. The plays that Corneille wrote during this
time include Horace (1640), Cinna (1643), and
Polyeucte (1643). Collectively, these plays are
referred to as Corneille’s ‘Classical Tetralogy.’
Corneille continued to write more tragedies and his
popularity grew, but in 1652 his play Pertharite received poor
reviews and Corneille again took a hiatus from theater. After
this, Corneille published Discourses on Dramatic Poetry. This
was Corneille’s response to the “Querelle du Cid”. In this work,
Corneille defended his unique style and argued that the classical dramatic guidelines were open to creative interpretation.
In Man and Ethics: Studies in French Classicism, Paul
Benichou writes:
Few great writers have been so hastily judged as Corneille…His contemporaries admired him for his fire, his
dash, and his ardor. Saint-Evremond, for example, writes
that Corneille ‘elevates the soul’...
Corneille made a distinct impact on contemporary French
drama, influencing Moliere, and the theatrical works that succeeded his time. On October 1, 1684 Corneille died at his home
in Paris, married, and both the father of seven children and of
French tragedy.
Arnulfo Maldonado (Costumes) last worked with the UR International Theatre Program this past
season on their production of The Hairy Dutchman, and previously on Hello Again. Recent work
includes: Race Music (Diverse City), La Finta Giardiniera (Cali School of Music), Romeo and Juliet
(Classic Stage Company), Noon Day Sun (Diverse City Theater), The FreshPlay Festival (MCC
Theatre), Tempest Tossed (Classic Stage Company), Flaming Guns of the Purple Sage (Theatre Project), and Bridge Over Land (InterArt Annex). In addition, Arnulfo completed work as production
designer on his first feature film, Asylum Seekers (Best Art Direction, First Run Film Festival). Other
work includes: Jump/Rope (Urban Stages), Crime and Punishment (Riverside Church), Operation
Ajax (Butane Group), Snapshots (Diverse City), and Jam and Spice: The Music of Kurt Weill (Westport Country Playhouse). Upcoming productions include: Orpheus In the Underworld (Center City
Opera) and Santa Claus is Coming Out (Beckett Theatre). He has exhibited at the Prague Quadrennial, the international exhibition of scenography and theatre architecture. Arnulfo is the recipient of
the 2008 Princess Grace Theater Fellowship (Fabergé Theater Award). He is a graduate of NYU
Tisch’s Department of Design for Stage and Film and currently teaches design at the Dalton School.
Thomas Dunn (Lighting) is an Associate Artist of the UR International Theatre Program
and designs lighting for architecture, dance, theater, and visual art venues in the US and
abroad. He last worked with the URITP this past season on The Hairy Dutchman. Other
University affiliations include Auburn University, Bard College, Florida State University, and
Fordham University. New York City company credits include works with The Civilians: Gone
Missing and Paris Commune; DD Dorvillier/human future dance corps: Coming Out of the
Night With Names, No Change or “freedom is a psycho-kinetic skill,” Nottthing Is Importanttt
(for which he received a Bessie in 2007), Choreography, a Prologue for the Apocalypse of Understanding, Get Ready!; Sens Production/Noémie Lafrance productions: Noir, Agora, Melt,
Rapture, and Home; Trajal Harrell: Notes On Less Than Zero, Before Intermission, Showpony,
and Quartet for the End of Time. Thomas is the recipient of a 2009 Kevin Kline Award for
Outstanding Lighting Design on The Little Dog Laughed at The Repertory Theatre of St.
Louis. He was educated at Bennington College and Yale School of Drama.
Will Pickens (Sound) was privileged to have designed the UR International Theatre Program’s
first musical, Hello Again in 2008, and Andy Bragen’s The Hairy Dutchman in 2009. He was the
Audio Engineer and Resident Sound Associate at Geva Theatre Center for four years and was
fortunate to have designed multiple shows including Cabaret, A Marvelous Party, Key West, and
That Was Then. Recently he has worked on shows Off Broadway: Why Torture is Wrong, and
the People Who Love Them and The Good Negro (Public Theatre), Heroes, Beasley’s Christmas Party (Keen Company), A Dangerous Personality (The Women’s Project), Something You
Did (Primary Stages) and The Overwhelming (The Roundabout Theatre). Regional: St. Nick,
Merton of the Movies, The Hollow, and Marry Me a Little (Dorset Theatre Festival), Macbeth,
Comedy of Errors and Cymbeline (Chicago Shakespeare Theater).
J. David Brimmer (Fight Director), Fight Master, SAFD. David has choreographed some stuff (Broadway:
Speed the Plow, Spring Awakening, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Come Back, Little Sheba; NY premieres: Blasted,
The American Pilot, Blackbird, Bug, Killer Joe); had the pleasure of working at some wonderful venues (NY
Public Theater, Metropolitan Opera, Atlantic Theater, Manhattan Theater Club, Theater for a New Audience, Dallas Theater Center, Hartford Center Stage, Baltimore Center Stage, North Shore Music Theater, The
Guthrie),;taught a few places [NYU/Tisch School of the Arts, RADA (Guest Instructor), Strasberg Institute,
Yale]; and had the privilege of collaborating with some great folks (Stella Adler, Joe Chaikin, JoAnne Akalaitis,
Ken Russell, Franco Zeffirelli). Walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone. (G. Fox)
Artist’s Bios
Tony Kushner
b. 1956
In this world, there is
a kind of painful progress. Longing for what
we’ve left behind, and
dreaming ahead.
Respect the delicate ecology
of your delusions.
Angels in America, Part One:
Millennium Approaches
Angels in America,
Part Two: Perestroika
T
ony Kushner was born on July 16th, 1956 in
Manhattan, New York to Jewish parents. In 1974,
Kushner began his undergraduate education at Columbia University and received a B.A. in Medieval
Studies. He then proceeded to get a Master’s degree in Directing at NYU.
Kushner’s plays target controversial
contemporary issues including AIDS (Angels in
America), Afghanistan (Homebody/Kabul), German Fascism and Reaganism (A Bright Room Called
Day), capitalism (Hydriotaphia) and the Civil Rights
movement (Caroline, or Change). His other theatrical work includes musicals, and translations and
adaptations, including Corneille’s L’Illusion Comique
and S. Y. Ansky’s The Dybbuk. Kushner’s work for
the screen includes the screenplay for Munich, which
was co-written and directed by Steven Spielberg in
2005. Kushner is currently working with Spielberg
on a screenplay about Abraham Lincoln.
Kushner’s most renowned theatrical work is
the two-part play, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on
National Themes, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize
for Drama in 1992. Angels is a political
epic about the AIDS crisis during the
1980s. This work has been made into both
a television mini-series and an opera. Both
parts of this play received the Tony Award
for ‘Best Play.’
The New York Times wrote,
“Some playwrights want to change the
world. Some want to revolutionize theater. Tony Kushner is that rarity of rarities: a writer who has the promise to do
both.” Tony Kushner is also well known in
the Jewish community for his sometimes
controversial stances regarding the politics of the Isreali-Palestinian conflict. The
Zionist Organization of America accused
Kushner of anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli remarks. The organization circulated alleged
Kushner quotes that criticized Israeli treatment of Palestinians and Israeli politics in
an attempt to get Brandeis University to
revoke the honorary doctorate that they
awarded Kushner in 2006. Kushner argues
that his remarks completely misconstrued.
Tony Kushner is the winner of a
Pulitzer Prize for Drama, an Emmy Award,
two Tony Awards, an Oscar nomination,
and numerous other awards and honors.
He currently lives in Manhattan with his
husband, Mark Harris, an editor of Entertainment Weekly.
Imagination can’t create anything new, can it?
It only recycles bits and pieces from the world
and reassembles them into visions... So when
we think we’ve escaped the unbearable ordinariness and, well, untruthfulness of our lives,
it’s really only the same old ordinariness and
falseness rearranged into the appearance of
novelty and truth.
Angels in America, Part One:
Millennium Approaches
The Illusion vs The Theatrical Illusion
S
uccessful during its time, but forgotten soon after Pierre Corneille’s death, L’Illusion Comique was
adapted by American playwright, Tony Kushner, in 1990. While Kushner has retained much of the
original five-act French tragedy in his ‘freely adapted’ version, it is clear that Kushner’s dramatic intentions differ from Corneille’s. In her Two Illusions: Cultural Borrowings and Transcendence, Felicia Hardison
Londre explains:
An adaptation implies finding more radical equivalencies that can render a seventeenth-century
sensibility comprehensible to contemporary audiences. ‘A free adaptation’ might be understood
as an admission that some equivalencies simply cannot be made and thus the adaptor must
create anew.
Kushner has both excised some of Corneille’s original characters and included new ones as a means of emphasizing the themes that Corneille introduced, making The Illusion both a clear descendent of its original
and a work perhaps more immediately approachable for modern audiences.
Both L’Illusion Comique and The Illusion are odes to the art of the theatrical experience and the
power of the imagination. The play-within-a-play structure serves as a vehicle for the nesting of multiple
theatrical boxes and the continual mixing of the audience’s (and, indeed the characters’) expectations of
what constitutes illusion and what, reality. For Corneille, L’Illusion Comique, which was an early work that
marked Corneille’s personal transition into the mastery of his craft, showcased his excellence in dramatic
technique. Corneille’s vast knowledge of both Spanish and Elizabethan literature can be seen directly influencing his writing. Corneille also drew characters from the Italian tradition of the commedia dell’arte. Specifically, the character of the lunatic, Matamore, is a direct descendant of commedia dell’arte’s stock character,
il Capitano, a boastful, often cowardly soldier (and lover). In addition, Corneille explores the pastoral in his
opening act in the cave. Thus L’Illusion Comique becomes a showcase for Corneille’s talent and skills as a
playwright of considerable versatility.
Although Kushner retains much of the play’s structure, his main concern is not with showing off his
mastery of dramatic technique. Kushner, instead, adds the character of the Amanuensis and adds ‘Calisto’,
‘Melibea’, ‘Elicia’, and ‘Pleribo’ as one more name change to the lovers’ plot. These additions develop the
idea of illusion and reality that Corneille introduced in his original and further the mental entanglement
experienced by the modern audience. Through the additions of many of Alcandre’s monologues, Kushner
also imparts to his audience his personal commentary on the tribulations of love. However, the ending of
The Illusion is the antithesis of the seventeenth century original, proving to be Kushner’s clearest departure
from Corneille.
Despite the liberties Tony Kushner has taken with his adaptation, The Illusion has breathed life
back into Pierre Corneille’s long-ignored L’Illusion Comique and attracted a new generation of readers and
audiences.
The earliest use of the word ‘lunatic’ in English literature occurs in William Langland’s 14th-century
poem, Vision Concerning Piers Plowman:
Lunatic lollers and lepers about,
And mad as the Moon, some more or less
O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
The term ‘loony bin’, which refers to an insane asylum or the
psychiatric ward of a hospital, comes from the term ‘lunatic’.
The first lunar landing occurred on July
20 at 4:18 p.m. (EDT) when the Apollo 11
Lunar Module touched down on the moon
at Tranquility Base (Sea of Tranquility).
At 10:56 p.m., astronaut Neil Armstrong
touched one foot to the moon’s surface.
Woman wants monogamy;
Man delights in novelty.
Love is woman’s moon and sun;
Man has other forms of fun...
With this the gist and sum of it,
What earthly good can come of it?
Dorothy Parker
Blue Moon
You saw me standing alone
Without a dream in my heart
without a love of my own
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun,
the moon, and the truth.
Siddharta
In Russian, Polish, Czech and Slovak, ‘lunatic’ refers
to ‘sleepwalker’, ‘one who walks under the moon’ or
‘moon-walker’.
I don’t know if there are men on the
moon, but if there are they must be using the earth as their lunatic asylum.
George Bernard Shaw
The sun is setting!
Just for me!
The moon is rising!
Just for me!
Clindor, in The Illusion
Cast
Oh, a hawk!
What a sound it makes.
Every animal in the whole moonlit world
Freezes when it hears that cry.
It’s like an icicle through the heart.
Isabelle, in The Illusion
The Hawk, The Sun and The Moon
T
hroughout The Illusion, the omnipresent hawk is both seen
and referred to in the characters’ dialogue. In traditional
Western iconography, the hawk represents prophetic knowledge, and, like other birds, also acts as a symbolic messenger. In
addition, the hawk has a special significance for warriors as a representation of martial prowess.
The hawk is also seen as a ‘solar’ animal. In many cultures,
the sun deity is represented by the hawk for its clarity, brilliance, and
truth. This can be seen in many Native American tribes including
the Iroquois and Aztecs. The Ancient Egyptian sun gods, Re and
Horus, are depicted as hawks or hawk-headed men. Many polytheistic religions associate the hawk with life-sustaining deities, just like
life on Earth cannot exist without the Sun.
Pridamant of Avignon
a lawyer ......................................................................................................................................... Kevin McCarthy
Amanuensis
servant to Alcandre (also Geronte, father of Isabellle) ...................................................................... Anna Kroup
Alcandre
a magician ....................................................................................................................................... Christine Rose
Calisto/Clindor/Theogenes
son of Pridamant .................................................................................................................. Douglas Zeppenfeld
Melibea/Isabelle/Hippolyta
beloved/wife of Calisto/Clindor/Theogenes ...................................................................................... Mel Balzano
Elicia/Lyse/Clarina
maid/friend of Melibea/Isabelle/Hippolyta ........................................................................................ Leah Barish
Pleribo/Adraste/Prince Florilame
rival of Calisto/Clindor/Theogenes ..................................................................................... Phillip Dumouchel
Matamore
a lunatic ......................................................................................................................................... John Amir-Fazli
I’ve given up hope for this cannibal world;
No good will come of it, or of its creatures,
But ah! The moon…
It’s cold and bleak, they say;
Perhaps in a cave, on some comfortable rock,
Viewing the expanse of some lifeless lunar dessert,
I’ll learn to dream smaller, less tumultuous dreams.
Matamore, in The Illusion
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave
And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the prisoners
are released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is
liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round
and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the
glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of
which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive
some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but
that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned
towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision. What will be his
reply? And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to
the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them. Will he not
be perplexed? Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly
saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him?”
P
ierre Corneille’s L’Illusion Comique (1636) presents a unique look into the stylistic transition from the Baroque to the
growing movement of Neoclassicism during the 17th century. While L’Illusion Comique can be classified as a Baroque
play [it pays homage to the motto of the age, theatrum mundi (“the world is a stage”)], it can also be viewed as a
satirical reaction to the Baroque. Furthermore, Corneille’s position as “the Father of French tragedy” foreshadows the rise
of Neoclassicism as L’Illusion Comique does, in fact, adhere to many of Aristotle’s rules for dramatic tragedy. Thus, L’IIusion
Comique provides a tangible study in the shifting artistic values of its time.
The age of the Baroque began in the sixteenth century as the Roman Catholic Church attempted to react against
the Reformation. While the Council of Trent (1545) met to discuss the Protestant dispute and to stage a counter-reformation, one result of the Council was a shift in the patronage of the arts and the canonical use of the arts as Church propaganda. The rise of this new canon led to the Age of the Baroque. The Church sought to use the arts in order to communicate
religious messages and values to the illiterate. This presented a sharp shift in the influence of art in society, as the arts had
previously been directed at the educated. Thus, the Church had a strong hand in regulating the art and literature at the time,
dictating that the role of art should be to glorify God and uphold the power of the Church.
In general, Baroque art and literature can be classified as having a prevalence of dynamic emotional intensity and
sharp, almost excessive, attention to detail. Although the arts were highly regulated by the Church, writers and artists of
the time found ways to use their art to propagate astute analyses of society. With the rise and advancement of drama at
this time, theatrum mundi, took on multiple meanings. Theatre made immense strides in technological advancements that
allowed for a more heightened dramatic experience for audience members. However, “the world is a stage” also alludes to
the political nature of the time, in which the Church and government were able to manipulate society much in the same way
stages and machinery could be manipulated to alter what was presented to spectators.
L’Illusion Comique fits beautifully into the mood of the time by exploiting its power to alter appearance and reality
to audience members. The meta-theatrical (play-within-a-play) aspect of the work tests the limits of its audience by both
creating an illusion within the play and by acting as an allegory for the theatrical universe in society. As the result of a politically turbulent time, the focus on illusion and an emphasis on deceiving appearances are prevalent throughout the Baroque
and specifically in Corneille’s piece.
Towards the end of his career, Corneille struggled with the rise of classicism and the Church doctrine to adhere to
it. Contrary to the demands of Cardinal Richelieu’s literary dogma, L’Illusion Comique does not conform to Aristotle’s ‘Three
Unities’ of time, place, and action. Unlike Aristotle’s ideal, Corneille interrupts his plot by changing both the setting and
the sequence of events. Corneille does, however, adhere to Aristotle’s definition of tragedy. In his Poetics, Aristotle defines
tragedy:
But again, Tragedy is an imitation not only of a complete action, but of events inspiring fear or pity. Such an effect is best
produced when the events come on us by surprise; and the effect is heightened when, at the same time, they follow as
cause and effect. The tragic wonder will then be greater than if they happened of themselves or by accident; for even
coincidences are most striking when they have an air of design.
Corneille’s ability to appeal to the pathos of the audience and incite pity for Pridamant, the father, fulfils one of Aristotle’s
requirements for true tragedy.
In addition to embodying aspects of Aristotelian tragedy, L’Illusion Comique elaborates Plato’s ideal of mimesis in
art in his Theory of Forms. In his Egotism in German Philosophy, George Santayana explains the Platonic ideal:
The Platonic idealist is the man by nature so wedded to perfection that he sees in everything not the reality but the faultless ideal, which the reality misses and suggests.
In his Theory of Forms, Plato explains that artists and writers use mimesis in their works. This poses a conflict because Plato
argues that reality is not the world that we are experiencing around us, but rather the reality we have created in our mind.
Imitation, therefore, is also an illusion. Corneille clearly explores the boundaries of mimesis both in the explicit plot of
L’Illusion, in which the father is not able to distinguish between appearances and reality, and in the illusion that he creates
for audience members.
Thus, Pierre Corneille’s L’Illusion Comique exemplifies both the movement away from the age of the Baroque and
the ‘world as a theatre’, towards an acceptance of classical ideals and the neoclassical style.
Cardinal Richelieu, The Baroque and the Neoclassical
P
lato’s Allegory of the Cave, written as a fictional
dialogue between Socrates and Plato’s brother,
Glaucon, is used in his work The Republic to illustrate the human need for reflective understanding to
realize enlightenment and be liberated from ignorance.
Plato exploits the tendency in human nature to fail to distinguish between illusion and reality. In his allegory, Plato
describes a cave in which prisoners have been chained
by the arms and legs since childhood. In addition, these
prisoners have their heads fixed so that they are forced to
stare at a blank wall in front of them. Behind the prisoners
is a huge fire and an elevated walkway, upon which people walk carrying objects and figures on their heads. In
the dialogue, Socrates explains that these prisoners have
only ever watched the shadows cast on the wall without
knowing that they are merely shadows. For this reason,
the prisoners take the shadows to be the actual reality.
Socrates proceeds to describe the situation that occurs
as a prisoner is unfettered and allowed to see the objects
that cast the shadows. Not only would the prisoner believe the shadows to be more real than the objects, but
the prisoner would also be blinded by looking into the
fire. However, the prisoner, having been exposed to daylight, would soon acclimate to the Sun and he would no
longer be accustomed to the darkness once he was returned to the cave.
Plato’s Allegory symbolically represents his own
views on mankind and salvation. Plato illustrates that it is
not the world revealed by our senses that is the reality, but
the world apprehended intellectually. Thus, knowledge is
the key to reality; however, knowledge cannot simply be
transferred from teacher to pupil. Instead, education is
sought to guide the pupil’s mind towards what is real and
allow the student to realize those truths inherently embedded in our own minds. It is these enlightened members of society that are able to see the intangible truths
that are found under the surface of appearance.
In many ways, Alcandre’s cave mimics that of Plato’s. Alcandre struggles to guide Pridamant to see the reality
within the shadowy illusions of the visions that he conjures. In this scenario, the visions replace the shadows on
the cave walls and the actors replace the objects that cast
the shadows. Pridamant, the captive pupil, struggles to
find the invisible truths in these visions and is also unaware of the knowledge he inherently possesses.
Human Behavior and the Moon
M
an has had a longstanding preoccupation with the moon. Today, the influence of the moon on the earth’s tides is undisputed, however, myths about the moon still remain controversial. Since the dawn of human civilization, scientists
have suggested that there is a direct relationship between the phases of the moon and human behavior. The idea that the
moon influences fertility and madness remains prevalent even now.
The word ‘lunatic’ is derived from the Latin word, luna, meaning ‘moon’. The scientific study of madness was a
preoccupation in societies as early as the Ancient Greeks. The Greek physician, Hippocrates (460-370 BC) argued that
“madness comes from the brain’s ‘moistness.’” Knowing the correlation between the moon and the tides, Greeks and Romans believed that the moon affected the moisture in the brain and thus had a direct impact on madness.
The link between the moon and madness resurfaced during the Dark Ages. Italian
philosopher, Saint Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274), wrote:
That demons harass men according to certain phases of the Moon happens in two ways ...
it is manifest that the brain is the most moist of all parts of the body... Therefore it is the
most subject to the action of the Moon, the property of which is to move what is moist.
(Summa Theologica)
This connection between madness and the phases of the moon has continued
to evolve through time. While Renaissance philosophers argued that the disease of
insanity was caused by the phases of the moon, over time, scientists simply argued that
lunar phases merely enhanced the already existing disease of madness within individuals.
Many scientists and psychiatrists still argue about the validity of a connection
between the moon and human behavior. Today, this phenomenon is referred to as the
‘Lunar (or Transylvanian) Effect’. The Lunar Effect suggests that there is a connection
between the phases of the moon and deviant behavior. More specifically, the ‘biological
tide theory’ argues that because both the Earth and the human body are composed of
80% water, the moon’s gravitational force produces biological tides in the human brain
as it does physical tides in the Earth’s oceans. The Lunar Hypothesis, as discussed in the
Journal of Affective Disorders (1999), suggests that in the past, the phases of the moon
might, in fact, have had an effect on bipolar patients by providing light during nights
which would have otherwise have been dark, thus causing sleep deprivation. While discourse and research on the Lunar Effect is thoroughly contradictory, studies have been
done to show the correlation between the phases of the moon and human behavior.
Specific areas of interest have been homicide rates, birth rates, suicides, domestic violence, epilepsy, emergency room admissions, etc. While many researchers vehemently
argue against what they consider to be myth and folklore in this theory, some studies
have indeed supported it. Scientists who support the hypothesis have argued that results contradicting the Lunar Hypothesis may be attributed to the invention of electric
light, which lessens the effects of lunar light on human communities.
In addition to the connection between the moon and madness, there is also
discourse on the existence of a correlation between the moon and fertility. In the 1950s,
Czech psychiatrist, Dr. Eugene Jonas began researching ancient texts to uncover a
remedy that would lower the abortion rate in Czechoslovakia. Jonas discovered that
the phases of the moon directly influenced female fertility and that women had both a
biological and a lunar fertility cycle. While the ‘rhythm method’ proved to be only 75%
effective in preventing pregnancy, in combination with the ‘lunar method’ there was a
calculated 98% reliability rate. The ‘lunar method’ involves Jonas’ three fundamental
‘rules of conception’ that relied on the moon: the time of a woman’s fertility depends
on the recurrence of the angle of the sun and the moon that occurred at the woman’s
own birth; the sex of the child depends on the position of the moon at conception; and
certain planetary configurations at the time of conception can effect the viability of the
embryo. Under this method, a woman born under a new moon will be most fertile and
ready to conceive at the time of a new moon.