The Writing of Mitch Mikinos

Origins

The play started as depiction of a mother visiting her unreachable daughter in a mental hospital.  The daughter sensed that she had control of the situation and used her power to torment her mother. 

I realized that the daughter could be Iphigenia, the daughter that Agamemnon sacrificed for a favorable wind to take the Greek fleet to Troy to recover his sister-in-law Helen. 

The Light in November was an early version of the play read at Playwright’s Center when the workshop met at the Blue Bear Theatre at Fort Mason.  Scenes were read at the the Black Box Theatre Lab at the Exit Cafe, Theatre Arts Conspiracy writers’ circle at Limelight Books, Playwrights' Center at 965 Mission and at the Play Cafe in Berkeley.  

CatchyName performed the one-act version Mitch for the San Francisco Fringe Festival 2008 at the Phoenix Theatre featuring Joy Breed, Vonn Scott Bair, Abhi Katyal, Jesse Mueller, Kirsten Solveig and Irving Schulman.  

The Old Story: The Curse of the House of Tantalus

To unify the background of the character of Agamemnon, I chose to assemble from various sources all the worst gossip I could find about him and his family.  This condensed story is as follows. 

Tantalus invited the gods to dinner and served them a stew that featured the body of his own son, Pelops (Dark Eyed), for which the gods punished him according to the well-known legend and thus began the curse of murder and cannibalism on the family. 

Pelops was reassembled by the gods and married Hippodamia, having three sons Atreus, Thyestes, and Chrysippus. 

Thyestes and Atreus murdered their brother Chrysippus. 

As a guest in the palace of Atreus of Mycenae, Thyestes seduced the wife of Atreus, Areope, brought in the incest theme, and was banished from the palace. 

Years later, when Thyestes begged forgiveness, Atreus ordered his sons Agamemnon and Menelaus to murder, butcher, and cook the two sons of Thyestes (Pleisthenes and Tantalus) and serve them to the unknowing father.  Because the sons could not have a proper burial, Atreus had created a vengeance on Thyestes that would be eternal. 

Thyestes left the palace for a second time, determine to avenge himself on the house of Atreus. 

On the advice of an oracle, Thyestes fathered a son, Aegisthus, by his own daughter, Pelopia.  Aegisthus was brought up by the unknowing Atreus and, when the young man matured, Atreus directed Aegisthus to kill Thyestes, his own father. 

However the knife that Aegisthus was to use for the murder was the very knife that Pelopia had obtained from Thyestes, who recognized it in the hands of Aegisthus.  Thus father and son were reunited, the story was revealed, and Aegisthus vowed revenge on Atreus. 

Aegisthus killed Atreus and Agamemnon assumed the throne of Mycenae, killed Clytemnestra’s first husband and their son and then married her. 

When Helen eloped with Paris to Troy, Agamemnon assembled the Greek army at Aulis to obtain the return of his sister in law.  But there was no wind to speed the ships to Troy.  It was discovered that Agamemnon had not sufficiently sacrificed lately and that he must give up his most cherished possession. 

Odysseus lured Iphigenia, Agamemnon’s first born, to Aulis ostensibly to be married to Achilles.  Instead she was bound, placed on an altar and killed.  The Greek fleet sailed for Troy. 

However, they sacked the city of Chryses on the way, and captured the princess daughter.  A curse was laid upon the Greek fleet that was lifted only when Agamemnon returned the princess.  Agamemnon then demanded of Achilles his favorite slave girl, an act that poisoned the relationship between Agamemnon and Achilles, driving Achilles sulking to his tent for most of the war.  

During the war, Agamemnon killed at least 8 Trojan warriors in battle, including 3 sets of brothers. 

While Agamemnon was in Troy, Aegisthus became the lover of Clytemnestra, who held the throne for her absent husband.  

When Agamemnon returned from the war with the Trojan princess Cassandra his slave, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus killed the old warrior for all of his crimes.  Thus Aegisthus avenged the unspeakable fate of his brothers, having the taken the wife, life and kingdom of Agamemnon.  Cassandra perished as she had predicted.  

Electra and Orestes, the surviving children of Agamemnon, were compelled to avenge their father’s murder but were horrified that the revenge must fall upon their own mother.  Orestes and Electra overcame their trepidations and eventually killed Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. 

For the crime of matricide, the Furies haunted Orestes until he sought justice at the Areopagus, a court of elders near the Athenian Acropolis.  There he was acquitted and the curse on his family was finally lifted. 

Classical Tie-Ins

Development Cycle

I expanded the play, rewrote, staged more than one reading, began over, and rewrote as I achieved firmer footing in Greek drama and more stage experience.  Mitch would be a drama in the classical Greek style but updated to postmodernity where dramatically convenient. 

Clearly, some of the points of the Greek style are incompatible with modern life. His daughter could not be sacrificed for a wind in contemporary Pacific Heights, San Francisco.  I invented a sub-plot, a crime in which Jennifer would threaten her father’s hegemony. 

I chose to make the character of Mitch an archaic relic, the ancient surviving patriarch, domineering, hierarchal and murderous. 

Moderns and postmoderns would live in the domain of the patriarch, under his shelter and under threat. 

The central character in both is the wife, a strong and willful individual who runs her own life and kills her husband because of his crimes and because his death pleases her ambitions.  In addition to living under an abusive patriarchy, she also faces the disintegration of her own personality as her relationships fall apart. 

Ellen would be assertive, managing Mitch’s affairs in his absence. 

Mitch would be killed by his wife, Ellen, who would temporarily escape punishment. 

Brendan would be motivated by a deep, smoldering vengeance. 

Brendan, Ellen’s secret lover, would temporarily escape punishment and eventually claim Mitch’s position. 

The prologue, given by a watchman in the original, would be given by Ellen.

One of the aphorism’s (more full of holes than a fishing net) is taken directly from the translation of the original play be Aeschylus.  Several more or less contemporary bucolicisms were be added. 

The chorus in Mitch would be an off-stage collection of people including a pair of thugs and the powerful investor Mr. Bane.  

Other Ideas that Influenced the Writing

The surface of the story should be modern and self-sufficient.  The audience should not need to know anything about the ancient play to understand the modern play.  

To minimize production costs, the cast should be small. 

Casting parts should be roughly equivalent to each other. 

There would be two sets: one in the restaurant and one at home. 

Some punning around with names was allowed.  

By a play based on Agamemnon in the Greek style I mean the following. 

• The play would have a cast similar in name and character to Agamemnon, the original play by Aeschylus. 
• The plot would follow the original. 
• The main characters would have a horrifying experience. 
• The dialogue would use the techniques of exposition identified in my research. 
• The action would occur in a single place within 24 hours. 
• The characters would live within a rigid hierarchy. 
• The disintegration of the monarch would lead to civil unrest. 
• The action would proceed by discovery and reversal. 

Production History of Mitch

2009: 2-act version performed at the Phoenix Annex, San Francisco, September.  

2008 1-act version of Mitch performed at the San Francisco Fringe Festival at the Phoenix theatre. 

2008 Staged reading of a 1-act version of Mitch at The Actor’s Center of San Francisco . 

2002 Black Box Theatre Lab staged reading of the scene between Ellen and Jennifer in the restaurant. 

2000 Playwright’s Center of San Francisco Staged reading of The Light in November, an early version of Mitch. 

The Final Cut

By the time of the 2009 production of Mitch Mikinos at the Phoenix Annex in San Francisco, the play had become a 20th Century American drama about the breakup of the nuclear family, resembling one aspect of some of the plays by Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Sam Shepard.  The father holds the family together just as the persons of the kings in the ancient and Elizabethan tragedies held their nations together.  The death of the patriarch broke the social order constituted by him and thus threatened everyone.  

The ancient aspect of Mitch revolves around patriarchal political power and social order embodied in the person of the monarch.  

The play is modern in that it is consistent with the belief that you must believe in something.  While there can be many paths to the absolute truth, there is one absolute truth.  Fashionably, the absolute truth resides in the belief in the atomic individual, that fortress of choice, that invincible island of autonomy in the stormy ocean of external politics and morality and opinion and advice. Each person is the reigning monarch of her world. 

The play approaches the limit of modernity as the individual approaches the limit of her own individuality.  Each character has her own goals and means to achieve it.  Communication becomes difficult and influence impossible.  You cannot believe in anything but yourself. 

What’s next?  What comes after the apotheosis of the individual?  Could it be that our sacred idea of our own singular autonomous self is insufficient to our own existence? Could it be that the Individual is a myth to which we cling just as the monarchists and monotheists cling to patriarchy?  Could it be that the idea of the individual is a mortal idea that is even now beginning to be eclipsed?  If so, what's next?  

The breakdown of the atomic individual lurks in Ellen's personality as it threatens dissolution.  She cannot believe even in herself.  The very concept of the individual is under assault in Ellen’s monologue as she feels herself disintegrating as she becomes more and more alone.  For Ellen, individualism is no refuge.  With nowhere else to turn, her story becomes tragic as all her choices lead inevitably to the destruction of her identity. 

The post-modern skepticism about grand meta-narratives surfaces in the play in that none of the characters are adorable or even likable.  They choose and then cling to their choices because that’s all there is.  We can't say anything good about them.  Without absolutes or narratives or common sense or common ground, we merely do what we do and justify what we justify.  Rather than many paths to an absolute truth, we merely have many paths and nowhere in particular to go.  Nothing can be said about the action in the play except a recitation of the action and possibly that selfism leads to chaos in the community (a very old equation) and eventually destroys the possibility of satisfying anyone’s desires (old), destroying the very thing it was attempting to preserve in the first place.  This absence of a moral story threatens to make the play rather strange and unfamiliar to some audiences.  With the possible exception of Ellen, there is no one for the audience to love.  And even she reveals herself as selfish and ungenerous at core.  She is trying to preserve her family in order to save herself. 

In fact, in my more radical postmodern moments, I am willing to say that the play has no meaning other than the motivations that the director and actors invent or discover during rehearsal and performances and that the audience articulates over red wine and cookies during intermission.  There is no point whatsoever in replacing a disappearing authority with an author. 

The play was not driven by or dependant on the old story or a theory of drama but was tied into the old story and a theory of drama at particular points.  The audience would not need to know about the ancient play or dramatic theory to understand Mitch Mikinos.  

I was determined to write an original, self-sufficient, genuinely dramatic work whose cunning attractions were as independent of context as I could make them.  For that reason, Mitch cannot talk about the war and gain sympathy.  The other characters are bored with his tales.  Bringing in the war in any detail threatens to make the play about the Viet Nam War and not about the action and choices that the characters make on stage each performance.  In any case, it is the plight of the returned warrior that, beyond a parade or two, no one recognizes his sacrifice to anything like the degree of his experience.  The formality of recognition is really a form of dismissal. 

Similarly, I chose not to foreground incest, although incest played a big part of the old story.  By now, father-daughter incest is a well-recognized theme and once again I thought that the play would become about incest and would have to fight charges that it was brought in for exploitive reasons.  However, everything about the play is incestuous, in that all the illicit action takes place within a family.  Even Cassandra, the outsider, wants to join the family.  But it is not incestuous sex but incestuous finance that provides the scandal.  In any case, Dear Cousin Brendan seems to be playing sexually with all the women in the play. 

Background

During the development cycle, I researched classical Greek theatre and culture.  What constituted a Greek play?  What was Greece like in the Bronze Age?  What was Greece like in the time of Homer?  Who was Homer?  What did the classical Greek tragedians know of the Bronze Age legends? 

Publications and Performances

I read at least one English translation of each of the following plays. 

• Agamemnon by Aeschylus
• Libation Bearers by Aeschylus
• Eumenedes by Aeschylus
• Electra by Euripides
• Electra by Sophocles
• Iphigenia at Aulis by Euripides
• Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
• Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles
• Antigone by Sophocles
• The Trojan Women by Euripides
• The Flies by Jean Paul Sartre

I saw at least one stage or film performance of the following

• Electra by Euripides
• Orestes by Euripides
• Trojan Women by Euripides
• Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
• Antigone by Sophocles
• Thyestes by Seneca
• Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O’Neille
• View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller

I read the following histories and archaeological documents. 

• Bronze Age Aegean Archaeology class notes by Jeremy Rutter
• Decipherment of Linear B by John Chadwick
• The Coming of the Greeks by Robert Drews
• The End of the Bronze Age by Robert Drews
• Pylos Comes Alive, a symposium of the New York Society of the Archaeological Institute of America

Other Ancient Greek Literature and its criticism…

• Iliad by Homer (multiple translations)
• Odyssey by Homer (multiple translations)
• Homeric Hymns
• Theogony by Hesiod
• Iliad: Form and Function by C. M. Bowra
• Heroic Poetry by C. M. Bowra
• Homeric Questions by Gregory Nagy
• Poetics by Aristotle

The tragedies gave a range of views of Agamemnon and his deeds.  In some cases his crimes are not mentioned and in other cases they are mentioned but justified.  In the Odyssey, another Return story, the Homeric poets depicted Agamemnon as a wronged man, betrayed and murdered.  In Seneca’s Thyestes, Atreus, the father of Agamemnon, wanted eternal vengeance and directed his sons to murder their cousins and cook and serve them to Thyestes, their unsuspecting father.  Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides each wrote a play detailing the dutiful revenge of the children of Agamemnon on his murderers, each play significantly different from the others.  

The stories illustrated the paradoxes of killing.  War was justification for any action.  Death would be avenged with death.  The ancient writers were free to improvise, a conclusion that freed me as a writer to tell the story as I wished.  

Aristotle suggested that tragedy be developed with peripeteia coupled with discovery.  Peripeteia is a chain of reversals of fortune.  Discovery is the process whereby a character or the audience learns a secret about another character.  Many of the reversals in Mitch extend from the expectation of wealth.  The discovery to be made by cast and audience is the detail of the swindle and the deepening hatred that enabled it.  Tragedy should be unified in time and place and the unjust should be punished.  Mitch takes place in one city within 24 hours.  

Techniques of Exposition in Greek Tragedy

I identified and counted techniques of exposition in Greek tragedy.  For example, the aphorism was a common technique for closing an argument in preparation to a new dramatic unit. 

The details of this study can be found at GreekTechs.htm

Structural Analysis of Mitch

The matrix illustrates the change in relationship for the characters in the play. 

The script should exhibit a maximum change in relationship.  There should be at least one unit of dialogue (beat) that demonstrates the initial state and its subsequent transition.  With powerful characters, there will be multiple beats per transition as characters attempt to further or prevent the transition. 

Travel

In 1994 I visited the island of Ithaca, the reputed homeland of Odysseus, including the museum at Stavros, and met an archaeologist digging for evidence of bronze-age occupation in Stavros. 

I visited the ruins of Mycenae, the reputed palace of Agamemnon, and spent an hour in the large tholos tomb called the Tomb of Clytemnestra. 

I visited the Athenian Acropolis, including its museum. 

I visited the Greek Classical and Bronze Age exhibits in the British Museum. 

Miscellaneous

I also explored other dramas including that of Shakespeare, especially Hamlet, and the plays of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Sam Shepard, and David Mamet. 

I developed a structural theory of drama called Generative Dramatics whereby some aspects of staged drama could be criticized and synthesized. http://catchynametheatre.org/Essay/StructuralDrama_20080529.html

I continued to write and produce drama in my own style: dark, high-impact cultural criticism. 

Post-Modernity

I use the following mnemonic to (over-) simplify some grand ideas.  

• Premodern: One Absolute Truth, one path to that Truth

• Modern: One Absolute Truth, many paths to that Truth

• Post-Modern: No Absolute Truth, many paths

To satisfy post-modernity, I mean that the play's action will be driven by the characters and their attempts to achieve their individual objectives despite over-arching meta-narratives or history or religion or morality.  

In particular, each of the characters is contemplating the abyss of individuality.  

• Ellen fears becoming an individual.  She fears being alone.  

• Jennifer, Brendan and Cassandra have already accepted and are working successfully within the choice-space of the singular individual.  

• Mitch lives within the old patriarchal system of ethics.  He does not know that the sun has set on that system long ago.  

• Russell is the neophyte who is about to choose the architecture of his choice-space.  

I established my own investigation into post-modernity where the postmodern individual, in reaching for freedom and autonomy, has fallen into the clutches of advertising and other cultural systems at the service of the American empire and, ironically, has become less autonomous than ever.  The investigation is published in the philosophical work, Weeping for Narcissus, which can be found at http://www.sfsalvo.com/.

The Tremulous Private Body by Francis Barker provides a foucaultian criticism of the idea of the Individual that I found exquisitely useful.  

I established a theory of drama, Generative Dramatics, which can aid the analysis and synthesis of drama.  An essay on this topic can be found at http://www.catchynametheatre.org/.  While the practical theory takes advantage of some structural techniques, I assert that human behavior, including the artistic, is open and not structural.  

A Feminist Interpretation of the Iliad

I considered a feminist interpretation of the Iliad.  The epic could be talked about as about the ownership of women.  Mitch then could be a play about a woman defying her patriarchal husband. 

• Agamemnon owned Iphigenia and thus was able to kill her with the approval of the Greek army.    [Citation needed.  Not in the Iliad?]
• Menelaus owned Helen.  Irrespective of Helen’s wishes, Menelaus could demand her back by force.  Helen's presence in Troy is the whole excuse for the attack on the city.  
• In the Iliad, Helen claims to have been abducted against her will, preferring death to dishonor [Citation].  In some works, Helen willfully eloped with Paris to Troy.  While in Troy, she supports her 'captivity' [Citation needed. Not in the Iliad].  
• On the way to Troy, the Greek army sacked the city of Chryses, without cause, and Agamemnon captured the maiden daughter of Chryses for his concubine (Fagels, Iliad I. lines 95-150).  
• Chryses received Apollo's assistance and Agamemnon returned the maiden to her father (her rightful owner) but in compensation took from Achilles his slave girl, Briseis, (Fagels, Iliad I. line 185). Deprived of his possession, Achilles sulked in his tent for 10 years and refused to help the Greek army in its assault on Troy.  
• Eventually, to placate Achilles, Agamemnon offered any of his surviving daughters for no bride-price to Achilles (Fagels, Iliad 9. line 174).  Achilles refuses.  
• Paris proposes to fight against Menelaus for the possession of Helen [Citation needed].
• Some Trojans suggest giving Helen back to the Greeks [Citation needed].

Characters and Objectives in Mitch Mikinos

Ellen Mikinos

Originally from Ogden , Utah , her childhood was troubled with low finances and little emotional support.  She grew up alone. 

Ellen came to San Francisco in 1970.  She worked her way through college and up the ranks in a major bank. 

She married Mitch in 1980 and was very happy and proud of herself, at first. 

However, her relationships have been in steady decline for years.  She is losing friends and family. 

She fears loneliness most of all.  When she is alone with her thoughts, she becomes alternately fearful, angry, and sad with increasing severity and frequency. 

She is worried about her sanity. 

She does not understand her mood swings and fears losing control.  She is in turmoil and torment. 

Everywhere she turns, she feels she is being shut out and as she reaches out with increasing desperation, she drives people further away from her. 

Mitch Mikinos

Mitch is dominating, patriarchal, and brutal. 

His method is force, preferably physical, although he has learned to be civilized and resorts to coercion and persuasion. 

In 1980 he loved Ellen, who was young and beautiful.  Now he is searching for a younger woman. 

He has driven away Jennifer, his daughter from his first marriage.  She was rebellious, an act that he will not tolerate. 

He recognizes a rebellious streak in Russell, his son, and is trying to force him into line.  He is perfectly willing to drive Russell from the house. 

He expects to start a new family with Cassandra. 

He has taken some business risks, laundering money for a high-level drug dealer and buying a second restaurant, mainly as cover for a larger laundering operation. 

Mitch has no friends.  He has no inner life.  He never questions himself, his actions, or his motives.  If there is a problem it is always external.  It is always another person who stubbornly refuses to cooperate and who must be brought in line by whatever means is most convenient to him. 

He was a captain in the US Army Infantry during the Viet Nam War.  His company destroyed a village and killed many its civilian inhabitants and was subsequently attacked by a large Viet Cong force.  He lost many of his men in the fight.  He sometimes talks about the Viet Cong but never about the village. 

Jennifer Mikinos

Jennifer is Mitch’s daughter from his first marriage. 

She has a strong personality, much like her father.  She wishes to dominate and does not tolerate being dominated. 

Mitch drove her from their Pacific Heights mansion, a place she loved to live in.  It was a source of pride for her, where she could take her friends.  She had lots of space in the house but it was not big enough for her and Mitch. 

She despises Mitch for driving her out.  She has vowed vengeance. 

She has toyed with the idea of her own self-destruction as a way to get back at Mitch but abandoned the idea as uncertain in its effect. 

She has allied herself with Brendan, who has the same objective, and with Cassandra, who might be useful in achieving the objective. 

The strategy is to get near where large sums of money are changing hands and look for opportunities. 

Russell Mikinos

Russell has had an easy life so far as long as he stays out of Mitch’s way but in the last few years, asserting himself more and more at home and in the family business, he has collided with Mitch with greater frequency and force. 

His wish is to continue to live in the house in Pacific Heights , to have a nice car, to be successful in business, and to philander like his father. 

Mitch has driven Russell closer to his mother. 

Russell does not look forward to sharing Jennifer’s fate.  He wants to live in that house. 

Brendan Mikinos

Brendan is Mitch’s cousin.  Mitch and his branch of the Mikinos family has always exploited and cheated Brendan’s branch.  Brendan’s father committed suicide when faced with his financial failure. 

Brendan had a claim on the house and the restaurant but not the cash to make it work. 

Mitch and his father separated Brendan from his inheritance and paid him a pittance for relinquishing his claim. 

Brendan bears a deep eternal grudge against Mitch.  He blames them for his financial loss, even for his father’s death. 

His only enterprise is to devise a suitable revenge.  He has been working for Mitch for many years, getting to know the processes. 

Cassandra Priam

Cassandra is attempting to ratchet her way up the financial and social scale, learning as she goes, taking every opportunity to get more money and more social position, which she expects will get her even more leverage to get even more. 

Cassandra has worked as a prostitute, a profession that gave her deep disgust for men and taught her to control men to her advantage.  She abandoned the profession but not its techniques. 

She has toyed with the idea of being a madam as a retirement job. 

She worked as a hostess in a restaurant but her real job was to manage a group of high-class prostitutes that used the restaurant as a rendezvous. 

Jennifer knew Cassandra and her business. 

Staying behind the scenes, Jennifer arranged Mitch to meet Cassandra, who informed him that the restaurant was in serious business trouble and that the owner was looking for a way out. 

Petey Levine

Petey serves a major San Franciscan drug dealer with dedication and attention to detail. 

He greatly fears his boss and will do anything to avoid displeasing him.  He does not tell his boss that he has lost the money, which would be a disgrace and could result in his elimination. 

Petey works immediately for the recovery of the money. 

Petey knows his place in the pyramid of power.  He must dominate people like Mitch or they will dominate him, which will diminish his power and will quickly result in being thrown out of the pyramid. 

Petey moves cash around for laundering.  He arranges for the solution of certain classes of problems. 

Petey does not handle drugs nor does he commit crimes of violence.  These are performed by subcontractors.