Once upon time, there was a monster.
photo by Ryan Maxwell Photography
During the very early stages of the rehearsal process, we spent a lot of time discussing the hero’s journey, the path in most stories that a hero undertakes to achieve his goals. But then one night we wondered… what would a monster’s journey be?
Jason came into rehearsal the next day and asked us to close our eyes. He first laid out the stages of the hero’s journey. Then he told us a story: the story of a man and a monster. The story of Frankenstein.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is one of my favorite stories of all time. I love it mostly for the piece that the classic Hollywood Frankenstein movies leave out: the humanity of the monster. In the novel, Frankenstein creates the monster and then abandons him out of horror because what he created is hideous, rather than the angelic visage he imagined. He goes back home. The monster wanders by himself, learning about the world, abused by humans which makes him wary of them. He observes a kind and loving family, but then when they discover him and run away from fear, he burns their hut to the ground. He eventually makes his way to his creator to ask for two things: a purpose and a companion.
We hear the story of his encounters with humans and their treatment of him from his own very articulate lips. He is an innocent sponge, absorbing everything about how the world works. He absorbs a classical education from books, full of high ideals, as well as the cruel reality of how humans treat each other.
The monster is as human as you or I, only accelerated. He is a newborn, full of love, full of strength, full of outrage at the unfairness of the world. He wants to know the “why” of things. He seeks his creator to find out why he was made and why he was abandoned. Shelley points out that these are both questions we would ask of our creator given the chance.
Above all, he is lonely. He seeks someone else like him that will accept him and his ugliness. He asks Frankenstein to make him a companion, and Victor refuses. Since the monster cannot have someone to love him, he lays waste to everything that Victor loves.
“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.” – The Monster
This was the starting place for our Monster’s Journey. What if? What if in the monster’s initial wanderings, he found companions who do not see him as a monster? Someone he could give the love he speaks about and could love him in return?
In exploring this, we looked at the Hero’s Journey and the story of Frankenstein, and created our own story. He is created and then abandoned. He explores who he is and what the world is like. He meets companions along the way that help him to understand more about the world and give him someone to love deeply. He meets enemies that threaten that love and then he does what the monster in the book promises, bringing down “rage the likes of which [we] would not believe.”
And in the end, when it looks like all is lost, we give him what the novel never did, the dearest wish of his heart: acceptance.
– Megan Reichelt, Dramatist
Flying V Fights: Heroes & Monsters
July 11-28
The Writer’s Center, Bethesda
