The Oldest Boy

Tonight I jumped back into the KC theater scene to see “The Oldest Boy” by Sarah Ruhl at the Unicorn Theatre. This particular performance was unique because the show was framed initially around actual Tibetan monks who are currently visiting from India. Before the show began they greeted audience members with hand clasps and head bows, all the while performing ritualistic chants specific to their Buddhist faith. When Cynthia Levin, Producing Artistic Manager and director, introduced the monks to us before the show, she also informed us they would accompany us in the audience. Not only did we dive into foreign anxieties and traditions specific to Tibetan monks and those who practice this faith in the US, but these special guests also saw represented on stage our perception of their own struggles, beliefs, and traditions. Trippy, eh?

Front facade

Before the show

“The Oldest Boy” premiered a year ago at the Lincoln Center and is currently being produced simultaneously by the Unicorn Theater (KC) and the Marin Theatre Company (SF). The narrative of this story surrounds a racially-mixed couple who learn that Tibetan monks believe their three year old son is the reincarnation of a former teacher in Nepal. Faced with the decision to give up their son to be enthroned within a monk community or rejecting this proposal and living a more traditional American life, the couple must face each other and their religious upbringings, their emotional attachments to family, and their commitment to each other.

American living room for first act

There’s one aesthetic outlier to this whole story: the boy is a puppet. Manipulated by two puppeteers the rest of the cast interact with the boy as if he were real, but the audience, or at least myself, struggled to push away the obvious detachment between a real boy and a puppet. However, when the couple decides to let the boy live out a monk’s reincarnated life back in Nepal, the man who manipulated the puppet, and who spoke for the puppet, transforms himself into the enthroned and grown-up version of Oldest Boy. What does it say that the boy is a puppet? Does he have agency? This surprising element of the production raises questions about how parents approach their children and attachment/agency issues.

Alex Espy (puppeteer), the Oldest Boy puppet & myself (from left to right)

At first the plot-line sounds totally far-fetched for a traditional Judeo-Christian Midwestern audience, but I was drawn time and again to the clever threads that connected these two cultures and religions. For example, at one point Mother makes a Biblical reference to the idea of giving up her son to the Tibetan monks like Abraham offering his son Isaac for a sacrifice, or Jesus Christ dying for the Father. Or the other moment, masterfully performed, when the Lama who has only experienced monkhood, and Mother, who has experienced traditional American life, shed tears over losing loved ones in their past. These remarkable, intimate moments unify the two worlds with traditional spiritual narratives as well as raw human emotion. What at first seemed completely foreign became tremendously personal.

If I might indulge on one more aspect of the production this evening it would be the idea of reincarnation as translation. At the end of the play Mother leaves behind her son and rededicates her passion for literature with translation between English and Tibetan. She affirms her new career is similar to reincarnation in that while she creates a new work through translation, the concept or idea does not disappear between the two works. Amanda Boyle, the resident literary manager and dramaturg at Unicorn, quoted Reborn in the West when she describes reincarnation as the ability to “remain conscious through the transition from death to rebirth” (playbill). In a way, when we translate, that transition from one language to another requires that the concept and idea remain consistent, just as the life of a person who dies and is reborn stays consistent with the essence of that person, no matter what sign or form they select in the next life.

“The Oldest Boy” ends this weekend, so if you want to see this incredible production I would suggest you take action now. A big thanks to all who participated in this evening’s performance and for those who made the night extremely enjoyable.

Special thanks to Yve Rojas (right), member of the Board of Directors, for offering me an amazing experience