Director's Note

In our production of The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? the question of “Who is Sylvia?” becomes the question of “Who are we?” What makes us humans human? Are we truly as evolved from our most primal chemical instincts as we believe we may be? Why is morality necessary for us and how do we create moral lines? What are the limits to our empathy for others when these lines are crossed? Is exposing the truth always a fundamentally, objective good? Albee does not give us any answers but he certainly leaves us with many valuable questions. Questions that become even more valuable when put in a historical context. For most of humanity’s history, homosexuality and bestiality have existed on the same moral plane. The hypocrisy of Martin’s homophobia allows us to examine the absurdity of this history. In the spirit of Greek tragedy, The Goat presents unimaginable circumstances and forces one to imagine them, to simply think newly and freshly about what we have buried deep as intolerable. The play is also about how we go about coping when things are shattered and cannot be pieced back together. I urge you all to let the laughter in so that the more serious issues can flow in as well. In today’s world, I feel that this idea of imagining the unimaginable is ever so present. Much like Stevie, I find that I have become accustomed to having moral conversations, specifically on politics in this country, in which the truth seems so clear to me but others are somehow able to wholly deny it. How do we make progress in a world of such unwavering certainty? For me, the only answer is a complete collapse of what we have long held as true and a rebuild from the ground up.