I watched Wise Children’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s WUTHERING HEIGHTS at Berkeley Rep last week and I’m still thinking about it. And that’s why I needed to write the important lesson that I took from it: not everyone is binary. And I’m defining binary in this context is good vs. bad.
One of the biggest questions I had in grad school was “does the protagonist need to be good for an audience to like the play?” Of course there’s anti-heroes, but I’ve always had that question about what I write, “is this character likable? and if not, is the audience still going to watch? are they going to be compelled to continue watching until the end of the play or leave now?”
What Emily Rice, the AD and Director of the show, did to pull this age-old question from me and throw it on the ground and stomp on it! I watched an interview of her talking about the play and what I took from it was that the whole show was about passion. I think my brain turned that word into a the romantic definition, which the play had, but the turning of passion of revenge was more apt. AND I LOVED IT!
In another podcast, there was also talk about how Disney had the formula of portraying characters as good OR bad; white hat vs. black hat; good vs. evil. This formula is something I’ve always tried because, as a people pleaser, is something I tried to do with my work because uh Disney/Pixar’s track record for having people like their work is proven. And reading books like SAVING THE CAT teaches need for writers the add the nuance for characters. But what I’ve seen from the video reviews of WUTHERING HEIGHTS the novel, everyone was bad! Noone was likable…. and that’s so refreshing! And watching it, I was like, okay, Heathcliffe has to be the good guy… until he isn’t. Like really bad! And I loved it cuz it went against my initial thoughts and hopes. But isn’t that what good characters and stories need to do, challenge expectations?