There Is a Happiness That Morning Is (2011)by Mickle Maher
Performances
Sep 23, 2011 -
Nov 19, 2011
Cast & Personnel
Director
Cast
Scenic Design
Costume Design
Lighting Design
Sound Design
Stage Manager
The Play
Bernard and Ellen are college professors and scholars of the poet William Blake. The night before we meet them, they have been overtaken by their common passion and spontaneously made love on the public green for all to see. Now they must apologize for or successfully defend their act, to the students that witnessed it, or lose their tenured positions. Moreover, what they do next will profoundly impact each one’s ability to remain in the lives they’ve know for literally decades before.
The play is presented as two lectures – one idealistic and impassioned, the other defiant but conflicted. Delivered entirely in rhymed verse, the play nevertheless possesses a pronounced comedic and contemporary sensibility. The verse is quick and the rhymes are sharp, but it is what’s at their bottom that matters. Though they speak of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, they do so in the service of a real, hard look at love, its difficulties and its miracles.
In There is a Happiness That Morning Is, Maher is focused on how differently two people can view even the most intimate shared experience and the impact that difference might have on their lives.
Of course, all Maher plays are up to something more than meets the eye. His work is known for wildly inventive conceits married to deeply resonant themes. In Spirits to Enforce, Maher recast Shakespearean characters as superheroes to examine nostalgia and a yearning to return to a fulfilling former life. The Strangerer mashed up the Bush-Kerry presidential debates with Albert Camus’ classic text, casting Bush as an existential hero in search of meaning. One need not be familiar in any way with Blake, Shakespeare or Camus to experience the grandest qualities of his plays. The clever setups are always transcended by deeper questions.
Maher’s plays are reliably touching, but are also always extraordinarily funny. The sort of funny that has audiences falling out of their chairs. If you saw Catastrophic’s productions of The Strangerer or Spirits to Enforce, you know exactly what we’re talking about. Audiences left the theatre laughing their heads off while expressing wonder and awe at having seen something unique and magnificent.
There Is a Happiness That Morning Is was first produced in Chicago by Theatre Oobleck in April 2011. Here’s what critics said about the world premiere:
Maher’s text is almost endlessly engaging and frequently hilarious. Time Out Chicago
Maher’s most powerful play to date… soul shaking. Chicago Reader
Funny, witty, literate, and profound. Windy City Times
An enjoyably lunatic endeavor. Chicago Tribune
The Playwright
MICKLE MAHER
Mickle Maher’s plays have been produced Off-Broadway and throughout the world. Catastrophic has produced a whopping 12 productions of his plays, some of them more than once: last season’s It Is Magic, Song About Himself, The Hunchback Variations, There Is a Happiness That Morning Is, The Strangerer, Jim Lehrer and The Theater and Its Double and Jim Lehrer’s Double, and the world premieres of The Pine and Small Ball, commissioned and co-produced by Catastrophic and former Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey. Maher is a co-founder of Chicago’s Theater Oobleck and has taught playwriting and related subjects at The University of Chicago, Columbia College, and Northwestern University. His plays are published by Hope and Nonthings.
“Maher [is] one of the most original voices in American theater today.” – Houston Chronicle
In the Media
The Catastrophic Theatre: There Is a Happiness That Morning Is
October 10, 2011 |
The LoopScoop
| Kerri Foley
Catastrophic’s “There Is a Happiness” Is a True Original
October 4, 2011 |
Houston Chronicle
| Everett Evans
Videos
I can scarcely contain my enthusiasm for Catastrophic Theatre’s ideally realized presentation of Mickle Maher’s delightfully original There Is a Happiness That Morning Is, so I’m not even going to try.
— Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle
