Sport, theater and Lauren Feldman's "Grace'

In a recent column, Broad Street Review's editor Dan Rottenberg— a former athlete who still exercises daily— argued for a continued separation of sport and theater. "Sports provide a necessary refuge from the tedium of everyday life," Dan wrote. "Theater provides a necessary refuge from the mindless mass mentality of sport. Start mixing them together and you have no refuge from anything."

Well, consider Lauren Feldman's Grace, Or the Art of Climbing. This unabashedly athletic play covers five months in the life of Em (the phenomenally talented Rachael Joffred), a young woman suffering from a deep depression brought on by a two-day period in which her boyfriend dumps her and her father suffers a debilitating stroke.

To escape her depression, she sets a goal— not necessarily of re-establishing psychological normality, but an athletic achievement to compete for the national rock climbing team at the world championships a year later. Like any ascent, Em progresses by fits and starts, sometimes losing her grip to fall back to a previously surpassed level of mental health.

With the help of a remarkable cast and her coach, Sims (compelling realized by Armando Batista), Em starts with easy grade bouldering, gains the mettle to tackle moderate 7- and 8-grade climbs, and finally progresses to the difficult 11s and 12s by the play's end. In a journey that reminded me of Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice, she comes to terms with her father's medical condition and the new ground from which their relationship must now proceed.

My personal best

I've never suffered severe depression, watched a parent's physical and mental deterioration, or climbed a rock wall. (Hell, I've never even been dumped by a lover.) But I understood and identified with Em's story far more than with most other figures I find in contemporary drama.

From my high school and college days to my forays as an Olympic weightlifter, sports have always enabled me to overcome life's hard knocks and push myself through periods of personal funk. Recently, I hit a personal best to set a National Master's Record in weightlifting. After that successful lift, a different me walked off the platform, one who'd surpassed the limitations of my former self. Similarly, as Em completed her final trek up a rock face, she too was transformed into something new and different.

Clearly, the old truism holds true: sport builds character. To be sure, as Pete Rose, Marion Jones, and many others have proven, sport can also destroy character. Either way, sport ought to be the perfect vehicle for drama, not necessarily something playwrights should avoid.

The Greeks knew the answer

What I derive from theater is neither escape nor refuge. Like the ancient Greeks, I go for a purgation of emotions and, more important, for instruction on how to live. By finding the metaphors and meaning in sports, Feldman's play spoke to my particular experience like no other.

Even non-athletes could relate to the resonating metaphors of Feldman's drama. Climbing, Em's dad instructs, "is a solo sport… with partners," governed by the first rule: "Know where you're going and how you're going to get there." At some point, he tells her, "You have to top-rope," i.e., move away from the easy tasks (like just getting out of bed) and fully re-engage in life.

As for learning to trust again, Em's coach remarks that "falling is part of the game… If you're not falling, then you're not climbing hard enough. You want to be a better climber? Start trusting." Later, he lays down his own Number One Rule: "Climbers fall. [But] They never let go."

In learning these lessons, Em prospers by pushing herself, and literally climbs out of her depression.

Planting the flag

As I pointed out in a previous essay, you don't find many plays about sport. With Grace, Feldman plants a flag atop the summit of her own literary achievement. It's a work that merges the worlds of sport and theater to glint like freshly cut rock with the beauty, poetry and meaning of both.

Not every athlete's story belongs on stage (certainly not Michael Vick's). But we could do worse than see more dramas like Grace, that ordinary people like me can live through as well as learn from.