“Every Brilliant Thing” was the play that ran this past weekend, on Saturday, Sept. 12 and Sunday the13th. The play was put on at the Forge Theater on the University of Idaho’s campus. The single actor in this play, named only as The Narrator, was played by Craig A. Miller, Associate Professor of Acting and Directing at UI. However, as the audience entered the small room, several of them were handed slips of paper while some were handed books.
Every person in the room was part of the story, and was expected to play that part. The Narrator began to speak, telling the story of his life, good and bad, hilarious and sad.
The play began in the Narrator’s childhood. Miller introduced himself as a seven-year-old boy, and told of the coldness between him and his father as he was driven to see his mother in the hospital. Once there, his mother did not want to see him. He gradually came to understand that his mother had attempted to take her own life.
The child’s response was to make a list. Not just any list, but a list of all the brilliant things in the world, the things that make life worth living. He listed number five: things with stripes. Then there was number seven; people falling over.
This list was a recurring part of the story. As the Narrator aged, the list grew. The 2001st brilliant thing was “films that are better than the books they are based on.” By the end, there were one million things on the list. The audience had watched as this character grew up and interacted with the world around him, went to college, fell in love, fell into depression and dragged himself out again with the help of a therapist with a sock puppet and his own ever-expanding list of brilliant things.
Aside from the story itself, which was equal parts of tears and laughter, the play had several added layers of interest. By framing the main character as merely a Narrator of his own life, the story became universal. This story was the audience’s story, the story of someone theyknew, someone they loved, or the story of their own life.
Even more than that, at certain parts, audience members were called upon to be part of the cast, to play characters in the life of this narrator, as a vet, as the father, as the lover, the wife andthe professor. Partly, this added to the entertainment value, watching unexpecting audience members be suddenly thrust into a story they did not know, but this was done so intentionally, and so well, that it really sucked the people in that little room into the emotional turmoil of the moment.
When a number was called, it referred to a brilliant thing, and some audience members holding that slip of paper read out something that makes life beautiful. Number 4, the color yellow. The true takeaway from this play was the commentary on the social view of suicide. Most of the time, the way suicide is displayed in media has deeply harmful effects. Specifically, the Narrator mentioned things like the fact that suicides are described as “successful” if the deed is carried through, or the fact that celebrity suicides are published front page of papers and it has been shown that this can lead to a significant spike in suicides, simply because of the exposure of the idea. He listed he full length of the Samaritan’s media guide in the play, which is full of very simple things that the media could do to decrease the widespread damage that reporting on suicides does to the public.
This production of Every Brilliant Thing was sponsored by the Dean of Student’s Office at UI. Blake Eckroft saw this production during the summer several years ago and declared that it should be done in the school year so that more students could see it.
It was truly worth watching, a raw and heartbreaking description of depression and its ripple effect. It was also hilarious, adorable, rich in human emotion, joy, and inspiration. The world is broken and life goes wrong and people get hurt, but that does not diminish the beauty and importance of life and living.
Selah Mathis can be reached at [email protected].