Approach:

Other Desert Cities is a play about our relationship to the past, our attempts to escape those events and decisions that haunt us, and our inability to appreciate the choices and politics of those in the “opposition.”  

The death of Henry and the guilt that each member of the family feels as a result defines the choices of each of these characters. Brooke, angry about her inability to help her brother and her parent’s apparent role in pushing him to the extremes, flees across the country to battle with her demons. Polly and Lyman hide in their Palm Springs home, sequestered from the rest of world and isolated in the barely repressed pain of their loss of family and of political capital. Silda struggles with alcoholism and wages a one woman war against Polly’s politics and philosophy. Trip, ever in the shadow of grief for a brother he never got to know, retreats to frivolous entertainments and forced mirth. In their attempts at escape, each of these characters relies on their own technique for dealing with grief: polite facades and isolation, drink, reality tv, and, in Brooke’s case, the writing of a one sided tell-all that lays the blame at her parent’s feet.  

As Silda notes, however, “Palm Springs isn’t a refuge; it’s King Tut’s Tomb” (26). As much as these characters try to hide from their pasts, Palm Springs acts as a magnet and a catalyst. It draws everyone back and amplifies the grief and guilt of each of them.  

These failed attempts at escape, and the conversations that follow, reveal a central issue of the text: the danger of the barriers that arise to block any attempts at meaningful discussion and debate. Over the past few decades, party politics in the US have become increasingly divisive. We’ve devolved to the point that we refuse to engage with the other side. We are positive that “our side” is the only right answer. That everyone on the other side is either ignorant, racist, sexist, and xenophobic or, alternatively, anti-American, regressive leftist, feminazi social justice warrior snowflakes who favor handouts and entitlements for all.  

One of the strengths of this script is the fact that it sets up both sides as strawmen. Both have elements of the extreme. It turns out, however, that neither side has the whole story. Once the characters stop trying to escape the truth (or, rather, once they stop pursing their own “divergent truths”) real connection, understanding, and healing can begin.  

The truth is complex. The truth is subjective and contingent. With this production, I focused on the futility of these attempts at escaping, at relying only on the opinions of those who already agree with us, and being so convinced of our personal truths that we close ourselves to the experiences, to the truths of those we classify as opponents. Like the characters in Other Desert Cities, we can only move forward if we seek understanding and connection with the “enemy,” rather than relying purely on righteous anger and moral certitude.