Synecdoche

Introduction

Professor Warren Doody

Near the end of my final year of graduate school at Northern Arizona University, I received two phone calls from two peers, each independent of the other, both imploring me to audition for a play at the local theatre company.  At that point in my life, I had never been in a play and, for that matter, really had no interest in theatre at all, so, although I told both parties that I would definitely be there,  never bothered showing up.  Unfazed, they both called the next night, again independent of each other, and again with the same, though slightly modified message:  I needed to audition because the theatre was still looking for someone to play the lead, a character named McPherson, a detective, caught up in things beyond his control, a man in the wrong place at the wrong time, in love with the wrong woman.  That description intrigued me; I thought of my life as not entirely dissimilar to McPherson's, so, feeling a kinship, I went to the theatre, auditioned and, two days later, I was cast.
    
The rest, as they say, is history.  I did that play, then another, then another - after the fourth consecutive show, a peer suggested I join "actors anonymous" - took an acting class, switched from fiction to playwriting, got a few ten-minutes plays produced, then a full-length play, went back to undergraduate school for a year to build a theatre foundation, then graduate school in Ohio and California, picked up an MFA, got hired by Vanguard to teach playwriting, (along with a few other courses . . . ), and now, some seventeen years after those two serendipitous phone calls that changed my life forever, I've been asked to serve as Guest Editor for Synecdoche, Vanguard's Literary Journal.  This year's motif, fittingly enough, is the theatre, although I can't blame it on serendipity or strange phone calls in the night, since it was my idea.

This theatre motif manifests itself in a variety of different ways.  If you take a look at the thematic divider pages, for instance, you'll find this year's cast and crew dressed, (or, at least, masked), in Commedia dell' Arte mode.  Commedia dell' Arte, for those unfamiliar with the form, originated in the sixteenth century Italy and was, essentially, improvisational theatre, notable for using a series of stock characters to flesh out its unscripted comedy.  The improvisation is a given here, but if you'll look closely, you'll notice some of these stock characters that brought down the house, some four hundred years ago: there's Harlequin, a clown; there's Il Dottore, the doctor; and there, hiding behind a black and white mask that is more Batman villain than stock character, is Il Editorio, who would be me.  If you look inside the journal, (and, let's face it, if you're reading this, you're already doing that), you'll find the contents ordered along the lines of these same stock characters, who serve as thematic dividers.  In addition to the above-mentioned characters, there's Brighella, cynical and sarcastic, ushering in satirical works; there's Pantalone, the muse, on hand to introduce economic and death-related works; ther's The Innamorati, the lovers, who serve as a bridge into the subject of love (and, in some cases, anti-love, sometimes referred to as hate).  There are also characters paving the way for strictly scholarly works; comic works; intellectually amusing works; feminist works; and those that don't fit into any particular category, but simply deal with the human condition.

Synecdoche, a difficult word to spell, let alone pronounce, refers to a figure of speech in which the part represents the whole.  I can't remember who came up with the name for the journal, but I do remember when we kicked it off: 2004.  The journal was the charge of the English Department's English Capstone Seminar, and the ground rules were that the English Majors in the class would serve as the editorial board and be responsible for putting the magazine together, with the Capstone professor serving as facilitator.  That first year, we started small, photocopying a compilation of papers written by English Majors in the mail room, and using cheap, spiral binding to tie it all together.  The final product wasn't particularly impressive, to be sure, but it was a start.  The next year, the journal made a jump in quality, fitting its contents inside of a somewhat generic cover, but, at least, it looked like a journal, hardcover and all, and not a hastily slapped together binder of student writings.  In 2006, we got serious about this thing, called for submissions from the entire campus, and offered a cash prize for the top creative and critical pieces.  The journal looked great, (even if its cover featured, for no apparent reason, a baby doll head); we held a release party; we invited the campus; Dr. Jerry Camery-Hoggatt, in the role of guest editor, read from his original work, and the capacity crowd in the Forrest Room went wild.  We were on our way.

We're now in our fifth year, and the responsibility of choosing this year's top picks was mine.  It wasn't easy.  In the creative category, the selections were strong enough that I literally couldn't choose just one, opting instead to split the vote between Michelle Goedinghaus' "Leisure Country" and Rebecca Testrake's "What the Barmaid Saw."  In the critical category, after reading and re-reading and re-reading yet again the five papers handed to me by the Scholarly Works Committee, I finally decided on Ben Cross' "The Freedom Found in Dumping the Sparkling Water."

A word or two about these selections: "Leisure Country" is a screenplay, and since its full length stretches to over one hundred pages, the published piece is an excerpt.  It's a political comedy that takes place in a Leisure World setting and relies on a "truth" I hear repeatedly from my students: "Old people are funny."  I don't know if that's true, (I kind of hope not . . .), but it's certainly true here.  "What the Barmaid Saw" is a stage play and again, because of its length, the published piece here is an excerpt.  It's a courtroom drama that puts William Shakespeare on trial for the murder of Christopher Marlowe, speculating that the bard was so driven by envy - he was, after all, considered an inferior writer to the alleged victim in Elizabethan England - that he took matters into his own hands.  Finally, "The Freedom Found in Dumping the Sparkling Water," is an innovative piece that features Convention, Logic, and Sir Narrative - he's British - as the main characters, who spend most of their time in a bar questioning the need for their very existence.  Fittingly - there's that word again - they receive a surprise visit from a literary critic, who helps them see things with different eyes.

In Los Angeles, easily the most self-absorbed place on the planet, the joke is that when people are done telling you about themselves, they'll say, "But enough about me.  What do you think about me?"  I can't really do that here, since I can't see you, so I did the next best thing - I invited Synecdoche Editor-in-Chief, Stephanie Rosemeyer, to my office, two weeks ago, where she conducted an impromptu interview.  Over the course of an hour, she tracked my trajectory, ferreted out family secrets, and tricked me into revealing trade secrets.  The result is on the next page.  So, by all means, please keep reading . . . .
  
Professor Warren Doody
Guest Editor