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    The Revisionist
    The Revisionist
    The Revisionist
    Ebook93 pages1 hour

    The Revisionist

    By Jesse Eisenberg and John Patrick Shanley

    ()

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    About this ebook

    A play by the multitalented actor: “[Eisenberg] has a wry ear and a knack for unsentimental poignancy that keeps The Revisionist emotionally compelling.”—USA Today

    Though he first became known for his acting in films ranging from The Squid and the Whale to The Social Network, Jesse Eisenberg has also emerged as an acclaimed literary talent—a regular contributor to the New Yorker and a highly praised playwright.


    In The Revisionist, his second play, young writer David arrives in Poland with a crippling case of writer’s block and a desire to be left alone. His seventy-five-year-old second cousin, Maria, welcomes him with a fervent need to connect with her distant American relative. As their relationship develops, she will reveal details about her postwar past that test their ideas of what it means to be a family.

    This “tightly structured, deeply human play about the truthful mess of human experience” (Exeunt Magazine) had its world premiere at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York in spring 2013, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Vanessa Redgrave and directed by Kip Fagan.


    “A rewarding account of cultural collision that yields unexpected reflections on the centrality of family in our lives—whether we idealize them or take them for granted…As a playwright, Eisenberg’s intentions seem clear. He takes a critical swipe at himself, and by extension, his entitled generation.”—Hollywood Reporter
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateNov 4, 2013
    ISBN9780802192738
    The Revisionist

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      Book preview

      The Revisionist - Jesse Eisenberg

      TheRevisionistPKFRONT.jpg

      The Revisionist

      JESSE EISENBERG

      The Revisionist

      A Play

      Introduction by

      John Patrick Shanley

      V-1.tif

      Grove Press

      New York

      Copyright © 2013 by Jesse Eisenberg

      Introduction copyright © 2013 by John Patrick Shanley

      Don’t Let It Bring You Down (page 66), words and music by Neil Young. Copyright © 1970 by Broken Arrow Music Corporation. Copyright renewed. All rights reserved, used by permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or permissions@groveatlantic.com.

      Printed in the United States of America

      Published simultaneously in Canada

      ISBN:

      978-0-8021-2233-9

      eBook ISBN: 978-0-8021-9273-8

      CAUTION: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that The Revisionist is subject to a royalty. It is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and all British Commonwealth countries, and all countries covered by the International Copyright Union, the Pan-American Copyright Convention, and the Universal Copyright Convention. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, recitation, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound taping, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved.

      First-class professional, stock, and amateur applications for permission to perform it, and those other rights stated above, must be made in advance to Creative Artists Agency, Attn: Simon Green, 162 5th Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10010 and by paying the requisite fee, whether the play is presented for charity or gain and whether or not admission is charged.

      Grove Press

      an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

      154 West 14th Street

      New York, NY 10011

      Distributed by Publishers Group West

      www.groveatlantic.com

      INTRODUCTION

      How to read a play? I’ve done it enough to tell you how I do it. I read with a degree of fatalism. It’s like visiting family. Occasionally, the experience is rewarding, but always, suffering is involved. You’re trapped in somebody else’s house or head, their engine of despair or uplift. Face-to-face with a wise uncle, ignorant nephew or enigmatic aunt, you wonder how you fit in, or if you do. You see yourself in an uncomfortable light. You’re a hapless intruder. If the play is good, at some point you realize you’re in it. Shit. This is MY house.

      Buckyballs began bouncing in my head scarcely moments into the production of The Revisionist I saw some weeks back. A character named David, a young man who is utterly unable to be present, gets trapped in a very small space with an old woman named Maria, who is ONLY present. As in all the best stuff, the encounter is rich because each character highlights the other.

      David is a product of life in America now, a new kind of Peter Pan who flies because he can’t land. He can’t grow up because he can’t commit to any one life long enough to do so. His entire method of operation consists of running, deflecting and avoiding, by every means possible. In a bold stroke, Jesse Eisenberg not only wrote the play, but played the part. His performance physically demonstrated the emotional truth of this guy; he literally spent a goodly amount of his time onstage finding a way, again in a very small space, of staying off the floor. He was habitually PERCHING on something: a bed, the arm of a chair or couch. When that tactic proved impossible, he resorted to tranquilizing himself with marijuana or liquor.

      Meanwhile, his counterpart, Maria, a Polish woman in her seventies, wants the one thing the young man can’t give. She wants company. She wants to get to know him, to be with him, to share food and time with him. Her values are all human.

      She’s thrilled because this young fellow is her cousin, and he has elected to visit her. She has been suffering from isolation and longs to connect. Her plight is such because she lost her European family in the Holocaust. David is her American family. But Maria wants family in the European sense, and David can’t begin to fulfill that need.

      Now, the institution of family in America has been under assault for a long time, but these days there is an additional malaise. Individuals are now losing their connection to humanness itself. The extraordinary onslaught of virtual communication and social media has allowed us to cultivate something unhealthy in our psyches: the desire NOT to be touched. Not only

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