The acclaimed dramatist has officially abandoned the proscenium arch, declaring the medium of live theater fundamentally inadequate for her vision. Cinema, historically a haven for failed novelists, will now serve as the canvas for her revenge narrative.
In a maneuver that can only be described as a profound indictment of the theatrical arts, Aleshea Harris has officially assumed directorial control over the film adaptation of her acclaimed play "Is God Is"; a decision that ostensibly implies the physical limitations of the stage, the sweating bodies of the performers, and the tragic permanence of a single viewing angle were simply too provincial to contain the magnitude of her dialogue. It is a transition that betrays a certain modern impatience with the spatial confines of the theater, substituting the sacred, ancient ritual of the proscenium for the sterile, dictatorial control of the editing bay, where a writer's structural infelicities might be safely hidden behind a well-timed cut to a wide shot.
To properly contextualize the sheer, unadulterated hubris of a playwright pivoting to the cinematic director's chair merely because her own stage directions proved insufficient for her expanding thematic ambitions, one must trace a lineage of formalist rebellion; we are forced, inevitably, to consider Vsevolod Meyerhold's biomechanical staging of "The Magnanimous Cuckold," the existential cinematic rupture of Ingmar Bergman's "Persona," and, most pressingly, the 2004 Wayans brothers vehicle "White Chicks," in which the agonizing constraints of the physical vessel were similarly, violently, discarded in pursuit of a broader demographic. Harris, it seems, has looked upon the intimate, blood-soaked domesticity of her original theatrical triumph and decided it required the explosive visual vocabulary previously reserved for Michael Bay and those who lack the stamina for a two-act intermission.
I realized that forcing my audience to sit in a single room while local actors breathed the same recycled air was fundamentally compromising the purity of my revenge narrative.
The adaptation will now proceed with the full backing of the cinematic apparatus, complete with multiple takes, artificial lighting, and the profound luxury of leaving one's mistakes on the cutting room floor, rather than forcing an underpaid stage manager to sweep them up in real time. Whether this translation from the visceral immediacy of the boards to the flattened, digitized expanse of the silver screen will actually expand the thematic resonance of "Is God Is," or merely provide its creator with an excuse to abuse a drone camera, remains to be seen; one only hopes that in her frantic pursuit of cinematic possibilities, Harris does not entirely forget the crude, magnificent terror of trapping an audience in the dark with nowhere to look but forward.