Tag: Suicide

The Hemingway Solution, Parts Unknown, and Anthony Bourdain

Posted on by James Hutchison

Chapter One

To fall in love with Asia is one thing. To fall in love in Asia is another. Both have happened to me.

The Star Ferry to Kowloon at night. Lights of Hong Kong behind me. It’s a gift. A dream. A curse. The best thing. The happiest thing. Yet, also the loneliest thing in the world.

Anthony Bourdain – Parts Unknown – Hong Kong

Photograph of Anthony Bourdain on Hong Kong Ferry writing in his journal. Courtesy of CNN
Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown- Hong Kong 3/1/18 Tony writing on the Star Ferry – Courtesy of CNN

The Hemingway Solution – that’s a title for a short play idea I’ve had – the Hemingway Solution is of course suicide. There’s always, “the Hemingway solution” so says one of my characters in my, as of yet, unwritten play.

Thoughts of death and suicide are not abnormal. We’re mortal after all. It would be strange not to ponder our own mortality. And once you have an adult mind you can imagine all sorts of “what if” possibilities. “What if I could fly?” “What if I had magical powers?” “What if aliens are already among us?” “What if I am an alien?” “What if I died?” 

The movie The Big Chill from 1983 is all about a group of college friends getting together after one of them commits suicide. It’s a movie worth checking out if you haven’t seen it, or if you have seen it, why not see it again. It has a stellar cast. Kevin Kline, Jeff Goldblum, Glenn Close, Meg Tilly, Jobeth Williams, Tom Berenger, William Hurt, and Mary Kay Place, and it was written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan. I’ve been thinking about this movie because it’s a mainstream film that deals with suicide and questions of life and that’s good because suicide is part of the human experience and so both in our personal thoughts and in our art the subject is going to be explored. And right now there’s seems to be a more urgent need to talk about suicide because suicide rates are on the rise. In the United States, for example, over the last twenty years, CNN reports that twenty-five States have experienced a rise in suicide rates of more than 30% according to statistics released by US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But there’s a difference between thinking about suicide in a casual “what if” way and being suicidal. Those are two very different things. When you’re suicidal you’re probably depressed and when you’re depressed you’re in a place of despair and despair means you disconnect from things. You don’t want to see your friends. You don’t want to ask for help, or if you are asking for help you might be doing it in an indirect way. You might reach out with a text or an e-mail or a phone call because you need to connect and talk about your problems but you don’t necessarily say that. Maybe you talk or write about everything else except what’s really on your mind. Because here’s the thing. We’re not supposed to talk about suicidal thoughts – that’s taboo. Especially if you’re a man. It means you’re weak, right? And unfortunately, if you don’t talk about it and you don’t get the help you need the end result could be deadly. And that’s why we need to talk about Anthony Bourdain.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Anthony Bourdain, as have a lot of people, over the last couple of weeks. I knew about him – but I’d never read any of his books or watched any of his shows. He was a famous stranger. The first time I remember being aware of a famous stranger was when Elvis died. His music and personality had always been a part of my life and so when he died, even though I wasn’t a huge fan, I still felt a sense of loss. And Bourdain, like Elvis, is someone I knew about – someone whose shows I would have loved if I had watched them – but I didn’t watch them – that is – until yesterday. 

Yesterday I tuned into CNN and I ended up watching the last episode of Parts Unknown where Bourdain travels to Bhutan – with the director of the movie Mother – Darren Aronofsky. Bhutan is a country committed to protecting the environment and its culture. Fifty percent of the land is under some sort of protection and off limits to development. So it makes a lot of sense to have Aronofsky there because his film is all about man’s abuse and destruction of the earth and Bhutan which locally is focused on environmental protection is feeling the direct effects of global warming. The snows no longer fall. And the glaciers are melting. And even though the current government wants to protect the environment, once they open themselves up to the world they will be under increasing pressure to change – because the world has powerful forces motivated by money and profit who don’t give a damn about the environment. Me, I like the Bhutan way of thinking – I like the idea that at least fifty percent of the world should be off-limits to development. But I’m getting sidetracked. I was talking about Anthony Bourdain.

So, I watched the final episode of Parts Unknown – and it was a fascinating glimpse into a really interesting country and a totally different way of life. And then I watched an episode of The Layover with Anthony Bourdain on Netflix where he goes to São Paulo. The thing about Bourdain’s shows, which you probably already know and I didn’t, is that they’re not just about food. They’re really about people and culture. The food is the doorway, and if I had to sum up his style and approach I’d call it authentic and truthful. Maybe that’s why Bourdain comes across as so likable. He’s not pretentious. He loves food. He loves people. He loves going to far-away places.

Anthony Bourdain in Newfoundland for his show Parts Unknown sitting on a rocky beach in an old chair with a bear rug in front of him and another identical empty chair beside him.
Anthony Bourdain – Parts Unknown – Newfoundland – Courtesy of CNN

And that’s what struck me most after I watched these shows was Bourdain’s genuine curiosity and interest in other people. That’s something we share. That’s why I studied sociology. That’s why I tell stories. That’s why I thought of being a therapist. That’s why I’ve started to interview people for my blog instead of just writing about my own thoughts and ideas. I want to interview playwrights and actors and designers and anyone else that’s involved in the creation of theatre. You see I’m interested in the creative impulse and what drives people. And I have done a few interviews already. I talked with playwright Meredith Taylor-Parry about her play Survival Skills which deals with the aftermath of suicide and was produced a few years back Off-Broadway. I also talked to Dale Lee Kwong about her cultural coming out story Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets which ran at Lunchbox Theatre this year. And most recently I interviewed actor and playwright Braden Griffiths who is the president of The Betty Mitchell Awards Committee about the Betty Awards and theatre in Calgary.

So, watching Bourdain has inspired me to do more. To dig deeper. To think about what my interviews can be. And so, even though I’m going to work harder on more blog posts and interviews, I’m also going to watch more Anthony Bourdain and in particular, I’m going to watch his show on Hong Kong. Why? Because this show according to Bourdain was the professional highlight of his career. That’s what he told Anderson Cooper at CNN. That’s what he wrote in a guest column for the Hollywood Reporter called, My Cinematic Dream Filming With Asia Argento and Christopher Doyle in Hong Kong which was published just six days before his death. Doesn’t that just hit you in the gut? Here he is saying this is what I’ve been reaching for professionally all my life and a few days later he kills himself. I don’t know if there’s a connection between the two but I so wish someone had been there – that at that dark moment in his life he hadn’t found himself alone.

Because we all face dark days. We all face times when we need a friend. I think one of the other reasons Bourdain’s’ death has been on my mind so much is simply his age. He’s not much older than I am. In fact, oddly enough he’s about the same age Hemingway was when Hemingway killed himself. Hemingway died at 61 a few weeks before his 62nd birthday. Birthdays can be troubling events. Not everyone finds the passing of another year something to celebrate. But growing old is inevitable. So too is dying. So you’d think the inevitability of death would make life worth living but it doesn’t when you’re depressed because when you’re depressed even the smallest daily tasks can seem overwhelming and take incredible amounts of energy to complete. Basically, life becomes exhausting. So, how are you supposed to help someone when they won’t talk about their feelings or ask for help? You need to be sensitive to changes in their behaviour and routines. Those can be clues to how they’re feeling and if you suspect a friend or family member is depressed or suicidal then ask them how they’re doing. And then listen. Don’t judge. Just listen. And then urge them to talk to a healthcare professional and get the help they need.

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NOTE: I wrote the original draft of this article on Monday, June 25th which was Bourdain’s 62nd birthday. I didn’t know that at the time it was just one of those weird coincidences you sometimes encounter in life. I’d watched the final episode of Parts Unknown on Sunday, June 24th on CNN

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Other interviews and links about Anthony Bourdain that may be of interest:

If you or someone you know is facing difficult challenges then here a couple of links with information about suicide and suicide prevention.

Links to recent news stories related to suicide and suicide prevention.

Interview Playwright Meredith Taylor-Parry – Part One: Survival Skills

Posted on by James Hutchison

Survival Skills by Meredith Taylor-Parry won the New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest in 2013 and was produced Off Off Broadway by the 13 Street Repertory Company, in New York City in April 2014.

“You want to write the kind of play where people are going to go home and talk about it, and think about it, and talk about themselves a little bit. You know, my God, if it got people to think about their own mortality a little bit, how could that be a bad thing? We all run around scared to talk about it, but we’re fascinated by it at the same time. The idea that we’re mortal. Just to have that discussion opened up wouldn’t hurt.”

Playwright Meredith Taylor-Parry Survival Skills
Playwright Meredith Taylor-Parry – Photograph by James Hutchison

Her most recent work, Book Club was developed as part of the Suncor Stage One Festival at Lunchbox Theatre and will receive a world premiere at Lunchbox in February.

I sat down with Meredith, while her four-month-old Beagle Tucker, lay happily nearby chewing puppy toys, to talk with her about Survival Skills and Book Club, as well as her writing process.

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JAMES HUTCHISON

When you go to a play what is it you go for? What is it you hope to get out of it?

MEREDITH TAYLOR-PARRY

I guess I want to be moved emotionally, always. I like Opera. I always write while I listen to Opera. I want to be moved. I like the tragic. I like stories where you watch people getting put through the wringer. Watching characters go through hell and then some. And I like stories and plays with some expression of hope at the end. That’s very important. It doesn’t need to be wrapped up perfectly, but just something.

JAMES

Tell me about the reason you wrote Survival Skills.

MEREDITH

Well, my Dad committed suicide in two thousand and two after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, and I always knew that I wanted to write about it. I never thought about writing a novel – I always thought it would be a play.

JAMES

How difficult was it to put that out into the world? Because that’s a very personal thing.

MEREDITH

It was difficult, but when an experience like that happens to you – or at least my experience is – you’re compelled to tell that story over and over and over again.

And I’ve heard some people say, yeah but some people never want to talk about it again – but that wasn’t me. I was compelled to tell that story to friends – to grief groups –I’m just compelled to share it. I don’t know how many times my mom and I would get on the phone after it happened and we’d end up retelling that day – the actual event – when we found the suicide note – when we called the police – when my brother went out to look at the body that afternoon.

And I originally thought the play was going to open with that scene, but then I went to a Playworks Ink Conference in 2011 and I signed up early and got into Daniel MacIvor’s workshop. And he started the workshop by reading the scene you’d submitted. And he’s a pretty fantastic actor and he did all the different parts. I had my sister there, my brother there, my mother in the scene, and the character that represented me. We were all there and he just read through that first scene from beginning to end and when he finished – it was silent and he said, “That’s a hell of a way to start a play. People discovering a suicide note.”

And I went, “Yeah, yeah I guess it is.  I wasn’t really thinking about that.”

He said, “We’re going to end the scene right here where your brother hangs up the phone and I want you to write the next scene.”

And I wrote the next scene and that became the first scene of the play because I took his advice – that is a hell of a way to start a play. But I think I needed to write the suicide scene first because that was the hardest scene to write – bar none – and to go back and remember those moments in specific detail.

JAMES

How much do you credit that workshop with moving forward on the play?

MEREDITH

Huge. He looked at me and said, because I had some humour in there, “Meredith, any play that can bring levity to the topic of death needs to be written.” He said, “I myself am terrified of the medical system. I’m not afraid of dying – I’m terrified about becoming a patient of the medical system.”

And here’s this man who has written all these beautiful plays with all this fabulous experience and wisdom but at the same time he’s a really good teacher too. He really has the right touch. And I think he just knew the right thing to say to help keep me going. He also made us promise, before we left the workshop, to send him the first draft by a certain date. And I did, because it’s Daniel MacIvor, right. I wasn’t not going to do it. I was two weeks late, but it made me finish it.

JAMES

You worked on the play for a couple more years and then entered it into the New Plays of Merit Contest in 2013 and won. What was it like getting the phone call that the play had won?

MEREDITH

That’s what my dream was up to that point. That someone was going to phone me up and tell me that I was good enough to win a contest. And I felt really good about it because it was New York. Because to me that was the place where all the good playwrights go. So, that was a real shot in the arm – no question. I felt pretty good about that – but I was stunned.

JAMES

What was it like to go see your play on stage?

MEREDITH

I vowed that I wasn’t going to be critical of my work because I don’t know if this is ever going to happen to me again. The idea of going to New York to see your play – Off Off Broadway in a little old theatre with a little old 92 year old Broadway performer running it. I mean this theatre had a lot of history. Tennessee Williams’ plays were performed there. And I thought, don’t ruin it by sitting there thinking about all the things that are wrong with your play. It wasn’t perfect, and I still think there are things that can be improved about the play, but I just vowed I was going to go and enjoy it.

JAMES

It’s interesting to me because there’s a certain completion to the journey. From the experience of your father having committed suicide, to writing the script, to winning the contest, to getting it produced. How you would sum up the whole experience as you were watching the production with your family?

MEREDITH

Well the first word that popped into my mind was surreal, and the second thing was how much I enjoyed the performances, and how much the actors brought to it. I just vowed I was going to go and enjoy it and I wasn’t going to worry about my family as far as taking care of them or worry about their reactions to it either. But you know, I also worked through a lot of stuff with that play.

When dad was suspecting a bad diagnosis – this was three days before he completed suicide – I phoned his room at the Moncton Hospital from Calgary. And he said, “Oh they’re going to do some tests and things.” Because at first they thought it might be a bowel infection and a reaction to antibiotics. But there was a moment where he hesitated on the phone and in my mind I wondered what was he was going to say next. To me there was something that he meant to say and tell me. Like he opened his mouth to say it and it didn’t come out and I wondered if it was, “Listen if it’s a bad diagnoses this is what I’m going to do.” But he didn’t say anything, and I heard this kind of breath, or hesitation, and I wondered, and wondered, and wondered about that afterwards.

And then I thought, well what would you have done if he had said, you know, this is not going to go well…would I have suspected…because we knew his philosophical stance on end of life.  He always said, “If I ever got a bad diagnosis that would be it.” But it’s a leap in your mind to hear those words and really imagine your father actually doing that.

So I thought, in my state of mind, what would I have done? I probably would have called mom and told her not to leave him for a minute. And then there’s a part of you that would have said, “Okay – whatever you need – I’ll do it – I’ll help you.”

And I did end up inadvertently helping him complete the act by flying to the Maritimes, because when my mother came to pick me up at the airport that’s when he completed. So I felt complicit in that, and that bothered me for a long time, even though it was inadvertent. It was a window of opportunity, and he took it, and I provided that. So, in a way I helped whether I wanted to or not.

I changed the play so that the character who plays me actually does make the decision to fly home to get her mother out of the house so that her father will have the window of opportunity very knowingly not inadvertently.

JAMES

Dramatically that’s a good choice.

MEREDITH

Dramatically it was a hell of a lot better choice than what really happened.

JAMES

Because then the character is active.

MEREDITH

Yes.

JAMES

What do you think your dad would think of this play?

MEREDITH

Wow. I just think he’d be horrified, because he was such a private person. I had to struggle past that a little bit because he’d be so horrified that I laid it all out. But you know what? Whatever form – and I do believe there is some kind of spiritual form that he takes now – I don’t think he has those same opinions any more.

And after he was gone, I pretty quickly said this is more about me than it is about him. This is more about us. And that’s how I was able to write it. I was lucky, because my family wasn’t upset. But dad would have been. I think for sure. But I wouldn’t have had to write it – you know what I mean – unless it had happened.

JAMES

Was it cathartic for your family in some ways?

MEREDITH

Maybe in some ways. I sat right beside my mom and my aunt and I could feel the seat shaking because they cried and cried and they laughed too, but there was a lot of tears you know. I know that my aunt and mom told me they sat up all night in the hotel room talking about it. My brother said, “Man it’s weird to see your life up on stage like that.” But it was probably not as cathartic for them as it was for me

JAMES

What are your hopes for the story?

MEREDITH

I would love to see it produced again, of course. Published and produced. Those are the things that I’m looking for with all my plays. I don’t really want them to just sit stagnant. You want to write the kind of play where people are going to go home and talk about it, and think about it, and talk about themselves a little bit. You know, my God, if it got people to think about their own mortality a little bit, how could that be a bad thing? We all run around scared to talk about it, but we’re fascinated by it at the same time. The idea that we’re mortal. Just to have that discussion opened up wouldn’t hurt.

***

Next week, in Part Two, I talk with Meredith about her play Book Club, and its upcoming production at Lunchbox Theatre.

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Meredith Taylor-Parry Survival Skills - Survival Skills Poster

Survival Skills by Meredith Taylor-Parry

A father takes his life.  The family gathers to mourn.  Only one saw the body.  Only one knows what really happened.

Winner: 2013 New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest

Premiered at 13th Street Repertory – NYC April 3 – May 1, 2014, with the following cast and crew.

  • Directed by Leanora Lange

Cast

  • Kathleen – Aimee Thrasher
  • Annalise – Kristen Busalacchi
  • Eliza – Mary Ruth Baggott
  • Oscar – Jason Kirk
  • Len – Danny Sauls

Crew

  • Stage Manager – Alex Bishop
  • Properties Assistant – Aimee Thrasher
  • Dramatrug – Kurt Hollender
  • Producer – Sandra Nordgren

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Playwright Meredith Taylor-Parry

Meredith Taylor-Parry is a playwright based in Calgary, Alberta. Her play Survival Skills won the New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest in 2013 and was produced Off Off Broadway by the 13th Street Repertory Company, NYC in April 2014. Her play Devices received a production in Week One of the New Ideas Festival at Alumnae Theatre in Toronto in March of 2015. Her most recent work, Book Club, was developed as part of the Suncor Energy Stage One Festival of New Canadian Work at Lunchbox Theatre in Calgary in 2014 and will receive a world premiere at Lunchbox in February 2016. Meredith is Co-Artistic Director of Bigs and Littles Theatre Society and also enjoys writing and performing for young audiences.

You can contact Meredith at LinkedIn by clicking the link above or by email at: mtaylorparry@gmail.com

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Survival Skills by Meredith Tyalor-Parry – Synopsis

“He saw a window of opportunity.”

A man diagnosed with terminal cancer commits suicide, leaving his family behind to struggle with the aftermath. Our journey begins 20 years later as Annalise and her sister sit at their dying mother’s bedside. The daughters are compelled to relive with the audience the horrible days following their father’s death when those closest to him came together to mourn and try to understand his choice. The play moves between past and present.

Their father’s decision is a controversial one. It was terribly painful for his wife and children to experience such a sudden, violent loss. But as we watch the sisters sit with their mother we begin to understand the motives behind his action. Is the choice to let death come in its prolonged and often agonizing way any less traumatic for those involved? Should we have the right to choose?

As in any time of family crises, personalities clash and sibling rivalries are revisited. Annalise’s frustration grows as her father is both accused of being a coward and applauded as hero. Finally she reveals an awful secret; her father needed her help. It is only by sifting through the memories that haunt her, that she will find forgiveness.

New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest

New Works of Merit is an international playwriting contest developed in 2003 to bring works of social significance to the general public.

13th Street Repertory Company

The 13th Street Repertory Company, founded in 1972 by Artistic Director Edith O’Hara, provides a place for actors, directors, playwrights, and technicians to develop their craft in a caring, nurturing, professional environment.

Link to Interview with Juliet Liraz
Link to The Hemingway Solution Parts Unknown, and Anthony Bourdain