Robert Johnson. Jimi Hendrix. Janis Joplin. Jim Morrison. Kurt Cobain.
Strong associations appear simply in the mentioning of these artists’ names. Their massive musical ability is matched only by the vastness of their captivating personalities. These are the musicians who fueled the heart of rock & roll, fastening thick arteries that stretch like highways over space and time, journeying on a dusty Greyhound bus out of the Mississippi Delta to New York, San Francisco, Seattle and far beyond. Their lives are an inherent source of fascination, simultaneously revered, reviled, mourned and martyred.
For those of us whose lives exist outside the sphere of the super-famous, celebrities give us cause to press our noses to the glass, inspiring us to dream of money, exaltation, love by the millions. But that window into a more perfect life may be a fishbowl in disguise, distorting how the person inside sees, hears and relates to the world. Even the truest of artists can fall victim to the pressures of exhaustion and over-exposure; the Dionysian burn that is the agony and ecstasy of sex, drugs and rock & roll.
We hail our rock stars as prophets or oracles, blessed with a rare and divine gift. Yet we revel when stars fall, watching with anticipation their divorce, their latest arrest, their most recent trip to rehab.
But what is it that sets these five apart from any other tabloid victim? One strong possibility could be that they all belong to the infamous 27 Club, a longstanding rock & roll legend that mysteriously claims the lives of promising young musicians. Another could be the confliction that surrounds each of their deaths. There are conspiracy theories by the score, be it murder, suicide or misadventure.
Or maybe it’s because we reflect on their lost years as intensely as their lived ones. Jim might have become a respected novelist. Kurt might have used his popularity to campaign for various political causes between albums. Janis one day might have been someone’s sweet, impish grandmother. The world will never know.
What makes UNPLUGGED such an immediately intriguing piece are reflections like these on the duality of celebrity. But the scope of these two plays is much more ambitious. As a dramaturg, part of my job is to create a strong foundation of information for the play to build upon. I attempted to better understand who the artists’ were while they were alive, in order to imagine who these artists’ are in the afterlife.
But mostly I played inside the cracks of speculation, and discovered a powerful empathy. By meditating on what is known and what is ultimately unknowable, the possibilities of artistic expression are pulled into focus, yielding a truer understanding of these artists striving to transcend beyond the fishbowl and find enlightenment inside of the music that defines them.
