by Joshua Gryniewicz

The Expiration Date on Fairy-Tale Romance
copyright (c) 2003 by Josh Gryniewicz

On the premiere night of Chris Demian’s “Waves Under Broken Ice,” a surreal, anti-romantic romance about love in the 21st century – a 19-year-old woman in the front row wrung hand over hand and bit her lip to hold back tears. Her lip quivered, her eyes grew watery and they darted from the on-stage action

to the man sitting next to her.

She wanted to cry, to release tears that were growing in her chest and pushing themselves toward that quivering lip, to let free a wail that had been building for years. A wail that seemed echoed on stage in the character Joy (Lisa Rizzi). A wail against year’s of dating big bad wolves that posed themselves in the garb of a charming prince; of watching her mother precondition her toward making those mistakes; of a society that still hasn’t completely asserted the role of the independent woman in an era after liberation. A wail against the fairy tale fantasies of damsels in distress rescued by errant knights who would make them beautiful princesses washed away like elaborate sand castles in the tide of reality.

Immediately following the curtain call this woman leapt from her seat rushed to the actress and wrapped her arms around her, she gave her a deep embrace and wrestled her from ear shot of the boyfriend beside her whose presence had kept her from sobbing aloud. She told Lisa, the actress who portrayed Joy – that the character that she had embodied was so reminiscent of her own life that she would return the next night alone to watch again and permit herself a good cry. She went to Chris, the writer, and thanked him personally, telling him that he had opened her eyes to so many things that she hadn’t been prepared to admit to herself. She returned the next night, she cried and later, her sentiments were echoed repeatedly by other members of the audience every night of the production. Interestingly, Lisa herself had been making this same statement since the first week of rehearsals.

It had been an amazing enough a feat that the production had been carried off in the first place. Cast doubled as crew; lights, sound and seating were begged, borrowed and hijacked; the theater location twice had pulled the production before it had gone up, twice the weather had threatened the same and once a week rehearsal’s were held at actor’s apartments. Actors did their own marketing performing at open mic nights, designed the posters and part of the play was even added three weeks into production. Furthermore, for Chris the play embodied the nomenclature “life imitates art” inspired by one of the most convoluted, chaotic moments of his life where in the matter of an evening he proposed, was engaged to be married, was rejected, got a separated and broke up. He stated that if there was one thing he wanted from the show, it was that reaction, it was this “art” to imitate “life.”

That night we celebrated a premiere performance, the maiden production of Chris’ theater troupe and a well-earned page in the memoirs – but more so, we celebrated a collective personal closure to outmoded relationship models.

Three members of the production of “Waves,” Kurt the Forlorn (Assistant Producer); Chris of the Broken Heart (Writer, Producer and Actor); and I -- Josh of the Crisis Codependency (Co-writer and Director) would take from the experience something not necessarily included in the script. “Waves” builds to the pivotal moments of eight relationships and as the metaphorical title indicates shows the emotions build to a surge captured beneath that frozen, frustrated ice – in other words, just as in life, relationships do not always have clean closure or idyllic romantically incurable conclusions.

Interestingly, as off stage drama fought to eclipse the drama on-stage our trio would each come to a different conclusion about our own romantic relationships.

We three Knights had been seated at the Round Table, well at the very least a round table, to prove chivalry wasn’t dead it had just been confined to the back section of a 24-hour greasy spoon restaurant. The conversation – not surprisingly -- focused on love and love lost, women, relationships, broken hearts and romantic crisis. These stories were executed in a narrative style that was a hybrid combination between a self-important, self-deluded narrative that featured the speaker in a thrilling action/adventure plot starring which ever one of us telling the story as leading man and soap operatic gossip. For this reason we had christened ourselves the Knights of the Knitting Circle.

Collette Dowling’s “Cinderella Complex” popularized the fairy tale motif of the princess in waiting for her prince, a “complex” which has since been attributed to everything from body image and eating disorders to perpetuating domestic violence by reinforcing domesticity and acting as a barrier to women gaining financial independence. It represents the social programming that has become an internal challenge in the wake of women’s liberation challenging the sense of self-reliance. It hinders female empowerment by perpetuating the social programming formula that women must be beautiful, meek, helpless and tender to be worthy of love, but don’t make the mistake of thinking men get off the hook that easy.

Men are instructed that to be worthy of love they must be handsome but modest, gentle but strong, brave but sensitive and preferably rich. That simultaneously these charming Prince providers and protectors confuse respecting their mate’s independence with being self-effacing toward their own contribution to the relationship, which in turn breeds resentment. Above all else men are told they must be an emotional rock that keeps their problems to themselves, so long as they also share what is on their mind.

These contradictory characteristics become complicated when men feel they must play this role and if it doesn’t work out, men are told, then it must be because they are “too nice” and should try to play the “bad boy” for a change.

In “The Uses of Enchantment” Bruno Bettelheim argues that “the knight in shining armor” motif “…offers the story of the unnoticed little boy who goes into the world and makes great success of life. Details may differ, but the basic plot is always the same: the unlikely hero proves himself through slaying dragons, solving riddles, and living by his wits and goodness until eventually he frees the beautiful princess, marries her, and lives happily ever after.” The story of a male hero sacrificing his own sense of self to rescue his “helpless” princess counterpart appears throughout cultures from Hindu literature to modern B-action films.

Dowling observed that the “Cinderella” story reinforces a little girl’s sense that self-preservation and love as achieved through docile co-dependence. It can be further reasoned then that young vulnerable boys who are reared to believe that to vanquish there own fears and inner demons they must first find a woman to rescue as motive for such conquest. This in turn leads to the leading man style stoicism and self-containment achieved through repression. It leads to a crisis dependent relationship cycle where the woman is expected to be in constant distress and the man in constant action.

As on-stage action and back stage theatrics merged these concepts came to a new light, for Chris through the characterization of his lead role Jack, a figure so wrapped in the incurably romantic notions of love that he fails to recognize the individuality and independence of his partner Melissa (Elizabeth Hauser) this lesson was most profound. The result was that such “heroics” were illusory at best and that the objectives of a healthy productive relationship are to foster each other’s growth, aspirations and independence.

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