Saying Goodbye to Too Much Light: a Personal Story

CHICAGO, Il: Upon the release of his 2015 book “Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind: 90 Plays from the First 25 Years," Greg Allen released the rights to independent theaters to perform the play.

I was lucky enough to co-direct a production of that play with high school students as the cast members. At the black box theater at DeLaSalle Institute in Chicago, students performed the plays, which varied from an opinion on gun violence to true love, to a two-minute rendition of classic Shakespeare performed with Oreos.

My heart was hit with a personal grief that extended beyond that of a fan of the show when I read the press release Allen issued Nov. 30.

“Faced with the pending inauguration of Donald J. Trump, Allen has decided to let the existing Chicago Neo-Futurists’ license come to an end so that he can rebrand the show with a new diverse ensemble that embraces a specifically socially activist mission,” the release states. “Having always been an ensemble of writer/performers who aim to directly express their lives and their issues on stage without artifice, the new “Too Much Light” ensemble will be comprised entirely of people of color, LBTQ+, artist/activist women, and other disenfranchised voices in order to combat the tyranny of censorship and oppression.”

But I was also torn.

The revolutionary in me wants to jump for joy. Allen is essentially doing in theater the same thing that The Tangled Thread is doing with the written word. But, before I raise a glass of champagne to the revolutionary in Allen, I have to pause to say goodbye to a show that holds an intensely special place in my heart.

The lights on the show, which has run 50 weeks a year since 1988, will go out on Dec. 31. It seems fitting to me that 2016, which has for many been a year of release and grieving, be the year that this show ends its run in its original incarnation.

I hesitate to write about my reaction to Too Much Light on The Tangled Thread because my reaction is highly personal.

But, I am spurred on because my emotions surrounding the show are found in the places where we come together. In grief, we come together. In heartbreak we come together, in using our creativity to change the world, we come together.

My grief in hearing of the shift in the show is another place where I say goodbye again to the most real, most beautiful relationship I have ever been in.

Despite watching my friends go see this show again and again when I was in high school and college, I did not go see this show performed until 2014. At the time, I was in what would turn out to be a four-year relationship with a man who in many ways showed me how to love. This show had a special place in that man’s heart. The Neo-Futurists had a special place in his heart...his heart was meant for this theater troop.

So, when I see stories saying sad goodbyes to Too Much Light, I also see another instance in which I grieve the loss of that love that was the truest I have ever known.

In addition to my own personal sadness, I am sad for the theater scene in Chicago where almost every night for the last 28 years, people lined up outside the theater on Ashland Avenue, rolled dice, got a new name and saw a show that the audience controlled. Every night, the story changed. And that is what kept it alive. Its not dissimilar from my relationship that is intrinsically tied to Too Much Light -- or any relationship for that matter.

It creates ways to reinvent itself to survive. It changes because everyone involved in it changes.

Plays close. It is a part of the beauty of the theater.

And this time, Allen has made a decision that the Neo-Futurists could not change enough to create the new vision he had. Allen left the Neo-Futurists four years ago, but retained the rights/license to TML.

For their part, the members of the Neo-Futurists also released a statement about the closing of Too Much Light.

“While we are disappointed that it has come to this conclusion, throughout our long history with Greg, there have been considerable artistic differences and irreconcilable personal conflicts,” the release states. “The company is dedicated to moving forward in 2017 with the full support of our Board of Directors and the enthusiastic commitment of our talented and diverse ensemble.”

When I directed Too Much Light at DeLaSalle, something was missing from the pulse of the show. My students were performing plays that had been written by the Neo-Futurists in the first 25 years of the performances. They were not performing plays that they themselves had written. They were telling other people’s stories. Too Much Light is so appealing in part because the plays that are performed are first-person stories. The Neo-Futurists are telling their own stories.

So I applaud Allen’s decision to move forward with a cast make up that has lived the very stories he wants to tell. I applaud his bravery in ending something that lasted for 28 years because his vision changed. Allen needed to tell authentic stories that were less about Shakespeare performed with Oreos and more about the heartbreak of gun violence, the fear of living as a woman in America where grabbing someone by the pussy is acceptable from the president-elect, the true crisis of consciousness that someone who realizes they are gay faces when deciding when and how to come out of the closet.

These stories can only be told by the people who have lived them. To have a white person perform a play about systemic racism does not work the same way.

Allen has made a decision to have the play performed in such a way to give voice to the very same people as The Tangled Thread.

“The new ensemble will perform in a variety of theaters and spaces in neighborhoods all over Chicago, giving space and voice to marginalized people in the predominately white, patriarchal Chicago theater community,” the written release states. “The ensemble will also create and perform fundraisers for organizations fighting for civil rights – a central part of the mission of the new company.”

I will go see Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind one more time. I will grieve the original show and my relationship with it. And then, like we do in our own lives, I will pick up and look toward the future, much like the Neo-Futurists who lost their license must do.

#TooMuchLightMakestheBabyGoBlind