Hymns To The Obvious - A Play Written by Robert Weinstein
Robert Weinstein, our far too humble host and resident storytelling teacher has written yet another play, which was performed by the Barrow Group, and we get to talk about it, celebrate it, and accidentally tear into it.
Read the play here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1O_pb-vqXSIgZY2o9UsmZRMpkdBG1STGN?usp=sharing
THE ARC'S TAKE
We dig into a ten-minute play about an angry old woman recording an iPad message instead of just calling her granddaughter, and argue the whole thing works precisely because Robby never decided why — the best writing choices are the ones you don't consciously make.
EPISODE SUMMARY
This week on The Arc, an elderly woman records a message to her granddaughter on an iPad, and somehow that's the whole play — no plot, just a furious 67-year marriage's worth of regret, delivered in ten minutes. Robby wrote it under deadline pressure and still isn't sure it's finished, but we argue it's close to perfect, right down to a running gag lifted from David Mamet. You don't need to have read the script first, though we give you the link if you want to.
New To The Show?
New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning with Episode 01: The Princess Bride.
A Long Summary
Robby wrote a ten-minute play called Hymns to the Obvious, and this episode is the three of us sitting inside it — the script, the staging, the drinks after with the performer and the playwright — trying to figure out how a thing with almost no plot ends up being all story. Janice Tenexis is a woman in a nursing home recording a video reply to her granddaughter's letter asking for relationship advice, while the attendant, Teresa, quietly narrates the whole thing and, less quietly, the transfer papers sitting on Janice's desk. Janice was married sixty-seven years to a man whose optimism annoyed the hell out of her, and only now, too late, does she miss him. She hates ducks. She calls people morons and figures they know where she stands. She describes a town singing hymns in the church of the obvious and slinging gin fizzies at the cocktail lounge of heavenly matches — lines so good that one of us threatened to get a tattoo of one.
What the conversation is actually about is where writing comes from and when you're allowed to stop. Robby says he writes characters the way he wishes people existed — more patient, more articulate — and that the best line in the play arrived because he heard Janice say it, not because he built it. There's a running device where every mention of the senior center drags along the name of the town and its elementary school and a mandatory "Go Hooks," which the actress found nearly impossible to perform and which Robby refused to cut, because some things feel too good to let go. Cole calls that bit the closest the play gets to the Platonic form of a play itself; Jaclynn, who's realized she can only ever write in her own voice and has made peace with it by embodying the cruel voices in her head instead, keeps circling how you get the picture in your head out into the world without losing it.
The best part, and the reason to spend the time, is Cole asking why Janice records a video instead of just calling — a question so pointed it plays like a profound story choice, until Robby admits, flatly and repeatedly, that he never thought of the other options at all. Cole cannot stop making it worse. It becomes a small essay on the difference between what an artist intends and what an audience swears they meant, complete with a Phoebe Waller-Bridge appearance and Dad digging the hole several feet deeper before anyone can get him to put down the shovel. If you found this searching for the film, know that we treat ten minutes of it more seriously than most people treat features — and that Robby blushes on tape at least once.
CREATIVES
- Robert Weinstein — Playwright
- The Barrow Group — Producing Theater
Full cast and director information was not available for this production.
SOURCE MATERIAL
Hymns to the Obvious is an original short play written by Robert Weinstein — our far too humble host and resident storytelling teacher — performed by The Barrow Group. Read the play here.
FUN FACTS / PRODUCTION TRIVIA
The recurring "Go Hooks" civic-pride tic that drives Janice crazy is explicitly modeled on a device from David Mamet's State and Main — that film's fictional town of Waterford has its own nonsensical all-purpose chant, connected to the town's history, with "Go you Huskies!" serving as the town's all-purpose rallying cry. Critics have noted this is a hallmark of how Mamet builds comedy through repetition, misdirection, and his own unique dialogue rhythm rather than punchlines — precisely the mechanism Robby borrows for the "Palmer McKinney" refrain.
The Stephen Colbert/Phoebe Waller-Bridge anecdote we use to describe Robby's unintentional depth is also real. During a 2020 remote interview, Colbert asked Waller-Bridge what the fox in Fleabag means, and she declined to answer, then asked Colbert what he thought it meant. Colbert offered that he thought the fox was the "Hound of Heaven," then recited the Francis Thompson poem of that title as his evidence, and Waller-Bridge said she was "completely blown away," responding "Yes, that's what it is!" — she then asked him "Can you do that whenever anyone asks what I said the fox was?", essentially adopting his reading as her own on the spot, which is the exact dynamic we are pointing to when we compare it to Robby's iPad choice.
Sources:
- https://www.avclub.com/david-mamet-s-state-and-main-engineers-a-perfect-punchl-1798240443
- https://collider.com/stephen-colbert-phoebe-waller-bridge-fleabag-fox-explained/
- https://startefacts.com/news/stephen-colbert-s-take-on-fleabag-s-biggest-mystery-is-so-lit-even-phoebe-waller-bridge-gave-up_a138
RELATED ARC EPISODES
New to The Arc? Start with Episode 02: The Fantastic Four if you like Marvel movies — and want to hate us forever and tell your friends how lame we are.
SOUND DESIGN ATTRIBUTION
CRWDReac_Crowd Mmm In Agreement 01 by ShangusBurger | License: Creative Commons 0
CRWDApls_Snapping 02 by ShangusBurger | License: Creative Commons 0
Transcript
I write characters
2
:the way that I wish they existed
in the world, It's so realistic.
3
:But it's not reality.
4
:I think there's a truth in it.
5
:If you want to read Robby's play,
before you listen to the rest of this,
6
:There will be a link to it
in the description,
7
:and if you have ten minutes,
you will get to experience
8
:the full array of human emotions.
9
:I know you, she said.
10
:That shouldn't just be between us.
11
:You need to say that out loud, too. Yeah.
12
:I hate plot so much, but I love stories.
13
:That's awesome.
14
:And it's so true.
15
:Yeah.
16
:the fact you just have instantly handed me
17
:something that has kind of no plot,
18
:but lots of story is tickling me
to no end.
19
:I love this play so much.
20
:what's the story to both of you two?
21
:since there isn't, like jumping off
buildings.
22
:Plot, plot plot.
23
:You have the phrase singing hymns
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:in the church of the obvious.
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:It's such a mythical, apocryphal
sounding phrase.
26
:I want to hear how you got to that,
because it is magical.
27
:When and how do you know
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:when something is finished?
29
:What was that moment for this?
30
:For him.
31
:So the obvious.
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:I know when I'm willing.
33
:once I take the first step to make it
a reality.
34
:That's very funny,
because I was walking through a gigantic,
35
:cathedral
to capitalism today called Hudson Yards.
36
:Surrounded by
37
:people who are very good at business
and very good at corporate things.
38
:And I just kept mumbling,
wow, I am not good at business.
39
:So it's very funny to hear you say,
oh, coal is good at business.
40
:but, like,
41
:It also.
42
:just because of like
43
:I forgotten what I was going to ask you.
44
:Everybody, Oh, the voices in your head.
45
:I'm wondering how you, Affect.
46
:How the dialog ends up
sounding to other people
47
:in the real world.
48
:Yeah.
49
:Let me ask that again.
50
:It's, you know exactly how you want dialog
to sound in your head.
51
:You can hear it in your head
in a certain rhythm, in a certain cadence,
52
:or in an exact rhythm
and an exact cadence.
53
:But once you've written something
and once you're interacting with it,
54
:and once actors are speaking it,
55
:it may not sound the same.
56
:How do you either deal with that tension
or how do you affect.
57
:The final outcome of how it sounds with
how you wrote it in the first place?
58
:but. my friend.
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:You have done a bookend and repetition.
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:How dare you! Oh. Yeah.
61
:And then,
62
:this bit of repetition
and the idiosyncratic nature of it
63
:is the number one thing about the play
that makes it such
64
:a perfect representation
of the format of a play itself.
65
:Like in their,
I wish I knew this for real, but like this
66
:the Greek sense of there
is something innate in a form,
67
:and there's the perfect idea of this form,
this recurring bit
68
:that you do is very close to,
like the perfect form
69
:of a play.
70
:loved it.
71
:Because it's not realistic in many ways.
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:Like if you walked into a town
and people actually did this, you're like,
73
:what's. Why?
74
:Oh, really?
75
:I grew up in freaking
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:In a more complimentary
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:way, I should say that
my notes about this was.
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:It's so realistic.
79
:But it's not reality.
80
:Let me ask
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:Robbie's question
in a different way as well.
82
:How would you go about writing a wizard?
83
:And what would the wizard sound
like in your head?
84
:Yeah.
85
:What's your favorite line from your play,
Robbie? Wow.
86
:I have never met someone who hates ducks.
87
:I've been attacked by geese
multiple times, and yet I don't.
88
:I know, duh,
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:It's in.
90
:Character.
91
:It's a perfect natural title.
92
:now my favorite line is going to sound
pithy, but, Janice
93
:the grandmother has just called somebody
a moron.
94
:Very bluntly, and it's been noticed.
95
:And Janice clarifies with
96
:she knows where I stand.
97
:those blonds,
as I've heard a character be.
98
:But keep it realistic within the world.
99
:And I always want my characters
to be blunter and blunter.
100
:But they teeter off the deep
end of believability.
101
:When I get to that.
Something like that. So I loved it.
102
:Is recording is through an iPad
103
:and sending a message from a nursing home
back to somebody a normal thing?
104
:Or is that, like, a huge story decision
to say these people are so just.
105
:She's so disconnected
from her granddaughter
106
:that they are not going
to pick up the phone and call.
107
:Well, they definitely.
108
:Yeah,
109
:you know, or someone
who can really be bothered by it, but I,
110
:I mean
111
:it was not a book.
112
:Call.
113
:It was the opposite of poking holes.
114
:It was saying it's such a distinct choice,
because obviously,
115
:There's no way in on unearth. that.
116
:You didn't have the thought.
117
:People pick up phones and call each other.
118
:You're not helping.
119
:Stop talking.
These two people just said he. Didn't.
120
:don't.
121
:Obviously nothing.
122
:Obviously. No. Jabroni.
123
:You wouldn't think,
124
:I actually did not
125
:Does it help if I say No.
126
:that it came off as profound?
127
:Yeah. It did.
128
:I agree, it felt like a very
129
:I'm so sorry.
130
:Obviously,
131
:What do you mean by a media?
132
:I'm sorry. I.
