Being untouched by reality yet living a life that’s engraved in it. That is how Water came about. It is a non-sequential interlace of real life experiences that take form through some sort of familiarity with the fictitious character that lives inside all of us.
Marios Stilianakis
The protagonists in this play, Bill and Ali (played by David Bennett and Bobby Naderi), unfold their lives on stage and give us a taste of two worlds that are as similar as they are different. Throughout the play, the most dominant element is the very same quality we all share at levels vaster and more powerful than we could ever admit or even imagine: our common sense of humanity.
The two protagonists were made to mirror each and every one of us at our most intimate and at our most basic level – and that is exactly how Water tackles human existence. It is drawn upon and inspired by personal experiences and by stories that span from the Middle East to Europe to the U.S. and deal with issues as varied as religion, war, individual and collective happiness, love and hate.
But above all, Water deals with the concept of humanity at its most basic level: the individual.
I grew up in a war zone. I lived through two wars, had come to see hundreds of thousands of war victims and, in the end, in order to escape from it all, I began to imagine a life in a new world, a place and time where the collective would actually stand up and protect and nurture the individual.
Things don’t always work out that way, though, do they?
In Water, we are exposed to the exact opposite of “the collective” – whatever that might be; for above all, Ali and Bill are individuals, nothing more and nothing less. It is the individual perspective that stands tall against the overwhelming force of the collective “no” or, for a matter of fact, the collective “yes;” and of any sort of fanaticism accompanying them.
Does it really matter who we are if all we’ve done is buy into a camouflaged and absolute “no” or a presumably generous but still disqualifying “yes?” Where do we all stand when those who are given the power to make the rules are no longer individuals but individual entities, corporations, religious or political groups, even governments?
Bobby Naderi and David Bennett in Water.Photo by Eric Mastil
What would happen to the world if its vastness was tackled not as a compelling journey outwards but as an eye-opening discovery of the world within? What if our individual worlds were all that we had to belong to? So much has been said and done in the name of the collective! What if we could de-universalize our world and begin to look at our co-existence through the lens of our own individual eyes?
If we’re not part of an army, not part of a country, not part of a town or a village, would we still have so much to differ on? What would happen to us if our whole world was just “you and me?” Would we still judge and hate and differ with each other? Or, would our humanity take over and force us to see each other as human beings of a collective that has no boundaries and no differences between its members?
It is the pain, the reality, the beauty and hope in such questions that propelled the creation and materialization and the on-stage direction and visual presentation of Water. Two men, as different and as similar as we all are to each other, are left alone with no other than the most basic and naked parts of their individualism! Human to human! How would we all come to view life if we, too, had been placed in that predicament? That is the core question behind the inspiration of Water…
Water, written and directed by Marios Stilianakis, is produced by Zeke Rettman for Left to Right Productions. Opens Sept. 10; plays Fri.-Sat., 8 pm; Sun., 3 pm; until Oct. 17. Tickets: $20. The Lounge Theatre, 6201 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood; 323.960.7711 or plays411.com/water.
