ندیده

by Donald Margulies, Mahtab Safdari (Translator)

جاناتان نقاش امریکایی بسیار سرشناسی است و قرار است به زودی نمایشگاهی از آثار وی در لندن برپا شود. پیش از آغاز نمایشگاه، جاناتان به روستایی در انگلستان سفر می‌کند که پاتریشا، عشق دوران جوانی‌اش به همراه شوهرش نیک، در آنجا زندگی می‌کند. در خانه‌ی سرد و دورافتاده‌ی آنها، جاناتان یکی از نقاشی‌های قدیمی خود از پاتریشا را می‌بیند و تنش از همان‌جا آغاز می‌شود. پاتریشا هرگز جاناتان را نبخشیده، نیک از جاناتان و نقاشی‌های او بیزار است و چشمه‌ی الهام جاناتان خشک شده و دیگر نمی‌تواند آثار نابی همچون گذشته بیافریند.
ندیده رفت و آمدی است میان گذشته و حال. شخصیت‌ها با پرسش‌هایی بی‌پاسخ و پیامد تصمیم‌های گذشته‌ی خود روبه‌رو می‌شوند و اکنون نیز ناچارند تصمیم‌هایی تازه بگیرند. اما هر تصمیمی بر سرنوشت خویش و دیگری تأثیر می‌گذارد.
دونالد مارگولیز از اندوه از دست رفتن عشق، جایگاه هنر و هنرمند در جامعه، انسانیت، بی‌تفاوتی نسبت به دیگران، میراث گذشتگان و اثر فرهنگ و سنت بر زندگی آدم‌ها می‌گوید. رشته‌های اندیشه، عواطف و روزمرگی را در هم می‌تند و با روایتی زندگی‌گونه، لحظه‌هایی جذاب، به یادماندنی، واقعی و تفکربرانگیز می‌آفریند

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre, Audiobook, Fiction

106 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Born in Brooklyn in 1954, Donald Margulies grew up in Trump Village, a Coney Island housing project built by Donald Trump's father. Margulies was exposed early to the theatre. His father, a wallpaper salesman, played show tunes on the family hi-fi and, despite a limited income, often took his children to Manhattan to attend Broadway plays and musicals.

Margulies studied visual arts at the Pratt Institute before transferring to State University of New York to pursue a degree in playwriting. During the early 80s, he collaborated with Joseph Papp, and his first Off-Broadway play, Found a Peanut, was produced at the Public Theatre. In 1983, he moved with his wife to New Haven, Connecticut, so that she could attend Yale Medical School.

In 1992, Margulies' career really began to take off when Sight Unseen won an Obie for Best New American Play. Some of his other plays include The Loman Family Picnic; Pitching to the Star; Zimmer; Luna Park; What's Wrong With This Picture?; The Model Apartment; Broken Sleep; July 7, 1994, and The God of Vengeance. Dinner With Friends--which tells the story of a seemingly happy couple who re-examine their own relationship when their best friends decide to divorce--won Margulies a 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He had previously been nominated for a Pulitzer for Collected Stories, a play about a Jewish writer who is betrayed by her young disciple.

Elected to the Dramatists Guild Council in 1993, Margulies has received grants from Creative Artists Public Service (CAPS), New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. His plays have premiered at Manhattan Theatre Club, South Coast Repertory, The New York Shakespeare Festival and the Jewish Repertory Theatre. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut, where he teaches playwriting at the Yale School of Drama.

Reviews

[Bobby Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good play. And I even found a good monologue for auditions. :)

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s never good when, only a few weeks after reading a play, the title doesn’t ring a bell and, once it does, I can’t remember anything about the plot.

Thanks, Wikipedia, for providing enough of a summary for me to remember that, yes, I have read this play, and yes, I do remember enough of the plot to write a review.

Sight Unseen is about an artist and his former lover, and it has some good moments and an interesting driver to the plot. The play is good but not great (hence totally forgetting I had read it only a few weeks after the fact – and I usually have a creepy good memory when it comes to books). Old lovers reuniting is a common theme – if you haven’t seen the The Song of Lunch with Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson, you’re missing out (it’s essentially a film set to a poem! With good actors!) – and Sight Unseen doesn’t have enough to make it stand out as new or different. Quasi-recommended.

[Bryce]

loved the final scene. The entire interview with Grete was fantastic as well. Makes you think about the points in which creations transfer from the demands of its creator into the demands of its consumers, then transfers again to satisfy the demands brought by commodification.
I feel like whatever else this is trying to say gets caught with up a sort of sputtering quality, but I think it works between Pat and Jon?

[Brian McCann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Second Margulies play I’ve read recently and REALLY liked. It’s structure is non-linear, but so compelling and fulfilling. Glad to read it after seeing its revival at the Biltmore in the early 2000s.

[Current Affairs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well. The main female character is very blah. The kind you'd be 180% sure was written by a man in the late 20th century. But that is what she is, after all.
Great humor in the play, very good rhythm.

[Chuck O'Connor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting relationships with some gripping scenes that hurt due to the characters raw honesty but I have no clue what the play's theme is and the fractured structure does not offer any hint. Any time a play chooses a non-linear structure there is the expectation that the time-jumps will work to prove a premise. That isn't the case here. The structure feels arbitrary. It fails to reveal a protagonist and works to present the key conflict as static. Still, Margulies writes very honest characters whose tactics in dealing with each other are surprising without being implausible.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Artist Jonathan reunites with a long-lost love. But to what purpose? To catch up on old times, or steal away the one painting that gave him a sense of grounding in both his life and heritage? Marguiles draws up some bitter conclusions about the artist's need to capitalize and cannibalize on themselves and loved ones, but this play is worth reading, if only for its final scene, one of the loveliest scenes of introduction I've ever read.

[Aaron McGuire · Rating 2 out of 5]

It wasn't bad, but it was extremely mediocre. I listened to it on audiobook -- it was given a bit of extra life by Adam Arkin and an excellent cast. But the whole purpose of the play was unclear, and it felt like spinning wheels to some extent. The non-traditional format with the time swaps fell flat without a purpose. There were some definite high points, and I didn't strictly dislike it, but it was a far cry from great.

[Lorma Doone · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this in one sitting. Pretty mediocre.

I'm over plays where the woman's sole purpose is to be a foil for the male. The woman who can't move on. Where are the strong women characters in plays? Do we always have to be victims of lovelorn shit and unrequited love? Fuck that.

The 2 stars are for the conversations about art. That was the most engaging element of the play for me.

[Gabrielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This play is tightly written and explores important and interesting issues about home and heritage and art. It is quick and deep -- contemporary to the core. I liked the structure of the scenes in different locations and back and forth in time and using a spare four characters.

[Siouxsie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm playing the role of Grete in this play this December. I'm really interested in the playwright's notes about Grete's fascination with Jonathan. Does she represent the educated or uneducated viewer of art? What is her role as the media?

[Sean Evans]

Sight Unseen. by Donald Margulies (1998)

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting. The play flips back and forth in time. It has a juggling of a broken relationship, artist's integrity, and anti-semitism.