Thoughts on love, compassion, sex, and relationships after seeing "The Goat, Or Who I

Last night I saw Edward Albee's The Goat, Or Who is Sylvia? The play was intense and provocative. Your notions of "morality" are challenged-- it definitely challenges you to think!

Martin is a successful architect, he's at the prime of his career, and there are great expectations placed on him on his next move. He's been married for more than 20 years to an intelligent and a woman with a great sense of humor and appreciation for metaphor, Stevie. Their son Billy is gay, and they are both "fine" with it.

He confesses to his best friend that he is being unfaithful to his wife-- he is in love and is both ecstatic and deeply conflicted by it. His new love is a goat-- or Sylvia.

Throughout the play Stevie, Billy, his best friend call him a goat fucker and sick.

Yes, beastiality is not conventionally accepted in society-- although it's not uncommon (I'd like to read more about what Kinsey has to say about this). But this play is not really about beastiality or "goat fucking." It's about a man who feels alone despite all his success-- everyone expects him to be a certain way and conduct himself in a respectable manner, as an award winning architect should. He loves his wife and son-- but still something is missing.

He escapes the city and travels to the country in the search of a country home . . . and peace. Then he meets "Sylvia" and he feels a connection-- a kind of closeness and tender understanding that does not include making judgments about him based on who he is and how he should be. This fills him like a rush, unlike anything he has ever experienced. Everything he has ever known tells him that this is not right, but it's already happened-- he's in love.

I think it's a play that wants to challenge it's audience-- How tolerant are you? How long until your "traditional values" are triggered and you decide to judge Martin and what he has done? Is all closeness kissing and touching sexual?

In a society were sex has been commodified to a point where it is not only an expression of love, but it is largely seen as a release of "primal urges"-- it is jolting and disturbing for the audience to learn that Martin is not only deeply connected in a spiritual kind of sense, but also sexually with a goat. But this play is not really about a man who has sex with a goat or beastiality-- the goat can be a metaphor for any kind of "unconventional" relations and the nature of love.

Those are just some initial thoughts for now . . . I think I need to think about this some more . . .



(This was previously posted on the L.A.W.C. blog)