Taking Back the BIG Nose

Who nose how, or why, or through what unknowable myriad of cultural confluences, big noses came to be looked down on (or at). It's not entirely clear to me why big noses came to be seen in a negative light. In purely Darwinian terms, an enhanced olfactory gland seems an advantage in the process of natural selection, perhaps providing earlier humans with a better awareness of encroaching danger (poisonous food, predators) and giving them an advantage on the hunt. Further, large naval cavities and nasal septums might enhance the nose's respiratory functions, and therefore a potential indicator of better physical fitness. Big noses are even said to make "Eskimo-Kissing" easier.

Yet there's no debating that, culturally speaking, big noses are not desired the same way size is in, say, some other human organs. From the legend of Pinocchio's ever-expanding nose to Severus Snape's (of the Harry Potter series) hooked beak, the nose has never been quite meant as a sign of his sexual prowess, but as a sign of deceit and greed . Of course, big noses are also linked with a negative Jewish stereotype (see: Shylock, The Merchant of Venice), accentuating their reputation as harbingers of selfishness and malevolence.

Cyrano marks a clear, decisive break from this hard-nosed tradition, utilizing it as a symbol for his individuality, exceptionality and unmatched boldness. Cyrano's enemies attack his preposterous extra center-face flesh, and it's instructive that Valvert only finds it necessary to say Cyrano has a "big nose." A big nose, to Valvert's (admittedly puny) mind, speaks for itself--no further elaboration of the insult is necessary.

The nature of Cyrano's rebuttal, in one of the play's most magical scenes, reveals how he turns his nose against his foes. In Cyrano's criticism of Valvert's insult, he accuses Valvert of a lack of imagination, of "wit, or letters." Somewhat correctly, Cyrano equates Valvert's superficial blandness with Valvert's unimaginative mind, and continues the analogy to himself. Rather than allow his big nose to be mired in the usual assumptions, Cyrano equates it with a kind of exceptionality limited to him.

It's a powerful message--not just for those with large noses. Turning what makes you strange into what makes you unique may not seem easy, but Cyrano's ability to do so speaks lengths about his character.

(*Footnote: Of course, there's one awfully glaring hole in this line of logic: Cyrano's unbelievable sensitivity towards the topic of his nose, or as Carbon says, anywhere in the nose area. I tend to view this as one of the play's few flaws, an oversight on Rostand's part inconsistent with the Valvert scene and with Cyrano's character as a whole. For someone who professes such indifference to the opinions of the populace's "chattering curs," Cyrano is awfully averse to teasing about the size of his nose. If I ever reconcile this in my own mind, I'll let you know!)

Three Woofs for Cyrano (Throughout the Ages)!

A few minutes after packing the hand-cart to take the props to today's opening night show, fellow Production Assistant David Martin and I heard a loud thud from the hallway. We rushed to the scene to find the leg of a chair—an important set-piece for the show—irreparably shattered.

Luckily, our mistake did not set the mood of the show. By its end, our actors had made the audience (over 50 strong!) cackle, coo and cry. Much of our audience even barked, including a couple dogs who began yapping loudly away, also apparently in awe of the performance, during the final ovation.

It's remarkable how much our premiere was like the first ever Cyrano show. Just before the curtain first went up on June 28, 1897, the show's playwright Edmund Rostand "fell at the feet of leading actor Constant Coquelin and exclaimed: 'Forgive me! Oh, forgive me, my friend, for having dragged you into this disastrous adventure!'...he then donned a costume and slipped onstage during the first act, causing surprise and confusing among the actors"* I wonder what Coquelin's reaction could have been to this outburst, other than "You tell me this now...?"

Obviously, Rostand's panic attack proved wholly unjustified. And, as with our show, the cast plowed through the unexpected. Although there were no barking dogs in the Theatre de la Porte-Saint-Martin that night, "The first act was greeted with bravos, the following ones with standing ovations, and the final scene with forty-two curtain calls, so many that at two o'clock in the morning the exhausted stage manager simply left the curtain open and went home to bed."*

We have another show to put on tomorrow, so our wonderful Stage Manager Anna Demenkoff was unable to accommodate forty-two curtain calls. Not that the audience wasn't begging, on hands, knees and paws, to give them.

*Courtesy of Peter Connor, Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Barnard College, Columbia University. Written for Barnes & Nobles Classics edition of Cyrano.

Shout-out!

Of those of you who have listened to Reflection Eternal's brilliant new album Revolutions Per Minute (released May 2010), most, I'm guessing, were unaware that it contains a plug for our show, which opens today.

Here's from a song on the album named Long Hot Summer, also appropriate for our show.

Symmetrical braids, incredible edible legs
Just to track her down, I went on a ghetto crusade
Serenade this angel like Cyrano de Bergerac
The lightness of her being was unbearable (a reference to Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being)

The play really does fit seamlessly with Talib Kweli's song, as a reference to love serenades. Kweli's whole song (see: incredible edible legs) could easily be a letter from Cyrano to Roxanne, so full it is with professions of deep-seated love. Kweli evokes Cyrano because he sees himself within the tradition of great love poets--something I don't think he's wrong to believe.

Long-time Kweli fans (such as, you guessed it, me!) will also remember that this is not his first reference to Rostand's play. When Kweli was with Blackstar, he and Mos Def launched their careers with their smash single Definition, an homage to meaningful lyrics in hip-hop. Again, Kweli turned to Cyrano as an icon of lyrical power and talent:

Consider me the entity within the industry without a history
of spittin the epitome, of stupidity -- livin my life
expressin my liberty, it gotta be done properly
My name is in the middle of e-Kweli-ty
People follow me and other cats they hear him flow
And assume I'm the real one with lyrics like I'm Cyrano

Theater Gods Bless The Hudson Warehouse

With the opening of The Hudson Warehouse's second summer show, Cyrano, less than 24 hours away, the muses have sent a sign down from above to bless our production. One actor in Cyrano,also a waiter at a neighborhood restaurant, thinks he might have seen Daryl Hannah--star of Roxanne, Steve Martin's popular 1987 movie adaptation of Cyrano--eating at said restaurant. Such a chance sighting can only signify that our production has been officially handed the torch, carried through the ages, of wonderful Cyrano productions.

The Enlightenment Comes a Century Early to Bergerac

Unlike the characters in The Trojan Women, whose uncertain historicity is discussed below, there is no doubt that a man named Cyrano lived, from 1619 to 1655. He was indeed a prolific poet, playwright and philosopher, a Gascon cadet in the Thirty Year’s War at the siege of Arras, and may have even had, as this portrait suggests, a rather large nose. Also like Rostand’s fictionalized character, the real Cyrano dreamed of going to the moon, attacked wealthy patrons and was killed by a piece of plank dropped from the sky, in all probability by a cowardly rival.

That’s about where the similarities between the real Cyrano and that of Rostand’s play—written nearly 300 years later—end. While Le Bret and Carbon are real historical figures, much of Cyrano’s relationship with them is probably invented. More essentially, the whole storyline of Roxanne (Cyrano did have a cousin, but we have no proof of feelings, or letters, between them) and Christian is almost certainly invented, as Cyrano was likely a homosexual. Furthermore, the real Cyrano lead a life of gambling and drinking, and was probably sexually active (some believe he really died of syphilis), so contrary to the sexual recluse portrayed in Rostand’s play.

Yet the most important similarity between 17^th Century Cyrano and Rostand’s imagined Cyrano is, to my mind, his (their?) iconoclastic worldview. For, as both a poet and a reader of his contemporaries’ philosophies, Cyrano was one of the first believers in Enlightenment thought, which Cyrano must have attempted to meld with his more romantic, poetic ideals. According to this biography, in spite his affinity for dueling, Cyrano was fiercely opposed to the death penalty, and favored an “individualist” thinking unknown to his day. He brazenly opposed practices of the Catholic Church, and argued against the prevailing skeptics of heliocentric beliefs. Cyrano’s faith in rationalism, so rare for its time, foreshadowed the course of world intellectual history. This part of the historical man, more than anything, must have been Rostand’s truly important source material—a man before his time who held closely to his convictions.

Cyrano's Complexity

Cyrano de Bergerac—premiering tomorrow at the Hudson Warehouse—is a tough play to classify. Unlike The Trojan Women (a tragedy) or Romeo and Juliet (a romance), Rostand’s play seems part romantic-comedy, part straight satirical farce and part epic tragedy. This chameleon flavor makes the play feel disconnected at times, but—more importantly, lends the play a sense of self-awareness that augments each of its seemingly disparate moods.

Cyrano himself is particularly emblematic of this, as one of the most prismatic figures of the stage. He is at once exalted for his heroism and a parody of the tragic hero (100 warriors slain!), at once honored for his principles and a parody of self-righteousness, at once a star-crossed lover and a parody of melodrama. Yet rather than betraying an inconsistency, these ambiguities serve as one of the play’s major strengths.

The many prisms through which we can view, for instance, Cyrano, notifies the audience that the playwright recognizes both the limitations and merits of each perspective. As a simply comic figure in the mold of Don Quixote, the protagonist’s struggles would be unlikely to interest us. Yet if we were simply meant to see him as an unflawed hero, the ideal Renaissance man victimized by an inhumane society, then Cyrano would become an unbelievable character, and lose his flawed charm. These subtle middle grounds are what make Cyrano a play of such enduring value.