Twin Houses
By Terry Brennan
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But how? Because realistic theater focuses on the surface of things, it promotes the illusion of self, the illusion that a body on a stage is one person, whole and indivisible. Even words betray the analysand’s experience, since they belong largely to the social world and its steel-reinforced edifice of illusions. The experience demands radical methods.
The weakness of Twin Houses is its sketchy narrative. The ephemeral plot seems to be simply the story of a psychoanalysis, ridding the protagonist of her domineering puppets. Some of them die easily: Mossoux gently places a female puppet (a head and long dress) on a tomb, where they wrestle, rocking back and forth; this character is truly banished, subsequently disappearing from the narrative. But the male puppet who snatched the pen from Mossoux returns, more bratty than ever. He snatches playing cards from Mossoux’s hand and scatters them on the floor. In a fit of temper she tears the puppet off her shoulder and throws it to the floor–the first moment in the evening when she’s had no puppet burdening her. Yet, as many analysands have discovered, rejected personality fragments have a way of returning as neurotic or abusive people in the analysand’s life. In Twin Houses, the bald man returns as a towering figure (a puppet riding on Mossoux’s shoulders) who quickly seduces Mossoux. In the funniest scene, when he has sex with the protagonist, his huge form completely covers her. Eventually she’s consumed by him, disappearing inside his body. He lopes around the stage looking for her, then just gives up and has a cigarette.
