"up" by bridget carpenter

Syracuse Stage presented Bridget Carpenter’s comedrama (did I just make up a new word? – I’m a bit giddy about that!) “Up” last weekend and I scored a few seats so Joey and I could go. I won’t weigh you down with a complete review of a play you’ll (sadly) likely never have the opportunity to see, but in short the story picks up with Walter Griffin about fifteen years after his successful weather-balloons-tied-to-a-lawn-chair launch which carried him 16,000 feet (3 miles) up.

The play explores where reality and dreams meet. At times that place sees our dreams become reality, as witnessed when a hack inventor like Walter fulfills his lifelong dream of flying while tethered to weather balloons. And at other times, our reality becomes a series of dreams that overwhelm our capacity to function in society, often strong-arming us by necessity into sacrificing our dreams to survive. What is interesting is how unrealized and realized dreams can both affect us like the hammer of a god. Indeed they did the real Walter, as according to the theater’s playbill Walter hiked into the woods at age 44, years after the successful launch and subsequent failed attempts to match his earlier success, and shot himself straight through the heart.

What goes up must come down. Perhaps this is the beautiful tragedy of it all, the truth that truly moved me during this play. Many people spend a lifetime chasing that elusive dream and in their chase become jaded, disillusioned, apart from life, by the chase. And yet we witness the same qualities of life in a man who has realized his struggles to hold on. Is it the dream, then, that shatters us?

As a few side notes, the daring Philippe Petit who tight-rope-walked between the Twin Towers in 1974 (coincidentally the year that I was born) makes a few appearances in the play and acts as Walter’s counselor. Check out the documentary about Petit called “Man on a Wire.” Also, though it does not appear to follow the same plotline as Walter’s life, Disney/Pixar is releasing an animated film on May 29 called “Up” about a 78-year-old man whose lifelong dream is to travel the world and whose dream is realized when his home tethered to a zillion balloons begins to float away. Perhaps Bridget Carpenter will follow up with Carl Frederickson a decade after his tour of the globe to see exactly how realizing his dreams has truly fared.