A Vintage Aubusson (that's a bitch to lug)
From Road Show to "the Road" (part 1)
Throughout this analysis, we've been circling around just how important Marianne and the Bishop's conversation in Interlude 3: Snow is to understanding Here We Are. While it's readable enough on its face, taking a step back and looking at what Sondheim and book writer John Weidman were examining in his last most recent play Road Show reveals interesting insights.
Road Show, for the unfamiliar, was Sondheim's last work before Here We Are. Inspired by Alva Johnston's biography of Wilson and Addison Mizner (The Legendary Mizners), the show follows brothers Wilson and Addison as they set out to follow their father's dying advice to "find their road" and to live the dream of America the forefathers attempted to embed in the fabric of the nation. Of course, it doesn't take long for the brothers to get lost on their journey to "find their road" and disappoint their dead father (he shows up from time to time to tell them just that), but at no point do they stop looking for "their road".
One of the best examples of this comes in the elaborate picaresque of "Addison's Trip". Having left Wilson to his own devices, Addison embarks on a journey into the world so that he may find his place in it. As he goes from location to location, he's beset by a series of tragedies: the pineapple orchard in Hawaii he invests in catches fire, the Indian gem emporium he becomes a partner in gets beset by cyclones - worse yet awaits in Hong Kong and beyond. At each stop, he gains souvenirs from his experiences and adds them to his collection that just gets larger and more apparently onerous to carry with him as the song goes on.
When he finally runs out of money he returns home with his arsenal of objets. He can't seem to find a satisfactory place to house his new treasures - they seem "out of place" or "compressed" in his current house. He reasons that in order to appropriately showcase these treasures so that they resonate with the fullness he experienced them while out in the world he'd need to build a house with a "hundred rooms" - each providing the appropriate architectural context to understand each of these souvenirs.
Were you ready to discuss cognitive development and ontology? I know, I know! So predictable, but bear with me - I'm going somewhere with this. In order to make sense of what's happening between Addison's ears as he does this, we can draw on psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The ZPD can be thought of broadly as "that which you can learn when working with a knowledgeable other". Throughout Addison’s journey, the world acts as this “knowledgeable other,” providing "souvenirs" of new skills and knowledge that push the boundaries of his cognitive abilities.
However, it is only upon returning home that Addison can integrate these experiences—a process that echoes Piaget’s theories of assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation occurs when new experiences are incorporated into existing cognitive frameworks without changing the structure. Accommodation, on the other hand, happens when new experiences lead to changes in cognitive structures to fit the new information. Addison’s need to build a house with "a hundred rooms” symbolizes the necessary cognitive expansion to house and make sense of what he's learned in the world. Just like the chandelier gets an atrium and the lacquered screen gets a mezzanine, Addison's understanding of himself, the world and his position in it must change to accommodate everything he's learned. In doing so, he finally (if temporarily) finds his path.
Similarly, in Here We Are, the Bishop acts as Marianne's "knowledgeable other". By having previously equipped himself with insights from art (he plays music, reads and quotes literature) he has a plurality of answers he's discovered within his own cognitive journeys that he can now impart - or, perhaps put more simply, he ministers. Marianne’s existential reflections in Interlude 3: Snow mirror Addison’s Trip - she assimilates what she can and creates space for (accommodates) what she previously could not. It's worth pointing out that in this exchange, it's clear that this is a two-way street. Her offhanded comment that their conversation was "to be continued" generates a genuine insight into the nature of being in the bishop as he reflects back "Yes! To be.... continued." Like Addison finding his path, this new integrated perspective allows Marianne the insight needed to recognize that the "key change" was necessary to end their entrapment.
Both characters’ narratives emphasize the continual process of cognitive and existential growth, where new experiences demand ever more complex frameworks for understanding. The necessity of building a "hundred-room house" in Addison's journey and Marianne's struggle to integrate her reflections both underscore the dynamic interplay between assimilation and accommodation, highlighting the ongoing nature of development and the quest for meaning. The failure to do so leaves things compressed or otherwise "out of place" - easy to ignore if you spend your life on the road and, crucially, can have someone else lug your stuff.
The developmental arcs of Addison and Marianne vividly embody the metamodern oscillation, their journeys tracing the waveform dynamics delineated earlier. However, "Here We Are" goes further by acknowledging its own role as "knowledgeable other" catalyzing and scaffolding that very oscillation within the audience.
Just as the world prods Addison and the Bishop provokes Marianne, the play instigates a metamodern cycle of cognitive reintegration for the viewers themselves. We are seduced by its initial sincerity - the promises of a musical theater experience. Yet "Here We Are" immediately begins deconstructing those conventions, rupturing our assimilative comforts with antithetical provocations.
The disruptive techniques and formal departures become ironizing dynamics that unhinge our meaning-making frameworks. But the play does not leave us unmoored in that ironic distance. Through Marianne's developmental narratives, it models the reconstructive pathways towards pluralistic accommodation of these new experiential truths - only we have to lower our eyebrows and pay attention to see it.