Therapy 101

We live in a very “tuned in” world.  All generations are spending so much time on their phones, on the internet…we’re constantly texting each other, or watching videos.  I think we probably spend just as much time on our screens as we spend in real time.  This idea is only the start of Job, even if we don’t know that right away.  What we do know from the start is that a young woman is pointing a gun at an older man and that makes it pretty obvious that we’re going to be in for a wild ride.  The thing is, I didn’t realize just how wild.

What Job is is a short and wild ride.  We quickly see that we’re watching a therapy appointment.  And at first, it looks like Loyd is completely in control of the situation.  He’s able to get Jane to put the gun away, to talk her down enough that she starts talking to him.  But as this show progresses, there’s a lot of questions about who is really in control.  As someone who has been through a lot of therapy, this was a very interesting perspective for me.  Honestly, I think it would be an interesting perspective for anyone.

There are two very interesting characters in Job.  Jane is a young woman who is plainly troubled…and I’m not just saying that because the show opens with her pointing a gun at Loyd.  She clearly has no grasp on reality, something we see over and over throughout the play.  In the end, she very much sees what she does as an honor.  She’s such an important person in this world, and no one can do what she does.  This is all eventually her downfall, because what she’s done has clearly psychologically destroyed her.  We see the small things happening to her throughout the play, and how she’s living.

The second character in Job is Loyd, a therapist who promises he is very good at what he does.  At first, I definitely believed him.  He was what any therapist should be…calm and collected, good at deescalating (he came down awfully quick from having a gun pointed at him).  But as Job progresses, I started to see little things that made me feel otherwise.  As someone who has spent a lot of time in therapy, I’ve come to understand a lot about therapists.  Loyd started off as a great one…but I’m not sure he ended as one.

So these are our two characters.  And honestly, they created a world that was mind blowing.  Watching the ups and downs of their therapy session was awe inducing and completely terrifying.  Jane’s mind is clearly a very scary place, and Loyd, although trying to help her through that, isn’t necessarily doing what he should be.  I think a lot of what both characters do is trigger the other, which makes for a really interesting play, but a very disturbing story.  Honestly, though, it was so fascinating to watch.  What was unfolding in front of me was insane.

Jane’s job is everything to her.  We see this from almost the very start of Job.  She’s going to this therapy session to be cleared to go back to work after she had a meltdown.  All she wants out of this session is to be cleared.  She stresses that what she does is so important…that no one can do this job except for her.  Despite all this, she’s clearly not emotionally well.  We get little flashes throughout the play, flashes of what’s going on in her head while she’s in this session with Loyd.  And in the end, despite everything, she is clearly not satisfied.

As someone with mental health issues, I thought they did a really great job of showing a very disturbed person in Job.  Arianna Gayle really showed a character that had a lot of issues.  It was truly a treat seeing how she showed what it was like in Jane’s head.  But more importantly, Job gave a voice to those of us with mental illnesses.  Having spent my entire life in theatre, I know that theatre is really good at giving a voice to the marginalized, and this play clearly did that.  Getting that voice in this show was truly amazing for someone like me in the audience, even if there were some triggering moments.

I can’t even begin to imagine the emotional toll Job took on Arianna Gayle and Scott Greer.  What they’ve been doing on stage every night is absolutely incredible, but very intense and heavy.  They showed such amazing work, and although my feelings during and afterwards were all over the place, I really loved this show.  I felt like Theatre Exile really did something that most places would be really afraid to do, and I really thank them for that.  I saw a lot of myself up on that stage last night, and walked away feeling like all of us with mental health issues were in the spotlight.  We don’t get that a lot.  Job did something crazy and new, and I think every audience was better off for it.

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