BIG LOVE by Charles L. Mee
Who is Charles L. Mee?
I like plays that are not too neat, too finished, too presentable. My plays are broken, jagged, filled with sharp edges, filled with things that take sudden turns, careen into each other, smash up, veer off in sickening turns. That feels good to me. It feels like my life. It feels like the world.
-Charles Mee
the (re)making project
All About the Author:
Charles L. Mee
Charles L. Mee was born in Barrington, Illinois on September 15 1938. As a young boy, he was extremely active as a boy scout and was a tremendous football player. However, his “normal” life came to a halt when he was diagnosed with Polio in the summer of 1953 when he was just 14. Mee spent the majority of his teenage years within the hospital where he read consistently and vigorously.
His introduction to one particular text, Plato’s Symposium, was a critical turning point in his life which led him to pursue the study of history, literature, philosophy, and his ultimate pathway into playwriting.
Mee’s plays-inspired by ideas articulated in Plato’s texts, also reflects his own experience with Polio- presenting us with those disjointed and disconnected worlds found in many of his pieces. Charles Mee first focused on non-fiction historical writing throughout his career and later in life wrote his first historically based play. Mee then began re-imagining classic texts, creating worlds that are as fantastic as the Greek mythological legends from which they are derived.
I had come to understand that whatever vague plans I may once had had to make my way in the world with my body were now useless. Henceforth, I would have to use my head. And my head was empty. And so I filled it with Plato. In fact, I devoured the Symposium, and asked Mrs. Strouss to bring me more. She brought me Crito, Phaedo, and the Apology, and more, and then more. Before I could hold a book with all my fingers, I had read all of Plato. I loved the dialogue form, the opposing arguments, the turmoil of conflicting ideas and feelings; he spoke to my mind and heart...
-A Nearly Normal Life:
A Memoir by Charles L. Mee
Please click on the articles, interviews, and pieces from Charles Mee's Memoirs.
*Please Note: These documents require full downloading onto the readers computer to view complete highlights and annotation. All other documents, annotated copies can be viewed directly online by clicking the link.
*Shattered and Fucked Up Words and Works
-Compilation of thoughts and conversations including
Charles Mee's "Notes Towards a Manifesto"
*THEATER; Falling In, Falling Out: Love's Cycle of Rebirth
- A Conversation with Jonathan Mandell, New York Times
A Nearly Normal Life: A Memoir
-Selections from Charles Mee's Memoir
*Charles Mee | the (re)making project
-Excerpts from the (re)making project website
"I Like to take a Greek Play" by Charles Mee
-Charles Mee Explains his Style
-A Conversation with Chicago Fusion Theatre
I like a book that feels like a crystal goblet that has been thrown to the floor and shattered, so that its pieces, when they are picked up and arranged on a table, still describe a whole glass, but the glass itself lies in shards.
-A Nearly Normal Life:
A Memoir by Charles L. Mee
A SPECIAL THANK YOU
Charles Mee's work has been made possible by the support of Richard B. Fisher and Jeanne Donovan Fisher.