Waiting, Waiting, Waiting… And the lights dim.
We have all experienced that wait outside the examination room at the
doctor’s office. The wait seems eternal with all the dry air, awkward eye contact, and
extreme silence. Lisa Loomer’s play The Waiting Room takes the ordinary wait and
makes a complex statement of the controversial sexual and social politics as well as
the evolving perception of beauty. The play approaches the topics by highlighting
the lengths women go to achieve the perception of beauty. Now, I use the word
perception because, as the play demonstrates, beauty evolves and is interpreted
differently across the globe.
In 1998, Lisa Loomer wrote one of her most renown plays The Waiting Room.
The play consists of three women seeking medical attention. The first
is a Chinese woman from around the 18th century. The Chinese
woman, Forgiveness From Heaven, is seeking help because one of her
toes has fallen off due to foot binding. In China around the 18th
century, foot binding became popular. It was regarded as status
symbol. Wang Lifen describes that bound feet were the
only way a woman was able to marry into money. (Wang Lifen,
Painful Memories for China’s Footbinding Survivors”) These women
would proceed to breaking their feet at the arch and bandaging the
toes back to the heel. This process was continued until
their feet reached the length of three inches. The second woman in
the play is an English woman from around the 19th century Victorian
era. The English woman, Victoria, is seeking help with her pain of
displaced internal organ and breathing difficulties caused by wearing an extremely
tight corset and several heavy layers of clothing. The practice of corsetry was done
to give woman more of an hourglass figure. “Corsets narrow the bottom ribs… which
can impair the lungs, make breathing difficult.” New York Daily News states in their
article Hundred-year-old X-rays reveal how corsets put the squeeze on Victorian
women. Along with breathing difficulties, women were subject to discomfort as far
as fainting and blackouts due to their poor air circulation. The third woman is an
American woman from modern day. The woman, Wanda, is seeking help to adjust
her breast implants. She has now had three implants. Furthermore, at this visit the
doctor finds cancer on her breast. Although breast implants haven’t been directly
linked to a cancer risk factor, the American Cancer Society claim that implants make
it more difficult to detect tumors with a typical mammogram.
Loomer’s brilliance is shown not only within this play, but also her other
plays. Loomer is very much familiar to satirical writing. In fact, Loomer was part of a
political comedy group before she decided to write her own material. An early piece
she produced was Birds. In Birds, Loomer addresses how a Mexican family with an
American lifestyle finds who they are. She utilizes humor to consider the struggles
of balance between the two. In The Waiting Room, Loomer puts into light the
perception of beauty in a way that all can relate to. Her genius has earned The
Waiting Room with two awards, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Runner-up in 1993
and the Jane Chambers Award, Winner in 1994.
My three personal criteria are a bit more basic than the assumed criteria
professional critiques may use. My first criterion when evaluating the play is the
acting element quality. Throughout the play, I found myself fully engaged by the
actors’ emotion. Wanda’s reaction to the news of cancer covered the audience in
silence. She gave me a true reaction of fear to which I momentarily forgot was all an
act. An important factor to the emotion Wanda gave was her use of tone of voice. I
could clearly hear the quiver in her voice when she asked her doctor what she
needed to do to get rid of the cancer.
My second criterion consisted of the design element quality. The space
allotted for the stage setup was very small. The tight closed space made me feel a bit
skeptical of the scene adaptability due to space limitation. However, the tight space
was extremely well made and versatile. The versatility was well shown in the scene
change from the doctor’s office to the sauna in the health club spa. The sauna
benches were cleverly built into the walls of what was the waiting room wall. The
actors’ costumes were wonderful. The elegant fabrics Forgiveness wore were good
choices to reflect the style of Chinese women in the 18th century. Victoria’s coats and
other fur layers had a vintage look to them that contributed character to her role. I
most certainly believe the design elements met the criteria.
My third criterion focused on the intentions or purpose of the play. The
message you take away makes the play significant. As I personally don’t have a
calling for theatre, I am brought into a play for the message or material that is
applicable to my lifestyle and me. The pull in the play that swept me away was
Wanda’s line,” Isn’t is worse not living while you are alive.” It comes to light that
Wanda has had an epiphany of what true beauty is. This is her turning point in
which she accepts the circumstances of her actions and accepts herself. The scene
awakens an internal voice in me. It gets me thinking about my own definition of
beauty and the guidelines I hold myself to. Society should ask themselves. Will the
true perception of “beauty” ever be achieved or be defined? Will it ever be universal,
or if it is even significant to satisfy society while you are suffering, suppressing
yourself, or putting your life at risk?
The Waiting Room is an extraordinary play for those of us still trying to find
ourselves as well as those of us that believe we already have. It allows us to see
controversy over sexual and social politics in an approachable perspective. Society
should not shape the image of “beauty”. Nevertheless, we are all subject to fall under
the pressure of society to comply with the perception. I urge everyone to break the
perception and pass along their true beauty and accept that beauty is seen from
individuals’ eyes and not through society.
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