Harley Elias describes himself as a history nerd. The proof is in his plays, which tend to be set in obscure periods of the distant past. The most recent example, The Handless King, is about to premiere at Fort Worth’s Amphibian Stage.
Inspired by a relief from 728 B.C.E. that depicts a pair of scribes from the Assyrian Empire using two different writing methods, The Handless King imagines a deadly rivalry between the eunuchs over the historical change from cuneiform on clay tablets to Aramaic on leather or parchment.
The oldest known example of one writing system replacing another, it was a technological breakthrough that excited Elias. He portrays the scribes, whom he named Ubru and Dilgan, as employees of the state whose job is to count dead bodies from battle. The third character is the Administrator, a representative of the army. The roles are played by Patrick Bynane, Parker Gray and Ahmad Kamal under the direction of Jay Duffer.
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“I heard about the relief in a lecture series on the history of writing systems,” says Elias, who’s in town for the opening performances. “It struck me as an amazing moment in our collective history of communication, writing and technology. I had to find the thing, which is at the British Museum.”
This is not Elias’ first visit to North Texas. The 36-year-old native New Yorker got into show business at a young age, acting since he was a child on Broadway and in national tours of musicals. He first passed through the area in the companies of Les Misérables and Ragtime.
He went on to earn degrees in history and art history from Stanford and recently completed a master’s in playwriting at Brown University. We talked to Elias by phone about The Handless King and his writing career, which includes librettos for operas. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What did you see in the relief?
Two people who must have hated each other. There’s no way they were getting along, because of the stakes. I started to hear their voices. A play is a wonderful excuse to get to dive into a world that you want to call home for a little while. At Brown, I studied cuneiform in the department of Assyriology, which was phenomenal.
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The play has been described as “a dark comedy for anyone who has ever wanted to draw triangles in clay.” What’s the story and its themes?
Aramaic is the new language that has come in. It’s the personal computer, it’s the crypto coin, it’s the Kindle that’s replacing what has existed for a very long time. These two scribes argue over the merits of their writing systems, which is a way of getting at what writing is. Is writing about beauty, about expression or about the message that it carries? At the time, writing was in most ways mercenary, a duty performed for kings and merchants. Most of the writing that exists from the period is lists of oxen or the military acts of a ruler.
One of the scribes has found something that he hasn’t shared with anyone else. And that is writing without purpose, or as he calls it, poetry. They argue about how poetry might be used by scribes, who have been tools of the state. They have been castrated. Their bodies have been made into instruments. We watch them not only grappling with the invention of poetry but with revolution. The central themes of the play are about state power, empire, the possibility of political revolution, state-enforced disability and what are the best methods of fomenting a revolution.
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What’s the role of the Administrator?
The Administrator is a representation of the army. There is this new idea of military expansion, expanding the reaches of the empire. But he’s not the king, he’s not the general. He’s a cog in the machine. Is he closer to the scribes, an instrument of the state like them? Or is he a representation of the state’s might against them? Are they under his foot or are they all under someone else’s? These questions become important to their budding revolution. If the Administrator finds out about their ideas, they’ll be beheaded. It’s a life-or-death moment. Are they going to throw each other under the chariot?
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Your Brown University bio says you write about “the strangeness of history and the dismantling of power systems.” I count five of your plays that take place in historical periods. What about the little-known past attracts you to these old stories?
I’m drawn to the farthest corners of the past because I see our presence in it. As someone who comes from an Iraqi family, I see my ancestors. As a writer in my family’s homeland 3,000 years ago, this might have been me. It’s like speaking to a grandfather or a great, great, great, great grandfather. I get to exist in a lineage of storytelling.
Plays come to me through voices. I hear conversation, I hear banter. So listening to history has always been my favorite way to engage with the past. And I hear those voices most fervently when you have to go to a dimly lit, shadowy corner of the past to find them. This isn’t a story that’s been told. Many times, they’re on the margins and you have to kind of wander over and hope that you’ll get to hear some whispers. The whispers get really loud for me.
All of your plays are considered comedies. Why be funny?
One of the first things to be lost to the waste bin of history is humor and irony. Everything seems very serious in the past, everything seems very determined. We often are left with only the best, most successful versions of things. We get the Beethovens of history, but we may not get the worst playwright or the lesser music. I’m interested in rescuing that idea of badness from history. What were the knock-knock jokes of the ancient era? What were people entertaining each other with as their world was ending? I seek to write about moments of great historical upheaval, dark chapters and violence. It’s in those moments of pain, the most severe moments in life, that we need to be telling each other jokes.
What was your upbringing like and why did you become a writer?
My upbringing was wonderful and strange and really lucky and blessed in many ways, because I got to live life in the theater from a very young age. The first life-changing moment of theater-watching for me was Les Misérables when I was 8. It felt so big, so filled with revolution and with history, this epic storytelling, that I said, ”I have to do that,” whatever that was. I learned to sing, but it was a means to an end of getting to do this dream of being in Les Mis, the idea that you could go to a new city every week and get to tell this incredible story from the past about people who were very different than us. It was the most wonderful thing that a kid could get to do.
Once I started playwriting, it opened up a part of my brain that I haven’t ever wanted to close down. I started listening to people on the subway and on the street in a different way. I started searching for stories in the woodwork of the world around me. I’ll hear something that someone says on the street, and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. Now, I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to re-create a line as beautiful as something that someone just said off the cuff. And I’ll never get to it. But gosh, it’s good to try to get close. And that’s the playwright’s dream, to get closer and closer to human language.
Details
July 26-Aug. 18 at 120 S. Main St., Fort Worth $17-$62. amphibianstage.com.
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