Dead Accounts: The Playwright's Note

America doesn’t know how to talk to itself anymore.

It wasn’t always like this. I was born and raised in the

Midwest, where people were taught that decency and in-

tegrity and community were all important values. We were

democrats with a little ‘d.’ We were told that hard work and

talent and character would get you somewhere. At school,

we learned it was important to share. On Arbor Day, we all

planted trees.

And we admired the people who lived and worked on the

East Coast. Writers like Arthur Miller and Tennessee Wil-

liams were heroic figures. The great museums and orchestras

and universities were, to us, the jewels of American accom-

plishment. It was an unimaginable thrill, to go New York and

see the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building and

Times Square. To see a play on Broadway - which cost I think

about $25 dollars - was a dream beyond dreaming.

I don’t know what New Yorkers thought about Mid-

westerners during those years—and this wasn’t all that long

ago; I’m actually not a hundred years old. I do know what

New Yorkers think of the Midwest now, and I know what

the Midwest thinks of New York. When I go to Ohio to visit

relatives on holidays, I am often astonished by the level of

casual dismissal which is offered up by way of discussion.

At a time when the country faces deeply complex challenges

around it’s future and the future of the planet itself, there is

a sense that only crazy east coast liberals worry about that

stuff.

There is a sense that the East Coast has lost its moral

center. The catastrophe of the banking industry, and the

scandalous waste of our character, perpetrated by our gov-

ernment and the media has offended the Midwest so deeply

they don’t want to even talk about it. Or, they do want to

talk about it, but they are so angry and simultaneously so

polite, they don’t know how to talk about it. So they bury

their heads in Fox News and pretend that reducing the deficit

will salve their anxiety.

Meanwhile, the East Coast cannot believe how stupid

the center of the country seems to have gotten.

How do you make this funny? There are times when I

wonder how I ever thought that I could dramatize the death

of a national discussion as a family comedy. But so many

of us are the spawn of this perplexing divide; we carry it in

our DNA. The question—How did we start there, and get

here?—is in fact a question of mortality. Which, as we all

know, is hilarious.

Death is coming to our little family, and so we fight to

live. Peculiarly, that is funny. And we do have things to teach

each other. As long as we can remember how to talk.

—Theresa Rebeck