Spotlight: Michael Quinn’s Play ‘Get It Together” Explores the Strange Yet Bittersweet Nuances of Modern Intimacy
“No one is ever ‘just saying’ anything. Everything has a reason. It’s the most dishonest little phrase… It’s like the textbook definition of pernicious.” –– Mary, Get It Together
IN THE MODERN AGE OF ANXIETY AND SOCIAL MEDIA, WHERE INTIMACY HAS A MULTITUDE OF LAYERED MEANING — it’s hard to say whether anyone has it right. It’s even more confusing and daunting in our youth, when these juvenile attempts at intimacy coincide with an inability to communicate. Especially when exploring a relationship of any kind, communication and the lack thereof is defining. Michael Quinn’s Get It Together is a play that explores these nuanced yet earnest situations young adults find themselves in.
Initially performed in 2018 with the second act debuting in 2020, this third iteration of his existential play displays Quinn’s growth as well. Writing the second act as a response piece to the first, Quinn asked himself how the two characters, Mary and Harold, would change. Within the realm of romance is the maturation arc of these two young adults who, like most of us, tumble somewhat unknowingly into intimacy.
There’s something to be said about the tendency towards cynicism at a young age, especially after some failed attempts at romance, but there’s something intrinsically beautiful about finally coming upon the realization that, generally, things do eventually work out for most people. “It made me think of these little dreams about romance,” Quinn shares, a hopeless romantic himself. “Playing out this fantasy in your head versus struggling with the actuality of what you’re faced with.” The idea of mature romance is almost foreign in the face of romanticism, but consequently these romanticized notions keep the cynicism at bay.
“The driving force of the play is essentially affirmation,” Quinn points out. There’s a reason why these two young adults are in this situation, whether it be in the search for themselves or the desire to be intimately known by another human being. “It’s the idea that this small window of time is nothing in the grand scheme of things, but it’s everything to these two people. We’ve all had that experience where we think, “The only 50 minutes here is where I get to be this person that I've always wanted to be, where you’re more present in this than in most situations in life.”
It’s this drive to self-actuality that defines the truest version of ourselves. The affirmation of self and belief — the feeling of levitating, of giddiness, of every beautiful romanticized nuance that makes navigating the dross of the everyday worth it.
Besides remarks on modern dating and the evident hookup culture that runs rampant, Get It Together depicts a romance in the digital age, where the constant maintenance of another human being (via social channels) prevents young adults from developing emotionally. “The frailty of memory was something that made romance so beautiful and fulfilling. It was arguably easier to move on, but now we have these tokens of what happened, and they live with you forever,” Quinn muses. “The idea that nothing truly ends is dark. We constantly keep tabs on each other and stop ourselves from moving on.”
As a person who writes poetry, memory serves a different function for Quinn. “Memory is a tool that Mary uses to comprehend her experiences,” Quinn shares. “In my mind, I associate this character so strongly with myself partially due to the development of her identity as an artist and a poet and how she feels misunderstood in the world. Writing poetry adds to it, and in action, a lot of things I dislike about myself as well are on display.”
Quinn believes that if you have a character in a similar likeness to yourself, you need another character to demolish their existence in a concentrated manner. “Playwriting can be a very healthy vessel for gender exploration in terms of writing,” he says. “Emotionality and anger comes off differently between men and women, oftentimes just venomous from the former. Writing from a female perspective can make it easier to be more earnest by playing into tropes that exist alongside the notions associated with it.” A non-confrontational person typically, in playwriting Quinn makes it clear that this quasi-aggressive form of resolving conflict is perhaps the most honest and raw form of communication there is, dismantling self-realizations altogether.
“I hope people take away that there are very serious conflicts and questions that you contend with at 19 or 20 — they’re not just being emo,” he says. “At this age, forming a first love is going to determine a lot of your life. I hope that people realize that the path is sad but funny, affirming yet destabilizing, and very confusing and very vegetative.”
The core of Quinn’s play is the silly, bittersweet experience of being young, wanting to connect but having a hard time doing so. As human beings, it’s hard not to empathize with the desire to be understood and known by another human being in our entirety. The minutiae of this very basic human desire is explored through Mary and Harold, two characters who are exemplar of Quinn’s nuanced depiction of intimacy.
Get It Together opens July 29 and is on view until July 31, with another run from August 5–7 at Zephyr Theatre in Los Angeles.
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