I met Joyce when I was 12. I was awestruck. She wanted to teach us the art of transformation. Nothing less satisfied her. Using third-person narration, in front of our very eyes, she turned herself into an ancient witch in a fairy tale. That was the first time I witnessed how narration could enact physical transformation in the theatre.
Years later, in the Piven Theatre Workshop’s Young People’s Company, she had us repeat lines from Shakespeare over and over, exploring and heightening. “Full fathom five thy father lies/Of his bones are coral made/Those are pearls that were his eyes: nothing of him that doth fade/but doth suffer a sea-change/into something rich and strange.”
Last week I read that poem over the phone to Joyce while she was in the hospital, her daughter Shira holding the phone up to her ear. I wanted to remind Joyce that she’d been transforming all her life, so this latest transformation was nothing to fear. Knowing that she was listening, even though she couldn’t speak, I trusted that she heard every word. After all, Joyce taught the art of listening. She would say, “Nothing is more beautiful onstage than someone really listening. Not pretending to listen. But really listening.” She trained thousands of people how to listen with empathy and presence; how to listen to the spaces between the words.
Joyce taught me and countless others so much. When I was a shy child, she taught me how to play without self-consciousness. When I was a teenager, she taught me how language can transform space. When I was a young woman, and I lost my father, she taught me how grief can transform into art. And when I was a grown artist, she taught me how to defy critics, how to persevere, how to be a mother and an artist.
She witnessed or instigated many of my big firsts. When I was 14, I took her scene study class. My acting partner and I rehearsed our sweet little scene before presenting it. The stage directions called for a kiss, but we ignored that while rehearsing. Then, when we did our scene for the class, he kissed me, and I must have jumped. Joyce said to him in her husky voice, “Oh no—you have to plan those things in advance with your scene partner.” It was, in fact, my first kiss, and Joyce had witnessed it.
Twenty years later, I saw Joyce for lunch with Polly Noonan the day I got engaged to my husband. “Ah!” she said triumphantly. “You’re going to marry a doctor! A doctor!” She always modeled and understood the importance of family alongside the work of an artist.
When I started writing poetry and plays, Joyce was an early champion. It was clear (at least to me) that I was no actor. That didn’t matter to Joyce. She cultivated talent where she saw it: acting, writing, making music, or simply being a person. She commissioned my first professional play and she directed it. We watched together in rehearsals when actors were brilliant, and when they were unable to go on. One actress flung herself on the ground and groaned, “I’m in the tunnel!” Joyce just looked at her and said, “Then get up!”
I visited Joyce in the hospital 10 years ago when she’d had a terrifying medical episode. She asked Polly to read Shakespeare aloud in the hospital room. As Polly read, Joyce coached, “Stop, Polly, read it again—that line should be a demonstration of amazement.” Then I painted her fingernails dark red. She was an artist and a teacher in a hospital or a rehearsal room.
The last time I saw Joyce in person, I asked her how she was. She’d had some bad falls. She said, in her throaty, passionate, unmistakable cadence, “I’m not thriving, but I’m alive and I’m going to stay here on this earth until they kick me out. I’m stubborn, I’m faithful, and I have good references.” And she shook her fist at the sky. We talked of books and of her childhood, which felt very present to her. She spoke of the hard work her mother did on the South Side of Chicago at a deli to support the family. And how her father taught her how to tell a good story, which she credits with getting her out of relative poverty. When it was time for me to leave, Joyce said she’d walk me to the door. I said, “No need to walk me. The doctors said no walking, no falling, right?”
“I’ll walk you to the door,” she said firmly. “Let me show you what I can do. I’ve been practicing.” She gestured to her walker, like a queen. I got on one side of Joyce and her aide got on the other side. Joyce walked with surprising speed to the door with us spotting. At the door, I told her how much I loved her, how much she’d taught me. “That,” she whispered, “is the gift.”
I can’t really imagine not having more conversations with her, so I think I’ll just go on having them. Somewhere, not out of reach, is her deep, wide listening, and her love. If Joyce was your greatest champion, she still is, I promise.
Sarah Ruhl is the award-winning playwright of Eurydice, The Clean House, and In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play).
