Love. Grief. Forgiveness. Time. The guy in the subway shouting about pineapples.
The law demands order. The theatre invites chaos, serves it wine, and asks it to monologue. I live in both. One world expects exhibits, redactions, and polished shoes. The other celebrates gnomes on trial and emotional breakdowns that rhyme.
But there are a few things – let’s call them “recurring problems of being alive” – that the law cannot, and frankly should not, attempt to define. Things that laugh in the face of legal precision and then cry quietly into a curtain. Things for which playwrights, poor fools that we are, keep reaching anyway.
Let’s examine five such beasts. Bring a pen. Or a sword. Or a subway transfer.
1. Love
The law recognizes marriage. It files paperwork for it. Dissolves it. Taxes it. But it cannot, despite its sincerest motions, explain why someone drives three hours in the rain to return a hoodie, or stays with someone who collects vintage ketchup packets “ironically.”
Love is not admissible. It is erratic, undocumented, and almost certainly in contempt of court. You can’t cross-examine a heartbeat. You can only write it down, dress it up, and make it say something halfway profound under a spotlight.
Playwrights don’t define love. We just throw two strangers on a stage and see what happens when they run out of chairs.
2. Grief
The legal system tries, earnestly and awkwardly, to quantify grief. It awards it in damages. It speaks of “loss of consortium” as though someone misplaced a spouse like an umbrella.
But grief is not linear. It arrives late, without knocking. It rummages through drawers. It wears your father’s cologne and dares you to breathe.
Theatre gets it. Grief doesn’t show up in the script – it hijacks the tech rehearsal and changes the ending. We write widows who bake in silence. Children who talk to ghosts. Men who laugh too loudly at nothing.
Grief is not Exhibit A. It’s the thing that makes you forget what you came in to prove.
3. Forgiveness
There’s no standard form for forgiveness. The law can pardon, sure – but only on official stationery. Forgiveness, real forgiveness, doesn’t announce itself in triplicate. It slinks in through the back door wearing someone else’s coat.
It’s awkward. Ambiguous. It rarely includes a satisfying declaration. More often it’s a grunt. A shrug. An unopened letter left on a dresser.
Theatre likes forgiveness precisely because it’s unstable. It makes the actor sweat. It makes the audience lean forward and mutter “Don’t you dare” under their breath. And then…they do. Or they don’t. And that’s the scene.
Forgiveness isn’t a verdict. It’s an ellipsis.
4. Time
The law treats time like a cranky landlord: rent due monthly, no exceptions. Miss a deadline, lose your rights. Appeal out of sequence? Dismissed. Time is sacred and utterly humorless.
But playwrights have a more flexible relationship with chronology. We stretch it, fracture it, dance with it, then ignore it entirely. A ten-minute play can last a lifetime. A tragedy can unfold in under an hour, assuming no one drops a prop.
Time on stage is a suggestion, not a sentence. It loops. It stutters. It shows up drunk and refuses to leave. You want a clean timeline? Watch Law & Order. You want time to bend until it breaks? Welcome to Act II.
5. The Guy in the Subway Shouting About Pineapples
The law would like to contain him. Possibly cite him. Maybe declare him a public disturbance and offer a wellness check. But playwrights…we see him.
He is not background noise. He is prophecy. He is exposition. He is comic relief and final judgment rolled into one disheveled figure clutching a duffel bag full of answers no one asked for.
You think he’s mad. I think he’s a Greek chorus. A pineapple-scented harbinger of truth in a system obsessed with decorum. Maybe he’s God. Maybe he’s your father. Maybe he’s the only one paying attention.
Either way – he gets a monologue.
Final Act
Lawyers organize the world into arguments. Playwrights dismantle it into questions. Where the law draws lines, the stage smudges them. Where the law seeks resolution, theatre demands reckoning.
So when the law runs out of ink, send in the playwrights. We’ll bring metaphors. And possibly fruit.
Because some things – Love. Grief. Forgiveness. Time. Pineapples – cannot be ruled on.
Only revealed.
Brian Brijbag 