The Disciple
Written and directed by Rachel Carey
Seen July 25, 2021 closing night at The Wild Project in Manhattan, NYC. Produced by Third Wing LTD
This one act, two-character, play tells a story of the relationship between Ayn Rand and her disciple Ayn Rand
Rand is played by Maja Wampuszyc, Branden by Cameron Darwin Bossert.
The play, even though it runs about an hour, takes us through a 25 year timeline that focuses on critical points in the relationship between master and follower.
They meet when he approaches her as a nervous starstruck 19 year old admirer of her work including the novel The Fountainhead (1943). His physical presence, as performed by Bossert in the role, is appropriately tense and apologetic in contrast to Wampuszyc's forceful, direct, and chain-smoking, Rand. In that first scene she accepts him as a disciple.
There is a well constructed scene in which Rand makes her move on the attractive young disciple. She was 15 years older. She even frames and uses her philosophy and tops him from the bottom in a sense that she tells him that he needs to be a forceful man and have what he wants regardless of the fact that she is married and he is deeply involved with a young woman. This is the liberterian free-love justification with fake male dominance thrown in. She tells him that they will tell their other partners about it and it will be fine, which it is at least between Rand and her husband. And she tells him how to physically do it. She wants him to be forceful and rape her.
This sets up the main question that the piece explores. Which is: What happens when the person of intellectual social ideals is put in a situation in which her emotions do not cooperate.
As usual, when that person is a charismatic cult leader the disciple gets excommunicated and blamed for everything.
Rachel Carey has constructed an interesting and entertaining example in her play by putting Ayn Rand in this situation.
Any exposure of the nastiness of Rand and her ideals is welcome since unfortunately her reactionary notions had been so widely embraced in the ruggedly individualistic USA.
The show could be viewed just as an indictment of Rand, an accusation of gross inconsistency.
Perhaps it is more useful to the audience as an invitation to look into one’s own ideals and what would happen if they were challenged by real-life emotions arising from real-life situations.
https://www.thirdwing.info/the-disciple-page
