Six Degrees of Separation

So apparently I've already failed this challenge because I forgot to post yesterday. But I did read the play. So we're halfway there. I assume I will be less forgetful over time.

What was most engaging for me about this play, and perhaps it's my sociological background, was the importance of credentials. I know that I should be thinking about how strangers wander in and out of our lives and how someone we passed on the street yesterday could be a part of our lives three years later.

It's challenging you to think about what is real and what matters. Ouisa, at least for a moment, realizes how intelligent Paul must be to pull off all these cons. But what is the difference between "artificial" knowledge and actual cultural capital, actually growing up in an apartment outside of Central Park and growing up wherever Paul did? He was able to slip into a world he did not grow up in and fit in - how is that knowledge and skill so different from not growing up there? It makes those credentials we see as being so important, the Harvard degree, the famous father, seem so arbitrary. And yet, they are everything.

It's also challenging us to examine why those credentials are important. Why does Paul have such a drive to want to fit into these peoples' lives? Where does he come from? Why does he want to erase his given name or his original speech pattern? Does he not value himself and where he comes from?

I guess my point is that the play is as much social commentary as it is about Six Degrees of Separation between each person. Yes, we may be connected to everyone we run into, but we're also very isolated. We may pass someone on the street who we can connect to somehow, through strings of acquaintances, but that doesn't mean that we can suddenly fall in with any crowd, that social stigma and credentials don't put up barriers between each person that we meet.