But we are not computers to reboot ourselves

I read last night Stefan Caraman's critically acclaimed play "The Dead and the Living." I asked for a copy in English because I wanted to see if I could assign the play to my students enrolled in a course about theater only, a course that I cannot wait to teach this coming fall. The play has a guiding motto from a great writer, Vaclav Havel, “It is, indeed, hard to tell why one has to live.” What I liked in this play, and that is the bitterest part of it (to me), is the lack of love. We repeat our falling in love as if repeating a script, as if dressing up for a monotonous day (another day caught in the same scenario), we memorize those manneristic lines and say them (as if) detached, we don't have time to know the other because we do not feel ourselves in the first place. The naked in the morgue (where the action takes place) seem more decent than us, as the author suggests. The play is also a reflection on the verb "to live."

If verbs indicate action, then to live has been gradually rendered meaningless and is now inactive. If that verb is inactive, we are repeating lines and do not feel a thing. Is there a remedy? Could we revisit the Russian Formalist literary technique of defamiliarization of the familiar and make love, and by extension us, be born again, hope again, love again -- only that this time for real, in an unscripted way, and w/o a care in the world, especially w/o trying to please others?

Finally, "The Dead and the Living" is a play about humanity at the end of its own rope. And, to return to Havel's idea, it becomes evident that there is no reason why we should be on Earth if we cannot love anymore.

PS: The love story between Camea and Maler reminds me of the famous one between Romeo and Juliet, but it's even sadder. Camea tells Maler that she can be his forever if she is returned to the dead, because only in that condition love has a chance to not be criticized, and more, to last.

https://istoric.teatrul-odeon.ro/spectacol/morti-si-vii