by Jane Martin
Director’s Notes, 2015
human
adjective
1 they're only human: mortal, flesh and blood; fallible, weak, frail, imperfect, vulnerable, susceptible, erring, error-prone; physical, bodily, fleshly.
It’s hard to be a human being and even harder to be a good one.
It was this sentiment more than anything else that drew me to Jake, Deborah, and the bittersweet tale of H2O. An emotional labyrinth conceived in hell and set ever so gently on a bed of quicksand, H2O has language so seductively simple I honestly thought I had a grasp of what I had taken on and what it would take to wrestle it to the ground. How wrong I was. But with that said, how could I have known what I was taking on when the characters only sometimes say what they mean, only sometimes mean what they say they mean, and only sometimes say what they say they would mean if only they would say it. Sounds like real life to me, but what else is a human being supposed to do when faced with feelings he can never hope to control.
Beyond the notion of a good person, it was the tenderness, the inescapable and tender promise at the heart of Jake and Deborah’s relationship that I couldn’t resist. Isn't what they want what we all want? On a good day it's an easy question to answer, but on a not so good day I'd rather send an email or a text in its place. That's the thing with this life of ours, there's always a way out of loneliness and a ship on the horizon. If given the chance to do it all over again I'd rather come back as a table. All you have to do is stand in the corner, make sure you don't fall down, and everybody loves you. Sounds good to me.
-michael french