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Act 1, Prologue
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in If We Were Villains, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Fate vs. Free Will
Identity and Disguise
Love and Sexuality
Theatre and Corruption
Summary
Analysis
In September of 1997, Oliver and six other fourth-year students sit in a library of Dellecher Classical Conservatory, Broadwater, Illinois. The clock strikes midnight, and the students lower their books and start to talk. Tomorrow, they’re auditioning for the school production of Julius Caesar. They’ve been studying their monologues in preparation. One student, Alexander, laments the futility of the exercise—after all, he says, they always get the same kinds of parts. He bets the others that he can predict the cast list correctly. According to him, Richard will be Caesar, James will be Brutus, Alexander will be Cassius, Wren will be Portia, Meredith will be Calpurnia, and Filippa will play a male part. When Oliver prompts him, he casts him as Octavius, deciding that he’s too inconspicuous to be Antony.
Alexander’s perspective on the pointlessness of auditioning for roles introduces the importance of fate and free will in If We Were Villains. Here, his insistence that it’s pointless for them to prepare their monologues when their casting will be the same no matter what argues for the precedence of destiny over agency. The roles that Alexander assigns match Oliver’s assessment of the fourth-years’ typecasts quite well: Richard plays a tyrant, James a hero, and so on.
Themes
Oliver is less than thrilled; he seems to always find himself playing bit parts and sidekicks to his main character friends. No one takes Alexander up on the bet, as they all agree that his casting is accurate. Slowly, the students start to peel off and go to bed. Oliver and James stay back. Finally, Oliver and James head off together for bed. They share a room in the Tower, a section of the run-down dormitory called “the Castle” that the fourth-years inhabit. James tells Oliver that he thinks Alexander’s casting is too predictable. He reassures Oliver that he’ll get a chance to be a “tragic hero.”
The other fourth-years’ unanimous acceptance of Alexander’s casting suggests that they all agree with him that there’s no point in trying to resist their typecasts. That Oliver and James work on their monologues a little longer before going to bed, however, implies that the two of them are hungrier to shake up the defined roles they’ve been assigned both on and off stage. Indeed, James’s words of comfort to Oliver underline the possibility that he hopes to upend the status quo.
Themes
