“Make sure someone’s watchin’ you”

Implications of poverty, disability, caregiving and caretaking in Martyna Majok’s Cost of Living

Contemporary American drama has much to say about identity, especially racial and sexual identity - but there are a few facets of identity it doesn’t seem ready to touch: namely, disability and poverty. Are these subjects still too taboo for writers to feel comfortable exploring - or for audiences to feel comfortable watching? And if so, why? After all, as activist Nancy Mairs reminds us, the disabled community is a minority group that “you can join involuntarily, without warning, at any time.” In the same essay, Mairs provocatively refers to able-bodied people as “Temporarily Abled Persons.” We might choose to think of socioeconomic class in much the same way. As the middle class has been gradually eliminated, more and more Americans (by a recent Forbes estimate, 76%) live paycheck to paycheck with little savings - many members of the working class could be easily rendered homeless by one unexpected emergency. Ought we to think of ourselves as “Temporarily Housed People”? And if we recognize that these two minority groups are ones that we all may well belong to at some point in our lives, shouldn’t we be especially interested in seeing characters grapple with those challenges onstage? Or, are we deliberately eschewing stories about poor and disabled characters, in order to avoid coming to terms with the precarity of our lives - and the terrifying fact that we may someday need to be taken care of, or to take care of someone else? Is Mairs right when she says that these kinds of issues are deliberately “effaced” from modern media, so that “the viewer won't feel threatened by her or his own vulnerability”? And if we are so petrified of recognizing the tenuousness of our lives, then what can Martyna Majok’s play Cost of Living do for us?

Typical hero’s journey structures, which abound in contemporary American drama, don’t leave much room for stories about people who lack, or appear to lack, agency over their lives, like poor and disabled folks. (Even many TV stories about disabled characters can’t actually stand to have their protagonist be disabled - the Marvel superhero Daredevil is supposedly blind, but has developed superhuman hearing abilities that completely make up for his blindness. And stories about poor characters rarely focus on characters living in their poverty - instead, the story focuses on whatever bold, protagonist-y choice they make to acquire wealth - see Walter White making meth in Breaking Bad.) In general, we’re used to narratives with a protagonist who takes clear action to achieve a particular goal, not narratives where the main character’s arc centers on requiring and accepting someone else’s help. Cost of Living subverts stereotypes of poor and disabled folks as confined, pitiable victims, without eliminating this truth about them: that these characters do indeed need to be taken care of. Equally important are the “caretaking” characters in the play. In fact, the line between care-giver and care-receiver becomes increasingly blurry as the play goes on, as the audience comes to realize that caretaking is as much a crucial health need for the giver as it is for the receiver.

No character in this play is without desperate need, or without agency. Consequently, Majok ensures all her characters are fully humanized and on a level playing field - without having to resort to cheap tricks to turn downtrodden characters into unrealistically heroic conquerors of their own fate. We could say that one major theme of Cost of Living is that each of us - poor, disabled, both, or neither - has an intrinsic need to take care of someone else, and yet also an intrinsic tendency to resist that responsibility, and to resist receiving care. Becoming a fully actualized human being is about accepting both of those human responsibilities: to give and receive care. If we learn to accept those obligations, we have our best chance at being unified as a human species, rather than segregated into the false dichotomy of needy/needed. Poor and disabled characters are some of the best characters to help us all grapple with this truth. This essay will explore what Majok does as a playwright in order to develop these thematic ideas.

Let’s begin with the play’s title: Cost of Living. Merriam-Webster defines this phrase as “the basic cost of the necessities of life.” Before the play even begins, the audience is forced to ponder what might be considered a necessity for living. Food? Shelter? Hygiene? The ability to move one’s body? To forge emotional connections with others? And what might be the costs of living? In addition to money, we pay other prices in order to live meaningful lives: grief, instability, loss of independence and freedom. Right away, by title alone, we are primed to assess what is required - what is needed, and what it costs - in order to be a fully alive human.

Majok then opens the play with two epigraphs by Andre Dubus. The first reads, in part: “The meal offered and received is a sacrament which says; ‘I know you will die; I am sharing food with you; it is all I can do, and it is everything.’” Giving and receiving care (symbolized by a meal), according to Dubus, is not at all insufficient in the face of mortality, nor is it merely helpful - it is actually everything. The next epigraph reads, in part: “If you [do something for someone else, such as returning your shopping cart to its place], you join the world…you move out of your isolation and become universal.” Moving out of isolation and becoming universal is the quest that all the characters in this piece are on, and they (mostly) eventually do so, by learning to accept and give care.

Next, let’s examine the character descriptions. Instead of “characters,” this page lists them as “folks” - a humanizing touch. In her casting note, Majok insists that John and Ani be played by disabled actors, though doesn’t specify what disabilities they need have, which leaves an openness to casting. Audiences may have preconceptions about the kind of disabled character they are going to meet, and then they may be met with an amputee, a person with MS walking with a cane, a blind person, a person with cerebral palsy in a wheelchair, or any other uniquely disabled individual. This opportunity for variety serves as an immediate visual reminder to the audience about the diversity of disabled experiences. Similarly, Majok notes that Ani and Jess’s ethnicity and home language, respectively, should change to reflect the actors’ own ethnic heritages, and that the total four-person cast should resemble “North Jersey and its beautiful diversity.” In this way, the characters are imbued with qualities beyond their poverty or disability, and they hold up a mirror to the diversity of the audience. The audience, then, is ready to receive these characters as fully human, not stereotypes - and is therefore ready to relate to them, rather than viewing them as mere objects of pity. In relating to them, the audience is more ready to absorb the universal lesson these characters learn about embracing vulnerability - one’s own, other people’s, life’s.

The play’s opening image is of the character Eddie Torres sitting alone in a hipster bar. The stage directions say he is “a man who understands that self-pity and moping are privileges for people who, in their lives, have friends and family who unconditionally love them and will listen to their shit.” He knows that no one is “obligated to stay and listen to him,” and this informs the way he relates his experiences. His opening line is: “The shit that happens is not to be understood.” Throughout the proceeding 10-page monologue, we learn that Eddie lost his truck driving license and has been on unemployment, and that he is grieving his recently- deceased wife. At the end of that monologue, Eddie fervently tries to get someone to accept a drink from him - but who? No one else is onstage. Is it us? Is this our first invitation to accept care from someone else? Eddie, being in the midst of both dire financial straits and grief, might strike us as a person who is in no shape to care for others right now. But being able to give help to someone - even something as small as a drink - is actually exactly what Eddie needs in this moment. Not because he has a hero complex or a guilty conscience or needs a self-esteem boost, but because he needs connection. For proof, look no further than what he wishes for the girl who stood him up at the bar: that she “found someone to share the night with [...] someone to talk to. It’s important.” In being introduced to Eddie, we accustom ourselves to the idea that the truly mutual exchange of care is everyone’s most urgent necessity, no matter their station in life - or perhaps particularly if they are in a state of vulnerability themselves.

The scene shifts, and we are introduced to Jess, the “first-generation child of an immigrant” who feels “very foreign” in the “well-kempt and rich” apartment she is standing in. She soon meets John, the man with cerebral palsy interviewing her for a caretaker position, and is “phased” by his beauty. John is “determinedly polished, comes from wealth and wears it, undeniably.” Already, John is not what Jess - or we - might have anticipated. Neither is Jess what John expected; he says “you’re not what usually applies for this job.” The two have an awkward first conversation. He admonishes her for using the term “Differently Abled,” finding it condescending, but then he condescends right back to her, squinting with suspicion at what he finds to be a mismatch on her resume between her Princeton education and her current assortment of bartending jobs. They have approached each other in preparation for a transactional relationship - employer and employee - and this causes them to dismiss one another. They have each made incorrect, offensive assumptions about the other related to their disability and class status. It is only once they take an interest in each other’s lives - in giving and receiving information about each other - that they can shake hands and look at one another with respect. The turning-point question the two ask of each other is, “How much life have you seen?” Since the answer, for each of them (for vastly different reasons) boils down to “a lot,” this exchange leads them to develop a burgeoning respect for one another and interest in each other’s lives. This genuine interest is the first step to the reciprocity of care that will grow between them as the play goes on - though not, as we will see, without reaching a limit.

The scene shifts to a flashback: Ani is alive, though already disabled by an accident, and Eddie is with her, though they are separated. He’s clearly nervous and has no idea how to help her, though he tries different tactics: carrying her umbrella, giving feng shui advice for her mental health, fluffing her pillow, even disastrously “dancing” with her before realizing her physical and emotional discomfort. She doesn’t trust his sudden zeal to take care of her, and accuses him of not being there for her during or after her surgeries in the past six months. Eddie sincerely apologizes and presses on undeterred, keeps gently offering his care to her throughout the conversation. Finally, when he makes her laugh at something, she cracks, and shares with him one anecdote about her physical therapy. The stage directions note that “She has had no one with which to share new information. It’s a vulnerable act. And he is listening.” It’s a small step, but it’s the first step toward Ani and Eddie being willing to take care of each other again. This small step is symbolically reinforced by Ani’s wiggling of one finger on her paralyzed hand at the end of the scene. Eddie drives off, but we get the strong sense he will return. This will be the beginning to their re-established trust in one another - which will not be without its complexities.

Back in John’s house, we see Jess shaving his face - an intimate physical act, though stilted here with some awkwardness - while he tries to get to know her better. He asks questions about her life, trying to level the playing field of vulnerability between the two (“You will take off my clothes and I will have nowhere to hide [...] It would be nice to know who is taking off my clothes,” he says.) She pushes him away, giving snappy one-word answers about her job and education, fearing he’s judging her for her financial state. When he tries to get her to imagine living inside his disabled body, she accuses him of trying to get her to mock him - and then “firing [her] because [she] didn’t entertain him on command.” There is a clear tension here between characters who each feel powerless. John is trapped in his body; Jess is trapped in financial circumstances beyond her control. Each feels something like an animal in a zoo exhibit in front of the other, and at first they lash out under the weight of anticipated judgment. But by the end of the scene, each character has shared something vulnerable about themselves - Jess shares the heartbreaking origin of her name; John shares the physical sensations he experiences in his body. The stage directions at the end of this scene note: “Something new is beginning.” What’s beginning is a reciprocal interchange of care that holds the potential to bring them both back into the universe.

In the next scene we see Eddie asking to be Ani’s live-in nurse, because he “needs the money.” As part of his pitch, he says, “I know what that is, to hafta be taken care of.” He reminds her that he is her emergency contact, and when she threatens to replace him with someone else, he asks, trailing off, “Who do we know in our lives who’d come? Who’s got the money or the [responsibility]?” Eddie finally clarifies that the main reason he wants to become her nurse is that he’d “like to see [her],” and the stage directions indicate that “Something shifts for Ani” when he says this. She trusts his authenticity, and is willing to accept his caretaking. This acceptance of his offer is, in its own way, a gift she is giving to Eddie. Eddie then presents himself as Ani’s birthday present, saying: “Happy birthday, baby.” If they accept one another’s care, they have the potential to break out of their isolation and rejoin the universe.

Scene Five shows Jess showering John for “as long as it takes.” We in the audience may experience some discomfort at watching this in real time, without any theatrical glossing-over, but if so, that discomfort is in seeing our own potential vulnerabilities mirrored back at us. It’s healthy to accustom ourselves to true vulnerability. In this moment of ultimate openness, we finally see Jess tell John about her financial status. John doesn’t understand why she doesn’t go out more, and she tries to explain to him that everything from a “ham sandwich” to a “book” costs money - it’s cheaper to stay in, especially by working as much as possible. When John insists “It’s not possible to work all the time,” Jess cuts him off, saying: “You can. People can. They do.” John asks, “For what are you working so much?” and Jess replies, “Everything [...] It matters who you are. Family. Connections. If there’s gonna be a net when you fall. ‘Cause everybody falls [...] I was supposed to be the net.” Jess’s financial pressure isn’t only due to the reality of her present circumstances - though it affects those significantly, forcing her to bathe with perfume samples from magazines and take night shifts at her jobs so she doesn’t have to scramble for a place to sleep at night - she also feels entire generations’ worth of pressure to make her mom’s decision to immigrate to the US worthwhile. If she wants to accept the date that she believes John is asking her on when he asks if she is free on Friday night, she’s forced to give up a highly-coveted shift where she could make the majority of her money for the week. She hesitantly accepts this date, knowing the financial cost to her, perhaps because she believes that the connection she is forging with John can be the new net to protect her, both financially and emotionally.

Her poverty is, in its way, a disability - it prevents her from leading a normal life, especially socially. In fact, John seems to have an easier time leading a social life than she does - after all, as we’ll discover a few scenes from now, he’s scored a date with a grad student. So the lines between participator and hermit, privileged and unprivileged, caretaker and caregiver blur in this scene. But now a new question is posed by the text: can an employer ever actually be a caretaker? Is providing money the same thing as providing care? Can there ever be a mutual exchange of care between employee and employer? John doesn’t understand the depth of Jess’s sacrifice when she gives up the Friday night shift, and perhaps this is the death knell signaling that these two have reached the limit of their ability to mutually care for one another.

The two couples’ scenes mirror each other. So, right after the John/Jess shower scene comes an Eddie/Ani bath scene. Ani is allowing Eddie to bathe her, though she calls him a prick several times during the bath, because “it woulda been good to feel this before.” But after she’s been allowed her moment of anger, she asks him, “How’s the water feel?” When Eddie jumps to apologize for the water’s temperature, she clarifies: “No no no. It’s good fer me. I’m askin fer you. How’s it feel fer you? Yer hands are in it too.” Here she addresses aloud that the caretaking is something they’re experiencing together - and she makes an unprompted concession toward his comfort, toward caring for him. As the bath continues, “Eddie’s hands in the water are doing something to Ani that she has loved for years.” She can’t physically feel it, so he soon stops. But then they find other ways to express their love for one another - new ways that work with her new body, like passing a cigarette back and forth. Then, in another bout of sudden distrust, Ani says, “If everything was perfect in yer life, if you had no holes to fill, you wouldn’t be here,” and Eddie replies with a gem of angry wisdom: “People don’t go after people unless they fuckin need em. And everyone fuckin - needs em, someone. That’s what life is, what yer life, my life… is. Okay? That’s how people work. In life.” Here he combines lives together - his life, her life, but also everyone’s lives. He’s making the same statement that Dubus made in the epigraph: that moving out of isolation, into needing someone, and providing something for someone, is what brings you into the universe, what makes you a human. When Ani slips down in the tub at the end of this scene, Eddie rescues her, and, realizing her own fragility and need, she asks him, “Don’t go.” This is the last we see of Ani. We do not witness her death, which we know occurs a few weeks after this scene. Her death, while terribly sad, is also ennobled. In her last scene, we see her making the choice to allow herself to be vulnerable with someone who clearly loves her, to finally accept the care that she needs instead of pushing it away. This demonstration of her growth and agency over her own choices imbues her death - and therefore her life - with meaning and dignity.

We return to John and Jess, and Jess discovers that John’s Friday night date is not with her, but a grad student he’s become acquainted with. Jess and the audience alike are surprised and heartbroken here, and part of it is perhaps because we’ve both fallen for the trope of believing that a disabled character couldn’t get a date on his own, or must inevitably fall for his caretaker. But our reaction is also, in part, because we’ve seen genuine chemistry between these two characters - and because they have come to represent hope and new beginnings for each other. The opening of this scene is the first time we’ve seen Jess take pride in her appearance and get excited about something. After the reveal of their miscommunication, she tries to get him to understand what she sacrificed to be there: “I took off work. On the night I make most of my money fer the week. To live. So I could be here. With you.” Even after John realizes the misunderstanding that has occurred, he doesn’t attempt to bridge the gap between them by apologizing, or by allowing her to stay in his house while he’s out on his date. Instead, he tells her that he is uncomfortable with her staying there alone, as she has previously stolen soap from him. John’s hardships with his disability haven’t necessarily made him more clear-eyed or generous - that’s not always what hardships do to people. Sometimes, hardship just makes people more selfish, more short-sighted. Still, the playwright doesn’t condemn John or Jess here, and thus another shade is fleshed-out in these fully human characters. What’s refreshing about all four characters in the play is none of them feel like advertisements for virtues, or symbolic stand-ins for entire communities or ideologies - they just feel like full real people. Thus, even when they make choices that we don’t approve of, we in the audience still connect to them and are invested in their journeys.

In the play’s final scene, Eddie has spotted Jess sleeping outside in her car in the freezing cold, and invited her into his house. There is some understandable hesitation and back-and-forth between the two characters as Eddie tries to convince her to stay with him. At first, Jess insists that she is “not some fuckin [person who] just sleeps in a car. [She] went to school. [She] works.” She’s trying to put up emotional walls and maintain a narrative of herself as a strong, independent person who doesn’t need anyone’s help. But she does. And Eddie needs someone to care for. As they begin to make furtive plans to live together, Jess corrects him about one detail of how they met: “You didn’t ‘find’ me. You saw me. I let you see me.” Jess is admitting to allowing herself to be seen, vulnerable, by Eddie earlier that night - she could have stayed out of sight if she really wanted to. Still, she’s not ready to accept his offer yet, and she apologizes for this, saying, “It’s just unfortunate that some people have already lived a lot of life before they meet other people.” She’s had her trust shattered and her life destabilized so many times already that she’s not sure she can soften again, only to be hurt again. She has a choice here. She can toughen, go back out to the street with the pizza Eddie’s given her, and move on in her life. Eddie is convinced this is the choice she’ll make. The last advice he gives her is, “Make sure someone’s watchin’ you, in y’know…in some kinda way.” She exits, leaving Eddie alone with his phone full of ghost-texts from his deceased wife’s number… but then re-emerges. The last scene of the play is them making the choice to take a step toward each other, and then “standing together in a fading light.”

In crafting these compelling, relatable, nuanced characters from particularly vulnerable populations - disabled and working class communities, which she draws together - Martyna Majok has invited us all to consider our place in society. Cost of Living invites us to see how we can bring ourselves back into the universe when we allow ourselves and others to be vulnerable, when we admit that we do have agency over our own choices no matter what hardships we are facing, and when we commit to the terrifying, rewarding dual responsibilities of giving and receiving care. This, the play argues, is what lends value and meaning to life. We can only hope that more stories celebrating human vulnerability and care can take center stage in contemporary American drama; these stories have the potential to unify and heal us all.

Works Cited

Batdorf, Emily. “Living Paycheck to Paycheck Statistics 2024.” Banking, Forbes Magazine, 2 Apr. 2024.

Mairs, Nancy. “On Being a Cripple.” Hers, The New York Times, 9 July 1987.

Majok, Martyna. Cost of Living. Theatre Communications Group, 23 Oct 2018.