Carl The Second is a comedy about a new type of tragic hero, Carl, who falls into a self-fulfilled prophecy of insecurity. From the negative pattern that he has in romantic relationships, his belief of innate inferiority as a human being—that he is only a “second” and not a “first”—becomes stronger, leading him to self-destruction.
The concept of my design is “soft spot”: a fatal weakness. I wanted to value the impact that I had felt when I first read this play, as I identified so much with the story and Carl. It felt as though the play was striking the point of my weakness over and over again, very accurately. The word “softspot” not only fits my reaction to the play, but also the context of the play. Carl has a soft spot that is damaged consistently even by small, unintended situations, that it leads him to sabotage a perfect relationship. Also, the destructive pattern in his relationships happen because of a softspot that Carl has for similar women and simultaneously, this type of woman has a soft‐spot for Carl. I used an imagery that utilizes the idea of scale as a device to portray what a soft spot is: pushpin holes compared to lunar craters. When one’s soft spot is stimulated, a tiny puncture by a pushpin may feel as big as the impact of a meteorite concaving a landscape; to some of us, something minute can have catastrophic damage. To me, pushpin holes on a white wall up‐close looked like craters on the moon—and like this, a soft spot is defined by unique perspective, a
very special and personal measurement.
