Theater is one of those things I've always felt incredibly connected with. I've half an idea of myself in some decades' time, perhaps, when the thrill of being a novelist wears off or leaves me temporarily, where I might hide myself in the theater. Write. Direct. I don't know.
I guess it helps that I've never bought into the whole pretentious allure that many people seem to ascribe to the theater. I don't like it coming from either side, as it were. Not a fan of the people who scoff at it and say it's artsy crap. Obviously. But not a fan of the snobs who think they're all that because they go to the theater, either. I think theater is just a different formation of a story, that's all.
So with theaters reopening for autumn, I've been immersing myself. Last night, I went to a first showing of a new play at (perhaps) my favorite theater here in Bucharest. It was an adaptation of Conor McPherson's "Shining City", and I was so very excited because it was directed by my favorite theater director. It was thrilling. Even sitting down in the room,there was an air of witnessing something new, almost like seeing a birth of sorts. And it was lovely, when certain lines "hit it off" with the audience, to see the actors crack a smile. It was their first time doing it in public, as it were, and it was all so mesmerizing.
On a surface level, it's a very funny play, and I almost cried with laughing so much which doesn't happen to me that often in the theater. I'm not such a fan of comedies in general, particularly the vulgar, crass shit that usually passes for "comedy" in Romanian modern theater. But last night was filled with laughter and delight...
...and yet, I left the theater feeling hollow and confused.
I didn't get it. I hadn't understood. I...was sitting there at the end, waiting for a revelation that wouldn't come to me.
Then, as I rode the bus home, I was overcome by a tremendous sadness. Devastating, crippling sorrow. I was sat there and felt so vulnerable and alone. Immediately, I triggered my inner critic, I thought, how can I leave such a fun play and feel so depressed?
From another play last week. I don't normally take photos at the theater, but I was mesmerized by the light.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to make the connection. Because while the play is filled with laughter, it is a story of great sorrow. Following an ex-priest who turns therapist, "Shining City" is the story of two desperately lost, lonely men. Showing both men in different relationships around them, most poignantly with the women in their lives, the play asks just how far you're willing to go for someone to see you. To feel like you're not alone.
I understood, perhaps belatedly, that my sorrow was a reaction to the tremendous emotional weight of the play I'd just witnessed. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of theater exploring despair, depression, loneliness, and all the nitty gritty of the human spirit, but this one hid itself so cleverly behind genuinely funny jokes, and bizarre, seemingly disparate moments, that it didn't leave the audience with a clear cut "lesson".
On the contrary, one left rather elated, jovial, smiling, and happy for the creative team that put together such a brilliant play. It's only after, as the magic of the "shining city" wears off, that you feel the weight of what you've just witnessed, that you realize the heaviness of sorrow and loneliness that people wear inside themselves, like a lining to their skin.
Of course, it got me considering my own feelings of loneliness and whichever sadness might inhabit my body for a while. It was supposed to. It also got me thinking about this fantastic art form, unlike anything else, really. To think that 20 years ago, a 30-something Irishman wrote this play and managed, through it, to see me, sitting in the side seat, kinda craning my neck in a small underground theater in Romania. It's fantastic. It blows my mind.
And of course, 20 years is nothing when we look at playwrights like Shakespeare, or Sophocles.
No. Scratch that. 20 years is something. We like to say it's nothing because the passage of time scares us, and 20 years is something that will pass during our lifetime, if we're lucky, and 2000 years is not, so we downplay smaller amounts of time to make ourselves feel young.
I've been thinking a good deal about transience, how this is not the end, even if, for every generation, it feels like that. Mine is gonna be the real gamechanger. Except it's not. I don't know if there is one down the road, eventually, but it's not this. It's not yours, not mine. Not all the people that have gone before. And to think that in the fluidity of time, someone reaches out across two decades and sees you, and brushes your hand with their fingers is nothing short of a miracle.
After all, we'll be with someone two days, two months, two years, without them really seeing us.
But that's nothing compared to twenty years. :)
