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Posts tagged ‘WIT’

Oct 21

27 Comments

Alas For Her!

This post is part of the Mirror Series. If this is your first visit to the Mirror Series, please click here and follow the arrows at the top right of each post to read the series from the beginning. Thank you for reading!

John Donne 72.

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,          5
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,   10
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell’st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

Darkness. It engulfed me. My heart still raced from the madness of it all. She was dying – she WANTED to die. Finally, I convinced them to let her go. The chaos stopped. I know I saw her walk into the light.

With the casual flick of a switch, I was blinded. Gazing into the gaping path of pure whiteness can cause sight issues when the beam stops glowing, when it is replaced by nothingness, a void. The room was silent. Where people had been swarming all around me just seconds ago, I felt no one. All that possessed my mind was the compulsion to move to the right, to get out of the way lest the light return too soon. It might decide to devour ME next time.

I knew this place. Confidence illumined my blackened steps as I plowed through the murk. Something brushed past me, and I knew if I followed it, I would find my place. Returning to myself again was always easy. This in-between time was the portal, the mirror, that eased me back into ME. If I kept moving I would make it. Almost, I was ALMOST there.

My knee struck something hard. I bit my lip to keep from screaming. The searing pain made me dizzy, but it didn’t make me deaf. I heard an object fall, its bouncing echoed through the needle-like silence of the room. With every reverberation, I felt my doom, forever to be trapped in the in-between. Heart throbbing in my center, I stood. Scrapes along the floor ebbed and charged, seeking to block my return. Could it see in this blackout? Waiting. Anticipating it, the menace that threatened to banish me .

When the lights came back up, the first thing I noticed was……..laughter?

My exit stage right at the end of the play Wit was a crashing, deafening disaster as I careened into the long forgotten desk from Act 1 that was stored in the wings. To have to go back onstage, face the audience and take my bow – it would surely be the death of me.


Jun 27

21 Comments

One Thing Leads to Another

Coming up with a story every day for a blog can be a tricky business. People visit for the random surprises, not the same-old-same-old. Can I spin the same story, but with a twist, and get away with something new?

Hmmmmmmmm.

I haven’t talked much about my life-long interest in theater. Yet, from kindergarten until my mid-thirties (when I aged out of believably playing the ingenue), I walked the boards with schizophrenic regularity. And, no, I’ve never had the joy of playing a crazy character.

Maybe someday.

I have, however, been cast in the role of nurse more often than any other in my acting career. The last time it happened, my Mom joked that my acting skills must’ve really improved, because no one on earth is less nurse-like than I am in real life. Yet, I found myself slated to play the nurse in Margaret Edson‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning play “W;t,” a show that juxtaposes the metaphysical poetry of John Donne over the life of an academic who finds herself stricken with ovarian cancer. Every night, I walked away from that play gobsmacked, grateful to be a part of such a layered, nuanced piece of theater. To date, it is my favorite role.

That’s the serious part of the story.

We staged this riveting piece of live performance at the historic Dock Street Theatre, and it was my virgin experience with the place. With its dressing rooms set up rickety stairs leading to a dark corridor in a recess of the second floor, it didn’t make me very happy. I had numerous costume changes, and I’m naturally clumsy. No way was I running up and down those stairs for the sake of modesty. Like many performer types, I carved out a space for my costumes backstage and changed there, multiple times per night, in front of whoever happened to be around at the time.

It was generally okay. Most of the actors in the show were people I’d known forever. I already ‘knew’ them and they ‘knew’ me, if you know what I mean. I forgot about our intern, though, a cherub-faced twelve-year-old boy who was interested in being a techie and was working backstage to learn the ropes.

During the first dress rehearsal, I came offstage and ripped off my shirt on the way to my changing area, and no one even noticed. No one except the poor intern. He was traumatized. He walked back to the green room with eyes like saucers and his angelic mouth in a little ‘o’ and announced to everyone that he’d just seen me in my bra. Not knowing what to do, he hid himself from my bra-clad boobies for the rest of the dress rehearsal, afraid they might send lightening-bolt daggers into his innocent little eyeballs.

Would that other snickering man could learn from him.

Too Much is Just Enough: Same Story, Different Ways

 

 

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