After tonight's performance of Bad Penny at City Garage, they had the Q & A session with the audience, the cast, and the director. I usually stay - I think these sessions are interesting, and it's fun to see the cast interact with the audience. Most of the time the audience asks questions about elements of the play that I had never considered or maybe had taken for granted. Coming in like I do, during the last week, to learn the lights and cues and stuff, I never really feel like I get a chance to absorb what's going on onstage the way I'd like to. I only have time to listen for my cues, to calm my own nerves, to do my job of making the show what it's supposed to be.
Tonight, someone in the audience asked the cast what they thought their characters had in common with each other. One of the actors responded with (and my memory is not so good, though I did bust my ass to get down the street to the Santa Monica library before closing so I could snag a public access PC and log on to Blogger... picture, if you will, me rushing down the street... OK, so that's a fat lie - I strolled, walked calmly into the library, renewed my SM library card... anyway, my memory is not so good, so I maybe have the wrong gist of what he said) something along the lines of, though each character is of course different, what they're all searching for is mutual understanding. The script says things along the lines of how life is incomprehensible, and how what you believe (or say you believe) isn't always the point. Shit happens for reasons either you understand... or you don't. The point is not your understanding, the point is that it happened. (That's not what any of the actors said... that's my not-so sophisticated, and probably wrong, interpretation.) Much of what the actors say to each other is what normal people might consider to be "crazy." The character Kat talks about her own experience of "becoming" crazy, and then "becoming" sane... and then doing it all over again, multiple times. That speech, where she talks about people looking at you too closely, sounded very familiar.
What I started thinking about, as I walked out of the theater into the alley and along Santa Monica Boulevard, is yes, that's true: we all want to be understood by each other. It hasn't escaped my attention that I'm here on Blogger, hoping that someone out there reading this understands what I feel based on the way I express myself. Not just understands, but recognizes. As sane? Or just as real. Sure, maybe I'm not the greatest writer, or blogger, or maybe my experiences and comments on them aren't too interesting to other people: strangers! Or non-strangers, even. And maybe I don't really put it all out there, anyway: I've said enough, I think, about my personal feelings without saying all of it. If this were fiction maybe I'd feel more comfortable with the nitty gritty reality of my mind... or if I could say it in a more creative way, to keep some of it for myself, like song lyrics that are both obscure and totally on the mark. But I'm not that talented, and I do need some protection, even I can see that.
What I think, after watching this play, now, for four weeks, is that, if the words coming out of our mouths are weird, or "crazy" or nonsensical or incomprehensible: maybe we're actually saying is preventing so-called normal, sane people from taking the time to figure out how we feel or what the idea that we're trying to convey even is. The words themselves are the barrier.
If what I say is so whacked out crazy, or if you think it's gibberish: is it? Am I?
Or what if, if all I say is the same normal bullshit everyone else says, who will know what the real me is all about?
...
I have 0:05 minutes left on this computer before the library closes, and I have to get home to Patrick, who has been waiting for me. Also I think my rapid, pounding typing is annoying the other people around me, who seem to be mostly pointing and clicking. Won't think about that too much.
You have two more weeks to get your ass into City Garage Theater for this production of Bad Penny - I really think you need to do it. Go see it. It's a wonderful production, the performances are great, and this show, this theater, needs you. Do it.
City Garage Theater
For reservations, call (310) 319-9939
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