I LOOOOOOOOVE THE THEATRE!!
I just got back from seeing Neil LaBute's play "Some Girls" at the Geffen. It has been five or six months since the last time I went to the theatre, and I really should be ashamed of myself, because I am missing out. I enjoyed the play. It was well-written, and the actors were committed. In a broad sense (because I don't want to spoil it for those of you who haven't yet seen it) I could relate to some of the situations in which the women in the play found themselves.
I've said it for years - For me, going to the theatre is like going to church. That same transformed, renewed people that many people speak of when referring to their experience in church? That's how I feel when I am privileged to be a part of good theatre. I am an actress, and theatre is my first love, but because theatre is interactive, I reap the benefits of the experience whether I am onstage or in the audience. I think it's because (my idea of) good theatre is theatre in which the writing and the actors are true to whatever is being presented onstage. Whether or not I agree with what is being played out, or whether or not I like the character is inconsequential--what matters is that the writer is telling the truth as s/he knows it to be (or that the characters know it to be--which is not necessarily the same thing), and that the actors are living within that circumstance rather than playing at it. This may get me into trouble (especially with my mother), but I have to say it anyway-- actors (and all artists, really) are equal to clergy because the truth is the truth is the truth. When I say "actor", I don't mean "movie star" any more than I mean "televangelist" when I say "priest". I mean that both occupations at their core are about truth-seeking and truth-telling.
I have wanted to do a play for a while now. It's been several years since my last one, and I miss it: that feeling of walking a tightrope several hundred feet above the ground, and knowing that there is an audience watching, hoping you make it (safely) to the other side. Knowing that you MUST make it to the other side, and that you will...but not knowing if you will do so fully intact, or if the act of stripping down and stepping into the circumstance of the play will rearrange your molecules in such a way that you are forever changed. I love that stuff! One take. It ain't for the faint of heart, that's for sure.
I need to find a play to do...
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