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"The same arc was there every night, of course, and yet it changed and was a living, breathing thing. Every performance was like doing a new Rubik's Cube." Scarlett Johansson, on playing her role in A View from the Bridge.
I had a tiny chat with Arthur, our esteemed editor, the other day and I realized from that exchange that it has been, and still is, easy for me just to bang out something for the magazine every month. The question now is whether it's a going to be another diatribe concerning my dysfunctional relationship with my long dead wannabe-actor father, or my America–hating French mother, or the generally putrid state of local theater & parts available therein. A sort of a "been there done that" scenario.
Then I ran across that quote from Scarlett Johansson & it started a really nice chain of connections—you know, like free associating—especially since I have just in the last month, I kid you not, been up to my eyeballs in Sudoku, as in spending three or four hours a day trying to get out of the EASY range & only able vaguely to imagine what the FIENDISH level is like.
I agree completely with ole Scarlett, in fact I would take it even farther. I would posit that the only reason for being involved in theater arts in the first place is to participate in the game—and the more participation, the more right-brain/left-brain you get going, the higher up your level, which leads tragically to the inevitable outcome of despair, boredom and backyard mediation/yoga.
Theater will do this to you.
Every time I tell myself
my neural synapses are finally well & truly toasted
I somehow find a path back again
to the beauty of Sudoku Game of Theater
the assurance that whatever happened last night
tonight will be different.
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