For the past weeks I have been directing a play I adapted – the adaptation process is, like all writing, infinite so I can never say I finished it. But I’m done with directing the show. On Saturday evening, after the final show, the set was taken away, the lights and curtains down, the floors painted back to black. In three weeks, another play will be performed in the same place, another world created, different audience, different lights, set, even soundtrack.
And of course this is expected – this is the life led in the theater. As comical as Ian Mckellen’s spot on Extra’s was, he did have a good bit of truth when he stated that acting was illusion. Like all illusions, though it is temporary; if it weren’t, it wouldn’t hold our interest, or it would simply be life but on a stage and no one wants to see that. So I can come to terms with the delicate necessity to be able to build a world with the knowledge that it’ll vanish before you had time to explore all of it.
Because for a brief moment we were kings of that world – my cast, my staff, my designers, myself. We controlled it, organized it, built it, had meetings to decide its color, its sound, and if we could have, probably their taste. But more important and more sad to see disappear was the fact that while we were working on this show we did so in the ultimate form of unity. Everyone had to do and be exactly what they were to create the show. Even down to everyone changing their facebook profile picture to the show poster. and now, we are back to our lives, our evenings free(ish?), and our old profile pictures. And it’s sad to watch it go, but it was a choice we made to build for a moment that would, granted, last as long as moments do, but a moment that was truly ours – not mine and hers and his – ours.
The question remains of what to do, but that is not our problem – that is each of ours. For now, I’m hanging my poster up on my wall. It’s not leaving my side, because that memory is not temporary.
