I think
I kind of expected that I would use my blog as a “scrapbook” for a time. Of
course I would need a scrapbook, and it was already the day after I published
this swan song on my blog that I saw “No Man’s Land” with Patrick Stewart and
Ian McKellen in the “Cinema”. Very fitting title for continuing my blog in 2017
by the way … But I won’t write any theatre reviews or the like just because I
don’t have anything else to write. This will still be about reading.
As
usual, I went because I wanted to see these two actors, and I didn’t make up my
mind about the play beforehand. I didn’t know anything about it, and I didn’t
read it – which would have been a complete waste of time anyway. Though it
might have been interesting to see what would have “happened” if I had tried to
read it aloud. But I doubt anything would have happened in this case. And I
couldn’t have understood it any better than I did because I understood EVERY
SINGLE WORD anyone said on that stage. (Finally everybody was speaking so
slowly that even I could follow – and it even was the perfect way of speaking
the text!)
The
reason why I am writing about it is, as usual, because I enjoyed it and wanted
to know why. I especially enjoyed the “aftermath” which is always significant. It
began immediately after I had seen it. There was a q&a, and it was still
before ten, but I didn’t want to stay for it. And I think this was because I
didn’t want to spoil the mood. Strange, because it is certainly one of these
plays I usually would have felt to be depressing and boring, and then I liked
the experience so much that I didn’t want to spoil it.
The
immediate reason was certainly that the actors - all four of them, by the way!
- spoke the text so beautifully that they easily convinced me that it is
special even though it didn’t yield any meaning. But meaning can “happen” in
very different ways, and there was definitely something happening for these
four actors. And without a text that works great on the stage you would never
see four great actors WHOEVER they were! (Though I couldn’t escape the
impression that Patrick Stewart might actually play a chair and “we” might like
to watch him doing it …)
What
jogged my brain and made me realize what exactly happened on that stage was
picking up a scrap of conversation during the interval. A woman explaining to
some younger people that the play was kind of “Waiting for Godot” … And I would
have liked to pitch in spontaneously and say: No, it is NOT, stupid!
But of
course I would never have done something like this. And she might not even have
been COMPLETELY wrong. But if this was “Waiting for Godot” it was certainly an
“adult” version for people who worked out that their brain isn’t just there to
produce thoughts and reproduce stuff they have learned at school, but that we
use it to create emotions and impressions OF OUR OWN. “Waiting for Godot” I had
done at uni and had hated it, of course. It is exactly the kind of stuff I hate
because it actually IS boring, and in this case I am sure seeing it in the
theatre wouldn’t have changed this. Because it is about nothing happening, and
that’s all there is. So THERE IS NOTHING HAPPENING on that stage whereas there
was definitely something going on in “No Man’s Land” – apart from Ian McKellen
being in love with his text and Patrick Stewart sitting in a chair in the most
significant manner I have ever seen anybody sitting in a chair. But what was
it?
I think
that “No Man’s Land” actually isn’t ABOUT anything. Nothing significant happens
– in terms of “story” – and nothing anybody says really MEANS anything, or
yields any real insight into these characters. Who they are doesn’t really
matter, nor what they are talking about. But all of it is used in a “material”
way, as “stuff” to create something quite different. At least in this
production, “No Man’s Land” is a performance to create something on the stage
which is appropriately called “No Man’s Land”, and which is something that
actually exists in real life but that we seldom become aware of. I’d describe
it as some kind of space in between the layer of talking – which actually is
something “we” apparently HAVE to do, even if there is no reason or thought or
point to it, just like we need to breathe, and which is an activity I try to
avoid … pointless talk. A space between this constant activity of mindless
talking and the human being which is the physical and psychological source of
this talk. This space, or void, is something we usually don’t feel, or become
aware of, and which might be so small that it is almost inexistent, or
certainly “unfelt”, especially when we are young. But when “we” are growing
older, or old … and nobody is interested anymore in us as the physical and
psychological unit we are, it begins to become bigger. And it was getting
bigger and bigger on that stage until it became REALLY big, and really dark. It
even had a different “sound” to it, like the sound of the void as distinct from
the beautiful sounding text, like being in a large cave where sounds are
different from the outside, or like standing inside a big sphere … And to see
or feel this space being created on the stage as something that ACTUALLY EXISTS
was totally exciting. Even more so as there is something beautiful being
created from an experience which in real life must be ugly and depressing,
through language and “physical” playing. And this is exactly the kind of thing
I like to see in the theatre. And which can happen ONLY in the theatre, by the
way – even if the stage is a cinema screen.
And of
course it can only happen when you have these great actors who can “fill” the
stage like this, having this sublime awareness of language as well as this
complete understanding of themselves as physical beings. Especially Patrick
Stewart was incredible. I last saw him in the RSC’s “Hamlet” (with David
Tennant as Hamlet), and I almost couldn’t believe it. Kind of like it was to
see Cate Blanchett in “Carol” – AFTER “Blue Jasmine”, or Richard Armitage as
the “Red Dragon” even after “The Crucible”. How can there be SO MUCH MORE even
after this? All these examples aren’t really something to compare, and I am in
no position to judge anyway, knowing so little of his theatre-work. But he
definitely is one of my favourite actors now, if he wasn’t before that, which
are the ones of whom I EXPECT that they will surprise me.
And I
know I should have stayed for the q&a, if only to confirm something I came
to suspect many times. That, as a reader, I can have a “better”, more complete or
significant, understanding of a text than any of the people producing it –
directors included. Which doesn’t mean that the act of creating it wasn’t a
much more INTENSE experience than watching (or reading) it. It certainly was,
but I am in a much better position to see what actually “came out” of this act
of creating. When everything that they put into it is coming together. Well, I
couldn’t confirm it in this case, maybe another time …
Anyway,
it was one of the purest examples of something I probably appreciate more than
anything about reading. That there is a very distinct state created WITHIN
MYSELF that is DIFFERENT from any other state I experienced until then. And it
made me see even more clearly what I need this blog for because, if I “just”
experienced it, it ends there. I don’t know what it is I have been feeling, and
I won’t remember it later on unless I can repeat the experience and feel THE
SAME again. Sometimes I am able to describe or explain it satisfactorily – as
in this case, or when I read “Vanity Fair”, or when I am watching “House of
Cards”. Or reading Shakespeare, by the way. I know WHY it is special. Sometimes
it is probably a too complex or singular and personal experience so that I have
never been able to describe it properly as, I think, was the case with “The
Crucible”. I am getting better at explaining what happened, though. I just
realized, putting together my “diary” from 2015 (which is more like a
“bimonthly”), that this exceptional theatre experience now dates back two
years, and I couldn’t believe it! The only thing that is more strange is that I
am apparently still “working on it”. But I am fairly certain now that it turned
out this way because I had a personal history with this play – having seen the
film twenty years ago – WITHOUT REALIZING IT when I finally saw it in the
theatre for the first time. I don’t even think that I would ever have wanted to
admit this, but it was one of these texts that had a similar impact on me –
especially on the part of me that is female! – as, for example, “The Scarlet
Letter”, or “Madame Bovary”, or “The White Peacock”. So, I got ambushed by my
own UNRESOLVED personal issues at the same time I enjoyed the beauty and
perfection of it. And this personal content cannot be “appropriated” in the
same way as other more “generally accepted” emotions, though I think a lot of
it can be “used” for reading, but then it is already altered. That is what I
think happened when I read “The Shrew” where I used a very personal experience
to get all the fun out of the play, and almost all the “life” into it. But with
“The Crucible” it was different, and I believe that I even WANTED it to come
out like this, in a way as bad as it really was. And I kind of liked feeling
REALLY BAD for about three days after I had seen it because this was how I
found out what had happened. I even like to think that this was because they
really “meant” what happened on that stage. This utter determination to get to
the bottom of the truth of this play was what I felt from the beginning and
what impressed me more than I can say. And made me rediscover how much I love
theatre – when it is NOT theatre.
Thinking
about this I hit on at least one issue about reading where I’d very much like
to dig deeper. It was there as an underlying experience especially when I
compared watching Shakespeare plays as stage productions and on screen. And I
had a go at it once, trying to explain, clumsily I think, what happens when I
“hit” the fourth wall. Until now it has proved epistemologically useful to
treat every text – be it a book, a film, a theatre production, or a tv series –
the same: as the beginning and end-product of a reading process. But the
differences had begun to show as well, as in this case the fundamentally
different experience of watching a performance on screen or on stage. I am not
really optimistic that I will ever get to the bottom of it, but it appears that
the stage somehow is the ideal place for dealing with the TRUTH. In a way I
haven’t even begun to describe, it is almost always more direct and honest, and
I cannot protect myself from it in the same way I can when it is a film. Any
film! – And I just had a short but no less interesting exchange with my brother
about a similar issue. He has currently had a very significant experience about
discovering reading as a “room of his own”, and gave an intense description of
what happens when he is reading. I could slap myself that I haven’t actively
put it to memory … And he told me that the experience of seeing a tv production
of a story in his opinion could never compete with the experience of reading the
book. And even though I don’t necessarily feel the same I know exactly what he
means. The difference is that I love adaptations of great literature, and love
and expect it to be a DIFFERENT experience. But undoubtedly there is a
fundamental difference between what happens when we are watching and when we
are reading. At the moment I mainly experience getting tired when I am reading.
But this is not insignificant either because it suggests that reading, for
whatever reason, appears to suck up much more of my energy. But it certainly is
a lot more complex than that, and one reason for getting tired is probably that
I am NOT reading Shakespeare at the moment but Philippa Gregory …
