No Man’s Land ( - and, on the occasion of the second anniversary of „The Crucible“: why theatre is so good when it is NOT theatre …)

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 …