ACTORS CREATING A WORLD
Actors, Alternate Realities,
and Obamabash #2
You can take a person out of the theater, but you can’t take theater out of a person. For the umpteenth time, I’m struck with wonder at theater folk. What makes them work so hard, focus so powerfully to create worlds in their imagination? Imagination! That is the key. Does any animal besides humano sapiens have it? I think yes, as I watch our two cats play at fighting, stare each other down, whop each other with lighting paws, hiss and leap at each other. And they’re pals, arriving as kittens in the same carrier from Bide-A-Wee. Hours each day they spend sleeping inches apart, so when they put on their fighting act, what can it be but imagination?
Humano sapiens takes imagination to amazing heights. Some live so completely in imagination we call them crazy. Yet everyone lives in a world constructed by his or her mind, using data the five senses gather from contact with the outside world. To each of us, that “real” world is only what our minds make of the data, and since we’re all different, we all live in different worlds.
That’s why I can’t dismiss people who see things differently, even the Tea Party, although plenty of my posts express dismay at what they say and do. And yet, I can’t help respecting, even loving them. (Not the cynical politicians who push their buttons for their own sly purposes.) The world in which Tea Party people live is different from mine, but who is to say which is “real?” Most people are sure that the world as they see it is real, and what’s more, the only world. Actors, however, are adventurers in different worlds, and whole-heartedly jump into a new one with every part they play. Their grasp on multiple realities must certainly be closer to “truth” than those who have reduced it to one exclusive reality—their own.
Speaking of actors, our apartment was jammed with them for our 2nd Obamabash last Sunday, 20 people plus an acting company of 9 in our tiny living room for a performance of Lillian Hellman’s portrait of a venomous family--The Little Foxes, Act I. (We’ll do Act II in August.) We raised $230, to go to Obama for America. Our first Obamabash was four years ago—songs monologs, stand-up comedy—and it worked! Obama was elected! This one will work too, by Heaven!
and Obamabash #2
You can take a person out of the theater, but you can’t take theater out of a person. For the umpteenth time, I’m struck with wonder at theater folk. What makes them work so hard, focus so powerfully to create worlds in their imagination? Imagination! That is the key. Does any animal besides humano sapiens have it? I think yes, as I watch our two cats play at fighting, stare each other down, whop each other with lighting paws, hiss and leap at each other. And they’re pals, arriving as kittens in the same carrier from Bide-A-Wee. Hours each day they spend sleeping inches apart, so when they put on their fighting act, what can it be but imagination?
Humano sapiens takes imagination to amazing heights. Some live so completely in imagination we call them crazy. Yet everyone lives in a world constructed by his or her mind, using data the five senses gather from contact with the outside world. To each of us, that “real” world is only what our minds make of the data, and since we’re all different, we all live in different worlds.
That’s why I can’t dismiss people who see things differently, even the Tea Party, although plenty of my posts express dismay at what they say and do. And yet, I can’t help respecting, even loving them. (Not the cynical politicians who push their buttons for their own sly purposes.) The world in which Tea Party people live is different from mine, but who is to say which is “real?” Most people are sure that the world as they see it is real, and what’s more, the only world. Actors, however, are adventurers in different worlds, and whole-heartedly jump into a new one with every part they play. Their grasp on multiple realities must certainly be closer to “truth” than those who have reduced it to one exclusive reality—their own.
Speaking of actors, our apartment was jammed with them for our 2nd Obamabash last Sunday, 20 people plus an acting company of 9 in our tiny living room for a performance of Lillian Hellman’s portrait of a venomous family--The Little Foxes, Act I. (We’ll do Act II in August.) We raised $230, to go to Obama for America. Our first Obamabash was four years ago—songs monologs, stand-up comedy—and it worked! Obama was elected! This one will work too, by Heaven!
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