photo by @fedotov_vs on Unsplash
I have a confession to make. I can be a bit of a troublemaker. It’s put me in some dicey and some hilarious situations.
When I was in college, I went to a lot of the campus theatrical productions. It was super cheap, usually good entertainment and a place to explore new ideas. Occasionally there would be a production that was overly pretentious. That brings out the devil in me.
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I don’t remember the name of the play I went to see. The players were being combative, accusing some poor audience member and belittling them. I’d had about enough of what looked to me like bullying in the name of art. After a particularly brutal inquisition moment, I jumped to my feet.
.
“Have you not seen the trouble that comes from such behavior?” I roared. The actors looked at one another, thunderstruck.
“When males and females bicker at each other across the gulf of their unwillingness to compromise, do we not create an environment of hatred, of misunderstanding and often resort to petty knife tosses of blame? Where indeed is the end of the serpent’s tail of misery that we inflict upon one another? Have we no compassion, no sense of other? I deplore these actions which send us to the deepest pits of despair.” And I sat down. Not bad, huh?
.
The entire room was silent and then a few sparse claps started but quickly died out. The actors were deer in the headlights lost. Well, they deserved it. Actually it was the playwright who deserved it but I figured putting a wrench in his play might make my point. I know; evil. Sometimes I’m just evil. But the audience seemed traumatized. And that made me mad at the playwrite.
Finally someone remembered a line of the actual play and they continued their dialogue, but the original combative spark to call out the audience was gone. They even managed to end the play with some success. At least the audience clapped.
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“What the hell are you up to?” whispered Diane clawing at my arm. “Were you supposed to do that? The whole cast looks sick.”
“Nah,” said I with a wicked smile. “I was just tired of all the intellectual smugness the playwright was inflicting on us. Plus he seemed mean. They kept goading people to speak up so I did.”
The actors huddled around the playwright and we heard them talking over one another haranguing him saying, “Who was that?!” “Did you set her up to do that to us?!” “Geez I was freaked out by that.” “What the hell was she talking about?!” “Is this going to happen every performance because you should have told us!”
As Diane and I left the playwright making the “keep it down” motion with his hands. I heard him say in a superior voice, “This is the genius of my play. It inspires people.”
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