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RAT Re: like the who when they're good

<Getting>

I'm late in the pool, but recent reading put me in mind of our conversation
on clarity. We get plays like we get high fevers - shows are disordering but
convincing contagions. Visions/images may arise out of bouts of
art-love-sickness, but first, we're in a state of being. Production puts us
at the ground of vision. Theater makes dreamers rather than dreams; shows us
little, makes us... something. In the interest of parity an audience should
wind up exactly where we ask our actors to be: present.

(A play is validated not by what a writer comes up with, but by what an
audience comes down with.)

A couple of quotes:


MOTHER: So, you would begrudge me, as a madperson, the right to strike the
bell under the moon tonight? An old poem says -

"Round, Round, it rises beyond the seaside peaks,
Softly, softly, it fades into the hazy clouds."

It's author lacked a final couplet just then, but later, facing the bright
moon, his mind cleared and he wrote -

"This night, a full-circled orb:
Is no spot unbathed by its clear radiance?"

Having come up with these lines, his heart became disordered with an excess
of joy, and climbing the high tower, he rang the bell. When he was rebuked
by people who asked why he would do such a thing, he replied: "This is
poetic licence." - Miidera (noh play)

and

"Faith is an obscure and certain nighttime journey of the soul" - John of
the Cross. (Obscurity and certainty are necessary partners, when faith is
the guiding criterion.)


Thanks to Nick for putting Philly together. Onward






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