Transported

My friend/colleague asked me yesterday when the last time was that I remember "really liking" a show -- because he hears me talk about theater a lot, and it's rarely in those terms that I talk about it.

The truth is, I really like shows all the time. I saw three in the past two days -- a highly realistic three-hander, a play that was about language and first love and borders (geographic and metaphysical), and a dance party of a play set in the future. I really liked all of them, or at least lots of things about them.

But I think what my friend was asking me was really "when was the last time you were really transported by a show." And that's much harder. I used to go to the theater and pay a lot of attention to the acting -- I'd come out with opinions -- but if the acting was stunning, I'd get wrapped up in the experience and come out transported. That rarely happens anymore. I've now trained as an actor, trained as a playwright, studied alongside designers and dramaturgs and directors. And every time I go to a show, that training kicks into gear. There are so many ways that I can "break down" what I'm seeing, that my brain has been conditioned to dissect and measure and compare, that watching a show, for me, is very, very ACTIVE. I absolutely enjoy that activity, I learn an enormous amount -- it is, for me, a way to work my muscles, in a way I can't when I'm sitting at my desk.

But there is a down-side. It's hard to turn that analytical part of me off, and it's hard, as a result, to be transported. So I very rarely walk out of a show anymore with that simple, deep-gutted, rapturous response. I come out talking, and questioning, and weighing -- nothing simple about it. I imagine that a food critic or a chef approaches meals the same way, I imagine a musician approaches concerts the same way. You may still like things, but there's a complexity to your response that, from the outside, probably looks like something somehow less pure.

And maybe it is less pure.