The play was all about science (vocation? life work) and gender (female) and love (inconstant and complicating) and there was some personal/life philosophy thrown in like curry to spice up the dish and make it even more complex. I was happy to see our own (this is a shout out to this semester's ENGL 425) Sam Kolb in the production, the ever graceful and expressive Sam Kolb, playing Emilie's stunt double in the strange realm of purgatory that was the play. I'm mot sure, finally, how I feel about metafiction and metadrama, but this play was just the perfect balance of narrative and meta-narrative, and Sam K's performance provided the force/energy behind that blend. Kudos!
As I sat waiting for the play to commence, though, I remembered that I had yet to write my poem for the day. So that thought plagued me during the intermission and then during the talkback, where I decided that I would create my own assignment for the day: I would write about the theater, somehow, and I would have to include the word "décolletage" [because April said that word so sweetly]. I got the cunning plan that I would dictate the poem to myself on the ride home using the voice to text app on my iphone. That experiment was kind of disastrous,* since the V2T software apparently can't quite understand me at times. (Well, I can't quite understand me at times, so there you have it.)
My final assignment: write a poem that deals in some way with theater, and includes the word "decolletage." Use an epigraph by someone OTHER than Shakespeare AND dedicate the poem.
*
The Poem with Theater in it
--For Stephen and April
“Acting requires a creative and compassionate attitude. It must aim to lift life up to a higher level of meaning and not tear it down or demean it. The actor's search is a generous quest for that larger meaning. That's why acting is never to be done passively.” ― Stella Adler, The Art of ActingAfter an afternoon at the theater
(pronounce it: THEE ah ture)
I have been lifted to a higher level
of meaning,
I have been mentally dismantled and reconstituted
as a series of precisely scripted characters
in a bound space,
characters doubled and dancing
on painted galaxies
that only reveal themselves to me
after the lights come up,
I have been included in a generous quest
for larger meaning,
a connection of all these
meaningless dots --
our souls, perhaps,
our inexpressible essences,
our emotional décolletage,
passions mashed to our chests
like heaving breasts under breathless corsets,
or parallel lives, elaborate "what if"s,
historical scripts blending
now with then and never.
This quest for the "larger meaning"
never ends.
I mean, I have yet to reach
the destination.
Final lines hint at conclusion and redemption
but taste like hopeful
confusion --
what these hours reveal
in spotlight and enunciated lines,
in blocking and weaving,
in pantomime and spiral,
in doubling and refrain,
in the luxury of direction and mis-
direction,
sweeping skirts and well-turned legs
(and loose leather shoes)
is the strange force that can't be
captured with word or gesture or paint
but that somehow exists
in the spaces between actors and acting,
between all the stories sitting in all the seats,
is the unquantifiable meaning
that falls with the dark moments
denoting the ends of scenes,
is the collective breath,
is the "deeper meaning"
and that we chase after
with scripts and costumes,
with pens and books,
with paint and wood and nails,
that animates us
as we leave the theater
and blink in the pedestrian air
of another meaningless afternoon.
*
*Here's what I managed to "talk" into my phone, in case you're interested (but why would you be? don't you have a life?):
I am dictating this poem on the way home. I am going to use voice to text on my cell phone. I must write about theater having just seen a play. And avoid driving across these old people who are walking in the road ahead of my car I need to use these three words décolletage leg knees all see knees I SE space EN space SCE and E now I see the limitations of this dictation maybe I should become a rap star lightning my way toward home how do we remember our lying? How do we remember our parts? How do we determine the end of the sea? Will we get an intermission? How long will we have to act i'm afraid this script is useless. I'm afraid the actor who plays me in real life cannot remember my lines correctly and is always ad-libbing out the best parts. The actor has made me less than I really a.m. I want someone more gifted in I want a stunt double. I need a director to tell me how to move through space and time in order to better say what I mean to say or mean what I say I need a writer to revise my lines I need more time and space I want my own trailer with a Jacuzzi and a fully stocked wine bar and I want all my M&Ms to be green I need a director to tell me how to move you time and space. I need to direct her to figure out what it all means and then show me how to make it mean what it all means. I need to weld turned leg and impressive. I need to know how it feels to breeze in a corset and outside of the course costumes props back drop curtain lines script direction blocking him as well turned legs stockings powdered wigs stretching and airing bombast tradition just jurors a well turned phrase set directions dialogue memorization tour production lighting sonography score i'm pretty sure that poetry cannot be dictated remember when poetry was the theater maybe that made lines easier to remember this dissect reject genuflect respect well I'm almost home now is palm is going to come to the clothes whatever it is the end Bonito your people see me talking to myself in the car and think what is she doing or so many people talking to their phones now that it doesn't mean anything it's just a daily thing I wish I had a cookie that's my last thought I want to cookie
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