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The Play's The Thing

First, I must make mention of the moon. The shape and angle of the crescent make it look like the outline of a pregnant woman’s belly. You can almost see her arching her back, her elbows bent and her hands placed on the outside small of her back. She has a sweet smile, as if an elderly couple is commenting on her glow. That’s the moon this evening.

My sister and I saw a play tonight. We went to dinner first and she told me all the stories of our family of late. Since I’m ‘flying solo’ here, I don’t always get the stories everyone else does so it was good to catch up.

The play we saw was… interesting. I thought we were going to see “King Lear” but what we saw was a play called “King Lear: The Storm at Home”. It was narrated by a man whose father was dying and contracted dementia. The play was interwoven with stories of others who were going through the same thing with their parents and tied together with long excerpts from ‘Lear’ that related with what was being said.

At times, the stories were a little confusing because the ensemble cast did not always announce themselves as a Shakespearean character or a modern-day one. Sometimes the dialog was so stiff you could almost see the typewritten words in the script. I liked the actor who was narrating the story but sometimes he also stepped into the Shakespeare cast and recited his lines – a knave here, a messenger there.

I think at its best I couldn’t relate to the text because I haven’t been down that road. At it’s worst, I felt like it was forcing me to face my parent’s mortality. I don’t want to think about their death just like I never wanted to think of them having sex. Of the two choices, I suppose I’d have to take the latter.

Whenever I have to deal with Shakespeare I feel like I am translating the words to myself. I try and tie the words with the body language of the actor and the inflections given to find the meaning. By the time I have come to understand what was being said, what IS being said gets lost. I try and understand quicker what is going on and find that I’m probably missing a good bit of the dialog – like reading every 4th or 5th word in a book and trying to get the deep meaning of what the author was trying to get across.

I prefer the sonnets: bite size morsels of goodness. I could take my time and churn the meaning from the words. I could take my time and meditate on the ideas that William was trying to get across.

“Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme…”

He knew. A man ahead of his time.

I’d like to think that some days I’m a man ahead of his time but usually time catches up.

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