The Theatre Illuminates Life and Vice Versa
My husband and I spent a glorious week in Toronto, visiting family and seeing four plays, all put on by Soulpepper Theatre Company. What struck me was how much the theatre illuminates life and vice versa. The playwright draws from life to write his plays but his plays speak to us in ways that inspire, provoke, and stir our imaginations.
As an actor, I could play with the text of screenplays when it came to working in film or television, but on stage the writer’s words are sacred. Perhaps it’s because many scripts for the media are thrown together in a relatively short time, whereas, the playwright workshops his play, sometimes many times, before his story ever hits the stage. And then, it’s his words that carry the audience along, not special effects or any other visual slight of hand.
So I was intrigued to see Our Town by Thornton Wilder. I had seen it twice before. This time, both my son-in-law and granddaughter were in it, which made my viewing all the more pleasurable. But it was Wilder’s examination of small town life that hit home. With our busy lives, crammed with technological marvels, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s important. I came away with the thought of how little we really see what’s around us. How many of us can say we stop to take in the sound of a child’s voice, the sight of a small bird flitting across our lawns, or a bud opening up its petals? Or further, the man on the sidewalk begging or a neighbour’s anguished face. So much slides by.
At the end of the play- which encompasses birth, daily living, and death-the actors, playing the deceased, say the living don’t understand. They’re stuck in boxes. It’s an interesting about turn, as we, the living, tend to view the ones who’ve died as being in boxes. But maybe, it’s we who need to examine the boxes we’ve made to keep us from seeing.
The other play that resonated was The Aleph, based on a Juan Borges short story. It’s a one act tour de force, acted and co-written by my son-in-law, Diego Matamoros and his director, Daniel Brooks. 
Wikipedia states that “in Borges’s story, the Aleph is a point in space that contains all other points. Anyone who gazes into it can see everything in the universe from every angle simultaneously, without distortion, overlapping or confusion” What a consideration! What if we could see all of that, would we make different choices?
Diego, like Borges, uses the text as a jumping off point to incorporate some autobiographical details from his own life. The Aleph, which is also the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, speaks to love and loss, and our struggles to make sense of our lives.
Different playwrights, but both left me thinking about life and my choices. There is nothing like the theatre to illuminate life and vice versa.
