{"id":1439,"date":"2015-07-02T00:01:21","date_gmt":"2015-07-02T05:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=1439"},"modified":"2015-07-02T00:01:21","modified_gmt":"2015-07-02T05:01:21","slug":"stratford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2015\/07\/02\/stratford\/","title":{"rendered":"Stratford"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reporting from Stratford, ON, at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, I should clarify to any who read this that my expertise, as it might be termed, is strictly as a casual theatre goer; a single college level course; an enthusiastic, but unrabid, fan of the annual Fringe<\/a>.\u00a0 Should plays cater to the enthusiast, the cultist, or the uninformed?<\/p>\n

\n

This evening was occupied with the viewing of a production of Possible Worlds<\/a><\/em>, by John Mighton.<\/p>\n

\n

Off on another topic, the lady to the right of\u00a0 my lovely wife, along with five or six other audience members,\u00a0appeared to think the entire play was a comedy.\u00a0 If the thought processes of some members of an audience are not congruent with those of the balance of the audience, are they fully members of the audience, or members of some other ontological category?<\/p>\n

Am I?<\/p>\n

\n

The play concerns the actions of a man who is aware of a dozen, a hundred, possible lives, how\u00a0he handles such an awareness – or how to break down when confronted with hundred variations of someone else.\u00a0 Each decision brings forth the results for all of his possible decisions, and it’s gradually driving him towards isolation, paralysis,\u00a0and all that follows.<\/p>\n

How many times should someone have a chance to love that special someone?<\/p>\n

\n

The play concerns a man of a hundred lives, as he watches it change as he makes a decision.\u00a0 As a science groupy, watching this\u00a0reminded me of the Multiverse<\/a> theory: the idea that new universes are generated each time a decision is made, such that all possible values of a decision are covered by the new additions of universes to the Multiverse.\u00a0 Into this seemingly insane scientific maelstrom is injected a man who has become aware of himself in all of those other decisive Universes – his own little corner of the Multiverse.\u00a0 He sees what happens in response to each decision – and then he tries to adjust for those decisions that went terribly wrong – and then those adjustments go –<\/p>\n

\n

Possible<\/em> Worlds<\/em> is a murder mystery play.\u00a0 The victims have had\u00a0their brain excised.<\/p>\n

\n

So, as a few members of the audience insistently laughed at inappropriate moments, I wondered at their laughter, it’s effect on my perceptions of the play, and whether they were, perhaps, plants<\/em> intended to produce just such an effect.\u00a0 Which did not stop me from feeling anger at their reactions; for God’s (Gods’?) sake, do you not feel any pity for these poor characters?\u00a0 But the anger was diluted with suspicion of outside manipulation; mixing with exhaustion from today’s trip throws my emotional state off on a strange tangent of self-awareness, down a dusty lane hardly ever taken.<\/p>\n

Good thing I didn’t follow through on my reactions.<\/p>\n

\n

Physically, the production stage consists of a\u00a0pool of water, perhaps a half inch\u00a0deep and maybe twenty feet in diameter, some floating boxes, a chair or two, and a concourse.\u00a0 Lighting was critical, as it illuminated the functioning of brains, and projected certain textual information for the audience; most of the projections were on, or into, the pool of water, easily visible to the audience.\u00a0 The Studio<\/a> theatre, which will be\u00a0the production’s\u00a0home for the season, is a stadium-style venue, with a very high pitch; it will host 260 audience members.<\/p>\n

\n

As an audience member who may not be equipped with the same operating instructions as most of the rest of the audience, perhaps I reach very different conclusions than did the majority.\u00a0 Did Mighton, the author, intend any conclusions?\u00a0 The production’s program implies not; it also, coincidentally or not, mentions Dr. Mighton holds a\u00a0doctorate in mathematics, so perhaps the Multiverse theory impacted the construction of the play, though not mentioned in the program.<\/p>\n

Given my possible atypicality, is it appropriate to report my reactions to the production, as they may mislead potential attendees into mistaken expectations?\u00a0 Were I truly circumspect, I would delete this report.\u00a0 Instead, I offer it in the spirit of self-examination, in honor of this unusual mind-state borne of exhaustion and novel theatrical conception, as refracted by my peculiar preconceptions.<\/p>\n

\n

To my\u00a0untrained and inexperienced eye, the acting seemed uneven; but I suspect this is a very hard play.\u00a0 Portraying insanity, as at least two actors must, due to a break in the very fabric of reality, must be difficult, at least in a striking, empathetic manner.\u00a0 But what defines a great performance of a role?\u00a0 What does an actor strive to achieve?\u00a0 I have given little thought to the matter and so should be cautious offering up judgments on the matter.<\/p>\n

What happened to me in those other Universes where I was not so cautious?<\/p>\n

\n

The final act offers a rational explanation to the whole of the madness, a decision which I must admit, at least in this single production I have seen, I detest.\u00a0 A full-fledged bull-roar of madness has been offered for the appreciation of the audience; and now that they have grasped the nettle in trying to accept it, they have it pulled away, the mad logic at once falsified through the removal of a foundation of the play: now it was all a dream.\u00a0 A mad dream of a sane man, driven over the precipice by disembodiment and deprivation.\u00a0 The nettle may leave its thorns embedded in the minds of the audience, but the poison is now dilute, and the more conventional audience members will nod and say to their dinner-mates, But it was just a dream, the rest was madness, and from madness one learns so little.\u00a0 Care for another tart?<\/i><\/p>\n

Best to have left this little peek into madness, of decision-making, and into a special little bit of scientific insanity, to stand defiantly on its own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reporting from Stratford, ON, at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, I should clarify to any who read this that my expertise, as it might be termed, is strictly as a casual theatre goer; a single college level course; an enthusiastic, but unrabid, fan of the annual Fringe.\u00a0 Should plays cater to \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1439"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1446,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1439\/revisions\/1446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}