While I was waiting in the wings to go on last night, I had time to really stand still and watch the performances taking place on the stage about 15 feet away. At one point, the music was so beautiful that I was moved to tears.
I love that I am capable of being so moved by music. Some may call it manipulative, and, to a certain degree, they are correct, but the feeling of being connected to the music and the characters in that one moment is like flying.
And there is a degree of safety in it. When I'm connecting to my emotions in such a powerful way in a theatre, I know that it's good and that everything will be alright, if not for the characters, then for me. But often, when I connect with my emotions so deeply outside a theatre in real life, I am dismissed as hysterical and my emotions as inappropriate.
When did feeling something become inappropriate? Did I miss a memo?
But when I'm in a theatre, I can feel free to weep as I will, and as I did at the recent Broadway revivals of Nine and A Moon for the Misbegotten and at Baz Luhrmann's production of La Boheme.
And last night while waiting to go on in Tosca.
I don't care what anyone says. I think that's just frickin' fine.
Posted by Jere at February 20, 2004 01:00 PM | TrackBack