Tonight PTIV's 'Beauty and the Beast' opens. And, like so many times before, I'll be hovering behind the scenes, behind curtains, and behind drops.
A drop, for any of my non-theatrical readers, is the painted cloth hung on the stage to simulate a background. Ours is of an old city street, helping flesh out the provincial French town Belle lives in.
Behind the drop are props and the stage's back wall. You can walk across the stage behind it and not be seen; the shadows won't show to the audience. If you go very fast you can make a ripple. But otherwise you're in a place between worlds. A place of quiet. An in-between place. Not reality, not even staged reality. Just outside of the edge of reality.
It's a Lovecraft space. A rip or a tear could let you through; it's the thinnest of barriers, but seems to be a whole world.
I feel like I'm there now.
The unreality of the last few days is still with me. I see things from the outside world, through the drop of internet, the media, Facebook; all hyper real, and beyond my touch. I am behind the drop.
The drop is going to fail. I am going to go through the other side. Something will pull me through. Something will make me tear through. The tiny rips are starting; a riot in a Royal Oak school. Friends terrified they or their loved ones will be attacked.
Will I push through a rip or be pulled through? What will do it? A sit-in? A protest march? My brothers in law being accosted? Someone deciding I look 'too ethnic' and doing something about it?
I'm no elder god. I'm no squid-faced horror from the beyond. I'm not even outside of reality. All I am is an actor who is scared. Fear that's sent me clawing at the drop. I'm trying to create my own rips with safety pins and internet barbs. Neither are very sharp. But the barrier is very thin.
Tonight I'll trod the boards and stand behind the village drop. I'll stroke the red velvet curtains that I've know for twenty years. I'll stand in darkness, alone, or with my cast. I'll forget the otherness and dissolve into the show, if only for a moment. Our drops, castle and town, will stand.
When will my Lovecraft space meld with reality? What will tear through? And, dear God, will I have the strength to stand it?
A drop, for any of my non-theatrical readers, is the painted cloth hung on the stage to simulate a background. Ours is of an old city street, helping flesh out the provincial French town Belle lives in.
Behind the drop are props and the stage's back wall. You can walk across the stage behind it and not be seen; the shadows won't show to the audience. If you go very fast you can make a ripple. But otherwise you're in a place between worlds. A place of quiet. An in-between place. Not reality, not even staged reality. Just outside of the edge of reality.
It's a Lovecraft space. A rip or a tear could let you through; it's the thinnest of barriers, but seems to be a whole world.
I feel like I'm there now.
The unreality of the last few days is still with me. I see things from the outside world, through the drop of internet, the media, Facebook; all hyper real, and beyond my touch. I am behind the drop.
The drop is going to fail. I am going to go through the other side. Something will pull me through. Something will make me tear through. The tiny rips are starting; a riot in a Royal Oak school. Friends terrified they or their loved ones will be attacked.
Will I push through a rip or be pulled through? What will do it? A sit-in? A protest march? My brothers in law being accosted? Someone deciding I look 'too ethnic' and doing something about it?
I'm no elder god. I'm no squid-faced horror from the beyond. I'm not even outside of reality. All I am is an actor who is scared. Fear that's sent me clawing at the drop. I'm trying to create my own rips with safety pins and internet barbs. Neither are very sharp. But the barrier is very thin.
Tonight I'll trod the boards and stand behind the village drop. I'll stroke the red velvet curtains that I've know for twenty years. I'll stand in darkness, alone, or with my cast. I'll forget the otherness and dissolve into the show, if only for a moment. Our drops, castle and town, will stand.
When will my Lovecraft space meld with reality? What will tear through? And, dear God, will I have the strength to stand it?
