to attend or not to

... with only obligation & sense of duty attended ... then wrote ...

No Exit & The Bald Soprano performed on the same evening create a wonderful juxtaposition and exploration of the space between word and action. Even the title Greystone Shorts 4 Evening A (or is it B) makes existential absurdity.

Sartre & Ionesco, two French playwrights of now classic stature, challenge student directors to sharpen their understanding of theater history, translate dramatic style into living action and live the question of theatrical conventions in a very practical way.

The evening depends on confronting the rejections which Sartre so brilliantly outlines in his 1966 lecture, Myth & Reality in Theater . It is much more than letting a play speak for itself ... it may not make a sound ... it needs to be heard ...

Each production must ask the vital question which measures all. Why theater? The modern classics may be anachronisms of quaint, old monuments and yet the inner unity of a complex work factored by the audience & the society from which the audience comes tests the conditioned reflexes.

"When I was young I had a professor who gave me private lessons without being paid. He was a great wise man and a specialist in Hinduism. When I began doing theater, I invited him to a performance but he refused. Why, had he refused, I asked him? He said, 'Because no matter what you do, it will transform itself into a hermitage.' (Grotowski)

- See: Theater

:: note :: ... theater as hermitage ... relics of a hermit ... temple living hermits ...