Your performance

The Bard tells us that all the world’s a stage. He is explicit about his meaning but all reading is an interpretive act. This is what I make of it:

Our life is our oeuvre, and all the world’s (simply) a stage.There you are, a character on stage. The costumes, furniture, lighting, backdrop, music… all of it, is your set of conditions. These are the parameters of the stage where you are performing tonight. Your character might wear a powdered wig or cornrows, depending on the adaptation. But your character is the same. Your lines are the same. What varies is delivery; a flair that comes from understanding what your props suggest. Powdered wig delivery has a musicality different from cornrow delivery, but they can be equally moving. Your lines are the same. They are what it is you’re here to say. Tell me, does a low budget production change your script?

The other thespians that share your stage this evening have their own lines; their own character to animate according to their own dramatic arc. They are playing, just like you. They set the tone and spaces which your lines, memorized in the heart, will fill. Whatever they say has little to do with your performance. They have their own script.

The character that you vivify is an aspect of your vast invisible life. You may play many characters and may eventually refine one; your favorite.

Your performance can electrify in a theater of few seats and sterile props.But all the props in the gilded theater cannot not make you rise to your art.