AND THE SHOW GOES ON

25.06.04

I really want to talk to you about my experience from my participation in the theatrical group of our municipality. It has been long since I got my first acting classes. I think that they were life lessons in the end.

When I found out about the group, I was (or so I think) 19 years old. I didn’t really love theatre but I was rather sad about feeling like this. I wanted to find a way to come closer to that kind of art and I felt that participating in a theatrical group was the best I could do, if I wanted to convince myself that all those who work on theatre share something very precious. This precious thing was what I wanted to discover.

As happens with everything that I’ve done in my life, this new activity was another true challenge for me. At first, I thought that there was no place for me in the group. I thought that I would just have to play the grandpa on his wheelchair or the ice-cream man (unbelievable!), because of my situation. The truth is that I had guessed right. I had just been wrong regarding the importance of participation even through such parts. Now that I come to think of it again, I just believe that I felt uncomfortable, knowing that I would be the only one with a disability among others. Consequently, I gave negative responses to all their invitations.

When I refused to admit even the least important fact, in my stubbornness to prove that I was born for great achievements, I was indifferent to the efforts of amateurs to be devoted to what they love. I was really ridiculous from that point of view. While I kept an ever-larger distance from such things, I remembered Melina’s passion for the theatre (I’ve driven you nuts with that woman, I know. And yet I owe her a lot even if I didn’t get to meet her.). I was listening to her voice in my head, telling me to go. You can’t ignore a voice like that, no matter who you are: ‘If you don’t go, you’ll be a real idiot!’. In fact, she told me even worse things that I wouldn’t dare say.I lifted my head up and went to meet the gang. I was particularly impressed by the freedom we were given in terms of improvisation and creation. Although we were there to get to know things, we had every right to adjust teaching to our abilities and preferences. There’s no point in mentioning how easily I joined the group and . how cordially everybody admitted me. From the very first moment, I felt that every sort of insecurity within me didn’t exist any longer. I am sure things would be truly different if Vivi was not our teacher. If we loved theater to the fullest, we owe it to her as well, even when her professionalism made us often doubt this love.

A whole year had to pass in order to put on our first performance (‘The Dining Room’ by A. R. Gerny). When we called it quits with improvising, we had to call it quits with all the ideas that we had in the beginning regarding the role of the actor as the person who incarnates characters. Personally, I figured out in surprise that, when you put on a performance, you really have to overlook your tendency to build your part as you like it. At this stage, your ability to intervene –doubting your director’s instructions probably- is strictly limited.

This thing made me really mad, and it also made me doubt the importance of the theatrical act at first. Later on I understood that I was wrong. When your leader-director is remarkable (as Vivi was), what you have to do is trust him/her fully. This is the person who sees things that are invisible to you; not only because you are part of a performance but because you’re not always able to imagine the final result that comes out when you do follow the instructions given to you.
As a whole, I participated in two performances, playing two parts in the first and one in the second. Once a psychiatrist and twice a grandpa. Always on my wheelchair. At the end of every performance I felt what I described yesterday: the fact that I was being congratulated for no reason. I tried very hard indeed, since the rehearsals were killing us. We weren’t amateurs. We had become some sort of professionals and I don’t overdo it by saying so.

Nonetheless, I was always worried about something. As soon as clapping stopped, I started blaming myself, because, as I thought back then, I was unable to offer what the others did. I was still comparing between people and I always came last of course. I couldn’t understand that what I did was already a lot. I turned at the wall and kept myself at a distance from all those people who insisted on congratulating me. I heard everyone else celebrating the success of the performances and I felt that this enormously great feeling belonged only to them. As if all this was none of my business. I was the one to marginalize myself and this was becoming evident. I never shared those feelings with my friends; not because I thought that they weren’t able to understand me but because I didn’t understand myself either.

At one of the performances, my part had to be ‘chopped’ a little, since my wheelchair could not slide on the ground. I was asked just to scream my words and not appear at all. I preferred to quit. Luckily, I didn’t do that. A solution was found for me, thanks to everybody’s love. Someone else would push my wheelchair on the ground. I was a grandpa again and every sort of weakness would look justified because of my part. That specific grandpa was grumpy and had to beat the kids black and blue. Am I allowed to confess my sin? I was really happy to throw punches and slaps all over the place.

This was the last performance in which I participated. Locked doors that I had to unlock kept appearing in front of me. I faced my inner self for the first time ever through this procedure. I was tormented by the fact that I was kind of different from the others, since I couldn’t respond like them to the activities that were equally compulsory for me. It was unfair to compare myself to the others. It was also unfair to be jealous of the people who I loved. This is why I decided to go on a trip. This was no other than the trip of self-knowledge. If you ask me, this is a route that never ends.

A BEAST IS BY MY SIDE

Dada, my friend,
I don’t expect that my disability will make me a better person. You don’t have to be blind, deaf or paraplegic in order to feel things. You might even feel more than those who never had to fight for something. But then again, this is not something to be taken for granted.
Disability, my friend, is a beast. You can’t expect from a beast to domesticate you. You are the one to domesticate the beast and not the opposite. When I say that I don’t care about disability, I mean that I’ve found the way to stop regarding the condition of the disability as the worst condition of all, especially in my case. I was lucky in my bad luck and I do have to recognize that. How restrictive can cerebral palsy be, when compared to the threats of death or absolute poverty?
As for your idea on turning something bad into something good, I would perfectly agree with you if I believed in saints.
Thanks indeed for the counter-arguments. Keep writing.