{"id":2112,"date":"2013-10-04T13:54:37","date_gmt":"2013-10-04T20:54:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/libernetics.com\/?p=2112"},"modified":"2013-10-04T14:01:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-04T21:01:00","slug":"kolt-run-creations-production-of-my-own-stranger-notes-and-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libernetics.com\/?p=2112","title":{"rendered":"KOLT Run Creations production of My Own Stranger: notes and Comments"},"content":{"rendered":"

KOLT’s “My Own Stranger<\/a>” is a great piece of theater. The stage on opening night was the Alex Bult Gallery<\/a>\u00a0in Midtown, which had Picasso, Monet, Goya, Joan Miro as backdrop. A beautiful setting. \u00a0And quite appropriate.<\/p>\n

The play consists of three women (Lisa Thew, Ruby Sketchley And Kellie Raines, directed by Kelley Ogden) reciting Anne Sexton’s writings, as arranged by Marilyn Campbell and Linda Laundra. \u00a0“Arranged” is the right word — like a piece of chamber music. \u00a0Pure language — poetry, prose, conversation, dialog. \u00a0The actors move according to the cadence of the language and the emotion of the situation.<\/p>\n

I think the best way to describe the play is to say it’s\u00a0Dr. Seuss<\/a>\u00a0meets\u00a0Hunter S. Thompson.<\/a>\u00a0 It is absolutely full of itself, contained in a logical framework that is apparent, if not common. The thing has it’s own perspective. \u00a0It is funny, rebellious, horrible, lucid, drunk, sensuous, sensible, full of life, and full of destruction. \u00a0It is not dull, or blunted, or timid.<\/p>\n

The play is (more or less) staged as a Greek Tragedy with no cast — just the Greek Chorus. \u00a0There isn’t any plot exactly, but there is a marvelous rhythm to the voice and movement. \u00a0There is no nonsense to this play. As uncommon as it is, it has a commonness that can be amusing, insofar as we can all recognize the marvelous difficulty in finding the “I” in ourselves amidst all the streams of \u00a0“I” that actually exist. We’ve all been “there”, wherever that might “be.”<\/p>\n

I confess I approach plays like this with a great deal of trepidation. \u00a0In high school I read The Bell Jar<\/a>,\u00a0I Never Promised You a Rose Garden<\/a>, and Naked Lunch<\/a>. \u00a0I didn’t find them fun to read. \u00a0To the extent they reveal what the authors actually went through, they are autobiographical, and I had the feeling I was being told there are, actually and truly, monsters under the bed, and evil in the closet.<\/p>\n

And so we have Anne Sexton<\/a>, a talented author and poet, who for some reason could not enjoy life enough to live it past the age of 47. \u00a0 But “My Own Stranger” isn’t exactly morose, there aren’t really any monsters. \u00a0A real woman, with real pain. \u00a0And some hope.\u00a0There is quite a bit of hope in Sexton’s words. \u00a0Perhaps not enough for her.<\/p>\n

Suicide is a harsh choice. \u00a0I’ve known several people who took their own lives; I think some of them were angry, and some had reached the point where they would never be in good health.<\/p>\n

So listening to Sexton’s words, hearing her persona brought to life by three talented women, and concluding Sexton was capable of great insight, one can’t help but ask why she chose to end her life. How is it she was such a stranger to herself?<\/p>\n

My sense of it is this: that there are only two great themes in all of Western Culture — love and redemption. \u00a0 Unfortunately for Sexton, she had not enough of either. \u00a0She couldn’t get away from her compulsivity, her habit of seeing nostrils as caves with air rushing in and out, the sound of her own mind, the need to play out the\u00a0imp of the perverse<\/a>. \u00a0And there was no amount of solace from friends and family, no amount of faith that life could have a useful meaning. \u00a0No redemption.<\/p>\n

And understanding that is what theater allows us to do. \u00a0Of course each of us comes to interpret the story through our own filter, which is to say we write our own story as we go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KOLT’s “My Own Stranger” is a great piece of theater. The stage on opening night was the Alex Bult Gallery\u00a0in Midtown, which had Picasso, Monet, Goya, Joan Miro as backdrop. A beautiful setting. \u00a0And quite appropriate. The play consists of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plays"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libernetics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libernetics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libernetics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libernetics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libernetics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2112"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/libernetics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2126,"href":"https:\/\/libernetics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2112\/revisions\/2126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libernetics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libernetics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libernetics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}