I sit at the kitchen table cutting out thin cardboard pieces
along their solid outlines. I do not cut the dashed lines – those are for
folding. This will be a three hour operation (“operation?” why not) whose final
result will be a three-face theatre mask inspired by (but nothing like) the
Venetian three-face masks I lust after but can’t afford. I wonder what it would
be like to do a play with serious money, without cutting corners, without saying
“this is Poor Theatre, people!” during each rehearsal, without making do. “Mend
and make do” like it's World War II forever on my stage. Theatre on the
barricades and all that.
The idea of the masks was there from the beginning,
not just because Fugue quotes passages (or images) from many of my previous
plays, but because it is a play about writing plays, about theatre as I know
it, the end-all of all things. Somebody did ask me once if I'm capable of
doing plays that aren’t meta-theatre and I got upset, and then I did a few just
to prove that I could, and then I thought, why am I trying to prove something
to someone other than me? I do theatre because I love it, so why not do it the
way it makes sense to me? Fugue is very self-indulgent. It reminds me of that
Anatole France quote, "Gentlemen, I am going to talk about myself on the subject of
Shakespeare, or Racine, or Pascal, or Goethe—subjects that offer me a beautiful
opportunity."
So: masks. How could I not have them in a play about
theatre, in a play that talks about the “naked masks” I wear every day. There
are gas masks in Fugue, and a White Rabbit mask (because the Master Builder
calls the girl who’ll be the death of him “Little Alice”), and some weird
steampunk Doctor of the Plague-like masks, and others. I chose the gas masks
because they seem to me the best representation of an introvert forced into
society. I think of my horror of idle conversation, of small talk and the
boredom and the exhaustion that comes with it; I think of me during endless
social events having to interact, to smile, to talk about the goddamn weather –
in other words, to hide behind a mask. The girls have cakes and sandwiches in
Fugue and, at some point, put on black gas masks and pick up delicate tea cups,
and wait for the ordeal to be over. They are my characters (in the play and in
reality), so they’re trapped inside my indecision, waiting. “The waiting is the
worst,” says Liz.
I’m always in a state of waiting. It’s like a mode of being
only in slow motion. Right now, I’m waiting for the original music for Fugue.
It was supposed to happen at some point at the end of December. Then in
January. Then later. The fragments I’ve heard, the ones composed in my presence,
are exactly what I’ve imagined, and also a little surprising, which is always
good. But the final recording never came, and there are only so many rehearsals
I can do without sound. As I wait, I wonder how someone who knows me rather
well can do this, knowing that to hurt a play is to hurt the most alive part of
me.
I pick up a book by a Romanian director I’ve always
admired, a book of memories, and anecdotes, and meditations on the nature of
theatre. The first chapter called “Scene,” tells of the director’s production
of Gogol’s The Government Inspector that was closed (by the government) after
three performances, and resulted in the expulsion from the country of both the
play’s director and the director of the Bucharest theatre that allowed the show
to be performed.
I read: “Because it is ephemeral, and because we carry
it inside us, theatre cannot be truly understood if it is not considered life’s
double. This is why telling stories about theatre is, in a way, telling our
story. Only inside us does theatre continue to live because, ultimately, memory
is the best critic, and if disappointments leave behind the intimation of
deception, we always carry with us, inside us, the exemplary shows we have
witnessed. We live with them.”
Fugue is my story. Not an autobiography – the story of immigration, career, or love –
but the story of my love affair with theatre, our on-again off-again
relationship, probably the longest relationship I’ve ever sustained with a
living, breathing organism. I cannot stage it without sound, without rhythm –
without a pulse. So I am waiting.
I’m waiting, and cutting along solid outlines, and
assembling a three-face mask meant to capture deception, ambiguity, and
indecision, wondering if, maybe, I’ve been wrong this time. But one side of the
mask is smiling, and I think that tomorrow I’ll be ready to believe six
impossible things before breakfast, and everything will be all right.
The waiting is the worst.
