#13

According to the blog, this will be my 13th post. Oh, gee, I'm not at all superstitious or anything, so this should be a snap, right?

Maybe if I write really fast . . .

Someone I knew died this week. He was young (younger than I, anyway), had a lovely family, a good job, and the respect of many many people in the community. He was one of the few truly *nice* people I've ever met -- and that's not faint praise, there simply aren't enough genuinely good people in the world. His loss is a real tragedy.

When I heard the news, my first thought was sorrow for the family, naturally. My second thought, I'm a little ashamed to say, was to wonder who was going to take over directing the show he'd just cast. Maybe I shouldn't be ashamed to have had that thought -- I know I'm not the only one to think it.

That's the nature of theatre. The cliche is, "The Show Must Go On," but it's a cliche for a reason -- it's absolutely true. No matter what happens in the real world, theatre people will move heaven and earth (with an Occult Hand, thank you very much Ed Ronco) to make sure the production continues. And that's kind of odd, when you think about it -- we wouldn't necessarily scramble to keep a work project afloat in similar circumstances, and we'd consider postponing weddings, graduation parties, and family reunions in the face of tragedy, so why does a play get this kind of concentrated effort? It's not that it's more important than anything else going on -- work is pretty important too, for most of us -- and it's not that there are so many people involved, because there'd be lots of people involved in a party or a family reunion as well.

It might be that people are more committed to illusion than to reality, and we resist giving up our golden tickets to that other world. Or maybe theatre people are just naturally stubborn, so used to doing everything with inadequate resources and inadequate time that they just keep plowing on, no matter what.

Or perhaps our respect for the man we've lost drives us to keep his dream going just a little while longer . . .