Theatre was used in ancient Greek as a catharsis. The theory was when you watch theatre and you watched all the pain of life, you would live it through the watching and you would purify your soul. Besides, when you could watch people for example killing in the theatre it was not necessary for you to kill someone yourself. Hence, theatre was thought to help the viewer understand more.
When I played theatre myself, I had to say that I probably learned the lesser from performing at the stage. Certainly it was a good experience to overcome the stage-fright and also to go through this with the whole theatre group, but I think I learned so much more about myself from all the rehearsals before. I had the feeling that for playing theatre the process of developing a play, hence the “way”, is more important than the actual performance, “the aim”. That’s just the final ending, the celebration of the previous work, the reward, but it’s meaningless. Of cause to get applause may be important for your ego and it’s always nice to get rewards, but I think one shouldn’t play theatre for the applause. One should do it for oneself; to get to know yourself better. When you try to be someone else, when you develop a character that is not you, when you invent a new body language, a new voice, a new laugher, a new mimic and gesture, that you can do that only by looking at your own body language, voice, laugher, mimic and gesture. Things you never look at but that define you so much. You get to know yourself and you get to know your limits. When I played theatre I played an old, blind women. I am neither old nor blind, but I am a woman. To find out how my body movement changed when I couldn’t see made me understand what it means to me to be able to see. Suddenly I became so careful and insecure. I was hardly willing to trust anyone when I couldn’t see. Paula blind would be someone else. I would be very different. My ability to see defines me more than I would have thought. I think if I hadn’t played this role I would have never thought about these things and there are many roles I didn’t play and hence there are also many things I am still unaware of. I think it is just true that we sometimes need to lose something to start valuing it. We need to get to know the opposite of what we have to understand what we have. We still define us also by the differentiation of the other. Sometimes it seems that only where the other starts we end. (has a lot to do with identity…). I think to act another character might be an even more effective catharsis. When everyone had the chance to be aggressive on stage maybe there would be less people aggressive in real life. And as I said before, for acting the stage is actually not even needed. To make theatre no audience is necessary. And theatre is a unique possibility, because it’s not dangerous. Whenever I wanted to stop being blind, I stopped. No permanent changes. I think everyone should play theatre at least ones in their life.
(Written: 27th Dec 2009)
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