Song of the Day: "Back to the Stone"

A column about music, and about how the music informs our lives. Today's author is Joe. See the previous songs HERE.

"Back to the Stone"

Woods

from Bend Beyond

2012

All that being said... I did see a play the other night. It wasn't on Broadway though. It wasn't even inside. Pam and I had a date night at the Schuylkill Center, an environmental center in Chestnut Hill. The Indecorous Theater group put on a production of A Midsummer's Night Dream in the middle of the woods, basically. We started out in a small semblance of an outdoor theater, but the actors moved the whole crowd on a hiking path. The actors continued to act the parts even while we were walking, running up and down the path, reciting the Shakespearean dialogue.

Shit, man, it had been a while since I'd been to any sort of theater production, either inside or outside. Seriously, when was the last time? I'm blanking. It couldn't have been Hamilton six years ago, but it might have been. It could just be that the performers in Indecorous were fucking incredible, like really energetic, often hilarious, making Shakespeare's poetry more than palatable for a simpleton like myself (to the point where I was wondering if this was actually a faithful interpretation of A Midsummer's Night Dream—it was!), but I will say that I missed the hell out of this shit.

Just the energy of it all, I think. I was never into actually performing in the theater myself, like the act of acting wasn't ever something that felt like a completely right fit for me, but I still acted and I still performed on stage, because the energy was infectious. I wanted to be around that kind of thing. I still do, I just didn't remember until I felt it, out there in the Northwest Philadelphia woods. (This is probably the reason I fall in love with one actress from basically every play I ever see. This is also probably why I married someone who used to act.)

There is something about the act of acting that is honest to a fault, and I find that compelling. To put it another way, performing Shakespeare in the woods in incredibly, absurdly lame and corny... and yet, if you commit to it fully, it becomes something like a miracle. We are so afraid to live our truth in this lifetime; we hide with sarcasm and irony. We don't want to be honest, we want to be cool. The theater shows us another way. Fuck being cool. Let's be true instead.

I like to see theater productions every once in a while because I need to be reminded of this.