Retro rant: Interval...

I wrote this theatre-rant-ish-thing, in another place, on the 20th of March, 2008. I thought it was important to repost, cos, though written by a different, younger, Ridiculous, it captures a bit of me and what theatre means to me. It is called Interval. (btw, I'll post the September rant ASAP. I'm drinking red wine and writing it as we speak. In the sense that 'we' 'speak,' which, 'we,' of course, don't, nevermind, enjoy.)

Most of you know this story as I tend to go on about things and live in the past and in art and in my childhood… arg… When I was eight years old I fell in love with the theatre. The colour. the immediacy. the excitement. The magic. My parents took me to see an Indian production of "a midsummer nights dream" and I was completely hooked. It smelt good, it sang and danced and screamed through all my little kid senses, my heart, my eyes my ears, my nose, my throat, my silly, my imagination, my grin, my guts… a big huge explosion of bollywood/Shakespeare nonsense and wonderful. You could not tear me away from it. My parents of course could. And did. They were enjoying it too of course but living in the grown up world they were tired and interval let us out of the theatres jaws at midnight so the play would be set to keep us up into the morning (when the magic would be wiped from our eyes an order restored I guess)… anyway The parents decided to call it a night and take us all home to dream our own dreams. I was heart broken and begged to be allowed to stay and watch the second half. Begged and begged and eventually pulled a full blown little kid tantrum, which unfortunately only sealed my going home fate "you are tired, you’re exhausted, we are taking you home" only I wasn’t I was alive and awake and drunk on theatre, I was tantruming out of sheer love and desperation and frustration and I couldn’t communicate through my tears how terribly sincere I actually was. I think in the end though dad understood how much it meant to me as he has said to me that one of the few regrets he has in this world is not letting me see the second half of the dream… so last night he took me to see the Indian production playing at the Sydney Theatre, it was so so magic and wonderful, and we sat together in a little box perched above the stage and watch the colours and music and magic unfold, and dad leaned over and whispered in my ear "just think of it as a really long interval"…