All the World's a stage

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exists and their entrances." One of the most famous quotes of many by William Shakespeare, and one with some profound meaning and lot of truth behind it. I often find parallels between living life and being on stage (as well as life as a simulation, Elon Musk-style) where we all have our part to play, whether it's a main protagonist/antagonist like world leaders or just a bit character like the normal citizen that I am. We all have to follow these rules of society like reading a script (stop at the stoplights, pay your taxes, do your homework, etc., etc., and the pre-ordained script of a beginning, birth, and an end, death.

It's odd, actually, when I was a child I loved attention and being on stage, where my parents told me (and I have a vague recollection of) grabbing the mike at a Chinese school talent show and reciting a popular folk take from the Journey to the West to fellow Chinese schoolers. I was like 5 at the time. And it was in Chinese. I think I must have felt so free then, not to feel anything about my appearance, what people might think of me, what words I couldn't say, whether my mom was watching or not and how'd she feel, it was just as natural as can be, just go up and tell everyone a story. I don't even know if I could do now at 31 (almost 32 years old! Whew!) what I could do at 5: go up to the stage in front of a lot of people and perform optimally. I would be way overthinking about "what will people think? What if I mess up? Who should I thank? What do I do if this happens? What if I do if I panic and forget what to say?"  If pressed I could do the job I needed to do, but not with the freedom I could at 5, where I remember dancing randomly without even thinking and shaking my butt a lot and copying others. I DEFINITELY couldn't public dancing and have other people judge me by my dancing. Therefore, the best performances, I feel, might be by children, who still have the freedom to express exactly what they want to express without constraints of social pressure and expectation.

The Broadway play I went to recently, coincidentally, had A LOT of child actors, and they swore a lot, as is apparently the case with a lot of Irish people, as depicted in the play "The Ferryman." Great story, lot of building action, and the climax happened in the last minute or 2 and left us with a huge ending. (Maybe similar to what Game of Thrones the Final Season will do coming up in the next couple months?) At first I was a little appalled at the price tag of these plays (easily can get up to triple digits per seat depending on where you sit), whereas the most expensive of movies cost just $20, but then you do have the live acting, and each show you watch those actors are performing that particular time JUST ONCE. There's actually a lot to be said about the opening weekend of any show and the initial performance, and those tickets can cost even more.

What struck me about The Ferryman was how much dialogue they had; it was 3 hours + of dialogue (with a short intermission between) with various characters constantly talking, sometimes more than 10 actors on stage, for sure, but the timing still had to be right on for knowing who talks when, etc., and some comedic timing is required, but these actors nailed it right on, without an obvious miss anywhere I could see (contrary to the high school musicals I was part of the musical pit crew for, where there'd be at least one little glitch I noticed every performance). And dialogue was the main source of plot movement, character development, and basically everything else that happened in this play (except there were live animals, which was kinda surprising but cool), know glitzy special effects or music to attract the attention, you really had to pay attention to the dialogue to know what was going on (and listen through the coughs from the audience, which got to be a bit annoying- possibly a no-illness possibly needs to be in place?)

Book of Mormon, Aladdin, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Hamilton, etc., etc. ........ plus the timeless "Wicked" that MJ and I saw in London. Now I get the appeal of the live performance play and why it was so popular in Shakespeare's time. All the world's a stage, and I'm ready to play my part as an audience member again!

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan