Interesting discussion at rehearsal this morning - when is the narrator? Is he speaking during the events in question, just after them, when I wrote the play or as I am performing it. This was easily answered last August (the narrator was speaking at that point in time) and last March (the narrator was speaking from that point in time) but what of this August? What about the future?
The words do not change, but the point of view certainly does. Case in point - “... but they are different clubs.” My friend has a child with Downs Syndrome. I have a child that died before birth. She says we are members of a club we never wanted to join, I agree - but observe that they are different clubs.
In August, I was harsh. It was as if I were saying “at least your child lives.” That was not what I was thinking, I was really thinking, “you have your situation, I have mine, we should accept that we do not understand each other” or something to that effect. But everyone thought I meant “at least your child lives.” You can see how that interpretation might seem a tad, oh, unsympathetic. But there I was, and I was not apologizing for voicing my thoughts at the time.
In March, things had changed. I had visited my friend, and met her beautiful daughter. The fact that our own, healthy daughter had recently been born did not really enter into it (well, okay, she must have, but I didn’t realize how) and the line was much more “Zen”. You have your club. I have my club. They are different. And we may, someday, understand each other, if we do not at this moment.
And today? Today I look at my own, healthy daughter - super healthy, uberhealthy, a monolith of an infant. And I see my friend, loving her child, cheering her child’s accomplishments, and I think, I have had my tragedy, and I live with it every day, and I think I am strong ... but I will never know if I could be strong like that.
And so the delivery is different - if I am speaking from today. And though I do a lot of acting here, it is a play after all, it is hard to be the narrator and not be me, the real me, the me that is standing on stage right now and talking to you.
I got hided by some members of the pre-natal death community in March for something I was quoted for in the paper. I said Zelda had changed my play. They thought I meant I had changed the play, the words, because I now had a living, healthy child. This is not true. But I could not articulate what I did mean by that comment. And now I just have.
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