Theater Cats - Act II
How to keep your balance, on stage and off
Recently I wrote a post about how cats are natural performers. They keep you in suspense with their changeable moods - now affectionate, then wild of eye, then all compliant at dinnertime.
Instinctively, cats know they don’t have to chew the scenery to portray a character. Even stretched out asleep on your desk papers, they hold your attention. Shakespeare might have had a cat in mind when he wrote in Hamlet about the art of acting,
Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand [or paw], thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.
You see above that Hamlet is in costume, ready to confide in the audience, “It offends me to the soul to hear a robustious peri-wigged fellow tear a passion to pieces. …”
For your amusement I’ve brought on stage a few more cats in famous theatrical roles. (It’s only because they’re in character, that they come when I call them!)
Above: In Oscar Wilde’s comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Bracknell says, with a slight pause between the two lines, “To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness.”
The British actress Edith Evans, who played Lady Bracknell for seven years in many theaters, once said, “I’ve played her everywhere except on ice and underwater.” And Maggie Smith in this role whispered the famous expressive line, “A hand-bag.”
Above: Blanche DuBois is Tennessee Williams’ tragic, tangled figure in A Streetcar Named Desire. “I don’t want realism,” she says. “I want magic.”
Yet the playwright said about Blanche, “I thought she was very likeable.”
Above: In Aristophanes’ play, Lysistrata, the title character leads Athenian women to deny their husbands sex for as long as it takes to end the Peloponnesian War. It was written in 411 B. C. during the last days of the Greek war between Athens and Sparta.
Although it was performed outdoors, I imagine there wasn’t a sound “in the house” when Lysistrata said, “A man! a man! I see him approaching all afire with the flames of love.”
Above: In Molière’s comedy, The Misanthrope, Alceste is tired of all the hypocrisy and flattery in 17th-century society. He is a misfit with high ideals and wishful thinking. “Pretend, pretend, that you are true,” he says. “And I shall make myself believe in you.”
I wonder if Molière could make a comedy of today’s cultural tensions.
Above: In the 1979 play Amadeus by Peter Shaffer, the young 18th-century composer Wolfgang Mozart finds his most supportive partner in his wife Constanze, who tries to protect his reputation — and his musical manuscripts — from Antonio Salieri’s grasp. In the play she worries, “Wolfgang will be frantic if he found those were missing, you see they’re all originals.”
Above: Charley’s Aunt opened in London in 1892 and ran worldwide for 1,466 performances. The farce in three acts by Brandon Thomas is a love story where two friends Jack and Charley plot to win the affections of two young women, by enlisting Lord Fancourt Babberley to impersonate Charley’s Aunt.
In the play, Lord Babberley in disguise, above, introduces himself. “I’m Charley’s Aunt from Brazil — where the nuts come from.” The imposter aunt is soon wooed by an elderly man who is a fortune hunter. And, of course, then the real aunt arrives!
Applause for all! (But don’t expect these cats to come out and bow.)
On my way home from the performance —
I’m trying to find a reasonable perspective on today’s public dramas where our lives are changing too quickly. If the world is a stage, I want to play my part by speaking out about what’s happening in our community. But I know it won’t help if I “tear a passion to pieces”!
So between the acts, to “acquire a temperance that may give [speech] smoothness”, I look for the centering peacefulness I’ve felt when one cat or another in my life has stretched out on my papers in complete repose.
So charming!
I love the artwork! We all need to be grounded and work on accomplishing one small thing after another. The whole is completely overwhelming. I’m grateful I don’t have school aged children attending public schools at this time.