Tonight's picture was taken in June of 2009. We were visiting our friends Tanja and Katharina and in their backyard was this wonderful tree swing. Mattie wanted to go on the swing. However he did not have the strength to hold on or certainly swing himself. So I put him on my lap and off we went.
Quote of the day: What comes from the heart, goes to the heart. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Peter told me yesterday that it was going to be raining ALL day today! I was happy that he warned me of this, because it gave me time to prepare for how we should spend our day! Weekends for us without a plan are NO good. Especially when that means we will be trapped indoors. Since I have been feeling particularly horrible and struggling with pain, I wasn't sure what I was going to be up to, so I planned for us to see a community play. Since both Peter and I enjoy the arts and like to support live theatre, this seemed like a great way to spend the day. So we went to Bethesda to the Roundhouse Theatre and saw their production of Impossible, A Happenstance Circus.
I am intrigued by the circus. Not the circus of today, but the traveling circuses that we only hear about now, in which people who we would consider unique were put on display and exploited. Such things would never happen today, or perhaps they still happen in more subtle ways, but they certainly do not happen in this very visual and profoundly inappropriate manner as they did back then. In many ways it is hard to believe in my mind that people bought tickets to see conjoined twins, the "dog faced boy," and the list goes on.
"The Impossible, A Happenstance Circus" was a simple show. In fact, I think before seeing the show, it would help the audience member to know more about the ensemble company and their philosophical performing style before setting foot in the theatre. Because once you do, I think it greatly helps the theatre going experience.
The Happenstance Theater Ensemble believes in the simplest means - humor, music, silence, text and beauty - they seek to elevate the moment when the performers and audience meet, to lift the encounter beyond the daily and pedestrian into the realms of dreams, poetry, and art. Meaning is often found by happenstance. http://www.happenstancetheater.com/#!about/c10fk
The ensemble addressed how the circus performers ate a very limited diet of just potatoes, because they couldn't afford anything else, and that they basically had no social life because they were always working and traveling. Not to mention were considered social outcasts. However, unlike the Broadway musical, Sideshow --- which I TRULY LOVED, there was no plot development in this show nor any sort of relationship between characters which I would have loved to have seen in order to get to understand life behind the scenes of the circus. Yet I understand the premise of this show was to appreciate the "show" itself and the performance of the acts. The actors accomplished this without sound effects, special effects, and other tricks and gadgets. They went back to pantomime and using one's imagination. Which for those of us in the audience over a certain age.... we could do this. But for the preteen and teenage population, I could hear a lot of groaning and mumbling in the audience because they are used to SPECIAL EFFECTS and reality spoon fed to them, rather than having to create it for themselves.
To see Scenes from Impossible go to: http://www.happenstancetheater.com/#!impossible-a-happenstance-circus/c24zh
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