15.03.2012

Stripped at La Mama

We are now in the second and last week of the performances of Stripped at La Mama. It’s been really fantastic performing the work and I feel like I learn more each night about what the work is in this form. Both through the process of performing it and hearing and feeling the responses to the work as I do it…my own and those of the audience; and also through talking afterwards to various audience members, receiving emails, and reading reviews…although I tend not to look at the reviews until after the show has closed.

I guess it’s always like this when you do any show, that you find out what it is as you perform it, but it’s less obvious when it’s an existing text. Also, I probably thought I knew what the play version of Stripped would be, pretty much, because I had spent so many years in the world of the novel. But, of course, it is very different, and night after night I find out more, much more about what it is and how it is.

Again, it seems obvious, and I guess I knew this intellectually, but until we started having real audiences I didn’t really know how central the communal, collective experience of the work is in this form, especially when one compares it to the private, intimate, internal experience of reading the novel. People really feel like they have gone through the experience with others, and it seems that this is both affirming and confronting. On the opening night a few people spoke about feeling as if they had just been to a funeral, with that same mixture of love and grief, of collective and private sorrow. A writer and teacher I really admire and respect sent Laurence and me a fabulous email and in it she said,

“How to speak about something so raw, gripping, and painful…. yet often so beautiful. In fact I found the exploration of the edges and slippages between ideas of beauty and ugliness one of the most compelling elements of the work.

I am still struggling to find words for my experience of the show. It is so rare to encounter such truth-telling and such intensity in the theatre, especially around the big unspeakables…."

Not only is this very affirming feedback, but it’s also very helpful.

As with all adaptations there are some people who much prefer the book; some who prefer the play; some who haven’t read the book and really love the play; and some who love both, in their difference. I’m really grateful to have had the opportunity to take the work to this next place, to offer it to more people and to expand my understanding of the work, of theatre, and even, maybe, a little bit more, of life.