Page 133 - YB1966_Classical

The stage is set; the lights go out; a cigarette is lit; the action begins. The attention of the audience focuses on the center of the stage, into the personage of the main character. The aware- ness of a hard brutal reality paralyzes all. A voice, strong, firm, defiant, sure, reveals one person; laughter, sarcastic and repetirous in- dicates another. A conflict has begun to take an indefinite shape, not only for the character but also for the audience embodied in the char- acter, yet separate from him. But, the conflicts are different. The character faces a struggle within himself. The desire and the need to be somebody fights off the grow- ing realization that he is nobody. His friends, his girl, his teacher, and finally his parents turn him away, till he has nothing but himself and the haunting laughter. Where can he turn for what he needs: to the world, to a band of in- different strangers? But even the world rejects him. He is no use to them. The laughter-that is where he can turn, where he must turn. It pushes him into himself, deeper and deeper into the very essence of his person until he sees it, until he sees himself as those around him see KID BLUE him. The audience sees, hears, and feels the mo- tions and the words of the character. Self-con- sciousness, pity, and a hanging-on to the reality of the situation keep the audience from com- plete identity with him. A fear that, perhaps he is talking to me, blaming his existence on mine, fills the hearts of each person and along with these fears comes a feeling of compassion, a desire to help. Anyone so lost and beaten deserves all the love one can give him. An in- tense desire to take him in your arms, love him, guide him, make him somebody, makes it nec- essary for one to hold onto one's chair. This peak of emotion, carried through the play holds the audience in a trance, with all eyes perman- ently fixed on the main character's face. The audience crys with him, laughs with him, runs with him. Yet afraid to make a sound, to put itself in the spotlight, it runs from him. Slowly and subtly the character begins to run also. The laughter, blocking every exit, drives him to his end, to the final judgment. Against him is the hateful, indifferent world, for him is no one, not even himself, for he is only an image. The laughter, recurring throughout the play, is himself laughing at his image, laughing and laughing until the image laughs at itself, even destroys itself. A boy is kneeling on the ground, clinging to the broken image; the audience is silent, spellbound, incapable of movement. The lights go out, and the silence remains. 130