Lindsey Markel Writes About True Things

Earlier this week a newspaper reporter came to write a preview article, and when she asked me what I thought of the play, I said it was strange and beautiful and poetic and poignant, and I meant them all in equal measure. It’s about a girl (yes you may have heard the myth, no it isn’t required reading) who dies on her wedding day and, after arriving in the Underworld, doesn’t remember anything about being alive. She forgets how to use language; when she opens her mouth to speak to the audience, the sound of swarming bees comes out. She can’t remember her husband’s name, can’t describe how it felt to leave her body when she died, and doesn’t remember her long-dead father when he arrives, saying her name joyously, which to her sounds like an exotic language, although she can’t describe that either. “It’s like a fruit!” she says, listening to him talk.

I don’t talk a lot about acting and I never have; truthfully, I find that people are only rarely interested in hearing about my theatrical hobby, which is not at all surprising here in ye olde smalle towne Midwest. Sometimes people come to see me because they know me and want to be nice, and I find out in the lobby afterward that it was the first play they’d ever seen. And I can’t ever say that I’m surprised. Acting was one of those secret childhood hobbies for me, something I thought I’d made up; then something I quietly honed for ten years in a church-turned-theatre with a capacity of thirty seats, tucked away in a town of a thousand.

A play is much more ridiculous than a rock show or rented movie. You’re held captive in a stiff seat for nearly two hours while actual, live adults play pretend. Grown people put on costumes; they pretend to slurp from empty coffee mugs; they glare and hiss and collapse and wail right in front of you. I understand the non-appeal.

Having said that, the non-appeal is also the appeal.

I go to work five days a week and sit at a desk. I dread going to the gas station in winter. I pay my bills once the checks come in. I forget to email people back. I have hangnails on both my thumbs. You know? It’s all good, but it’s the smallest bit repetitive at times, especially in FEBRUARY, MY GOD. And tonight, in a dark building tucked parallel to the train tracks on the north side of town, I’ll show up in the Underworld in an elevator that rains. My long-dead father will teach me to read again using a bound book of Shakespeare. I’ll speak to stones.

And I know it’s ridiculous, but that’s why you have to see it. Because it’s good for adults to be ridiculous. And to play, and to imagine, and to feel some feelings, even if they’re unexpected or off-putting. Especially if they’re that, actually.

(Originally published on youareamongfriends.com)