We’ve been to see a one-man play performed this afternoon at the MERA (McDonalds Corners & Elfin Recreation & Arts) Schoolhouse theatre in rural Lanark Highlands. The thespian event satisfied every credential of the ideal rural outing: perfect weather, easy parking, plates of homemade cookies and coffee in the waiting room upon arrival, audible theatre and visible stage, singular performance, old friends, new acquaintances and dinner afterwards at the golf club.
I have attached an article below which clarifies the complicated theme of the spectacle. Hay wrote and performed the play. It helps us however to know the actor and his mother. We were alerted in prior conversations with them to what was to come. It was an admirable performance and a thoroughly rich punctuation of an already inexpressibly beautiful day.
HAY, Justin My Own Private Shakespeare
After the performance the actor returned to the stage whence he received and answered questions from the audience (very much in the vernacular of a TED TalK). The crowd was involved. I had wanted to ask: In view of the adage (Robertson Davies) that what’s bred in the bone will out in the flesh; and, that writers are encouraged to write what they know, “Are you at all concerned that unwittingly you have already and (possibly irreversibly) inherited the complaints which you so admirably perform?” Granted it is an awkward way of asking what is obvious; and a nosey way of suggesting the same. Comparing Hay’s demonstrably theatric presence with the identical metaphor attributed to his late father, one is inescapably led to the query regarding inherited traits. All of which makes the performance even more commendable because of its encroachment on what are so deeply private – and most frequently concealed – insinuations.
Today’s venture into the arts has activated within me a burgeoning interest in related matters of self-expression which coincidentally are promoted as well by MERA (photography and music). The barrier which had previously obstructed such vindication was urban resources only or predominantly. Seemingly I am not the only one who prefers intellectual stimulation in a rural environment. I have always recoiled from popularity to privacy.