The Cosmic Theater is wide open, today.
No walls, no ceiling, no floor, just a painful, unavoidable light.
Is it a fucking sun?
May as well be.
A voice from the past . . .
I started in the theater because I thought it would be a way to impact the world, but it was already a world unto itself. When I would walk the city streets outside of this hermetically sealed reality, I felt a strange desire to just keep on walking. I was intoxicated by the grime and the grind that you could never hope to capture inside a corny damn proscenium frame-up. Try staging a play about the pitiless system of the city with all the pain and blood and shit and badges and piss and puke and money and cum and screaming intact. The ancient pale motherfuckers who endow everything would die from truth contact. Don't even try, friend, best just to drink 'til you vomit, and then use little plastic army men to stage Richard III in the sick. That way, at least you keep your integrity. I didn't really have any desire to return to the theater, which had no interest, really, in what existed outside of itself. You would think that playwrights would be looking out their windows for inspiration, but even if this was sometimes the case-and I think it was-the sealed-off reality inevitably had its way with whatever crossed its boundaries. Mostly, this was a process of sanitation, simplification, and ritualization, which sounds like some sophisticated shit, right? You can't just have unbridled chaos take the stage. Three Act Structure Prevails. There's a rule about that somewhere, right? And you definitely have to clamp down on the rate at which new works are permitted to filter into the theater-there must be Revered Classics, dammit! We're going to break new ground with this revival of Streetcar! Of course, everybody always says, "Nobody beats Brando!" Even young fucks who don't even know who Marlon Brando is still say, "Brando did it better." Ritual Units of Expression Prevail. I tried to change it up. I tried to be the change I desired in the world. When I directed Streetcar I cast the helicopter from Miss Saigon as Stanley Kowalski-oh, it was a big damn mess. I should never have attempted it. Young fucks were like, "Transformers did it better." Hey, this deep into Post-Literacy I'll take what I can get.
Walls, floor, ceiling reassert themselves.
The blazing painful light is totally blotted out.
Just outside this box we hear that voice from the past chattering away . . .
