So many terrible things have happened to people I know these past few days. The weight of what they have to face makes me want to burst into tears for them, but in a way I have no right to cry because I’m not the one who has to bear any of it. All I can really do is be an observer, helplessly aching for them.
Onstage, my tastes have generally stayed well on the opposite side of tragedies. Life, I’ve always felt, is hard enough without having to watch more terrible things happening to people that the playwright has made you grow to love. But now, I wonder if the entire purpose of tragedies is to formalize the experience of standing on the fringes of terrible grief, allowing us to carry some of the characters’ weight so that we have the right to cry for the ache in our hearts. A practice, almost, for those moments that inevitably leave us helpless.
When strangers suffer, the pain is safe and distant. When we or those we love suffer, the pain feels like it consumes the entire world. In between that all we can do is fumble at the edge of the darkness, bruised but not bleeding, and wish with all our hearts that the tragedy was happening to someone else onstage.
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