It's the sort of play that a person must see twice. And after my second viewing, I thought: "I want a third, at least." For the show revealed more of itself to me, and iterated that there was more and more still to unearth.
Unfortunately, my second viewing was closing night, so two is all I got.
It's been a while since I've been awash in the experience of a performance, where I haven't felt the weak links of the production jabbing at me. (Lucky me, I witnessed two separate shows that did such. The second piece gets a post of its own.) How could Red Ash Mosaic be more compelling? A third and fourth viewing, that's how. It made my heart ache with the breathlessness of a person standing at the edge of a cliff at night. All I know is that I know nothing. All I see is what the empty space presents to me: my life, my love, the eyes of my lover. This response, like the piece itself, doesn't take the form of linear narrative. It's emotion and meditation on emotion.
Truthfully, I began the evening as I often do, with my notebook out, ready to analyze. What I wrote at the end of the piece was the overwhelming experience. No critique, this isn't the place for it.
Sometimes the exploration of a question or series of questions yields a theory too messy for linear communication. Sometimes, all you can do is express in symbols and gestures the experiences of your spirit. And so, this play, reached out to touch the intuitive and wondering part of the mind.
"Math and logic explain the here and now, but the imagination explains eternity."
Or something to that effect.
Experiencing this show made me miss being part of an ensemble. There is an exquisite beauty in witnessing the creation of a new world, with its own language and idiosyncrasies, as the product of a group of individuals pouring themselves into a vessel that they've shaped together. There's hope in it. Today is a day when hope is needed. I'm grateful that this piece is one that houses such a complex interweaving of narrative. I had one moment in the piece, when just the realization of the meaning of one gesture from one single actor cracked me open and dissolved that shell of analysis, self-consciousness and ego through which I interact with much of life. I wept and felt the joy of realizing that each gesture in that piece had the same potential to reach the human spirit. It was full and rich, and I was lucky to be so. . .unprepared, uneducated, who knows.
It reminded me of the infinite capability of the mind. How welcoming that weird and unnerving feeling is.
The point is: the show was profound to me. It was entertaining, yes, but that didn't seem the point. The point was not to entertain the audience, but to use moments of entertainment to connect with us, to ask questions and express ideas that can be unsettling.
At the end of the evening. I felt grateful. I felt alive. I felt as though I could remember what it means to be fully alive. It's the best I can hope for from a piece of theater. It's so much what theater can offer, that it doesn't matter if the presentation is how I would choose it, or the lines said how I would say them. Its imperfections are proof of its life.