I call this one "Gas Mask Theatre"

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

*ahem*

The audience sits in muted expectation, their hazmat suits prevent even the quiet conversations of glancing at their watches or sharing looks of impatience, though they can still continue incessantly fidgeting.
They watch the piss-yellow curtains, begging them to open.
Backstage, a minor catastrophe occurs when the make-up artists realize their jobs are useless by the gas masks that are being pulled over the actors' faces. They tried to get the hairdressers to join them in impotent rage, but the hairdressers find the challenge of making hair look good between the rubber straps rewarding and refreshing.
The energy expended to subdue the irate make-up artists delay the play for fifteen minutes to half an hour, explains the producer.
The director is having a nervous breakdown. This is opening night, this is his debut, and it's already a mess, as the lines for the bathroom lengthen. No one can figure out how to pee through their suits.
The play finally starts, the audience rush back to their seats. The playwright in the wings winces with every word. His beautiful prose is squeezed through the panicked gasps of the gas masks.
The audience continues to fidget. Half of them surely would've fallen asleep now if the hazmat suits were a bit more comfortable. The story was hard to follow and the actor's were so constrained by the gas masks that they made extravagant gestures for no apparent reason.
These are bad actors, the audience agrees within themselves silently.
During the climactic scene, the lead actor, enamoured with his art and disgusted by the butchering the play is receiving, tears off his mask and gets halfway through his soliloquy before falling dead.
His understudy is pushed on stage to finish the scene. His lines are inaudible between his panicked sobs and even more panicked breathing. His eyes are wide and white beneath his mask.
Curtains drop.
The audience applauds politely and trade bad reviews in the theatre's lobby.
"Not worthing watching a man die," they quip, while trying to eat hors d'oeuvres through their suits.

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I've been reading a lot of pictures for sad children lately. Blame that.

Kisses!

1 comments:

David said...

Lee, you disturb me.