A wednesday in the waiting room.

Life is a cyclical thing.  That’s how I see it.  Despite any number of references like The Wheel Of The Year and such, It just seems to me that life goes in circles.  The plannet Earth, the world we live in, is not flat, it’s round.  It spins.  Light, shadow, long days, short days, seasons.  Seasons make us feel different ways.  So it’s not too surprising that we will feel, come Spring vaguely similar to the way that we’ve felt in former Springs of the past.  Granted, we may have different life circumstances.  Perhaps last Spring you were buying a house, this Spring you’ll sell it.  Perhaps last Spring you were getting married, this Spring you’ll kill your spouse.  This kind of personal day-to-day business and affairs can stretch and skew.  All I mean is that if a particular season has always made you feel a certain way, you’ll likely feel it again year after year. 

On the cycle, I’m in the Waiting-Room-Of-The-World phase.  Januaries feel like a waiting room to me.  Septemer-November I love.  Even December–that is starting to stretch–I can appreciate.  January is January.  January is difficult.  January is like walking one hundred miles through a thin, curving, twisting, dizzying path through a glacier.  The happiness of the New Year more often than not doesn’t really flare up for me until March or April. 

Each year, in the waiting room {January}, I find my thoughts return to theatre.  The many things I want to do.  Why I want to do them.  Comparing the long list of my ambitions to the shorter list of my achievements.  Thankfully, the list of achievments is longer than it was thirteen waiting rooms ago, when I started directing.  Discovering the news of Peter Brooks retirement yesterday catapulted me into this sort of contemplation all the more furiously.  Peter Brook is exactly the sort of icon I wanted to be, when I first started wanting to be a director.  An icon, and inspiration, a fellow who seems like a wise man.  An original thinker.  Hell, a thinker.  Bonus points for being a thinker, these days. 

Since I came into this year’s waiting room, I’ve read numerous posts on the Guardian’s theatre blog, and re-visited all the websites for exciting theatre companies around the world, which I visit pretty frequently as it happens.  Michael Boyd isn’t directing many plays at the RSC this season.  He outdid himself the last few years with the Histories cycle.  Cheek By Jowl has Andromoque on tour, and will be producing Macbeth for tour in 2010.  Sam Mendes bridge company is doing Winter’s Tale and a chekhov play (which one escapes me) at B.A.M. and other tour-stops.  The Epic Theatre is doing Winter’s Tale, too.  Two Winter’s Tales going on…  One of the few Shakespeares I know nothing whatsoever about.  Perhaps I should read it.  Maybe there’s some Winters Tale-ish karma going on in the world or the country now.  Kevin Spacey is still Artistic Director of the Old Vic.  Sam Mendes’ Bridge Project will be stopping there, in due time.  The Donmar is doing interesting things lately.  They’ve been doing interesting things for a few years! 

My theatre is doing nothing at the moment.  It may stay that way.  However, whether it twitches soon, or stays dormant, I will do something soon.  I’m in the waiting room, and the waiting room is a good place to make plans. 

It’s tremendously difficult to do theatre without proper funding.  However, I could do a one man show.  {Yes, I have those capabilities.}  I could direct a two person show.  {I’m pretty sure I could rise to those capabilities.}  There’s a great little studio space in the 42nd/Hollywood district I could rent to teach out of.  {I might be daydreaming there.} 

I can, and should, and {Oh god, I hope!} will do something come Spring. 

I used to do nothing but theatre.  Always worked.  Married to my work.  Loved it, hated it, but always did it.  Then I fell in love with an actual human being–my Beloved one.  A whole new world.  I didn’t really make a conscious decision to stop working, but sort of gradually wanted to give it up.  It is so time consuming to do theatre, and that time took me away from the time I could spend with my Beloved One.  It also felt like I should sacrifice my selfishness, a bit.  However, if I go too long without working, I get quite cranky, routine-oriented, boring, and contagiously gloomy.  My Beloved one loves me: if I’m gloomy, she gets gloomy after a while.  If she’s gloomy while I’m gloomy, I get more gloomy.  We both get tangled in a swampy puddle of gloomy goo.  Neither of us want that to happen.  If I love her, which I do, I owe it to her to not totally ignore myself. 

It’s only the 7th of January now.  I have a while in the waiting room to go before I can rightly be depressed for lack of things happening. 

© Jeffrey Puukka, 2009.