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Hirst: Tonight . . . my friend . . . you find me in the last lap of a race . . .I had long forgotten to run.
Pause
Spooner: A metaphor. Things are looking up.
-- from No Man's Land by Harold Pinter
The end.
To be an American as I write feels like being at the end of a painfully long marathon. Like watching street-fighters pummel each other in a no-rules bout with but one rule – one man left standing, our election season lurches to a close.
To be a director working on a play about religious tolerance today feels like being the guy who shows up at the costume party without a costume party. Absent the fancy dress, we simple are who we are.
Where I am, the air starts to bite in the early evening. Leaves change color. Large flocks of both birds and people start the annual southward migration in search of warmth. The year is ending.
Endings seem like curious things to a story-teller. In life stories don't end. Not neatly. Stories shift, wander, digress – they may wind through every winding tunnel and byway of reality and hope – but they don't end.
But in our line of work, we have to make endings. In *cough* years of working in the theatre, I can't name more than a half dozen truly great last lines – lines that effectively and appropriately end the play. So we muddle through. Where endings aren't, now with the artist's help, endings are.
Hirst's line in No Man's Land is one of those lines that comes to mind easily. There appears to be an elusive paradox in the line for me. The race isn't over, despite being in the last lap. There's more.
Curiously our nation will select a leader who will impact the entire world over the next few years – possibly for the next generation. We can only hope that the millions who cast their ballot speak decisively enough that five folks in black robes don't have to weigh in with their voices as they did in 2000.
As my little play grows closer to opening, I can only hope that I've done my best to communicate how making a performance works to my young actors. If we're lucky someone will hear our message and think better of their fellow human beings.
And as winter cold sinks on the mountains, I can only hope for a warm place by the fire and a good long story.
Beginning . . . .
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