Theatre – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Hollow Crowns, Hollow Honor, Hollow Men

There’s nothing new under the sun

My wife and I spent the weekend watching two pieces of history. One unfolding, one already folded into folios more times than creases might allow. Separated as they are by hundreds of years, one a streaming dramatic retelling, the other a dramatic reality, they share more similarities than those distances impart.

Promotional poster for the TV series “The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses,” showing the title in large white text on a dark background at left while, on the right, a group of medieval characters in armor and period clothing stand in front of misty trees and a bright, cloudy sky, with a crowned knight in full plate armor holding a sword at the front of the group.

That reality I speak of is of course the war that the United States and Israel have launched against Iran for any of the hollow rationales the administration keeps trying to fill in. The retelling is the two-season BBC series encompassing William Shakespeare’s history plays spanning the reigns of Richard II, through a collection Henrys, an Edward, and ending with Richard III called The Hollow Crown.

The title of the series is taken from a soliloquy from Richard II that always felt apt as preamble for what was to come through the period of history those plays encompass, as it has throughout human history, both before and after that bloody era.

From Richard II

…for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear’d and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humor’d thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!

The plays and our current Middle East maelstrom demonstrate the folly of humans in what we call war, civil and otherwise, and the allegiances we are taught to assign to countries, kings, and presidents. They also demonstrate the collective capacity to forget that these humans we bow down to, willingly or no, are no more or less flawed than those they govern. Even as some become monsters or others reveal that they always have been.

Shakespeare had the benefit of over 100 years distance from the events he was dramatizing before he embarked on writing the first tetralogy, (Henry VI, Parts I, II, and III, and Richard the Third,) and a few years later completing the second (Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 and 2 and Henry V.) Although taken as two parts of a whole in terms of history, the two tetralogies were written out of historical sequence with the latter years chronicled before the former.

Obviously, today we don’t have the benefit of perspective that distance and the passage of time can lend as current news swoops in like flocks of drones. In truth, we really shouldn’t need it. The only thing that really changes are the players and history’s progression of weaponry and technology that they wield. Even the rhetoric doesn’t change much.

From Henry V

Take pity of your town and of your people
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command,
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
O’erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
Of heady murder, spoil, and villainy.
If not, why, in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Desire the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters,
Your fathers taken by the silver beards
And their most reverend heads dashed to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds

These are the things men say when they choose to go to war, whether they may have good reason or not. If reason itself does exist in those moments. Once you descend down that path, it becomes an increasingly greater challenge to swallow the bluster and reverse course. Honor demands, they always say, and more than not leaves its corpse on the field.

Although you have to admit, Shakespeare’s poetry, even for those not used to scanning Shakespeare, is easier on the ear than anything spewing out of the mouths of Trump, Hegseth or any of the other current day blowhards and courtiers.

Regardless of whether the war councils happen in throne rooms, camp tents, or a makeshift Mar-A-Lago SCIF, it doesn’t take much imagining to see the similarities between modern day cabinet members, and long dead peers and archbishops. The costumes may be different, but the egos, hubris and fear remain the same. The fear isn’t always as much of the opponent, but of the leader’s capricious power against those who think differently and raise their heads to speak their minds. Civilization may have advanced to the point in most regions that we don’t cut off heads at a whim, but legs and livelihoods can swiftly be cut off with a Twitter/Truth Social post.

One of the things that struck me most about the production of The Hollow Crown, was the intimacy that filming allows. The series features a cast of superstars including Patrick Stewart, Judi Dench, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Simon Russell Beale, Ben Whishaw, David Suchet, Hugh Bonneville, Michelle Dockery, and Sophie Okonedo among a host of others it would be tough to assemble to speak those speeches on a stage. They do so with intimacy and nuance than larger, more open venues allow without amplification.

I’ve seen each of these plays live on stage multiple times. In fact, one of the signature live theatre viewing experiences of my life was attending the English Shakespeare Company’s The Wars of the Roses at the Chicago International Theatre Festival in 1988 that presented all of the plays over the course of three days.

Both that live version and this made for TV version made cuts in the text for various reasons including length. The three parts of Henry VI are condensed into two, with the TV version omitting Jack Cade’s rebellion, and Henry V bypassing the slaying of the children managing the baggage train are examples. But both gave you the essentials of the same story.

The live stage version certainly brought grandeur and spectacle to the event. The parade of the various reigns of kings proceeded through history adorned in Renaissance costumes with weapons of the period for Richard II evolving to more contemporary clothing and weapons for Richard III, before quickly devolving to the final battle between that Richard and Richmond in full battle armor, then flashing forward again, presenting Richmond’s final speech as a press conference broadcast on TV.

The TV version suffers a bit compared to current day streaming spectacles given the obvious budget and technology constraints of the time of its filming in 2012 through 2016. Amazing how 10-15 years can make more of a difference in our storytelling techniques than hundreds of years does in how we continue to rerun the actions of those stories in real life.

But the streaming version does hold up extraordinarily well and offers new insights, due to the intimacy that the camera allows. Using the camera to focus on Shakespeare’s moments of inner thoughts in soliloquies dissects those character kings and queens in ways modern day lickspittle journalists only wish they could access. Even though Shakespeare’s words describing those thoughts are his, they have the ring of more truth than the many we hear and see through these days, certainly in moments of chaos.

And there’s the rub. In moments that strain the hearts and souls of nations, we yearn for anything approaching a morsel of truth amongst all the banquets of rhetoric we’re served. Shakespeare’s fictionalized histories, though not accurate in detail or some necessary facts, reveal the more important and enduring truths, doubts, and fears that all men and women harbor beneath the armor they don for battle as they command us to follow.

Whether watching The Bishop of Canterbury recite the litany of lineage that gives King Henry V the right to invade France, or Secretary of State Marco Rubio breathlessly trying to spin together the strands of stories this administration has spewed out as justification for our current war, the comparisons favor neither, yet reveal the time worn folly of both. And you can’t walk away from comparing the falsehoods, conniving, and deteriorating health of Falstaff to those of Donald Trump.

History catalogs facts and the myths manufactured around them. Drama reveals the humanity of those behind the history. I have said more times than I can count that Shakespeare is the greatest chronicler of the human condition and the ways we relate one to another. There isn’t a human to human interaction that he doesn’t reveal in his characters, even those who have no character.

We like to ignore, or conveniently forget that it’s all been written before. Watching our current myth makers trying to rewrite history as it happens moment to moment, it’s no wonder we yearn for any small slice of humanity to help us make sense of it all.

I’m guessing the dramatists who will reveal that to us haven’t been born yet.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Nerd Nostalgia and Fading Fundamentals

Looking back, looking ahead

There are many reasons I’m glad I am the age I am. Of course there are also many reasons I’m not. But one of the reasons I am is that when there were skills to be learned, I learned them in a very hands on way. In much the way many of those skills had been learned for decades, if not longer, than before my time.

This post about a slide rule simulator from Lewin Day on Hackaday caught my eye this morning. My father taught me how to use a slide rule the summer before I was to need one in school. I didn’t take to it easily and it took me a while. I pretty much hated the chore all along the way. But it turned into one of those things I’m grateful to my Dad for having the patience and determination to make me learn. I have his slide rule somewhere in storage that I’ll need to dig out someday.

The fact that software exists to acquaint users with the skill, or any of range of other skills, is a good thing and on so many levels we call that progress. Rightly so. That said, I don’t think there’s any real substitute for hands on tactile learning of certain skills to understand the fundamentals.

As I progressed through my theatre education I took courses in lighting, scene, and costume design. I had to learn drafting using T-squares, pencils, pens, triangles, French curves, a compass, and all sorts of templates on a drafting board my Dad built for me. Again, I have all of that stashed away in storage somewhere.

I learned all of those fundamentals for tasks that many of the younger designers I work with never had to as they came of age when software could render and change a design in a comparative instant. Computers and technology have replaced so much in my profession from conception to execution. It’s actually quite efficient and made many things possible that weren’t before. Although I do find it humorous on occasion when I rely on some of those long ago learned fundamentals that are no longer really necessary for young designers and technicians to know, actually lead to a solution for the problem we’re attempting to solve.

I’m certainly not criticizing by going on this nostalgia dip into the past. As I said, technology has made many things possible in the theatre that weren’t before. But it does make me wonder how this new wave of Artificial Intelligence might or might not replace the shorter paths that were adopted after my time learning the ropes. I’m guessing somewhere some AI seduced producer is wondering if he’ll even need a team of designers in the future.

I think I’ll take a trip to storage soon and pull out some of my old kit.

(Image from Lewin Day’s post on Hackaday)

Looking Forward To Seeing David Byrne’s ‘Theater of The Mind’

Gonna take the trip

The previous immersive theatre experiences I’ve participated in have each been very much worth the trip. I’m very much looking forward to this one. Mike Davis of WBEZChicago got a pre-debut tour of David Byrne’s upcoming Theatre of The Mind and wrote about it.

2526_TOTM_Hero 1500x1000 2. In addition to being ever curious about immersive theatre experiences I’m a long time David Byrne fan, so this will be an exciting double dip.

I won’t begin to try and explain immersive theatre as a concept here, except to say it’s always a journey. Sometimes extremely satisfying, sometimes not so much. But then so is life.

I thoroughly enjoyed and was quite moved by the Albany Park Theater Project’s Port of Entry that Davis mentions in the piece. As an old theatre veteran, whenever the form lifts me out of my viewing habits I’m always intrigued.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Ian McKellen, Thomas More, Shakespeare, and The Strangers’ Case

Watch this

There really is nothing new under the sun. Man’s “mountainous inhumanity” is something that’s always been with us. We constantly need to remind ourselves of that when it comes to our current moment, especially as relates to our current ICE capades.

Ian McKellen appeared recently on The Late Night With Stephen Colbert for an extended interview in which he recited a 400-year-old monologue from the play Sir Thomas Moore, that speaks to directly to the plight of immigrants.

You can watch the clip below. It should be cued to the monologue. In case it’s not, the monologue begins at roughly 22:16 in the 26 minutes interview. Naturally I’d recommend watching the entire thing.

For an intriguing bit of context, the play largely thought to have been originally written by Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle, but contains pages attributed to Shakespeare and others in what was largely a collaborative effort over time as it passed from troupe to troupe. Which is when Shakespeare would have entered the picture. Of course, Shakespeare’s authorship has been debated as it always is. If interested, you can check out a Wikipedia entry on the play and its history that will give you some idea.

McKellen stepped into the play for the first time in 1964 after the original actor left the production due to artistic differences.

Setting aside authorship debates, the 400-year-old speech certainly speaks to our current moment as it has through generations, even if the play has been rarely performed live in its 400-year-old history.

Promises, Promises

Harold Hill never had such easy marks

Years ago when I ran professional theatres my principal responsibility was picking a season of plays and/or musicals, then pulling things together to actually produce that season. Planning was based on quite a few variables and data, but you never knew how things were actually going to play out in the end. Show business can be cruel.

The Music Man There were always surprises. Some good and some bad. Some shows would become surprise runaway hits, others that seemed like sure things would flop. Lose a weekend due to a snowstorm and the bottom line got hit hard.

Of course the choice of plays was always the key variable. I remember sitting in a particularly contentious board of directors meeting as we were nearing a season announcement and a board member was pushing back hard on our revenue and expense projections for what we had planned. He pounded the table and asked, “How can you know what will sell tickets a year from now?” I told him I could project, but I couldn’t know and that I always went into each season saying that if we succeeded as much as .300 hitters in baseball we’d be superstars.

Well, we weren’t baseball players, but we still usually came out ahead of the game with more hits some seasons than others. We held our own. The not-for-profit theatre version of the game I was playing relied on picking and announcing a season a year or so in advance. You’d promote and sell that season to subscribers to accumulate cash and support up front, and then once you were in the season proper you’d push hard for single ticket sales and then after they got a taste, try to convert them into subscribers, then donors.

It was always risky, just like many business propositions. I remember asking that same board member if his business would be comfortable announcing his plans and projecting sales a year in advance knowing all of the risks. It was a rhetorical question on my part because I knew his business couldn’t operate that way. Most can’t.

The entire thing was based initially on a promise, and each new season announcement was a new promise. Each time you delivered a promised season the theatre built or kept trust with that subscriber base. That loyal base would resubscribe based on that trust. Those customers knew there may be a play or two in the season they didn’t care for, but they came back season after season based on the quality of what we offered, and also that we delivered on what we initially sold and promoted.

As an artistic director (CEO) I was the one who was responsible for that trust and never took that responsibility lightly. Yes, there were times we had to change our plans, but the trust engendered along the way helped weather those moments as long as we were honest with our customers and donors.

The above is a long wind up to something I’ve been thinking about lately and spurred by an article I saw on Elon Musk’s latest promises about delivering robots “next year.”

No one thinks that’s real. For the life of me, I doubt he does. Given how many “promises” this guy has made and broken I don’t understand how reasonably intelligent (I assume they are reasonably intelligent) reporters and investors don’t just burst out laughing when the next one self-drives out of the empty garage that is his mouth. But then again, everyone is in on the con.

Musk isn’t alone these days when it comes to talking out of more orifices than human anatomy provides. Our politicians do it. Relentlessly. As do Tech and other corporate CEOs. The politicians you can almost understand because they are allowed to say whatever the hell they want under the Speech and Debate clause of the Constitution, granting them immunity for anything they say while doing their legislative duties. Unfortunately that seems to have spread a bit outside of the original boundaries through various court rulings and a willingness to boldly and brazenly lie at the drop of a hat.

But CEOs are supposed to be under more scrutiny. From their shareholders. From various regulatory agencies. And yet, those like Musk and many of the Artificial Intelligence promoters seem to be able to promise the Moon (or Mars) without ever delivering.

As I said earlier, at some point you’d think intelligent folks would catch on and actually run these Harold Hills out of town, instead of allowing them to continue courting the librarians they want to take jobs away from. If the regulators aren’t regulating and the shareholders keep writing checks I guess those of us watching shouldn’t care if they all end up playing air trombones. (Bonus points for those who get The Music Man references.)

There’s a truism in my business that nobody ever starts out to do a bad show. Yet, some shows flop. I used to believe that no one ever started a business to be a bust. But the flimflammery we’re seeing these days makes me wonder. As long as you can continue to fleece the flock along the way, does it really matter if you ultimately succeed in producing what you promised as long as you score along the way?

Set aside for the moment that anything, well intentioned or not, can fail. But after delivering a string of broken promises you’d think there’d be enough erosion of trust that only fools would continue to pony up their money. Perhaps I’ve just underestimated the number of fools.

My business was disposable. Technology isn’t. Essential as the arts are to our collective humanity, the arts are always the first to feel financial hits in tough times, and generally the last to recover. Technology keeps playing an increasing role in all of our lives and is becoming dangerously essential. Lord help us if an EMP ever goes off. Watching this new rush into the a world of Artificial Intelligence it’s frightening to contemplate even a small portion of what the promises offer, even as some have already collapsed under their own weight. It’s even more challenging to contemplate what the remaining ones might actually turn into.

It’s one thing to run a smartphone on a beta OS. It’s another when it runs your life for you.

Frankly, I don’t buy all of the promises. The ones that I think offer possible benefits I’m skeptical about. And that’s because I don’t trust the folks offering the promises, the folks funding them, or those rushing to implement them. They’ve all had their chance to earn my trust. There are very few remaining that haven’t squandered it.

The Catechism of a Christmas Carol Revisited

Humbugs and humble remembrances

In the run up to the Christmas holiday I revisit this piece I wrote for Ellemeno called The Catechism of A Christmas Carol. It makes sense because for most of my life I revisited or restaged A Christmas Carol, or some other Christmas themed show each and every holiday season.

I revisit the piece hoping that things might have changed for the better and that the hard hearted might have taken some of Dickens’ message to heart. Sadly, this year I knew that wasn’t going to be the case. But as I suggest in the piece, that’s true every year. This year it is just more openly apparent. As ingrained as it is in most of Western culture, A Christmas Carol doesn’t seem to have the same power to change hearts that the ghosts Dickens conjured did with old Ebenezer.

In fact these days, I’m slightly surprised that the folks in charge of banning books haven’t focused on this one yet, given how contradictory it is to their aims and careless heartlessness.

I write this a week before Christmas Day, 2025, in what has been a frightening year that presages more frights to come. I imagine this weekend will see theatre’s filled watching A Christmas Carol, A Wonderful Life, A Miracle on 34th Street, etc… etc…. We can hope some in those audiences will take home a moment taken to heart, if only momentarily.

Perhaps one day we’ll return to a place where the momentary touching of hearts and salving of souls means something for at least the length of the drive home from a Christmas Eve matinee. There is always hope. And that’s what Christmas is about.

As Scrooge’s nephew Fred says:

“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the nephew. “Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round — apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that — as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, Uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

I hope you’ll read the piece. Merry Christmas to all of those who celebrate.

(image from Plateresca on Shutterstock.)

Sunday Morning Reading

Hands on with playwrights, movies, smart toilets, and a discomforting rooster

Another Sunday. More snow overnight. More shoveling later. The holidays creep closer or perhaps they’re already here, given that grandpa mode has kicked into high gear. Started writing a new play out of the blue yesterday. I have no idea why, but it just tumbled out of my brain on to the screen via the keyboard. Time to share some Sunday Morning Reading. Read as you will, even if it’s on a smart toilet.

I often save the softer pieces for later in this column, but I’ll lead today with David Todd McCarty’s Christmas Means Comfort. Tell that to the rooster.

The world lost a treasure this week with the passing of architect Frank Gehry. Lee Bray writes a nice obituary and tribute. Check out Architect Frank Gehry Who Designed Millennium Park’s Pritzker Pavillion and Foot Bridge Dies at 96.

Samuel Beckett’s Hands is a terrific piece by Rob Tomlinson about, well it’s about Samuel Beckett’s hands and how Dupuytren’s contracture may have influenced not just how, but what he wrote, given that Beckett always begin his writing with pen and paper.

While I’m sharing stories about playwrights, the movie Hamnet is garnering lots of attention and accolades. (I haven’t seen it yet.) Based on Maggie O’Farrell’s excellent novel of the same name, Hamnet mostly follows accepted scholarship that William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet while grieving the death of his son, Hamnet. (At the time, the two names were practically interchangeable.) As with most things Shakespeare, there’s generally accepted knowledge and there are always those who challenge it. James Shapiro takes a look at The Long History of the Hamnet Myth.

And while I’m sharing stories about movies, take a look at Susan Morrison’s piece on How Noah Baumbach Fell (Back) In Love With The Movies.

I linked earlier this week to a piece by Phillip Bump called There Are Limits to the Hitler-Trump Comparison. Just Ask These Historians. I don’t disagree with the thesis. I just think it stops short in the way most history usually does.

Rory Rowan and Tristan Sturm write that Peter Thiel’s Apocalyptic Worldview Is A Dangerous Fantasy. Here’s hoping this first draft of our current history proves lasting.

There’s been much talk about all things military recently given how the current administration is tossing away most of what we believe the military stands for as easy as my grandson tosses away toy soldiers. Carrie Lee says The Soldier In The Illiberal State Is A Professional Dead End. I concur. Sadly.

In the wake of the cataclysm that was Twitter, social media is essentially a messy muddle these days with users continuing to migrate from one platform to another seeking some sort of place that feels comfortable enough to share and often discomfort others. Ian Dunt writes what he calls a love letter to one platform with Thank God for Bluesky.

Smart toilets were in the news this week. I actually got to see and use one at a Christmas party last night. All I could think about while doing my business was this piece by Victoria Song called Welcome To The Wellness Surveillance State.

And to conclude this week, Amogh Dimri informs us that the Oxford University Press has chosen Rage Bait as 2025’s Word of the Year. Dimiri thinks it’s a brilliant choice. I guess it begs the question, if we’re angry enough to rage, is it really baiting?

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Scene Painting a History of Hamlets at The National Theatre

Hamlets watching Hamlet

I’ve done some scene painting in my day, but nothing like this. Actually nothing even approaching anything like this.

In Robert Hatcher’s production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet at Britain’s National Theatre Ben Stones’ scenery features a gigantic mural that surrounds the set that includes the faces of actors who have played Hamlet through the ages. The picture above doesn’t do that description or the concept justice.

The faces woven into the Danish artwork are the ultimate theatrical Easter egg. While Stones keeps the full cast list close to his chest, he confirms that they are all there – a complete history of the role.

“They’re all hidden in there. Everybody who’s been in it… even Tinuke Craig’s schools Hamlets, the three boys who played on that tour. We were very clear that if we include, we are including everyone who’s ever spoken those words in any version of this kind of play.”

As a statement on the play and its theatricality that’s cool in and of itself. The ghost visages of previous Hamlets watching what can be described as a ghost story has a meta appeal.

What also attracted my attention to this article — and why I’m sharing it — is that it puts the spotlight on scenic painting, somewhat of a lost art in this day of projected backgrounds and digital printing. This theatrical work of art required 920 hours to complete.

There’s a terrific little video that gives you an idea of the scale and scope of the painting requirement. Unfortunately it’s filmed in vertical mode so you don’t get the grand finale the same way on a computer webpage that you might on a smartphone. Even on smaller screens it has an impact.

It made me recall my days directing theatre in Omsk, Russia when the scene painting loft was at the top of the building. There, drops would be stretched on a frame that would rise and descend through an opening in the floor allowing the scenic artists to stand on the floor as they painted. There were some amazing scenic painters in that loft.

The article also gives credit to the scenic artists who did the work for Hamlet at the National. Well deserved.

Find Beauty When and Where You Can

Stop and smell the roses

A Mastodon user sent me a direct message the other day asking why I felt so comfortable doing what I do every morning, which is posting a “Good Morning” toot featuring photos I’ve taken of flowers, tree leaves changing color, other shots of nature, holiday ornaments, etc….

The context of the query was criticizing how I could continue to do that every morning given all of the terrible things going on in the United States, things I also rightfully describe on social media as horrors.

I get it. Believe me I get it. I’m overwhelmed at times as well. But my response was and is simple.

Stop and smell the roses.

While there are indeed horrors happening in the world there is always beauty. If we don’t take a moment to see and acknowledge the beauty around us and the spontaneity of discovering it, whether it be in nature, in very human moments, in a museum, a gallery, a stage, a movie theater, a concert hall, a photograph, a child’s laugh, or in a story, then what the hell are we fighting for?

I’m convinced those we are fighting against don’t see or even care to see the beauty around and within us, unless it involves increasing their bank account balances.

Sometimes you need to stop and smell the roses. I prefer doing so in the mornings, before I put on my armor to meet the challenges of the day.

The Little Prince Meets Artificial Intelligence

A melange of technology and fantasy

Every year, sometimes twice a year, I return to one of my favorite theatre gigs, directing a staged reading for The International Voices Project. IVP is a Chicago company that produces staged readings of plays translated from other countries and cultures. Throughout the years the plays I’ve directed have taken me on journeys with writers from Syria, Lebanon, Ireland, Germany, Norway, Ukraine, El Salvador, and now Romania.

The reason I return each year is one of the reasons I have pursued and enjoyed my life making theatre. I get to touch and explore worlds, cultures, and ideas I would never have had the chance to experience otherwise. It’s always an adventure into something new.

My most recent gig with IVP certainly scratched all of those itches. The play is called Veronica’s Little Prince by Romanian playwright Dr. Catalina Florina Florescu. Yes, Antonie de Saint-Exupéry’s character of The Little Prince plays an important role.

The piece centers on Veronica, a former principal ballerina who has literally had her legs taken out from under her in a mysterious accident, leaving her in an institution, unable to move without the aid of a wheelchair and unable to speak. Unhappy with her fate Veronica is suspected of wanting to kill herself. Even before the mysterious accident she’s lived a life of self-destructive behavior.

The Little Prince arrives to help her examine and uncover the truth within her actions.

There’s another twist. I mentioned that Veronica can’t speak. In a technological twist she communicates via an AI robot by typing on her body. Via an implant those signals transmit to the robot who speaks her words and thoughts.

The play weaves in and out of Veronica’s mind and thoughts, her past and present, reality and fantasy, technology and humanity in very theatrical ways.

Creating an even more mysterious melange of tech and fantasy, the most frightening line to me is when Veronica’s Little Prince answers Veronica’s question about who told her to come by saying:

You see, they have programmed me to pop up whenever I hear certain words.

That may delight AI enthusiasts and those who keep suggesting we’re living in some sort of simulation, but given the rush to push us all deeper into a world run by Artificial Intelligence, it more than tweaks a nerve for those, like me, who may see benefits to AI in some forms, but think the pitfalls are more dangerous. Frankly, I prefer the characters in fantasy to spring from the minds of humans, not lines of code.

Given the sound and visual representations that give the script its many layers it was quite a challenge to present in a staged reading format without the benefit of theatre technology. But we managed to pull it off, letting the words weave their magic.

My thanks and kudos to the cast for doing such great work and especially to young Olive Popio who played our Little Prince.

(Photo by Scott Dray for The International Voices Project)