The other night, a friend texted me and was like, "Yo. I've got two tickets to a dope show I'm seeing for a class and one's got your name on it."
So I was like, "I'll be there."
And then we sent and saw it.
It was an adaptation of George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss, which I had never read before, and the most interesting part for me was how they used three different actresses to play the lead character at different stages of her life--one for her as a child, one to portray her as a teenager, and one for her adulthood. While this often happens in theatre and film, what was unique in this production was how, as the main character grew, the younger versions of her would randomly appear on stage at different moments, influencing the character in her current state. At first it kind of threw me off, and I was like *sigh, theatre people* but over time it added this beautiful, profound element to the story that really touched me in a way that only this kind of subtle, physical, theatrical portrayal could. Because though we do grow and change, the younger versions of ourselves really are still inside, and still influence us as we age.
For me, much like the main character in the play, there is the passionate, creative, imaginative child that didn't care very much about what others thought within me. The child who would spend hours drawing until her hands were black with marker, the child who considered catching bugs and looking for frogs in the creek her duty, the child who loved making people laugh and didn't worry about the kids who thought she was a little odd. She lived and loved and reveled in simplicity.
But there is also within me a teenage self, sometimes uncomfortable in her skin and often so worried about outside appearances and so stifled by self-consciousness and fear that she held back, a lot. I wish she wouldn't have cared so much, I wish she wouldn't have kept so much to herself, and I wish she could have realized that nothing at that time in life really would matter so much in the long run.
And as the play illustrated so beautifully, these past selves are still a part of me and form pieces of my identity even now as an adult. As I watched the play I realized just how much I want to tap into that childhood self and be less influenced by the teenage one. My inner struggles are so often an interplay between these two past selves, a dance of competing desires. It is freeing, though, to know that at this stage of life I can choose whatever and however I'd like to be. And we all have that choice--to embrace the parts of ourselves we love and admire while recognizing the parts we should avoid, though they may linger. I suppose that's what being an adult is, in a way. I've been wondering exactly what that means for a while, and I think I might have just understood a piece of it.
So I was like, "I'll be there."
And then we sent and saw it.
It was an adaptation of George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss, which I had never read before, and the most interesting part for me was how they used three different actresses to play the lead character at different stages of her life--one for her as a child, one to portray her as a teenager, and one for her adulthood. While this often happens in theatre and film, what was unique in this production was how, as the main character grew, the younger versions of her would randomly appear on stage at different moments, influencing the character in her current state. At first it kind of threw me off, and I was like *sigh, theatre people* but over time it added this beautiful, profound element to the story that really touched me in a way that only this kind of subtle, physical, theatrical portrayal could. Because though we do grow and change, the younger versions of ourselves really are still inside, and still influence us as we age.
For me, much like the main character in the play, there is the passionate, creative, imaginative child that didn't care very much about what others thought within me. The child who would spend hours drawing until her hands were black with marker, the child who considered catching bugs and looking for frogs in the creek her duty, the child who loved making people laugh and didn't worry about the kids who thought she was a little odd. She lived and loved and reveled in simplicity.
But there is also within me a teenage self, sometimes uncomfortable in her skin and often so worried about outside appearances and so stifled by self-consciousness and fear that she held back, a lot. I wish she wouldn't have cared so much, I wish she wouldn't have kept so much to herself, and I wish she could have realized that nothing at that time in life really would matter so much in the long run.
And as the play illustrated so beautifully, these past selves are still a part of me and form pieces of my identity even now as an adult. As I watched the play I realized just how much I want to tap into that childhood self and be less influenced by the teenage one. My inner struggles are so often an interplay between these two past selves, a dance of competing desires. It is freeing, though, to know that at this stage of life I can choose whatever and however I'd like to be. And we all have that choice--to embrace the parts of ourselves we love and admire while recognizing the parts we should avoid, though they may linger. I suppose that's what being an adult is, in a way. I've been wondering exactly what that means for a while, and I think I might have just understood a piece of it.
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