'Never Peek Around The Wings On Stage'

Never peek around the wings on stage;
if you are tempted, focus then on lines -
you never can be too assured with lines.

You have to treat your audience with respect;
they are your clients after all, and should
you treat their patronage well, as you should.

You must be acting any time they see you;
always keep your mask on when on stage,
even like the Greeks back in that age.

Your audience should never see you break
your character; but if you ever feel
you must, do it offstage - you must conceal it.

Never peep your head out from the wings;
you never should allow yourself to be
distracted by whomever you may see.

If ever you give in to such an itch
and look around the curtains, if you ever
just step near to the light, though you should never,

the curtains may just flutter by your touch,
reality will shatter, you will break
th'illusion, you will show the world it's fake;

and then, you'll lose the point of the deception,
the audience will not forget that sin,
and you may never win their trust again.

So never peek around the wings on stage.
Instead, stay hidden till you hear your cue,
then go out there and act the best you can.



28/05/16

Poet's Notes

With everything that has been going on, including the finishing of our two-term-long study of the Ancient Greek play Lysistrata and the nearing of our production of Little Shop of Horrors, I felt that writing a poem related to the stage would only have been appropriate. I remember this being a matter that my drama teacher always had to drill into everybody's heads simply because we were too anxious to see what was going on stage without being discreet enough. I guess the actual stimulus was when our director this year yelled at a few students for doing just that.

On the surface, this poem is simply what any drama teacher will tell you, but it can also be a metaphor for any sort of deception you choose to undertake. Close friends should recognise, however, what my stimulus was for writing this poem, especially if they're going through the rehearsal process of this year's production. If the rest of you want to know, you have to find out yourself because I'm not talking. But I hope even without this extra insight, you appreciate this poem.

'Waltz Now My Love' (Waltz no.2 by Dmitri Shostakovich)

Waltz now my love
for I will before morning leave you.
Trust now my love
for I have no intent to deceive you.
All's well that ends in love - 
that's what they say,
so I'll flee to another place late but ere the morning.
Trust in me that this sour displacement I will be mourning.
But we'll see that by Heaven's grace love will be reborn.

Soar 'cross the floor
for the hour of my going's ensuing.
Dance evermore
for that's what the world would have us doing.
Whisper of naught gone ill,
speak not of pain.
There's no time for distress, no second to waste for sorrow;
there's no rhyme for the fates to beckon this woe tomorrow
but my crime. Yet our peace, I reckon, will time restore.

Alas! Remorse is o'er taking.
The glass of clar'ty is breaking.
The passing by of the hours -
those leaving me - is grieving me.
What more can we lovers do now?
Wherefore do we 'gnore what's true?
How before is now a dream
is as clear as Diana's gleam.

Bring me back to the days when life was simple,
love was easy, words were censored,
music was inn'cent, art was legal,
when the gods could lawf'lly live amongst men.

But if that were to happen,
o how meaningless our work would be
without freedom, without truth.
No, we can only forward move and progress.

Please let me go
for I'll only dejection bring you;
please, please for woe
so the world with rejection won't sting you.
Close now your tired eyes,
close them for now.
May you dream evermore of me and of no more pain, and
let the beam of La Luna thee beautifully stain; and
one day we will each other see face to face again. 



24/03/16

Poet's Notes

Have I ever mentioned how much I adore Shostakovich's work? No? Well, from now on, that will be invalid: I love Dmitri Shostakovich and the music he composed. Okay, now that that's out of the way... This is the first piece of his that I have ever heard (not counting his second piano concerto, as I was a teeny wee lad), and I immediately fell in love with it: the melancholy in the melody; the sighing of the saxophone; the sounds of struggle in the singing of the strings (I'm going all alliteration here like I do in my other blog now). While listening to it one day in school, the words "Waltz now my love" popped into my head. I typed them out, and a few days later this poem was written. So sing the words along to the melody of the piece!

The narrative in this poem is based on the idea of art censorship, a similar kind that Shostakovich and many Soviet artists had to suffer - I even remember having to study The Collaborators in drama class for my iGCSEs, a tale of Russain playwright Mikhail Bulgakov being threatened with his life for composing anti-government plays. It deals with the poetic voice having to leave his lover and escape the clutches of Stalin for the sake of his art. Whether the act is selfish or not, you decide.

Update

I've decided that I would include analyses on drama as well, as I'm a drama student who realises how much literature-analysis skills count in the character development process. I think the first post of such would be the next, and on Iago's famous "I hate the Moor" soliloquy at the end of Act I scene i of Shakespeare's Othello. Stay tuned for that!