the boy who waited
So, I just saw Arthur Darvill on Broadway as the lead in Once from six rows from the front of the orchestra.
I may be having some OMG RORY feelings tonight.
This has been a good couple of weeks for me and theatre and Doctor Who actors, oddly enough -- last week I saw the all-black RSC production of Julius Caesar at BAM with, among others, Paterson Joseph as Brutus and Adjoa Andoh (Martha's mum) as Portia. Who were both really fucking amazing, though the guy playing Antony (Ray Fearon) completely stole the show with his brilliant interpretation of the "Friends, Romans, Countrymen" speech.
Anyway. So Arthur Darvill is apparently a really talented musician as well as a lovely actor, and I basically spent the whole show like ♥_♥ and the rest of the cast was quite talented as well and I'm more than a little bit in love right now.
Seriously, incidental enjoyment of Who actors aside, seeing these two wildly different but equally good productions in the past week and a half has very much driven home that to me, the theatre is a sacred space. There is nothing in the world that transfixes me quite like live theatre. It's not -- Broadway, or being fond of a television actor on a stage. It's just that the experience of sitting in an audience with living people twenty or fifty feet away from you creating a whole other world on a stage -- it's unlike any other feeling in the world. I feel more fully alive when I'm in a theatre than...god, any other time. It's why, for all the stress and hassle and shitty hours and worse pay of stage management, I honestly can't imagine ever doing anything else, because the theatre is everything to me. (Also, seriously, being alone in a dark, empty theater with only a ghost light for company makes me feel more at peace than pretty much anything else. I'm a stage manager, I'm often the first person in and the last person out of a theater, so it's not an unusual situation for me. But god, it's glorious. Theatre is an empty space just brimming with potential.)
I sometimes wonder if I'm...broken, or not built right, because it seems like I don't have feelings or form emotional connections in the way normal people do. I mean, not that I don't have feelings at all, obviously, I do, but not the way people around me seem to, and I'm mostly just lonely a lot. I genuinely like most people but don't particularly connect with very many of them. I've only been sort of in love maybe once or twice in my life; I can count the people I truly consider friends on one hand and I'm well aware that I need their friendship far more than they need mine because I'm a very distant and frequently absent sort of friend. When I look into my future, I don't see much of anything for my personal life -- I haven't had sex in years, I doubt I'll ever meet anyone I want to marry (or who wants to marry me), it's extremely unlikely I'll ever have kids. Barring accidents, I'm pretty much going to grow old and die alone, and I'm slowly resigning myself to that. But god, I fall hopelessly, selflessly in love every time I step into a theater. Productions like Once and Julius Caesar completely transport me. This is why I can get so angry about commercialism and Broadway -- empty trash moneymakers like Mamma Mia! or Legally Blonde: The Musical are actively profaning that sacred space for me. (Okay, I've probably never given my Broadway Rant here, but I have one, and many people who know me IRL have heard bits of it.) Good theatre, true storytelling, is just...magical.
...this post wound up being way less about seeing Rory on Broadway than it was supposed to be. Anyway. He was really, really good? And he can sing and play guitar. For real.
This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth. Comment wherever you'd like.
I may be having some OMG RORY feelings tonight.
This has been a good couple of weeks for me and theatre and Doctor Who actors, oddly enough -- last week I saw the all-black RSC production of Julius Caesar at BAM with, among others, Paterson Joseph as Brutus and Adjoa Andoh (Martha's mum) as Portia. Who were both really fucking amazing, though the guy playing Antony (Ray Fearon) completely stole the show with his brilliant interpretation of the "Friends, Romans, Countrymen" speech.
Anyway. So Arthur Darvill is apparently a really talented musician as well as a lovely actor, and I basically spent the whole show like ♥_♥ and the rest of the cast was quite talented as well and I'm more than a little bit in love right now.
Seriously, incidental enjoyment of Who actors aside, seeing these two wildly different but equally good productions in the past week and a half has very much driven home that to me, the theatre is a sacred space. There is nothing in the world that transfixes me quite like live theatre. It's not -- Broadway, or being fond of a television actor on a stage. It's just that the experience of sitting in an audience with living people twenty or fifty feet away from you creating a whole other world on a stage -- it's unlike any other feeling in the world. I feel more fully alive when I'm in a theatre than...god, any other time. It's why, for all the stress and hassle and shitty hours and worse pay of stage management, I honestly can't imagine ever doing anything else, because the theatre is everything to me. (Also, seriously, being alone in a dark, empty theater with only a ghost light for company makes me feel more at peace than pretty much anything else. I'm a stage manager, I'm often the first person in and the last person out of a theater, so it's not an unusual situation for me. But god, it's glorious. Theatre is an empty space just brimming with potential.)
I sometimes wonder if I'm...broken, or not built right, because it seems like I don't have feelings or form emotional connections in the way normal people do. I mean, not that I don't have feelings at all, obviously, I do, but not the way people around me seem to, and I'm mostly just lonely a lot. I genuinely like most people but don't particularly connect with very many of them. I've only been sort of in love maybe once or twice in my life; I can count the people I truly consider friends on one hand and I'm well aware that I need their friendship far more than they need mine because I'm a very distant and frequently absent sort of friend. When I look into my future, I don't see much of anything for my personal life -- I haven't had sex in years, I doubt I'll ever meet anyone I want to marry (or who wants to marry me), it's extremely unlikely I'll ever have kids. Barring accidents, I'm pretty much going to grow old and die alone, and I'm slowly resigning myself to that. But god, I fall hopelessly, selflessly in love every time I step into a theater. Productions like Once and Julius Caesar completely transport me. This is why I can get so angry about commercialism and Broadway -- empty trash moneymakers like Mamma Mia! or Legally Blonde: The Musical are actively profaning that sacred space for me. (Okay, I've probably never given my Broadway Rant here, but I have one, and many people who know me IRL have heard bits of it.) Good theatre, true storytelling, is just...magical.
...this post wound up being way less about seeing Rory on Broadway than it was supposed to be. Anyway. He was really, really good? And he can sing and play guitar. For real.
This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth. Comment wherever you'd like.