2005-06-15 - 11:41 a.m.
What I'm listening to: Strange Meadow Lark-The Dave Brubeck Quartet, and the beginnings of a wonderful thunderstorm.
Two nights ago I ended up seeing a play at the fringe festival. It was by accident really. I was at this party and a few others showed up, who had extra tickets. I remember feeling the glint of excitment, because I love theatre but it's been some time since I've indulged in such pleasures.
The show was at the Portugese Centre on St. Urbain. The friends who brought me to the show had seen other shows, and had a mostly favourable experience.
We got in the theatre...good lord it was hot. I kept on wondering what this used to be...church, synagogue, etc. I'll have to and have a look at it during the day.
So the play starts...opens with a couple arguing about how it's ok to eat animals but, somehow wild beastial sex is illegal. Ok....the play was called 'The United States of America Doesn't Exist'. It was supposed to be about this American family who moves to Montreal.
Well, it was nothing close to that. It turned out to be one hour and fifteen minutes of unpleasureable pain. Good god it was awful. The only redeeming quality was that the play's programme was thick enough to use as a personal fan.
When we left the theatre, one of my hosts apologized profusely, saying that the fringe plays aren't usually this horrible, and this was amateur theatre gone bad.
What's even funnier is that yesterday I'm walking down St. Laurent, and I see one of the actors from the night before. We are about to cross paths on the sidewalk, I look at him, he looks at me, we both look away, and I'm biting my lip, probably drawing blood, to keep myself from laughing hysterically. Then I call in the cavalry, so to speak. I have stored in my memory a couple of really sad thoughts that I think about, when I feel the need to laugh, but it would be inappropriate or rather bad manners to laugh at that given time.
I thought about all of those sad things, nothing was working. The time it took for us to cross paths seemed like forever, so I looked away, giggled, then we finally crossed. Afterwards, I'm walking down the street, alone laughing myself silly, no doubt to the casual amusement of the onlookers who see this guy walking down the street, laughing to himself.
What was even funnier, was that this actor was wearing the same thing that he was wearing during the play. Maybe they really did have a low budget for wardrobe.
Lighting struck...
Thunder shaking the table....
