Lionel Abel
NOT EVE ,RYONE IS IN THE FIX
You are not where you wanted to
be,
nor will you get
what you expected. But do you want to go somewhere else? Where?
Not easy to say, but it's not easy to stay where you are, either. You
will
stay too, unless you are like the reviewers for the dailies, who
damned
this
play* almost to a man. Why will you stay? Not in
any great hope of pleasure, but as you stay in a dentist's office,
motivated by an aching tooth.
If
you had come to be relieved
of your boredom, then you will not be satisfied. You will
not
be
relieved. You will
be
even more bored than you were
when you first came in. More bored and more amenable to
further boredom, a state in which there is a certain fascination.
You are bored stiff by the junkies on the stage; they are bored
stiff
too,
with each other and with themselves. They are waiting
for a "flash." What are you waiting for? They know what they
want.
You might decide of course that you know you don't want to
wait
with
them. But for some reason you do wait, until their chance
for a "flash" comes. And while you wait as they wait, certainly not
for
God
and not even for Godot, you lose your perspective, that is,
assuming
you had one; in this there is a definite pleasure. The fact
of
the matter is you don't know what you are doing or why you go
anywhere. Probably that is why you have come to see
The Connec–
lion.
And on the stage there are people, recognizably real, who are
u
disoriented as you are, but know that they want something, or
at
least need something. They are waiting for "horse," that is to say,
heroin;
it
will
be
brought to them by a negro, appropriately named
• Tbe
Connection.
By
Jack Gelber. The Living Theater.
