Doris Lessing
SIDE BENEFITS OF AN
HONOURABLE PROFESSION
Or rather, perhaps, a condition of, the mud which nur–
tures? Flowers, of course - but that isn't the point. No, definitely
not an effluent, a by-product. Accurate as well as charitable to see
it all as a kind of compost, the rich mad muck which feeds those
disciplined performances, exactly the same night after night that we
see and marvel at and which might even cause us to exclaim - if
we haven't entirely lost that naivety which I for one maintain the
theatre needs as dreams need sleep, and could not exist without for
one moment: How
can
he/she bear to be someone else so entirely
and devotedly every blessed night and two afternoons a week for
hours at a stretch ! Even with intervals for orange juice or Scotch.
Possibly for months at a time.
If
the play finds favour, as they say.
Those two, for instance: household names, or at least in those
households (one per cent of the population) which prefer to give
room to these rather than to the more vigorous performers, football
players, or horses or dogs - those two, having rehearsed for a month
a play which called for a slow progress towards a bed, made of the
bed itself a stage for - not at all for the guilt-ridden and eventually
murderous lusts which the play incorporated, but for innocence.
It was an innocence so immaculate that words like mud and
compost perhaps need looking at again. If, that is, we do not want
to examine innocence.
It
so happened - and no chance either, I feel, that both he
(we'll call him John) and she (Mary will do) were involved during
the period of rehearsal with some pretty savage moments in their
private lives. He was in trouble with his marriage; and she, having
been divorced, had reached that point with a possible new husband
