Lolita Chakrabarti on loving and loathing theatre: “a pretentious self-inflated profession” able to “ignite, surprise and wake up sleepy 15-year-olds.”
I love the theatre. I love its immediacy and invention. The places you can travel sitting in one seat. I love the collective experience (as long as fellow audience members don't distract you with texting, talking or eating their chicken dinner throughout the play as happened one night downstairs at the Royal Court). I love clever, succinct language that makes me laugh or cry and says exactly what I would hope to say if I were caught in that same situation. I love the way I can travel and live through the problems, dilemmas and cultures of people I will never meet. And at the end of the night, as I walk away from the theatre, I somehow understand my own limitations a little better. I am so glad I found the theatre. What would I have been without it?
I wouldn't have trained to be an actress. I wouldn't have started writing. And I wouldn't have found out about Ira Aldridge.
Aldridge was a 19th-century, black American actor who played Othello at Covent Garden's Theatre Royal in 1833. He had an illustrious international career and when he died was given a state funeral in Poland, but since then his achievements and legacy have largely been forgotten. In Aldridge's day, theatre was the most popular form of entertainment. It was a social event attended by all levels of society. The difference was that in those days it was affordable. Money is always the key.
I love the theatre. I love its immediacy and invention. The places you can travel sitting in one seat. I love the collective experience (as long as fellow audience members don't distract you with texting, talking or eating their chicken dinner throughout the play as happened one night downstairs at the Royal Court). I love clever, succinct language that makes me laugh or cry and says exactly what I would hope to say if I were caught in that same situation. I love the way I can travel and live through the problems, dilemmas and cultures of people I will never meet. And at the end of the night, as I walk away from the theatre, I somehow understand my own limitations a little better. I am so glad I found the theatre. What would I have been without it?
I wouldn't have trained to be an actress. I wouldn't have started writing. And I wouldn't have found out about Ira Aldridge.
Aldridge was a 19th-century, black American actor who played Othello at Covent Garden's Theatre Royal in 1833. He had an illustrious international career and when he died was given a state funeral in Poland, but since then his achievements and legacy have largely been forgotten. In Aldridge's day, theatre was the most popular form of entertainment. It was a social event attended by all levels of society. The difference was that in those days it was affordable. Money is always the key.