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Tony Adams is a Chicago based theatre artist, husband and father, and artistic director of Halcyon Theatre. He's been fortunate to make my way as an actor, designer, director and writer (in alphabetical order) He also staged managed twice. He is a horrible stage manager.
Clipped Wings
Submitted by Tony on Thu, 07/16/2009 - 17:04
The other night I decided to try and read Tony Jr. a story. He loves his beginner books, but I wasn't sure if he's old enough to just sit and listen to a story. So I grabbed the first book I could find that would work and started to read. We have an old collection of Arabian Nights tales that Jenn had picked up a long time ago. Some of our books who knows anymore who bought them, but this one was bought used from the Concord NH library. She's the New England-er in the family, I'm about as Mid-Western as they come.
Anyway, I started to read the little guy a story and he listened to a short one then it was time for bed. After putting him to bed (When Jenn's directing I watch the kids and she watches them while I'm in rehearsal.)
When I got back out I decided to read the preface, curiosity I guess. That edition was written in 1909, but part of the preface struck me:
You remember Maimoune, in the story of Prince Camaralzaman, and what she said to Danhasch, the genie who had just arrived from the farthest limits of China? "Be sure thou tellest me nothing but what is true or I shall clip thy wings!" This is what the modern child sometimes says to the genies of literature and his own wings are too often clipped in consequence.
The Empire of the Fairies is no more.
Reason has banished them from ev'ry shore;
Steam has outstripped their dragons and their cars.
Gas has eclipsed their glow-worms and their stars.
Reason has banished them from ev'ry shore;
Steam has outstripped their dragons and their cars.
Gas has eclipsed their glow-worms and their stars.
Edouard Loboulaye says in his introduction to Noveaux Contes Bleus: "Mothers who love your children, do not set them too soon in the study of history; let them dream while they are young. Do not close the soul to the first breath of poetry. Nothing affrights me so much as the reasonable, practical child who believes in nothing that he cannot touch. The sages of ten years are, at twenty, dullards, or what is worst, egoists."
I wonder how often theatre artists have clipped their wings, lost their imagination, forgot to dream.
There are many forms that can do things that theatre cannot. But at its best I've never seen anything that can reawaken our imagination in quite the same way. The shows I've seen and read that have bored me the most are those with their wings clipped the shortest--those perfectly reasonable shows; believing in nothing they cannot touch; that have closed their soul. How can we suspend disbelief if we cannot imagine?
For me, I'd so much rather watch Icarus fall from the sky after soaring too close to the sun than a 30-year old adolescent talking about his relationships. Though I'm not really a musical guy, and the price makes me quiver, I'd rather watch Wicked than just about anything LaBute has written. I'd take Angels in America over Art any day. Hell, I may actually prefer suffering through anything Sarah Ruhl has scribbled out over two couples in their twenty's talking in an apartment for two hours (Maybe.)
Am I alone in this?
