"return to life"

ta Last night at Skirball Center to see ERS's production of Seagull, their vision of Chekhov's play. I have friends who were performing in the play, but of course I havn't seen them since the pandemic began. Before that I interacted with them a lot. Arriving at the theatere, I felt ambivalent about saying hello to the three or four actors in the cast that I knew, wondering if they would even remember me. Would I be just some "clunky" ERS fan, unimportant to them. No,  to my surprise, the three cast members whom I knew well, Gavin, Kate and Lindsay, all greeted me with incredible warmth. I really felt like part of their "family"---so happy I remained afterwards to say hello to them. Thinking about it now, the morning after, there is something dreamlike about this reunion, a kind of "life returned" aspect to the whole thing. I am certainly not the same, after the 29 months since the pandemic interrupted things, but I could live again in an envirnoment that the pandemic and my illness had deprived me of. A very special night.

As for the play, well, Seagull is a play I care deeply about and have very strong feelings for. ERS is an eclectic group---their production was basically faithful to the play, with visual choices that showed how their creativness could come to terms with Chekhov's. I disagree with some of the choices, casting and othrewise, that I assume, their director made---watching these choices I often translated what I saw into my own "hunger' to direct the play at some point, with my own choices instead. Will that happen...? Probably not---nevertheless I continue to visualize my own casting choices, feelings, images often over what I see when I watch any of the four Chekhov classics. I look forward to having a discussion about the production with others that see it; I am definitely better of for watching this---I wonder if I will ever see a production that I feel coincides with my vision of the play; in 2016 a production of a play called "Stupid Fucking Bird", actually a very sensitive take on the Seagull, was very close to what I think Seagull should be. It emphasized the eroticism boiling under the surface of the four main characters, ERS's production was much cooler to this aspect. 

So here I sit at this computer, trying to figure out how the whole event last night casts light into my future. Returned to the apartment around midnight, the longest I have been out since the pandemic and the diagnosis of my illness. Will it happen again soon?  Does it mean I can push myself to travel outside the apartment for longer and longer times. Should I be less self protective about going to events I might like,? even if they challenge my nervousness stamina issues. So many places in the city I would like to go that are not on the upper west side. Movies at Lincoln Center or a laid back coffee shop in Bushwick, Flatbush or another neighborhood in Brooklyn? What about a walk on certain blocks in the Bronx? All things to consider after last night's "adventure". Will report soon.