Being of an age to attend matinees, it is a fact that apart from the school parties, the audience is made up of people of a certain age. They are your age! and it comes as rather a surprise because there you are in your timeless mindset looking at people thinking they are rather old and then you look and see they are just like you!!! This is the thing, there is this timeless part which looks out at the other time conditioned world and feels safer than perhaps it should. You just don't want to get caught out believing the passing show to be real and losing the opportunity to enjoy it without being totally submerged and taken in by it.
The other thing about the play is that while it is on, especially if it is good (and Othello at the National Theatre was brilliant), you are absorbed but only absorbed as the watcher, it isn't actually happening to you, you are absorbed but also free to get out of your seat at the end, wipe away the tear at the pity of it all, and catch the train home to Grandpa coping with the grandsons, the dogs and the rest of the rather chaotic play which is your life.
Meditating on the witness gives a little perspective, and makes the growing into being a matinee goer something to be more surprised and amused at than concerned.
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