To be so moved by something so grand and so rarely seen on stages anymore. A play so vast it feels like it overwhelms and swallows you, the way coffee swallows the cream. To be faced with the hard truth that time only moves one direction, forward, and there’s no turning the world back to its previous state.
You really can’t turn the jam out of your porridge. You can’t.
Love can only move us forward.
I’ve struggled for days to write this note, something I know parents and friends and students alike expect to find in our playbill. The director’s note is the moment when I, the teacher, must clearly articulate my thesis for our production and articulate its value in our learning. It is the morning of our opening night. I’m still in my kitchen when I should be at school. But I’m here, not unlike Septimus, scribbling unfinished solutions onto the page.
Why? Why do this? Why continue to fight against the inevitable changes in our school, our city, our nation? Why toil to solve an equation that we simply don’t have to calculus yet to prove? Why does the Sidley Park Hermit spend most of his life scribbling in isolation?
Because he has no choice. It is his calling, to finish the work, his teaching, his learning, his love, his life…
I think I finally get it.
Thank you for coming to our play. B'DAT #41, my Roman Empire.
Et in Arcadia ego.
With Love,
Jo
