DramaLit Blog 1.0: BU School of Theatre

These are two of my favorite actresses.  I first saw them in film: Linney in You Can Count on Me and Blanchett in Elizabeth.  But I didn’t really understand the enormity of their talent until I saw them onstage.  I saw Linney in The Crucible, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Sight Unseen and Time Stands Still.  I saw Blanchett only once in a Brooklyn Academy of Music performance of Hedda Gabler.  There are a number obvious reasons why a stage performance is simply more electric than a cinematic one: there’s the thrill of sharing the same physical space with the performer as well as the risk of live theater.  There’s another, more nuanced thrill, though, that speaks to theater more generally: the feeling that this performance, this moment, this particular iteration of this character in this play exists only here and now.  It will come and it will go and it can never be repeated exactly, can never be edited or refined.  And it’s mine to share with the others in that particular audience on that particular day for that particular showing only.  Everyone I know saw and loved Elizabeth and You Can Count on Me.  But that particular Elizabeth Proctor, that particular Hedda Gabler: they’re mine and mine alone.