My Wobbling Earth

By  Paul Roberts 

Three shows down, six more more to go over the next two weekends. As the director of Arsenic and Old Lace, I should be saying “Six more attempts at perfection.” Right?

Only if I want to be disappointed. Only if I want to drive my actors crazy, or angry, or frustrated, pushing them towards something that we will never achieve as a cast.

We were not perfect with all of our lines any of the first three nights. But even if we were able to recite our lines without a single missed syllable, would that be perfection? By one definition, I suppose. A very narrow definition. An artificial intelligence type of definition. Imagine that our audience gathered at the theater and when the curtain was raised we played a recording of a machine - or even a human - reciting the words exactly how Joseph Kesselring penned them in the late 1930’s. I doubt that any reviews of the performance would shout “Perfection!”

Live theater is in search of something other than multi-syllabic perfection. We attend a human performance of any kind - theater, sports, music, etc. - not to see perfection but to sense connection. And that connection can be everything a dramatic critic like Mortimer Brewster is looking for without being perfect.

Allow me a comparison, an analogy, if you will, that may seem a bit strange in the beginning. My buddy Isaac Asimov was talking to me in an essay titled “The Wobbling Earth” about perfection, or the lack of it, and how it is a normal part of our daily experience. I think of the earth as a globe, a perfectly spherical shape. It is not. It bulges, as a result of forces like the gravitational pull of the sun and the moon. I think of the earth as a perfect sphere, spinning in a perfect circle on an immovable axis. Wrong again. The earth wobbles. It wobbles from the pull of the sun and moon; it wobbles because of the movement of its oceans, because of the movement of its land masses through earthquakes, even because of the movement of wind across its surface. Small wobbles, but wobbles nonetheless. This globe I live on is imperfect, and from day to day, year to year, century to century, eon to eon, experiences what seems to be imperfection, just as the solar system, the galaxy, and the universe do. Imperfection, change, is a part of the reality that I live in.

How cool. The wobbling of my personal axis currently has me focused on the relationship between me, my cast, my fellow actors, and my audience. That wobble will come to an end, and my focus, my axis will be centered around something else. The change, the wobble, is not bad or wrong. In fact, it is the norm. It will bring me into a very relationship with other “celestial bodies”, (my cast, my audience) if you’ll allow me to take the analogy even further.

So if you get the chance to see Arsenic at the Sixth Street Theater this month (get your tickets now, they’re going fast) don’t expect perfection. But do expect to be drawn into our orbit for a very special experience.

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How do you manage the wobbles, the imperfection that life brings into your path? Share with us.

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