Saturday, June 14, 2014

Plays I don't remember seeing

Probably the most embarrassing aspect of seeing so much theatre is that some of it just slips my mind.  Sometimes this is because I was in the midst of huge work pressures and only managed to sneak out to see a show, and then returned to whatever I was dealing with.  Sometimes I just wasn't receptive to it, and it slipped my mind.  Or I didn't think they did a good job and I let it fall out of my mind.  (Granted, the shows that I really hated I tend to remember.)  And of course the further back I go, the more likely it is that I can't recall much about a show.  (Now I don't want to beat myself up too much, as I've seen literally hundreds of productions over the years and remember bits and pieces from most of them.)

Fortunately, hanging onto theatre programs will often, though not always, trigger at least some memories, and I am essentially done with scanning them.  But sometimes I look at one, and I still can't remember a darn thing about the show.  That's a shame.

Of all the ones that I will list, the most curious is Court Theatre's production of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing in 1999.  I can't remember anything at all about the production or the play itself.  I think this is a case where perhaps if I read the entire play, I might remember seeing it.  But it's a shame, as Stoppard is probably my favorite living playwright (just slightly ahead of Tony Kushner).

Here are a few others where a bit more was triggered after I ran across the relevant program as part of this scanning process:
T.S. Eliot The Family Reunion, Downtown Little Theatre, Toronto 1994
Vaclav Havel* The Increased Difficulty of Concentration, Famous Door, Chicago, 1996
Edward Albee Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Northwestern student production, 1997 (it had completely slipped my mind that I had ever seen this)
Lisa Loomer The Waiting Room, Trap Door, Chicago, 1998 (some of this came back after reading the play)
Tom Stoppard The Real Thing, Court Theatre, Chicago, 1999
Bulgakov Zoyka's Room, European Rep, Chicago, 1999 (I wish more of this had stuck with me)
John Orlock Indulgences in the Lousiville Harem, Rivendell, Chicago, 2002
Nilo Cruz A Park in Our House, Victory Gardens, Chicago, 2007 (I remember that I did attend this, but not that much about the play or production itself)
Joe Orton What the Butler Saw, Court Theatre, Chicago, 2007 (the opposite, I blanked on this at first, but then remembered a few slapstick elements of the play after seeing the program)

All in all, I have a pretty good memory of the plays I've seen in the past 15+ years, with just a couple of exceptions around 2007 interestingly enough.**  And there were some very memorable performances, even from 20 years back!  But I may well come back around in 5 more years and some more will have slipped my mind for sure.  I'm just trying to force too much stuff to stay in my head, and some things are bound to escape.✝

* Curiously, I have a much better memory of watching Havel's The Memorandum five years earlier.
** Presumably if I came across a cache of programs over 15 years old, there would be at least a few more I would need to add to this list.
✝ Indeed, I may need to make a list sooner rather than later of plays I attended where I didn't hang onto the program for one reason or another, including that you had to buy the program in the UK and I never felt it was worth it.

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