Thursday, July 07, 2005

West End is dark tonight

According to Blogway Baby the West End is dark tonight.

I was in NY on 9/11 and Broadway was dark for 2 days. On Thursday the 13th it went up again, and I thought that there was no better way for me, as part of the theatre community, to show that life doesn't stop in the face of such threats, than to go to a Broadway show.

I stood in line for 4 hours to get tickets to The Producers, which was Broadway's hot ticket at the time. And every theatre had similar lines and crowds. Standing in line with me were other stranded visitors from around the world, including a couple from England. We stood together for four hours, and then about 10 of us went and had pizza together before the show.

After a couple of days cooped up alone in my hotel room watching CNN, it was great to be in human company...and such diverse global company.

Seeing the show was very emotional for many of us in the house. Rocco Landesman gave a curtain speech, and we all sang God Bless America after the curtain call. And I'm sure our non-American friends in the audience sang as robustly as we did.

I hope that when the West End goes up again that the people in London experience a similar coming together and feeling of unity across artificial barriers. It all goes back to good old Aristotle and "catharsis" doesn't it?

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