One of the best parts of attending live theater is experiencing the tension inherent to preserving the veneer that separates the performers from reality. Unlike television or film, where the performances come pre-bottled, actors on stage are always a moment away from having their art punctured by all manner of intrusions, from a physical injury to a disruptive spectator to an act of God to an assassin’s bullet. To be a spectator is to exist in the same liminal space, to know that the “real” could intrude at any moment, but to choose to help create the conditions where the fantastic can take place.
One of my favorite Games of Thrones episodes begins with Arya watching a play in Braavos entitled “The Bloody Hand.” The play is a Braavosi treatment of Eddark Stark’s time as Hand of the King, and it takes us through Ned’s execution and Joffrey’s death at his own wedding. Arya watches with a keen if melancholic interest; her discerning eyes no doubt reflecting the contrast between her own lived experience and the play’s ribald, Lannister-ized take.
The layers add up to something special. As a viewer, we’re not only treated to a satirically-skewed version of some of the show’s most compelling events, we are also confronted with the tension inherent to Arya being a member of the audience. I know that I spent a decent part of the episode wishing that Arya could somehow intrude upon the show and set the record straight. Instead, Arya recognizes the talent of the actress who plays Cersei Lannister, the real-life version of which resides at the top of Arya’s list of persons she intends to see dead. When Arya later develops a friendship with the actress, their connection is colored with this knowledge.
I had these images in mind when I sat down to write my fantasy novelette Last Performance at the Three Dragons Inn. I knew that I wanted to explore the ways that tension might manifest when the motivations of the members of the audience act upon the performers on stage. The story’s protagonist, Jezebel, the starring actress in the novelette’s play, spends much of the story grasping at the larger forces that are attempting to manipulate her. The play revolves around the death of the king and his family by dragonflame thirty years earlier. When the current queen – the deceased king’s sister – decides to attend the show, Jezebel becomes unwittingly caught up in a decade’s long secret war between the royal family and a mysterious figure. It’s this tension – and the reader’s growing awareness of Jezebel’s predicament – that leads to what I hope is a satisfying denouement. The novelette is part of a larger epic fantasy series that I’m working on entitled The Song of the Burning Heart. You can download the novelette for free by subscribing to this newsletter. Or you can purchase a paperback copy here.
Back in 2016, I had the good fortune to see Hamilton: An American Musical at the Richard Rogers theater during the last week that the original cast performed. This was at the height of Hamiltonmania: I remember seeing Lin Manuel Miranda’s face on the cover of multiple national publications at the airport on my way to and from NYC. Having purchased the tickets nearly a year earlier, at a time when the play was popular but had not yet reached the heights that it later achieved, it felt like I had somehow tapped into the zeitgeist. The energy in the theater that night was palpable: the audience was not only aware of the actors onstage, they were also aware of their role as audience members watching one of the final performances by the original cast.
Months later, after the 2016 presidential election, the vice-president elect attended a performance of the show. When the show ended, the actors on-stage addressed the vice-president-elect about their concerns, in a moment that captured at least half the country’s unease over the presidential transition. I found the interaction fascinating. In a world where most of our art is consumed at a digital remove, here reality and art intersected, blurring, if for but a few brief tension-filled seconds, the divide between audience and stage.
This tension, of course, isn’t found solely at the theater. It’s also inherent to sporting events, concerts, and comedic performances. But the divide isn’t as strong at these events: fans commonly cheer and razz athletes, audience members routinely applaud and heckle comedians, and how good is a concert if half the fans aren’t singing along? But a play is different. Sure, there’s applause, but only at accepted moments. To interrupt a live performance at a play is to tamper with the very fabric that holds the play together. Plays are fragile things, sewn together by the actors’ belief that they are creating an alternate reality. When the audience refuses to play along, the fiction collapses in an instant.
And when reality intrudes, it’s almost always dark.
Books I’ve recently read and enjoyed:
The Wickwire Watch by Jacquelyn Hagen
The Book of Ayn by Lex Frieman
Music on my mind:
Right Back to It by Waxahatchee
Tourniquet by Zach Bryan
Love Will Tear Us Apart (cover) by Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds
Don’t Forget Me by Maggie Rogers
The Blue by Alice Wallace
I Don’t Know You by Mannequin Pussy
Last but not least, if you haven’t read my urban fantasy novel Many Savage Moons, I hope you’ll consider checking it out.
Excellent essay! I have always been fascinated by the whole notion of the theatrical "fourth wall", especially in light of the bard's often quoted line from As You Like It, "All the world's a stage." If true - the fourth wall is an interesting concept amid our day-to-day happenings.