Wednesday morning when I got on the
number 33 bus to go to the Royal
Edinburgh infirmary to check myself in
for a psychiatric evaluation when I got
to the emergency room it was completely
packed so I got in a queue and when I
got up to the intake person I said hi
I’m an American and I’m here with the
festival and I think I might be losing
my mind now either they get a lot of
this sort of thing or they had never
seen anything like this because she
didn’t ask me a single question she just
said it’s gonna be a long wait so I sat
down and I felt really alone I had come
to Scotland two weeks earlier after
accepting an offer to perform a
one-person play that I had written at
the end bro International Theatre
Festival and I was sure that this was
going to be the start of a European tour
I had arrived with high hopes and things
hadn’t gone exactly like I had expected
the apartment that the producers had
arranged for me had undependable
plumbing the bed was missing a mattress
so I was tossing and turning all night
on a bare boxspring and the theatre that
my play was booked into it was on this
tiny side street with poor signage and
it was miles away from all the popular
festival venues which ensured that there
would be zero foot traffic on top of
that my play was being produced and it
was sandwiched in between larger
productions which meant that I had
curtain times there were also guaranteed
to bring in throngs of people the times
were like 1120 1 a.m.
or 617 in the evening the day before my
excursion to the hospital exactly four
people had shown up for the 3:32
performance 15 minutes into the show
there were two people left in the
audience you know it’s really hard to
laugh at a comedy when you’re in an
empty theater unless you’re really
stoned so I stopped the play and I said
listen guys you wouldn’t go out for a
drink a cup of coffee tea my treat and
they said no we’re really loving this
and I noticed that the woman in the
couple was extraordinarily pregnant so I
thought maybe she really can’t stand up
I don’t keep doing the show so I
continued the show and afterwards we
hugged each other and then the stage
manager came up to me she was a very
young very enthusiastic gal and she said
well I think that show went great and I
just want you to know I don’t think the
audience could tell but I could see the
tears rolling down your cheeks and I
thought yeah the audience Oh
two of them inches as they were in front
of me yeah pretty sure they noticed that
I had been weeping throughout the show
so I I wandered around the streets of an
borough that night and that may have
been some drinking involved
is this what I crossed the Atlantic for
see I’d wanted to be an actress for as
long as I could remember and growing up
Jewish in Miami Beach I had started out
with the Temple Beth Shalom players now
Beth Shalom in the 1970s was a reformed
congregation it was the kind of place
where there was always someone strumming
guitar and the service singing blowing
in the wind I actually grew up thinking
blowing in the wind was part of the
Bible now of course we were very
culturally minded at best Shalom so we
did plays and in fact we did all of the
important play is drawn from the vast
American theatre Canon everything from
fiddler on the roof
all the way to Joseph and the
Technicolor Dreamcoat my very favorite
production was a Jerry Herman musical
milk and honey in this show all five of
us girls average age fourteen played
middle aged pass wives from the Midwest
who were widowed or divorced and we had
all gone to Israel in search of a
husband and we would presumably stay
there for the rest of our lives now this
show doesn’t make a lick of sense when
you really think about it because it
would have met schlepping suitcases
across the Sinai but no matter by the
time I was 18 I was ready to step it up
and so I flew to New York to check out
drama schools and I was checking out NYU
when I got an invitation to see a
student production at the experimental
theater wing of NYU I arrived that night
and the play was being done in a room
with no set the two actors weren’t
wearing costumes they were in their
street clothes they were speaking at the
same time we never did that at Beth
Shalom
they were cursing we didn’t do that at
Beth Shalom
and in the middle of a show they had a
pizza delivered yeah a real pizza
delivery guy showed up the cast
collected money and we all had slices I
had no idea what was going on I didn’t
know what the hell they were doing but I
knew this is what I wanted to do with
the rest of my life it was one of those
Eureka moments when everything becomes
clear and you have this clarity of
purpose and see in my experience those
Eureka moments they’re not you know like
that saying goes you know it’s not a
destination it’s the journey that counts
but for me that’s often the case this
your week guy is like a flashlight that
illuminates a path to follow and the
thing about Eureka is that there’s no
guarantee of what the outcome will be or
what that Eureka might ask of you so
when I began studying theater at NYU I
began studying this theater aesthetic
that it was pioneered by French
surrealist playwright Antonin Artaud in
the 1920s arto posited in his seminal
work the theater of Cruelty that Western
theater had fallen into a kind of
lassitude and it needed a lacerating
wake-up call now as it turns out not
everyone goes to the theater for a
lashing assault on the senses and our
Tom ended his days in a straightjacket
in a mental institution but he remains
an important figure in the theatre world
and I was studying with one of the
avatars of the modern experimental
theater movement
Richard Shatner now Richard drew his
influences even further back than our
toe even further back than the Greeks
who had developed the notion of theatre
as catharsis
back to the ancient world now you have
to imagine the ancient world was a
terrifying place right there would be a
storm or a drought you catch a cold that
could be a punishment from the gods who
knows right
so tribes developed ritualized forms of
play to create a poetic world alongside
the natural world and in this way they
were transported into liminal States
time out of time and participating in
this sacred suspension of time it
contributed to the cohesiveness of the
community anthropologists tell us that
when you participate in these
synchronous activities like a ritual
like singing together or dancing
together praying together even deep
breathing together well that leads to
what they call collective effervescence
and that’s the breaking down of the
boundaries between self and group now
when I heard that this was our goal I
mean I was really in because you know I
had always liked the way
Cass bonded together at Beth Shalom but
this idea that theater itself could be
used as community building
well that really spoke to me because I
had all that exposure to that blowing in
the wind kind of ethos that that’s
shallow and that’s how I spent the next
few years of my life but then when I
began to get work in television and film
and start a family
I really left that world behind but in
the recent years I have felt a loss a
real sense of loss for that collective
effervescence experience and I don’t
think that this is an accident
that it happened at the same time as the
internet promised us increased
connectivity because it delivered right
I can be connected now to people across
across the globe but the only thing is
I’m connecting to them while I’m at home
alone isolated in front of my computer
which makes me feel more isolated and
lonely so I felt the need to return
every chance I get to experiences where
we can have these shared liminal
experiences like today but at that
moment in that emergency room in
Scotland I really thought that I had hit
rock bottom this is how it started with
our toe and then I had one of those
Eureka moments I saw a direct line
between pizza delivery guy and the
emergency room in Scotland that’s the
thing about that Eureka it can really
return you to who you are and what you
believe in now sometimes when you have
one of those Eureka aha moments and you
want to listen to that voice well you
might not want to do that I mean if your
Eureka voice is telling you to break the
law or even break the golden rule that
might not be a Eureka you wanna listen
to so I’ve come up with kind of a Eureka
criteria if my Eureka is in the service
of building a bridge between my
experience and your experience well
that’s how we create empathy so that’s a
Eureka I’ll listen – that’s my Eureka
so I thought about what it was that I
had to do and I thought about how sure
it’s much more fun when there are a
thousand people gathered together but I
thought about how those two people at
that show the day before well I felt I
had really connected with them I mean
I’ve had some sex that was less intimate
than that show and I thought there’s
only one place in the entire country of
thotland where there are people who
might be hoping to connect to me so I
got back on the number 33 bus I headed
back to town I found a hotel with a
really good bed I took a long hot shower
and I headed over to the theater for the
5/17 performance
[Music] [Applause]