I am an actor. I am a socialist. A few years ago, I was privileged enough to combine both of these hobbies (it is very difficult to practice either acting or socialism as a profession in New Brunswick) in a performance of the one-man show Marx in Soho, written by the late historian Howard Zinn, in which the actor gets to perform the role of Karl Marx for an hour and a half on stage.
It is a lot of text to remember, needless to say. But practice makes perfect, and unless something unexpected throws you off, as long as you can remember where you are in the text you can stay on track. If you do get thrown off the script, you can still recover quickly and gracefully. There is no terror quite like being on stage alone, in front of an audience, wearing a silly costume, and not knowing what it is you are supposed to say. This is a brief tale of such a moment of terror.
One night, the performance was going very smoothly. I was a little nervous about sections of the long script that are transitional, i.e. where Marx finishes up talking about one thing, then transitions to talking about another. Those parts are tricky because there is a change in the train of thought; you can’t simply follow the train of thought and improvise around it, paraphrasing and so forth. You have to have memorized your next piece of subject matter, and gained a command of the overall narrative arc of the story. If you trip up on that transition, the play can grind to a halt.
Then, in the audience, I noticed a face. Enough light was spilling from the stage to the house that I was able to make out the face of my goddamn MLA. (An MLA is an elected member of New Brunswick’s Legislative Assembly; an MP for the provincial level.) “What is he doing here?” I thought. I had the sudden guilty sensation of a stripper that notices their priest is watching from the bar. In a province that is basically owned lock, stock and barrel by the Irving family and their companies, and run by their loyal politicians, socialism is a taboo subject. Even though the play had been advertised, it was being performed in a university theatre, a “safe space” for radical ideas where members of the political establishment would not intrude.
I was possessed by a sudden, sinking feeling that “the jig is up”. The politicians, the establishment, our masters have discovered that we common folk were secretly performing radical theatrical rituals, and have sent this man to spy on us, and keep a stern eye on his constituents. But here is where I come to the part about my moment of terror, about being thrown off my train of thought and the play grinding to a halt…
But it did not happen. As quickly as the feeling of distraction came upon me, so did another thought, something akin to “Fuck it!In for a penny, in for a pound.” If I was thrown off the script, it was not for a second before I recovered my place. Not only did I recover quickly and gracefully, the presence of this politician in the audience gave me a renewed purpose, and above all, a target for delivering certain lines. Lines about the shallowness of bourgeois politics, about organizing, about resisting power. The following section of monologue, I delivered straight to him alone:
When I was in Paris with Jenny in 1843, I was twenty-five, and I wrote that in the new industrial system people are estranged from their work because it is distasteful to them. They are estranged from nature, as machines, smoke, smells, noise invade their senses – progress, it is called. They are estranged from others because everyone is set against everyone else, scrambling for survival. And they are estranged from their own selves, living lives that are not their own, living as they do not really want to live, so that a good life is possible only in dreams, in fantasy.
But it does not have to be. There is still the possibility of choice. Only a possibility, I grant. Nothing is certain. That is now clear. I was too damned certain. Now I know – anything can happen. But people must get off their asses!
With this last line, my stage direction was to jump out of my chair and lunge at the front row of spectators, literally to get off my ass and make them jump out of their own seats a bit. Startle them out of their complacency. To get them to move, to act.
I am fairly sure this didn’t have the desired effect on my MLA, who was sitting 2 or 3 rows back. But I sure gave a fright to the person sitting in front of him, in the front row. That poor theatre-goer was collateral damage of the crossfire between me and my intended target. My politician friend was apparently unphased, too far out of range.
Years later, I ran into the spouse of the MLA, who told me that both she and her husband saw my play and were moved by the performance. I thanked her, and silently I wondered, “But did he get the message?”
Two years later, after another performance of Marx in Soho, I noticed an anonymous attendee of the play had left me a gift on the stage. It was a t-shirt, with a portrait of Karl Marx pointing to his eye, with a caption that read “Marx est mort, mon œil!” The theatre was empty. I do not know to this day who left me the present.
Marx lives. Somebody got the message.