Never stop learning

An actor is generally someone who daily puts themself in harm’s way.

Does whatever keeps you from being truly honest also keep you, more often than not, from being truly happy?

Through the internet, computers have become a portal through which we can see new worlds. Where we used to read newspapers, books, or watch T.V., now we often use the web to see beyond our own walls.

This season the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is presenting the world premiere of Bill Cain’s play “Equivocation.”

For more info on Equivocation, visit OSFAshland.org

The play is set during Shakespeare’s lifetime, and it speculates into Shakespeare’s considerations as a playwright running a theater company. As a writer, he was subordinate to the monarchic rule of his era. Writers could be jailed, persecuted, tortured, or killed for not publicly towing the party lines. Voices of dissent faced inhumane, cruel, and unusual punishments.

Equivocation focuses on the conflicts between the state run religion (The Church of England, whose head was the King of England) and the foreign-led religion (Catholicism, whose head was the Pope in Rome). During Shakespeare’s lifetime, Catholicism was illegal, and Catholic priests lived in hiding and in secret circles, working and being one persona during the day, and being a different persona, practicing Catholicism in hidden rituals, at night.

Equivocation, the word, means “unclear and seeming to have two opposing meanings, or confusing and able to be understood in two different ways.” To equivocate is “to speak in a way that is intentionally unclear and confusing to other people, especially to hide the truth.”

The play focuses on political conspiracies and practices of interrogation and torture. In particular, during Shakespeare’s lifetime, the perceived enemies of the king, Catholics and Catholic priests, were imprisoned, tortured, and killed.

In the play, Shakespeare has been commissioned by one of the King’s henchman and political operatives to write a pro-the-current-monarchy play. He interviews an imprisoned Catholic priest, a priest who has written instructions to other Catholics on how to effectively “equivocate” when being asked questions that might harm themselves or other Catholics.

Shakespeare asks the priest why the priest does not just tell the truth. And the priest poses this allegory or example (this is not the actual text. You can purchase the play from OSF. I’m just relaying what I remember).

Priest: (talking to Shakespeare) If your King was hiding in your home, hiding from soldiers of an opposing regime, soldiers who would put your King away in prison, torture your King, and kill your King, what would you do if soldiers came to your door and asked if your King was in your home?

Shakespeare: Would you lie to them and tell them he is not in your home? How could you be a Catholic priest and lie?

Priest: What is the real question the soldiers are asking?

Shakespeare: I don’t know. What is the question?

In the play, there is more than one interview between Shakespeare and the priest. And in the first posing of the above question, the priest does not answer Shakespeare’s question. Several scenes later, the priest answers Shakespeare’s question:

Priest: The soldiers are not really asking: Is your King inside your home? The soldiers are really asking: May we take your King away and kill him? And the answer to the real question is “No!”

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This is not a review of the play. But I give the play 5 out of 5 stars. And if you go to OSF this year, the play is worth your time to watch, consider, and remember.

I may remember little else from the plays I saw this season, but the considerations I learned about “telling the truth,” “equivocating,” and “real questions” I will remember and will be of great value to me the rest of my life.

The other day I was at a friend’’s home. They have a 6 year old son. Their son rolled out of bed and the first thing that came to his mind was to ask his mother: “Will you play a board game with me today?”

She was busy and getting ready for work. She considered her schedule for the rest of the day and, trying to be considerate of her beloved son, she told him she would play with him today if she could, but if she couldn’t, she’d play a board game with him tomorrow.

As I listened to this exchange, I thought to myself: the boy is not only asking to play a board came. What he was really asking was:

“Momma, will you do the activity I enjoy doing the most with you today?”

That was his real question.

And what does all of this have to do with compassion in the arts?

You should not only listen to the limited and safeguarded questions your emotional partners are asking you. Better reading and consideration of significant others comes from trying to accurately determine:

What is the real question they might be asking you? Sometimes the real questions are:

Am “we” more important to you than another option you have before you?

or

Is what I want to do with you more important than what you want to do by yourself or with others?

or

Is pleasing me still a priority for you?

Rarely are the real questions above asked so plainly. More often the above questions come in the form of:

Would you like to go to the farmer’s market with me this weekend?

or

Will you take my car to the mechanic to get it fixed?

or

Will you let me know when you’d like to spend time together?

If you only attempt to answer the “plain meaning” of the questions presented to you, you may miss the emotional and substantive intent implied in those same questions.

Sometimes we ask for a glass of water because we are thirsty. Sometimes we ask for a glass of water because we want the person we are asking to show us they still care.

To choose to be single is sometimes a conscious choice to never again allow your emotional well-being to be placed in someone else’s hands.

There can be profound sadness and depression when you realize your significant other’s vision of an “ideal life” involves activities you don’t want as part of your life.

Be slow to fall in love with something you are not intimately familiar with. Whether it be a person or place, imagined or real. Spend regular and significant time with your perceived ideal before you aim your heart, time, and concentration in that direction.

When I have come to forks in the road, I’ve consistently chosen the path where I thought I would learn the most and experience the most pleasure.

The question is not simply: What will make me wealthy? A better question is: What will make me and those around me wealthier?

The truths we avoid, hide, and do not reconcile with the rest of our lives often warp and imprison us.