Here’s something I’m reading. Thanks, John Wright.

“In Dickens’ Great Expectations, Pip was commanded to play by mad Miss Havisham, and he found that he couldn’t. The circumstances just weren’t right: he was helplessly self-conscious and didn’t know where to start. Play is unconscious in our own childhood, but in adulthood, Miss Havisham is alwasy in the room somewhere, so we have to conscientiously establish the appropriate circumstances that enable us to feel free to do what we like, or we’ll end up feeling awkward and self-conscious like Pip. Play is a discipline for me, with its own ground rules and its own procedures. Let’s not kid ourselves; theatre-making can be tough and making comedy even harder. The spectre of Miss Havisham will rise up in the form of lack of time, lack of money, intractable material or interpersonal conflicts. You might be tearing your hair out in the office with interminable discussions but in the rehearsal room, play always generates more material than discussion.”

Why Is That So Funny? John Wright

As a note in the margin, for today, for myself, this:

I don’t hold with the ‘growing up is over-rated’, school of thought. It’s not intrinsic to adulthood that your technicolour world turns greyscale, any more than childhood is all splashing through puddles and unicorn races. Play is everywhere and anytime possible. We stay hungry for it, and it stays vital. It’s just that as time goes on, we have to keep our mum’s voice out of our heads as much as we did when we were children and were called to tea, and strategically shut out the call to the kitchen until the game was done. That voice is harder to ignore when it has taken up residence in your innards. But it does, and it can be loved, appreciated and listened to, and on other occassions the door can be shut. Tea will be just as good cold. Because I’m a grown-up now, so I can do what I like.