When we met, I didn't pay too much attention.
A theater actress. How fascinating!
True, but nothing more. Maybe it made me proud when I told my friends. I'm with a stage actress. Cool, right?
But then I went out there, I spent time there and, in short, I liked it. I was spending time with the woman, not the actress. Most of the time the actress is not seen, except when she is working.
I courted her and she became my constant companion.
However, for a variety of reasons, I had not yet seen her act. She was always out and about, in distant countries, or if she happened to be more or less in the area it was in uncomfortable evenings for me. For several months, I was unable to come across the actress directly. Sometimes I saw the shadow of it, the traces left around: the scripts, stage costumes, pieces of scenography ideas and texts. Nothing more. I liked the woman, all things considered. Besides, she didn't see me working either. And luckily.
Then, suddenly some close dates happen. Some different shows. An engaged monologue on female homosexuality, a slightly lean reinterpretation of a great classic and a dance theater show. Very different subjects and types.
I don't know what to expect. I'm a little nervous about seeing her act. I am a very emotional person, I can feel agitated even for things that others have to do, if the bond is strong.
What if I don't like the way it plays? What if it's a goat? What would happen to our relationship? Would I be disappointed, like Dorian Gray, or would I be able to turn a blind eye? Basically what changes for me, I'm with the woman, not with the actress, and not even with her characters – I repeat myself to reassure myself. But could I really get over it?
This increases my agitation. The night before the show, the dance theater one, I can't sleep. And the event is scheduled for the evening. I spend a slow and distracted day. I am restless and nothing manages to hold my attention for more than a few minutes, then with a huff I have to find something else to devote myself to.
Finally the time comes to get ready and go. With an advance that I think only older people usually allow themselves. I arrive that the theater is still closed. Despite the agreements, I don't call her to tell her I've arrived. I'm looking for a bar where I can get bored a little longer. Being bored in different places is a little less bored.
On the way back there are already too many people for my taste. Ah, obviously I'm alone, let alone if I would have felt able to have some witnesses for such a decisive event in my life. Then if she were a goat and I decided to pass over it, how do I do it when someone else's judgment weighs on me too? How to tolerate knowing that someone else is in the know? For God's sake!
I queue up, take the ticket and sit down in the seat that has been assigned to me too far away.
Maybe I won't be able to come, I told her, so as not to commit myself and prevent her from keeping me a comfortable and even free place. I had preferred to leave everything in uncertainty. If I found her incapable, I could always say that I didn't make it to come, and then I would avoid going there in the future as well, making excuses. So many couples stand with excuses.
Meanwhile the lights go out, fun music starts and a little light moves behind a white sheet. I know that she is alone on stage, so she must necessarily be behind that light.
I'm starting to feel proud. She is my woman, she does that. Y'all are looking at my woman.
Then she goes out, in a black dress that reaches just below her knees, with two thin shoulder straps. And she dances, and smiles, and winks, and makes loaded expressions. In short, she acts. She plays and dances. And I look at her in ecstasy, I find her beautiful, very good, light, ethereal but at the same time sensual.
She's my woman, I tell myself. I feel like nudging my neighbors to announce it.
And I think I've never seen her dance like that. That some of her facial expressions I had never seen before. That the voices you had to interpret are partly unknown to me.
I know her a little better after this show.
One more slice. Things that hundreds and maybe thousands of people have already seen. Who knows how many in other parts of Italy and perhaps the world have seen him do it. And I, who thought I knew her, am only getting there now.
A hint of jealousy emerges after pride.
That body exposed on stage, with all those eyes on. That sometimes so sensual squirming that disturbs who knows how many men. Professional smiles bestowed with such generosity.
What do I usually see? Where is all this, when it's just you and me? What do I have that they all don't have?
It started with a positive experience and look what it's turning into. And all considering that she is very good. Otherwise maybe it would be easier, it would be enough to accept being with a mediocre actress, and everything would end there. The problem is the opposite. It is the spell of which all this audience of hers is the victim. All somehow to take a piece of her. I would like to stand at the exit and have everything handed back to me, while they take back their coats. A large incinerator where everything can be thrown away: desire, emotion, joy, cheerfulness, dreams.
I send you a dutiful message: I was there, you were magnificent.
Even for too many other people, I think.
I hear the enthusiastic comments. How good, an angel, how wonderful. Saying them aloud is perhaps a way to leave them there, the impressions, and take home a little less.
The following week is the monologue.
A punch in the stomach.
I cry most of the time. She suffers too much. The character, of course. But how to distinguish the actor from the character when he is on stage? How can those who love the actress ignore her suffering? The actor lends all of himself to the character, body and face included. Seeing her so destroyed that in her fiction she had gone through years of rejection and misunderstanding, seeing her having to relive the crucial phases of her pain in less than an hour, is too much for me. But even here I find some interesting news. There are some tragic scenes of tears, anger and frustration. I don't think I've ever seen her scream like that. Never had I seen such fury in her eyes, in the gnashing teeth inside her mouth.
And I think the theater is giving me a great gift. It allows me to see all the possibilities of behavior that I could have stumbled upon. Maybe it will never happen, but in any case I would have already seen it, I would know what it is. I would know her reactions, or at least their faces.
Then the third show, the classic in a modern key. Few actors playing so many parts.
She is the only woman on stage and does all or most of the female parts.
And it's as if I were seeing all the infinite people she could have been if she had perhaps received a different education, if she had been born in another place, in another family, if she had had other ideals, other experiences. One sliding doors live.
I wait for her outside, I kiss her, I give her flowers and I pay her lots of compliments. In short, I love her. Then, at dinner, I watch it.
What are you thinking about?
Yeah, what am I thinking about?
I think of all the suffering you have to play. I wonder if all these negative emotions have left or will leave a real trace on your face, even if they were faked. If it is true that we carry our worries and worries on our faces, you have hundreds of times interpreted passion and torment with this face of yours. How do you know it was all fake?
Not to mention the rest. How many times, in difficult times, was it enough for me to change my attitude, to ignore the anguish to realize that life by itself was pushing me towards hope. Surface area matters more than we would like. And living for fake despair, doesn't it drag you into it a little more every time?
But I don't tell her any of this. I also decide to stay on the surface.
I was thinking about the makeup you wore on stage, I've never seen it so heavy.
She smiles at me, and as usual, takes me by surprise.
I'm like a clown. All that makeup is to preserve the face.
Danilo Angioletti was born in Varese and is an engineer by profession. In addition to stories, he also writes music and has been playing guitar since the age of fifteen. He collects roots in the woods and takes care of them until they become sculptures. He is the author of multiple novels (Libra lake, in 2009, and The Whoreman, in 2011). For goWare he wrote Vitamore Vitamorte (2014). The story, in its publication in the online magazine Mood04, was accompanied by music clips and a collection of root photography.
