Hi, everyone! After a brief hiatus, it seems appropriate to be writing on the [Jewish] New Year. Welcome 5775! I feel that this will be an extra special year because it's a palindrome.
So, Happy New Year to my Jewish friends, and Happy Wednesday to my non-Jewish friends! May we find peace and fulfillment of our endeavors.
I stayed on in Munich for the month of August, not realizing that all of the language schools were on break, likewise all pianists had skipped town, so I had to find other ways to fill my time. I continued to work with one of our acting teachers from the program, which was a lot of fun and very freeing. After our first session, I felt a huge openness in my body, as if I had just come from a Grinberg movement class!
We worked on three scenes from
My Fair Lady and now I almost wish that I could do the whole show. I read
Pygmalion in high school, but I hadn't realized how much of it had been changed for the musical (namely, the amount of text that was left out). The very first film version of
Pygmalion changed the ending so that Eliza comes back to Professor Higgins (Bernard Shaw didn't find out until the film was already finished!) and I'm guessing that Alan Jay Lerner saw that version and decided to adopt that ending for his show. Actually, in the original play, the final scene is a bit surrealistic: everyone (including Eliza) spontaneously combusts in church and Eliza's unearthly laughter is heard as a passerby picks up her ring from the rubble. Nobody does this ending, but Shaw was so adamant that Eliza should not go back to Higgins that he wrote an epilogue. In it, he explained that Eliza
cannot go back to him, having finally become a fully whole woman and that going back would lessen her transformation.
I'm inclined to agree with Shaw. In the final scene, Eliza realizes that she doesn't need Higgins' approval, which she's been running after the whole time. And of course, the minute that she stands up to him, he thinks she's the most fabulous creature alive and exclaims that they are finally equals. But what is the point of being an "equal" with an emotionally insensitive and abusive person? Eliza finally takes her fate into her own hands and cuts all ties with him. "Bravo, Eliza"
indeed!
I have been re-reading my personal bible
The Women Who Run with the Wolves by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés. In it, she describes how the word "alone" used to be "all one." I think this is pertinent not just to Eliza's transformation, but also to my own. Amidst all of my traveling, I have realized the importance and necessity of being "all one." As performers, we often have to remind ourselves that the audience/agents
want to enjoy themselves and that they
want to like/hire us: they are not our enemies. Offstage, we often think that the world is against us, but really, we are the ones resisting the world trying to help us! The more that I strive for self-sustained independence, the more that I encounter people who want to help me. Learning how to take care of myself and to nurture my creativity has been one of the biggest challenges for me, but it has also been the most rewarding part of living
abroad.
This concludes my monthly rambling. Wherever you are, I wish you "all one-ness."
Love and peace,
Daniella
