Living room theatre

So there I was, outside a strange house on a perfectly ordinary Thursday evening, about to enter a stranger’s apartment. I made my friend meet me at the corner in case I got cold feet. We were about to go to a one man theatre performance taking place in the performer's living room and were feeling a little edgy.

We weren't alone though. The little group of women huddling on the street outside the doorway looked just as hesitant as we. Being in a group gave us enough strength and together we climbed to the sixth floor and towards a new experience.

Being in a strange house is almost always interesting. It can be uncomfortable, it can be pleasant, but nearly always it’s inspiring too see how other people live – how they decorate, what their home smells like, what books they read etc. Being in someone’s home as a spectator was not so different to being a regular guest, but it did bring extra layers to the visit. This type if a performance could have been a truly inspiring experience.

On arrival we were greeted very warmly by the performer himself and were escorted to the living room. The early arrivals had a choice of sitting on actual chairs or on the sofa, the latecomers had to settle for cushions on the floor.

It's highly improper to take photographs at a performance, so these are my books.

And this is my library - not his.

There were quite a few pauses in the performance. You know, silences. Long silences. Uncomfortable silences. Regular silences. During which I noticed there was a book called Silence tucked away at the back of the bookcase. Coincidence? As I looked around the room my eyes kept wandering  more and more to the bookcase. There were books on love - the performance was up to a point about love. I noticed some books that the performer and I shared (Shakespeare’s completed works – but everyone owns that one, right?) and tried to read the titles of the rest of them. I noticed that there weren't that many books after all and got to thinking how and why he'd picked the ones that he did have.

The inspiring aspect of the performance was how the room became a set. Things you thought were just decoration turned out to be a part of the performance and therefore constituted a set. I have a friend who's something of an expert on site-specific performance and I kept thinking what she would make of this - this set up I think would have been right up her alley.

1,5 hours passed like 2 and afterwards as we walked home in the cold, dark wintry night we wondered what we learned from what we'd just seen. Probably the most important lesson was not to avoid something just because its something new and unfamiliar. Next time I go see a performance in someone's house I'll be a lot less nervous!