Be warned all who enter here:
This
is the theatre space
haunted
by expectation
made
opaque with dream.
No
window opens to the sunlight here.
We
choose to control the light
to
reveal this face, hide that one,
to
begin time and end being
to
transform place, character,
emotion,
intellectual substance
into
stuffless spirit,
to
invest the godless
and
rip the god-fearing from
his
airy moorings.
We
are not in love with pretend here.
We
make Believe in order to find reality.
We
shatter the real world to find
its
true order.
We
search for the darkness here
destroying
it with
fresnels
and lekos and arc lamps
We
color it with subtle gels
knowing
always it is in the darkness that we will find
Being
naked
to its own colors.
Be
warned:
This
space is charged with the eclectic electric,
the
current of our romance:
We
will confront
our
humanity in the
prayer
of
recognizing
it.
Be
warned:
This
is a nudist
colony
here.
The
clothing we wear belongs
to
no emperor.
We
charge ourselves with
inner
nakedness.
We
are god's fools.
We
laugh at his universe,
teasing,
defying it
to
define itself.
Beware
all who enter here:
This
is a sacred place
suitable
only for those who
would
profane
shock
whisper
cajole
seduce
verily
suck the truth from her hiding
place
in our hearts.
—Byrne Piven, 1996 (with thanks to KC Cameron)
