All audiences are like guests in a restaurant, waiting to be served. They know everything, they’ve seen it all. Their taste buds are finely tuned. They are picky and demanding.
I have spent most of my life in the theatre. When I was five, I watched my mother being killed on the stage at the end of a melodrama in which she was the romantic heroine. She simulated death, she imitated it, she didn’t describe it or talk about it, she showed it.
After the performance she told me she was still alive, that it was all role-play. But I never believed her. Ever since, I’ve had a fascination with the difference between fact and fiction, between reality and illusion, between front stage and backstage, between “what is” and “what seems”, between the restaurant and the kitchen.
I am a playwright and a teacher of drama. Some days I watch plays or read scripts and some days I write them. Some days I eat and some days I cook. Eating is instinctive and easy, but cooking is hard and has to be learnt.
All audiences are like guests in a restaurant, waiting to be served. They know everything, they’ve seen it all. It takes them a fraction of a second to establish whether the food is too salty or too sweet, overcooked or undercooked, too hot or too cold. Their taste buds are finely tuned. They are picky and demanding.
All audiences are instinctive native speakers of languages, they use complex grammatical structures and they don’t know how they do it. It just happens to them. They all sing songs and use harmony and most of them are blissfully unaware of counterpoint. They just do it. They are all brilliant actors in their everyday life. They instinctively recognise good dialogue, strong plot, a well-defined character. They all know things they know nothing about.
The rest are a few, a tiny minority of cooks, who have to guess and satisfy the taste of this hungry multitude. These cooks are doomed to sweat in the heat of the kitchen, a messy and uncomfortable place where they can’t hear themselves think. They are habitually advised to get out if they can’t stand the heat. They have to choose their ingredients and go! Ready, steady, cook! There are dishes burning on front and back burners, nerves are frayed, stakes are high. It’s all up in the air. There is a fifteen seconds difference between a triumph and a failure. In the kitchen, the cooks only know what they can do. They depend not on the critical knowledge of the pompous and arrogant head, but on the creative knowledge of the humble and hardworking hand.
Next time you are in a restaurant, do spare a thought for the cook!
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