REPartee April Issue

This Thursday we are opening a new play at Repertory Philippines called “Aren’t We All,” a very charming and elegant comedy about love on different planes — comic, young and mature. It is also about the kind of wisdom which comes with age, that wonderful time of life when “humor takes the place of anger, and tolerance takes the place of disappointment.”

Some of our critics will throw up their hands and say, there goes Rep again with their irrelevant, escapist comedies! But if to dwell on anger and intolerance is irrelevant, the simple fact is, I’d rather be irrelevant. Life, after all, is what you dwell on. When people dwell on negative things, somehow I feel that life loses much of its luster. 

Again, from our forthcoming musical “ Zorba the Greek”, comes the kernel of wisdom from Zorba whose only distinction is that he has a zest for life and lives it to the fullest. His philosophy of life can be summed up in one of the dialogues he is given to speak. He says:

“When my little boy died, everyone cried, they screamed. Naturally. Do you know what I did? I danced. They thought I was mad. I had too much pain. It had to come out… Don’t you see? Death’s going to come, it’s part of life. It will come to you today, tomorrow. Someone shoots you and you’re dead. Or you die in bed… It comes to all of us… Every animal, every flower, every man… The only real death is the death you die every day by not living.”

To people in theater, art speaks a universal language. It does not matter whether an American or Filipino or a Greek speaks the truth. As long as it is the truth, the world is illuminated that much more, life becomes more understandable and people understand one another better. Since time began, this has always been the function of art — to teach man how to live.

Life, after all, is too short for trivia. Too sweet for animosity. Too precious for the negative. I love the theater because, always and ever, it celebrates life and love.