Stella and Lou

Terror used to be a word saved for make believe movies that made our skin turn into chicken skin.

Then it became the everyday and all too real word for unthinkable hatred for a country and its citizens.

Last night, I watched terror reveal itself for 75 minutes at People's Light and Theatre Company.  It was neither the movie or the hatred kind.

It was the "love kind" and our paralyzing fear of it.

"Stella and Lou" sits the audience down in a South Philly taproom, appropriately called Lou's (the arch rival to The Shamrock Bar) and lets us listen in on the wee hour conversation between a divorced, fun loving, ER nurse, Stella, and a bar owner/bartender, widower Lou, both in the second half of their lives. 

As they meander through all too familiar territory of small talk, they cha-cha back and forth, slowly turning over delicate feelings.  Lou's adeptness at turning those emotions back over does not thwart Stella, but he is like a frozen tundra of emotion, and she, a matchbook being lit, and relit against it, relentlessly. 

A third voice, Donnie, younger, newly engaged, tipsy, bursts in and out of the bar (and men's room) acting out overwhelmed feelings regarding the upcoming plans for his overdone wedding.  Lastly, a fourth, ghost character is longtime bar patron, Reilly, at whose funeral the show kicks off as Donnie sweats and struggles through the eulogy he does not want to give.

I don't know local playwright Bruce Graham, but he sure knows me - or, rather, us - as he offers up these characters to reveal the inner terror of exposing our hearts.  He manages to accomplish this mostly through humor.  But as middle of the night conversations often reveal, when the real feelings come out, the powerful quiet sobers us up. 

Actors Marcia Saunders, Tom Teti, and Scott Greer make us trust them immediately as we sit bar-side all the while laughing and aching with/for them. Like hopping off the high dive, we jump with hope, fear, eyes squeezed shut as we consider giving ourselves to someone else.  What will be the consequences?  Can I handle the consequences? And most importantly, I am afraid to be hurt- again!

I felt this same way when I saw another Graham play - the one man show - "The Philly Fan" with Tom McCarthy.  We are invited to open our hearts with these characters, yet we are safe in our seats. We are hopeful those on stage will also land gently by the evening's end. It's always a leap worth taking. http://asubjectforconsideration.blogspot.com/2011/11/nature-of-sports-dreams.html

 I am a Graham fan and look forward to seeing more of his many offerings.  He knows joy, pain, pathos and he's unafraid of the cocktail they create.  

So, head down the street to Lou's and listen in on the conversation.  It's a terrifying hoot!

"Stella and Lou" performances run at People's Light through 8/23/15  http://peopleslight.org/

Sorry For What?

When Sir Elton John croons, "Sorry seems to be the hardest word," I agree that, for some, it is.


(Photo by Stuart Miles.
www.Freedigitalphotos.com)

But have you ever noticed how much more girls/women use the word "sorry" even when they are being wronged?  It flows almost unnoticed.  "I'm sorry, there's a problem with my meal" instead of, "Excuse me, there's a problem with my meal."

It's a preface mindlessly used.  But somewhere along the way a decision to kick start our sentences with this overused intro is made, even when it makes no sense.  

"I'm sorry, did you call me?" 
"I'm sorry, what time should we meet?"
"I'm sorry, you gave me the wrong color."

I am pro-politeness but this isn't about being polite. This goes deeper. Why do we atone when we are simply making a statement? "Excuse me" is polite; "Pardon me" is polite.  "I'm sorry" lives in another neighborhood. Inserting "Excuse me" or "Pardon me" in place of "I'm sorry" gets the job done.

A recent NYTimes Op-Ed writer searches for why women apologize too much.  Sloane Crosley writes, "For so many women, myself included, apologies are inexorably linked with our conception of politeness. Somehow, as we grew into adults, “sorry” became an entry point to basic affirmative sentences." http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/opinion/when-an-apology-is-anything-but.html

Men are also users of this apologetic intro, Ms. Crosley adds with humor, "but they are mostly British." 

Ms. Crosley goes further in her reasoning for the overuse of "I'm sorry" by stating it is a passive way of nudging the other person to apologize.  She writes that the phrase is "employed when a situation is so clearly not our fault that we think the apology will serve as a prompt for the person who should be apologizing."

I wrote the word "sorry" on an index card and kept it with me one day.  It was to remind me to avoid using the apology when not apologizing.  Here's what I found: this little phrase gets a lot of air time.

While on the phone jotting down information from a health professional my pen ran out of ink, and I instinctively said, "I'm sorry, I need to get another pen."  I could have just as easily said, "Could you please hold on for a sec while I get another pen?  Thanks!"

When I was unknowingly blocking someone in the aisle at the supermarket, the woman said to me, "I'm sorry, could I get by?" to which I replied, "Sure, I'm sorry!"  A double dip of sorry!  Here is how it would play out in a more aware state:  Woman: " Pardon me, could I get by?" Me: "Sure!" 

It's not that "sorry" is offensive but it is being overused when no atonement is needed.  Using it in this way reduces the speaker a little bit each time.  What good is that? 

As a solution, Ms. Crosley suggests going cold turkey: "So we should stop. It’s not what we’re saying that’s the problem, it’s what we’re not saying. The sorrys are taking up airtime that should be used for making logical, declarative statements, expressing opinions and relaying accurate impressions of what we want."

Be kind.  Be aware.  Be thoughtful. 

As for the useless sorry - let it be.

Here is the link to Sloane Crosley's interview on CBS This Morning re: the Op-Ed piece.  It includes the very smart Amy Schumer's bit on women apologizing. http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/dont-be-sorry-why-women-are-quick-to-apologize/