verb [with object]
- convey (a thought or feeling) in words or by gestures and conduct
- (express oneself) say what one thinks or means
- Mathematics represent (a number, relation, or property) by a figure, symbol, or formula
- Genetics cause (an inherited characteristic or gene) to appear in a phenotype
Origin:
late Middle English (also in the sense 'press out, obtain by squeezing', used figuratively to mean 'extort'): from Old French expresser, based on Latin ex- 'out' + pressare 'to press' http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/english/express?q=express
On Christmas morning, when I was 13, I opened a card from my parents after all the other gifts had been opened and found a pair of tickets to see The Phantom of the Opera at The Academy of Music and I cried.
The day my mother and I went to see the show, we received a letter in the mail saying that charges of child abuse, which had been filed against my father through a call to an anonymous hotline, were being dropped and we went to see the show. As I sat in the theater, and the overture began, I cried. I'd stop crying and start and stop and start and it was as if there wasn't a thing I could do to prevent myself from succumbing to the waves of emotion pounding against my insides in conjunction with the flow of the score, the movement of the actors and actresses, and with the shifting of sets.
While still living at home, I saw a few other shows at The Academy of Music in Philadelphia. When I travelled to England between my sophomore and junior years in high school, I saw Miss Saigon in London. I've seen a number of plays and musicals performed by local theater companies and schools.
Four years ago, in July, I went to see my first show on Broadway. Kim and I went into the city just a few short days before I was to have the mediastinoscopy surgery ultimately responsible for diagnosing me with cancer. We saw The Phantom of the Opera. And as I sat in the theater, and the overture began, I cried. From the very first note, the tears pressed out.
Since then, Kim and I returned to the city to see War Horse at Lincoln Center and you would be correct to assume, as I sat in the theater and the music began, I cried.
A week ago today, Kim and I took our 13 year old nephew, Randy, for his first trip into the city to see The Lion King. Over lunch we joked about how I cry at shows while we sipped down fun beverages in flashing light cups. He made sure I knew there was only the sad part when Mufasa dies and I let him know it wasn't, in totality, about the sad. It was bigger than the sad, though I couldn't, exactly, explain it to him. I'm not entirely certain I can explain it to myself.
But it isn't and hasn't been just theater. And it isn't and hasn't just been professional performers. The same wave swallows me when a marching band passes by me, something reinforced last night as we drove by the Scranton High School stadium and the Drum and Bugle Corps Championship was going on. The same wave rolls when I watch Randy play in band or hear a particularly powerful choir. The same wave rolls when I hear a song at just the right moment in just the right way. It is the same wave that rolls when a poem is read in a way that I fold into the author. The performance doesn't have to be live. But it has to be real. The reality of the passion in the moment pulls the tears out. And perhaps it is most noticeable for me when I'm involved in theater, be it as an audience member or as a part of the cast or orchestra, because it is differently multi-sensory. All of those creative aspects I am most passionate about are, or can be, a part of theater.
A huge part of this world-- most of it actually-- has fallen away from me over the last ten years or so. In elementary school, I played cottage cheese in a school musical. In middle school, I split the role of Friar Tuck with a fellow student in a production of Robin Hood, was a school counselor in another musical, and was the witch from Hansel and Gretel in a play performed for a local elementary school. In high school, I was in the pit orchestra for The Sound of Music.
The importance of this world started to fall back in when we made that first trip to NY for my second viewing of Phantom. I fell even further in at War Horse and when taking a local playwriting course with a former Wilkes classmate. It was at that point I recognized the unique quality of theatrical dialogue, how it sounds, but more importantly how it writes. The first time I wrote more than a few lines of character dialogue, I was fascinated at how naturally characters could speak with one another, how naturally the dialogue and the movement perpetuated itself. And in a world, my world, where the force of silence has been so strong the ease of their voices astonished me. The ease of the self that is the character's natural self displayed astonished me. The organic movement of story fascinates me.
When all the elements come together, creating a robust story where any given element or elements have the ability to perpetuate the message, to sew together the threads, to mesh our own worlds with these other worlds, I cry. When I see passionate people, passionately doing something they are deeply passionate about, I cry. When I'm reminded of how I felt being a part of these other worlds, momentary breaths where I escaped my own, I cry. I cry when I come back from the transport to another place, another time, another feeling. And yes, it is also about the sad parts, like the one Randy warned me of when Mufasa dies but, mostly, it's about so very much more.
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