Embrace the Absurd!

I can't stop singing, "She's a nut" from the Broadway revival, On the Twentieth Century, with the Emmy and Tony award winning Kristin Chenoweth.  The show is a slapstick comedy about an aging Broadway producer trying to restart his career by finding financing from a wealthy crazy old lady and convincing a former leading lady to join him.  I went to see the show because of Kristin but surprisingly fell in love with the crazy old lady! This 80-year old woman captivated me by her silly antics which ranged from creating and telling wild stories about her multimillion dollar family business to doing cartwheels. As it turns out, she isn't quite what she appears to be...neither rich or famous.  I won't spoil her identity as I would highly encourage you to go see the show!  This show reminded that the key to successful aging is to become more nutty than less...and even if you lose your marbles, you won't know, so what is there to be afraid of? Just get out that pink hoola hoop and start gyrating with a red clown nose, while singing "She's a nut..."As I am contemplating about aging, I continue to see a different take on it. The Audience, an hour and a half play currently  running on Broadway, gives access to behind the scenes of Buckingham Palace and into the private chambers of Queen Elizabeth II as she meets with each of her Prime Ministers, from when she was a teenager to a young queen & mother to now as a Great Grandmother & 80-year old queen. As she flowed seamlessly from one role to the next, taking off her young girl dress and smiling to a wearing a crown and looking aloof as Margaret Thatcher came for a visit, I can't help wonder how she does it. I can’t imagine changing clothes that many times let alone transforming my identity within minutes. But what if I could? What possibilities might that open for me or anyone? Imagine you want to feel like a queen - what if you just put on an invisible crown or walk in a more regal way? What might happen to your relationships, business, and life? Instead of viewing life as a slowly evolving process in which your options shrink towards death, life could become an endless source of possible characters you could play at any given moment! Why not be the queen of England on Sunday and Serena Williams on Wednesday and then Jimmy Fallon on Friday? You can just add an invisible crown, or a mean serve, or a joke to your repertoire. It doesn’t have to be phony; rather, these characters are all there just waiting to come out and play. We just need to give them permission. Since it is a Wednesday, I will bring out my Serena Williams as I compete in a tennis game...what about you?And since I am on a run of exploring my wild side, why not go and see a completely raucous show such as "Something Rotten!"? It is a fast moving slap stick comedy with excellent acting, catchy tunes, and fabulous tap dancing that takes place during the Renaissance when Shakespeare is writing his plays. Who knew that the Bottom brothers were the ones who really wrote Hamlet and Shakespeare, who by the way was surprisingly such a stud, stole it! A rivalry ensues when the Bottom Brothers who write, act, and produce shows had hired Shakespeare to originally be an actor, but fired him because he was so bad in their shows and encouraged him to write instead. Shakespeare becomes a BIG successand the Bottom brothers are well...at the bottom, struggling to survive.  What does the elder Bottom brother, played by Brian d'Arcy James, do? The absurd, of course! He goes to ask a fortune teller to see the future of the theatre and was informed that the future will all be about musicals (which haven't even been invented yet). The fortune teller suggests that the Bottom brothers do the first musical about an omelet - yes, the kind with eggs!  An article in May 10th Sunday NY Times explained why Brian was attracted to this type of wacky show; he lost his father when he was 22 and the way he attempted to make sense of the unexplainable was to embrace the absurd.  This ridiculous and yet clever musical reminds me that lightening up and being open to the ridiculous can help you get through challenging times.  As Brian said, "If you are going to fall of a cliff, wouldn't it be more fun if you're doing it with a rhinoceros wearing a tutu!"That brings me to the final absurd show, Finding Neverland, a back story behind how Peter Pan was created.  While I am not a Peter Pan fan per se, I went because a college friend is an associate producer and let me tell you, this show requires Kleenex along with a full stomach so you can laugh out loud. Who knew that Peter Pan's inspiration came from a dead father? The author of Peter Pan had lost his father as a young boy and created this Neverland in his imagination of where dead people go. It's a coping mechanism of how a young child makes up another reality full of fairies, pirates, mermaids, talking dogs, and magic dust to help him make sense of a senseless death.  One of my favorite quotes from the show is, "Life is too absurd to be taken seriously."  This quote resonated as I watched the morning's news where the leading story was a train crash outside of Philadelphia in which 8 people died and over 200 are injured. As I said a private prayer for these people, I send them some magic dust, fairies, and of course Tinkerbelle also, knowing it won't solve the world's problems but it sure helps us swallow the absurdity of it all!