I diverge slightly; this is not a photo of a photo but a photo of a showbill. I was living in Manhattan. I had a small apartment on 36th Street between Fifth and Sixth. The apartment was in a four story walk-up tucked between two larger buildings. On the ground floor there was a very busy deli with its own entrance. I don’t recall going in there a single time, though I must have. The closer I came to leaving the city, the fonder I became of it. I went alone to events, as if practicing for the day when everything around me would be unfamiliar. I walked the few blocks to the Macy’s July Fourth Fireworks display, lavishly staged on the East River. In pre-September 11th New York, viewers were free to go as near as we wanted. Cracks of sound banged against buildings on both sides of the narrower streets. At the river’s edge, light and color exploded overhead like Close Encounters of the Third Kind come true. I went to museums, the theater, as often as possible. I was like some rabid tourist with a dire need for overstimulation. In AAAH OUI GENTY!, there is a puppet, described by John Corry (whose NY Times review I liked enough to clip inside the showbill) as “A Pierrot who looks uncomfortably like an unborn child, despite his floppy clown’s clothing...” The puppet realizes it is strung at the shoulders, neck, and wrists. Corry writes how the puppet “stares mournfully at the puppeteer. He is mournful because he is being manipulated,” Corry writes, “which tells us something about the nature of despondency.” The puppeteer, I remember, was way at the top of the stage, where long, dark curtains dropped from a height of at least fifteen feet, covering the entire back of the stage. The puppet, to see who was holding the strings, had to crane his head back and up. I remember this part of the play moving slowly as the puppet came to his realization and then made a decision, but I can’t say that memory is true. I know the section concluded with the puppet cutting all the strings and collapsing to the floor. I don’t remember if there was music. I don’t remember if the people around me, all strangers, cried out. I hope they did, and I with them.
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