I have been dying for over half a year; from AIDS, to suicide, to screaming down alleys of the upper west side (In the theater productions of West Side Story, Falsettos, and Burnt By the Sun).

Dying to self, past ideals, ways of thinking or perceiving the world around me is a constant goal of mine.  

To look at the world in a certain way and then see how it is similar or different to others.  What a blessed journey to constantly die to oneself, in order to grow and find the nuances of seeing the complex world around us.

A friend from high school has a tattoo with his life motto which is “Death leads to New life.” It is so easy to marry ourselves to what is comfortable, easy, or convenient. The art of dying is like it says, an art form.  It take time, practice and a willingness to do it over and over again. It is much harder to constantly question, explore, research, and be ready for the unknown of our own ignorances. Now in the three productions I hope to explore things we can glean from and apply towards life.  

Tony in West Side Story is the epitome of idealism, he is Romeo in Romeo and Juliet, he is every adolescent boy entering the world and seeing it all through rose colored lenses; a college freshman on the car ride to his first day of classes.  He is bright eyed and open to what the universe will give.  He speaks his desires into being with songs like “Something’s Comin.” He allows for the great unknown and is fully open to receive what he might encounter.  Personally, at the onset of rehearsals, I was reading “The Secret” which explores the laws of attraction, power of positivity, speaking things into being, and manifesting through the way we think. Tony is a perfect case study for this; he is unrelenting towards his ideas and how he wishes to see the world.  His wishes are evident in the “Tonight” duet with all of the ethereal language of the universe and stars.  The world and possibility is at your fingertips. This combined with the classical vocalism that is seperate from the rest of the characters in the musical, it creates Tony and Maria as very separate and elevated above the problems and situations of the world they live and were brought up in.  

A rose colored perception of reality is beautiful and we are swept away by elevating above our circumstance, upbringing, or heritage, until reality hits us with a curve ball.   Or, false reality that our girlfriend’s brother (Chino) has murdered your girlfriend (Maria). Now the person which you have realized all your hopes, potential, positivity, and manifesting has died and you are left with the slums and problems that culminate from them.  And so you choose DEATH. Death to ideals, death to positive thinking, death to self.

In Tony he embodies all of our desires to perceive the world with wonderment, with a larger idea of self- one that exists above the problems of upbringing, environment, or status. In the end he loosely symbolizes a Christ like figure being carried off stage.  This act bringing two opposing groups (the two gangs) together for a shared vision of a hopeful humanity

In Falsettos, the death of Whizzer is communicating something completely different, for me something very political.

I played the character of Whizzer, the gay lover of Marvin.  In short, Marvin leaves his wife and child to be with Whizzer and his wife ends up marrying his psychiatrist (Mendel).  Whizzer is a dandy, a player, a man of leisure and excess, in short a boy that might not have actually grown up (a theme of the men in this show; a possible meaning of ‘Falsettos’).  In a word he loves to play games; like chess, or racquetball, or with people’s love, or with people’s insecurities.

Personally, I am a person who takes things too seriously; sometimes it’s hard to let loose, or just have fun.  What fun to be a character who lives life through games of passion, hobbies, and hearts. It may be a cynical way of perceiving the world, but it erodes the superficial masks that we layer our lives with.  It is a way of being that does not take others or yourself too seriously. Something I can definitely learn form. As the play progresses Whizzer learns to let Marvin win, and this very masculine temperment of competition is subdued and we see character’s true feeling surface.  And then comes AIDS . . . and Whizzer dies. This is a crude summary, but Whizzer’s death brings these broken people with broken, vulnerable lives together in the unlikely circumstance of Marvin’s child’s (Jason) Bar Mitzvah.

We have much to learn from Whizzer.  In some senses he foils Tony, Whizzer is not a bright eyed idealist, he is the man that sees the opportunity to use and be used to his advantage.  He sees a fallen world and his place in it, he knows he can command it with his looks and charisma. He reminds me of an Oscar Wilde in his De Profundis,

“The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a flaneur, a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the smaller natures and the meanerminds. I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensation.”

 In a sense Tony perceives the world through an internal revelation of an external potential.  For Whizzer, he perceives external potential by his “eternal youth.”. He discovers at the end that the facade of the games he plays for a win, or a suit jacket, or place to sleep, or people’s heart is only short lived.  For Oscar Wilde it was being in prison for two years to remind him of truth in regards to fulfillment, for Whizzer, it was being rejected by someone who loved him and subsequently lonely two years, and then soon after encountering a fatal disease.  A sincere love is what springs up from these close encounters with death; a sincere love between all the characters in the play.

If people were chakras, Tony would be the ethereal, very spiritual crown chakras; he thinks above his problems and seems impenetrable whatever the world throws at him, and magnetically Whizzer is the Sacral chakra, connected to the senses, power, survival of the fittest way of viewing the world. We can learn from both that we need a balance.

In Burnt By the Sun, Mitia experiences death in a much different way then Whizzer and Tony and also perceives the world around him through the entirely different lense.  In Soviet Russia, during Stalin’s Purge this story is told. In short Mitia is sent off to war by a general (Kotov) and must leave his love Maroussia. Maroussia, in the eleven years while Mitia is absent, has married Kotov.  Mitia comes back and out of revenge and duty kills Kotov and thereafter commits suicide. Mitia returns, after eleven years, to a world that has completely changed and throughout the play tries desperately to relive and bring back the world that he knew.  He searches for the ideal and the artistic. He is also an artist and lives vicariously through his many characters he portrays to others, the songs he sings, and the words he chooses. His death is the death of a false ideal, a person no longer connected to the reality.  

Personally I have incredible experiences that keep me stuck in that idea of perfection or what an experience or life should be like.  When I have to confront that life has changed from that ideal, it is heartbreaking. For example, the first time I fell in love. The transcendent experiences, the exhilaration of just sitting next to them, the sense that everything becomes poetical and wonderful.  Now, it all ended and now I am stuck in that overly romanticized idea of love unable to experience the new or potential more grand. Such is the tragic story of Mitia; a man stuck in the past, in a false ideal eventually leaving him lonely and utterly empty, resorting to suicide.

We all strive to be; to see the world with the utmost potential and vitality (Tony), to not hold onto life so tightly, to play games and have fun (Whizzer), and to see the world around us abstractly and with a larger worldview (Mitia).  The art of dying is all of these, to see, to understand, to articulate and then rinse, wash, and repeat always ready for uncharted, the unknown.

Featured Image Photographer: Armi Ellison Photography

Model: Hailey Hines (@_haileyhines_)