Theatrical fantasy

Lately, just recently, I’ve been allowing myself to entertain a fantasy. Since I heard about Mr. Armitage’s interest in doing “The Rover,” I’ve been gnashing my teeth that I probably couldn’t see it. I’d been thinking, though, that it was planned for the coming London season. I recently realized, in listening to one of these many interviews, that Mr. Armitage has been discussing it as if it would happen next year, by which I assume he means 2011. So it would be the 2011-12 season. Hypothetically.

What I’d been assuming was impossible was a trip over during the coming theatre season.

I am not going to pretend that I couldn’t afford to do this if I really wanted to, at least under normal circumstances. One of the great things about being single is that you don’t have to fight negotiate with anyone about how to spend your money. I could even do it pretty comfortably, if I cut down on discretionary spending in other areas, watched airline fares carefully, bought an economy ticket, timed the stay to maximize the ratio between ticket price and housing costs, stayed in a tourist hotel in Bayswater, ate most of my meals in Pret à Manger or as takeaway rather than in restaurants, and did the cheap London sightseeing as opposed to the expensive things. London is such an amazing place that that’s no punishment, and I’ve done many of the expensive and /or touristy things already anyway. If I could get in a few days at the BL I could potentially even call it a professional expense. Of course, I’d have to fit it in with the university calendar, which means the play would have to be running in either December or January.

But: that would be the most money I had ever spent on a something that can at best be called a hobby. One of the problematic things about being single is that there’s no one to talk you out of realizing your crazy dreams fantasies. The thought seems outrageous, to spend so much on something that is purely pleasure. And: the circumstances are not normal. I’ll be leaving the position I have in May 2011 and the odds that I’ll find another with a comparable salary are not especially high. Indeed, I may opt for a career move that substantially cuts my income. Thus I need to spend all of my spare income until further notice on eliminating debt and creating savings.

But somehow the idea that this could happen not this year, but late next, has winged my thoughts. I now ponder the possibility that I’ll find employment that pays well, and that it would be possible to spend a week in London. I think about buying tickets to a whole week of performances of “The Rover,” going with my notebook, watching different characters, making notes, musing, going back the next to answer the questions I generate, and to top it all off, blogging about it all in frightening detail. I even think about sending Mr. Armitage flowers before the performance on one night. I can’t quite think that I’d be able to make myself hang out at the stage door, though.

Somehow I love the fantasy of just exerting myself to go, seeing the performance numerous times (one would also have to, just in case Mr. Armitage were ill or indisposed and his understudy were playing his role on one of the nights), geeking out over detail, squeeing my way home on the tube — but never meeting the great man himself.

Can someone I’ve built up this much energy over possibly be as impressive in real life as he’s become in my fantasies?

~ by Servetus on July 9, 2010.