The beginning

I am not a sleeper, I sleep around 5 to 6 hours every night for the past 50 years, but most of the time my nights are filled with dreams, dreams of being, dreams of who I am,  dreams of who I could have been, dreams of others who exist or not, dreams of my childhood, my youth, my adolescence, my maturity, my starting old age, my next life.

Last night I could not sleep at all, so no dreams, but unconscious thoughts in a half sleep, full of images, full of visions and ghosts of the past.

Of course theater was the center of all these images...

Life in my early adulthood was not ideal, my brother died in a car accident and my father died 6 months later when I was 19, we were just in a new country France, in Paris, my mother and I, poor Tunisian Jews lost in a different society with the feeling that we did not belong to that world...   

I was a physically very strong young man, angry at life, afraid of nothing, and feeling that i had nothing to loose...I had nothing, I was nothing, I had nobody, I was nobody... The university was giving me nothing except silly superficial knowledge about literature and philosophy while I did not know what life was about, except struggling and having this perpetual anger inside me... I walked in the streets of Paris for hours, for days, for weeks, for months looking for something, ready for anything, aggressive and confronting whoever dared to tell me anything...I had no idea of how to free my heart, my soul, my ME, to free myself of all this accumulated pain and I was just looking for danger and trying to change my life by being somebody else, by doing something which will show to the world that I existed, that I was somebody.

I started to be around the bad boys, talking about how to change the world, the society, by acting on it with no restraints, no limits, no sense of morals. Ready for anything, not afraid of the consequences, looking for the bad opportunity  without thinking of the possible result.

It was 1963, 50 years ago...One of the bad boy i was hanging out with, told me once to go with him to a theater acting class..I laughed at him and told him that theater was not life, was a way for people to waste time, and I did not need to be somebody else by acting:

 "I want to be somebody else everyday not by using the excuse of being a character" I said

 "Bernard, come with me and laugh at these idiots on stage, the acting teacher is a great woman, a Russian lady of 70 , her name is Tania Balachova, you will like her, what do you have to loose?" he answered

"fine, I will go with you for a few minutes and go back to reality."

The following day I went with him to a small theater in Paris called "theatre de l' épée de bois" Already the name of the theater made me grin, so full of lies, Theater of the wooden sword, come on, a wooden sword ? Why not a wooden life, a wooden emotion, a wooden anger, a wooden anything.

I arrive and sit in back of the small theater...Maybe 20-25 ACTORS in waiting are there, and I think: 

Here I am in the middle of this place with this people all looking like from the rich society of Paris, "des fils a papa", young men and women ready to be the next star of a decadent world, what am I doing here, I do not belong here more that anywhere else.

Madame Balachova is walking up and down the aisle giving indication to a young girl who was trying to be Ophelie in Shakespeare Hamlet.

The girl could not really follow the indications of Tania, but Tania was insisting, pushing her verbally, calling her names, asking her to be the little girl, of her childhood, to think about her mother, to REALLY go back to the time where she was alone and desperate, making her repeat the same line again and again, whispering to her what the words meant, prompting her with other words, the words which are not said in a text but are thought, AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN...Going into her head and body, asking questions about her life, about her past, about her dreams.  The girl suddenly burst into tears and delivered the lines with so much truth, so much emotion, so much tenderness and passion.  She was suddendly herself and not a caricature of herself, she looked suddendly like another person, like she had been invaded by herself, by her soul.    I felt tears running on my cheeks...I had not cried in months, in hundreds of year, in my entire life, I was feeling what I had never felt ... And it lasted 15 minutes, 20 minutes, an eternity.

Tania told the girl enough for today.

"Who is next?" she growled 

Some students raised their hands, she turned to me.

"Who are you? I have never seen you here? What are you doing here?"

"I came to watch with a friend" I scoured

"To watch? Nobody watches here, everybody is part of it ... Go on the stage."

"No, I have nothing to say, nothing to do, I am not an actor but a doctorate student at the University"

"You look very young to be a University student, go on stage and tell me about you..I said GO ON STAGE, DO YOU HEAR ME?"

I almost told her to get lost and left but her face looking at me was so full of strength and of honesty and of gentleness at the same time that I decided to go on stage.

"Talk to me about you, you want to be an actor?" she said with a smile.

"No"

"What do you want to be?"  

"I don't know"

"You don't know?"

"No"

"Read this"

She gave me a book.

"Open the book page 15"

"why?"

"OPEN THE BOOK"

I did ... It was the monologue of Raskolnikov in Crime and punishment by Dostoyevsky.

"Read, READ"

I started to read it.

"Louder...Do you know Raskolnikov? do you know Dostoyevsky?"  

"Yes, I read the novel" 

"DO YOU KNOW HIM?" 

"I read the novel" 

"So, you believe you know him because you read the novel? READ AGAIN" 

..............

"Now, I want you to think about your father while you read"

"My father is dead"

"Think of him" 

..............I continued to read with images of my father.

"Now think about your family, your brothers and sisters"

"I do not have any, I had a brother, he died"

"Think of him"    

.................. I read and read and read

"Start again from the beginning but before tell me...Are you from the eastern countries or are you Jewish?" 

"I am Jewish, why?" 

"Because you have a pain inside you that you need to use, to control.  Read Raskolnikov and let him be you with your own pains, your own story"

I read and read and read, I could not stop and she did not stop me, images of my childhood were invading me, images of my brother and all the dead invading me, they were alive again, talking to me, telling me to take care of me, to take care of my mother.  And Raskolnikov, I was discovering, came to life with my words, my being, my Pain...I could not stop. I started to walk while reading and I was alive.

After a long time who seems to be a few minutes, she said with a controlled smile,

"Enough for today, come back tomorrow, you are now my student"

"I cannot pay for lessons" 

"Who is asking you to pay anything, be here tomorrow at 11 am precisely"

I left the theater, swearing that I would never be back.

I walked through the streets for hours but feeling good. I felt free for the first time in years, I looked at people and smiled at them, I did not hate anybody, my heart was full of good feelings, I even helped an old lady cross the street.

I was there the following day at 10 am and waited an hour in the street for the theater to open.

I had memorized Raskolnikov all night, theater was invading me and changed my life for ever.    

50 YEARS AGO THIS YEAR.