CYRANO…. REALLY A NOSE???

I just finished a month of total friendship, of sharing feelings and emotion and having the sensation, that, sometimes, we are lucky to do what we do. It was a marvelous gift at my age to be able to connect on both artistic and human levels with younger people! I am happy to be reminded that it is possible for me to learn and to experiment with younger generations.

I was in Detroit Directing my opera Cyrano! Another occasion to share very special moments with the composer of this opera, my dear friend, David DiChiera. We have been friends for more than 35 years. The adventure of Cyrano- him composing the music and I writing the libretto, then directing the production- made us even closer, made us breathe the same air made us completely understand each other totally and become eternally intertwined. David, I want to thank you again for who you are, and your incredible generosity to us all.

Our friend Mark Flint, who was part of the creation of the opera through writing the orchestrations and conducting the premiere, passed away 5 years ago, and David with this production was announcing his retirement from Michigan Opera Theatre, the company he founded against all odds nearly 50 years ago…It was an extraordinary month of emotion, tears, laughs and artistic satisfactions with a cast of friends, old and new.

Returning to this opera, based on Edmond Rostand’s masterpiece, introduced me to an array of exciting opportunities and more questions about artistic involvement, about creativity, about fate, and about life.

While life and the events in our lives teach us how to behave and react to tragic moments, we always learn more about who we are and what we represent when we are in close contact with others.

This past month was another experience in learning how to deal with sorrow, disappointments, pain inflicted by events and sometimes by others! Though, too often, we inflict pain on ourselves due to the failing of not knowing who we really are, what is haunting us or where we belong.

BUT CYRANO…. WHAT IS REALLY HIS NOSE???

Cyrano says in the first act… “My friend there are times when I feel awful about my ugliness, sometimes all alone…” 

Yes, he suffers about his ugliness and his loneliness.

To have an extraordinary long nose can be a source of torment and even pain. BUT DON’T WE ALL HAVE A LONG NOSE WE TRY TO HIDE?

This long nose is only a symbol of the pain we all carry somewhere within ourselves- the feeling that we need something else and, most of the time it is buried inside us and we do not see it, or even we refuse to see it, afraid of being weakened by it… Throughout my life, I very rarely met people who did not have wounds, and too often under a bandage. And sometimes these wounds are continuously ignored due to fear or ignorance.

 Yes, we all have secret lives and those lives and very often kept a secret from ourselves…

Most of us spend our lives carrying pain or incertitude of who we really are, and too often we fall in the trap of disguising it by ignoring it. Unfortunately, we sometimes find ways to bury or deny it by using drugs, alcohol or even by refusing to obey laws and societal expectations... And instead of building a life with achievements and attempts to better ourselves we fall into the traps of self-destruction.

Yes, most of us have hidden pain inside and questions with no answers, and we need to learn how to deal with them and make them into positive elements to advance on our path in life.

Artists have a huge advantage and the opportunity to deal with these challenges! We can use this hidden pain to express ourselves within the context of our art and to process through creating! Find a balance between the real and the imaginary, between the everyday life and the secret life, and finally, we can overcome our excruciating pain. We can deal with our noses through total introspection, sometimes this total introspection is interpreted by others as being self-centered or selfish or even strange, not to say deranged. And very often, we are not welcome by the so-called normal society.     YES, ARTISTS HAVE A LONELY LIFE…AND YES, I KNOW THAT, FOR SOME, IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO TRY TO CURE THEIR DESEASE THROUGH CREATING ART AND THEIR LIVES ARE A LIVING HELL, and their curse is stronger than their creativity…

Performers have the same fate! We know or should remember, that in everyday life, consciously or unconsciously, we need to always be putting on a show to disguise “the real Me”, to hide our pains, our frustrations, our weaknesses and be somebody else- the person that “society” expects us to be.

We give to others-and the world at large- an image of ourselves to stay seemingly strong and able to function in a society that constantly demands more and more! We live in a world where we all are expected to play a role instead of being open about the extreme danger of losing the grasp on our true selves and who we really are.

But you must realize that, on stage, we are protected by the character we are performing. The world will see and witness a “personage”, and we are freed from the need to disguise who we really are! The stage is the only place where we do not need to act and we can finally be our true selves, being honest about our strengths and our weaknesses. We can deal with our pain, and use it, and let it go and finally find some kind of peace by opening the door to the buried world inside.

 Performers: you are lucky, you can finally be your true selves. Always dig into your past, into your subconscious, into your experiences and use them to become the character you need to be…Use your memories of events, find the equivalents-the connections- to different situations from your life, and build a bank of feelings to draw from when creating characters.

Not only will your performances be stronger, and real, and bewitching; but you will release the ghosts haunting your soul, you will take the bandage off, and you will enjoy some freedom, even if temporary, and finally some happiness…Always use who you are deep inside to become the character you are personifying and grow from it.,

Cyrano created a world of theater and a perpetual stage around him … He calls that “MON PANACHE!!!” He can function and he can act as a total human being, he found the ways, through using his pain and his NOSE, to be loved and admired by all. When he is alone, of course, he has moments of doubt and sorrow, but he always survives it and his incredible love for Roxane makes him the man we should all become…A SOUL WITH A LONG NOSE AND A BIG HEART!                                                                                                                                               

But throughout all of those years, Roxane could not see behind the appearance of an ugly nose, the real man that Cyrano was, so she wasted her life and his because of her vanity …. Please let’s try to see the people around us for who they truly are, let’s try to find the soul beneath the surface, but we also need to make it easier to find by opening the door to our buried traumas

We must learn how to embody Cyrano in our lives, how to deal with our noses. Let's face our noses, not ignore them or burry them! Let's use them and find the balance in our existence, let's not disguise them with superficial elements!

Become a harp with each string representing a different moment in your past, AND INCLUDE THE HAPPY MOMENTS, THE CREATIVE MOMENTS! Do not fall in perpetual depression by using only the sadness of your past experiences.

This, of course, is not an easy task. It demands courage and abandon, but it will make us so much happier and completely whole!!

Dealing with the hidden is the only way to make us strong -real- CREATIVE.