By the Ghost Light by R.H. Thomson

Author:R.H. Thomson [Thomson, R.H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2023-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

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I practise an art that is the epitome of impermanence. Acting is neither hung in galleries nor studied centuries afterwards. In theatre we’ve even made our transience a ritual. When the play ends, we step out of our characters, banishing any illusion that our stage has presented anything “real”; we bow, the audience applauds (hopefully), the lights are turned off and we all go home. We make no marks on the walls. Yes, film and TV actors leave something behind, since their performances are collected in the small digital galaxies that reside in memory cards. Theatre’s fleetingness is exhilarating because, after every performance, the walls are laid bare in anticipation of the next performance. To hang theatre on a gallery wall would be to drain it of blood.

On the way out the stage door, I sometimes slip back through the wings and go onstage. If the crew has gone, it will be dark except for a single light by which I will cast shadows. As I’ve said, theatres traditionally place one lamp—the ghost light—on a stand to burn all night to prevent people like me from falling off the stage. There is also a superstition that some theatres are inhabited by the ghosts of old actors, and the light allows them to continue their work. To stand in a dark theatre after so much life has been acted out is a thrill. The only motion is the beating of my heart, the photons fleeing the ghost light, and my shadow shifting on the walls. All the characters seem to be there still: Vladimir has contemplated the abyss and optimistically waits for the next day; Estragon sleeps on; Juliet, in her grief for Romeo, has ended her life, and their guilt-stricken parents have promised to find a path to peace.

But should we tell stories at all if everything is to vanish—the actors, the sets, the audience’s memories, the shadows when the ghost light burns out, the names carved on the headstones, and even the Earth itself, from which all life will be burned away when our dying sun grows so large that it scatters our ashes and every mark we have ever made to the cosmos? Yes. Because the cycle of creation will begin again. The dust and particles will once again gather into clouds between stars. The clouds may again compact, grow dense, and form a new star with “earths” and moons. And perhaps there will exist everything needed for some entity to leave the next set of marks and tell the next set of stories—to no one in particular. But that takes courage.

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