Theater of Shadows

How delightful, the Theater of Shadows!—and yet, in the end, how serious and unforgiving. Even today, after so much has changed, I find it difficult to account for the turn in our lives, brought about by so innocent a pastime. Was it really so innocent? We embraced it for the sake of our children, we hurled ourselves willingly into the Theater of Shadows, but in that embrace, wasn’t there something for us as well? Shouldn’t we have warned ourselves to move more slowly? To yield, if we had to, less completely? Even then we must have sensed the uneasy nature of shadows—those creatures born of the sun, but rebelling against the light.

When I look back to that first performance, I’m astonished to recall a time before it all began. I was young, I was ambitious, my wife hummed as she slipped into her bathing suit. Our children laughed in the sun. We welcomed things, we and our friends, we seized whatever life had to offer, while at the same time we never felt the need to step outside certain unspoken bounds that struck us as natural and healthy. We knew a little about the Theater of Shadows, the way you do when you’re reading the morning paper while glancing at your watch. It had finished a run in New York and was making a three-day visit to our town. The one-man show, operated by someone from Rumania or Hungary, was said to be ideal for the whole family. The performance was to take place in the old Arts Building, used at that time by the local film society, by visiting lecturers, by actors reading plays at two podiums — by anyone who cared to rent space before an audience.

When we arrived, the stage was hidden behind its sagging dark-blue curtain. Most of the seats were taken. We smiled, we waved to friends, we settled the kids. Everyone continued to whisper as the lights grew dim. 

The curtain rose crookedly. On the half-dark stage stood what appeared to be a small theater, about the height of my shoulders, with a black curtain of its own, closed above a narrow proscenium. Slowly the black curtain-halves began to part, revealing a whitish rectangle that might have been paper. It was painted with a black scene showing a tree and a wall. 

Now the theater lights went out completely. In the dark you couldn’t hear a sound. From the depths of the small theater came a sudden glow that threw the screen into brilliant whiteness. A moment later two ink-black figures appeared, facing each other beneath the tree. The sharply outlined figures moved toward each other, moved away, while their arms and legs lifted and lowered, their heads leaned forward and tipped back.