Broadway Theatre, New York, 2022. The performance was called A woman who cannot act. Believe me, I know the actress. She is a very well-known Hollywood artist and actress. She was also the author of the script for the play. Why cannot she act? That’s unbelievable. The floor is her and she sits among the audience.

I am in the audience too, the lights go out. Then we see a flash of light on the people on stage. They tell us that they are not actors and cannot act. Now they tell us their stories. No one is acting.
It seems incredible, somehow absurd. It reminds me of a picture from the MoMA. It shows a man on stage who is so weak that he cannot act. He is so emaciated. His complexion is so pale. He looks unreal, like a living person. But it’s not a skeleton, because the man’s small eyes are open. This is a starving artist.

Yes, you may think this is a very realistic depiction of how unpopular artists can end up. The problem is the title of the drawing. The title says: A popular artist. Now, this is an absurd.

Not at all. Have you ever read A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka? The main character of the short story is a hunger artist whose spectacles break popularity records. So why is he hungry? Well, simply because he has to fast. “I can’t do anything else,” says the hunger artist.

Why is that – you, as one of the viewers, will ask yourself. And the artist’s answer is so genuine:
“because I couldn’t find food that I liked. If I had found it, believe me, I would not have made a spectacle of myself and eaten to my heart’s content, like you and everyone else.

So maybe the woman I am writing about could not act in the face of the real stories. If she could, she would not have made a spectacle of herself.

The stories from the stage in Brodawy Theatre revolve around struggling. The first speaker struggles with mental health problems. The second is an illegal immigrant. The next struggles with feelings of emptiness and the last with career and financial pressures. None of them can act. A very realistic picture. Don’t you agree?

My stories are not real, but they can be reliable.
Well, if I could experience all the things I write about, believe me, I would do it, or … or not. Just a few of them: like a visit to MoMA and Broadway Theatre.