(Teatro de los Insurgentes, 13 May 2023)
This is not a West End production, where you are only as good as you are in your current part. Here, the actors and actresses are familiar faces from telenovelas. Except for the lead: Sofia Carrera. This is her breakout role. It is suggestive of certain meritocracy in the world of theatre that an eighteen-year-old newcomer, rather than an established forty-year-old actress, would be chosen to play the part of a twenty-year old protagonist.
(12 May 2023, Milo's)
The successful are obsessed. They bring joy. Indeed, in society that functions well, an important dimension of success is the ability to bring joy; one cannot be successful in abstract, without giving others what they want. (In society that functions poorly, one can find success by destroying competitors and by destroying value, without ever giving anything in return.)
Brenda Marie and the Tiger are perfectly matched. The Tiger is a consummate pianist with an acute sense of timing. Brenda Marie lives every song.
People become artists and entrepreneurs in order to retain creative control over their lives, in spite of the risk of penury. Brenda and Tiger are in full control. At least for the duration of the performance, they are free, and the audience gets a taste of freedom, too.
(12 May 2023, Un Teatro)
Dancers’ trim bodies maximise the expressiveness of the messages they transmit. There is little fat to disrupt the message. Every muscle speaks. Emotion and thought are transmitted reliably and fast.
Humans are large language models. Garbage in, garbage out. One ought to live a life that does not regurgitate others’ regurgitations. One should live. If one does not and trains instead on the same stories that others train on, then—unless one is better at training than everyone else—one is dispensable; it is as if one had not lived. When everyone trains on the same stories that others train on, the society is hierarchical, with everyone ranked according to his ability to train. A highly hierarchical society like this is akin to the world in which everyone is required to make a living by being a professional opera singer while no one wants to hear opera from anyone but the one singer who is the very best; this is an impoverished world.
