09/08/2023
We all started life on a stage unless you don't believe what Shakespeare said about the world being a stage but being on a stage scares me. It started when I was a boy and I was trying to find my feet in a world Shakespeare called a stage. I was at the back when I a teacher signalled me to climb up the stage. Everyone was watching me. I started shivering. I took one step at a time, praying I never get to the top of the stage. Just a little after five steps, all we heard was kuum! Someone had fallen.
Everyone started laughing. I was the only one who was not laughing. Do you know why?
I was the one who fell.
I didn't get to the top of the stage. I wax diɛn there hurting but I felt better than being on the stage. From there I hate anything that had 'stage' in it. When they told me I was in stage four, I nearly quit school. What was 'stage' doing in my four?
But one day, I bought a ticket to watch a STAGE play by Kobina Ansah. I've forgotten the title but there was a boy who was a girl and there was a character I fell in love with because I easily fall for things that work. She made her character work and I loved her. After the play, I wanted to get on the stage but it all started coming back to me so I didn't take that step.
What amazed me that day was how every character could play along as if they didn't have hundreds of people watching them. The play was good. The music was close to perfect and the lessons came dropping one after the other. In the end, I said, "The writer did an awesome job" that's aside from the excellent directing and acting.
On Saturday Kobina is doing another one; One Upon Riddle. He says he wrote fourteen original songs to be able to pull this off. He says it's about questions, questions life asks us every day. Questions like, if you have just one day to live, what will you do?"
I know what I'll do. I won't get closer to a stage because I don't want to die before my time.
What will you do with fame if you had it? That's another question this plays ask. What will you do if you had the world under your feet? Life is a riddle but whoever gives the riddle gives the answers in the end. So, let's meet on Saturday as we watch the answers unfurl on each step on the stage.
The world is indeed a stage but it's too big for you to see everything, that's why we have to gather around a small stage at the National Theater and watch the stories of our lives told to us by actors who don't even know our existence.
You need tickets? Speak to Mel or you say I should buy you a ticket?
Nesta Jojoe Erskine
