There exists a Big History which drags us
along, submerging us, and in
which we often feel incapable of intervening. We can neither know
nor understand in which direction it is moving, while it is moving,
and us with it. Only when we observe it in retrospect, when time
has passed, do its twists and turns appear clear to us. The Big
History concedes us no freedom at all. It moves on inexorably and
goes we know not where nor why. We often tell each other stories of
Hope or Despair. All equally meaningless, even though they may at
times kindle a feeble flame in the surrounding darkness.
Nevertheless in the Big History it is possible to outline small
islands, tiny
gardens where our hand may make its mark and where we can live out
our Small History. This Small History, intertwined with refusals
and superstitions, is that of our life, our home, our
family, of the misunderstandings, the encounters and the
coincidences that have guided us towards the craft and the
environment to which we have decided to belong.
Clearly the Big History and the Small History are not independent.
But
the Small Histories are not merely portions of the Big one.
Children who build a small dam on the margins of the current of a
great river, who make a tiny pool in which to bathe and splash
around, do not play in the rushing current, yet neither are they
separated from the water flowing in the centre of
the river. They create, along its banks, small inlets and
unexpected habitats, thus passing on to the future the marks of
their difference.
Voltaire described all this in Candide. The illusion that the world
in which we live is tolerable or that it is the best of all
possible worlds crumbles under a deluge of irony and
adventures. After lengthy participation in the mechanical game that
is the struggle between pessimism and optimism, Voltaire's
protagonist arrives at the conclusion that we must work without
thinking of the outcome of our work, just concentrating on
cultivating our own garden. This attitude does not
mean giving way, surrendering; it is not an appeal to selfishness
or to a restricted and egocentric vision of life. It is the
affirmation of the necessity to contradict the Big History with a
Small History that can belong to us and make them dance
together.
Theatre is an attempt to stand in the waters of the river
without letting oneself be dragged away by the current.
This is the history of theatre: small gardens and tiny pools
of water sheltered from the force of the current. Sometimes
submerged by it.