Cyrano de Bergerac in Saybrook

First, can I say that I love Cyrano de Bergerac. From when I first read the book in high school, I remember, really liking it... well, parts of it. Which is funny, because I had the same feeling when watching the live performance of it tonight in Saybrook College's courtyard at Yale.

I think it's the nature of theater to have delays and stretch out scenes - for dramatic suspense, to meet some arbitrary (economic maybe) expected time range, who knows? Perhaps I'm delaying now... It may be the nature of any written work, then.

Anyways, there were definitely scenes that lost my attention or my ability to follow or both. Given that the play lasted about 2 hours, these scenes could have been cut out.

What I loved about the play was preserved, however:

1. The poetry. I'm not going to pretend to know much about poetic meter and rhythm. But those couplets, especially the ones started by one character and finished by another, added great harmony to the play.

2. The crossed lovers: Roxane and Cyrano.

As if the cousin thing wasn't already a bit weird, the role of Cyrano was played by a girl in this rendition. My roommate did not like it. I did not like it at first. Especially because Christian was played by a guy who probably can be an Armani model if he doesn't feel like going to Yale anymore and I really couldn't imagine Roxane loving Cyrano over Christian in the end.

But I suppose that is the power of acting. The girl who played Cyrano de Bergerac did justice to the nose speech and every other great speech in the play (I LOVED the nose speech - Cyrano's list of alternative insults in every genre as a comeback to a rival's lame attack on his nose: "Your nose is large"). Here it is below:

Throughout the play, the actress's performance conveyed these aspects of Cyrano's noble character:

His violent threats against those who pretend to entertain.

His suave moves on a lowly server girl just to make her day.

His great pride blown by his self-image and unrequited love for a beautiful girl.

His desire to make her happy, even if another man gets to have her.

His ability to express his feelings because he genuinely and deeply feels them.

His satisfaction with being emotionally intimate with Roxane, not physically intimate.

His magnanimity in acknowledging the worthiness of a rival.

By the death scene, you forget Cyrano is played by a girl. Instead, all you see is a great poet and human being. I discovered, sitting there as Cyrano made his 10-minute dying speech and Roxane cries, "I loved one man all my life and lost him twice!" that we should all aspire to have a Cyrano-like death. I don't mean we should all want a piece of wood to fall on our heads after surviving several duels and a war. I mean we should sorta want people to feel immense regret and reverence at our deathbeds. How can we do this? Well, the answer is right under our noses: live life in a way that your inner beauty trumps even the most exquisite outer beauty.

On Shopping

Yale's shopping period has ended, alas, and I have learned some important lessons that I think other students could find useful.

First, what's the point?

Shopping period is a way to preview classes without committing to them, sitting in on the first couple classes to see what they're like in practice. But more importantly, it's a way to try out different schedules to see what times, what classes are best for you. Hence, the two week period. But it's quite distorting in that the first two weeks coincide with the start of everything else - extracurriculars, jobs, etc. It's hard to know what you'd really prefer for the rest of the semester. But that's just it. If you think about it like that, you will have a very bad shopping experience. I did. And that's why.

First, you can never know.

No religious undertones intended, but some things are out of our hands. The question is, when to know when something is out of your control. As Yalies, we are used to believing that many things people shrug off (unfair grading) can, in fact, be changed if we take things into our own hands (argue with the teacher). So it's no wonder that we try so hard to figure out our destinies.

After all, it is this active attitude that has gotten us where we are, this refusal to accept what we are dealt.

Second, nothing is wholly bad or worst or wholly good or best.

There are pros and cons to taking every class and you will go crazy if you try to figure them all out and calculate them at this point. Now we've always been told that preparation, looking ahead, will yield the best results. Sometimes looking ahead too much will just make you dizzy and ultimately really unsatisfied.