Emily's Weblog

          Yesterday, my mother told me she had a surprise for me.  She’d bought tickets for a play that night.  This was a surprise.  For one thing, my mom isn’t a huge theatre person, and for another—when was the last time you heard of someone going to a play?  These days, we seem to like movies—they’re faster after all, and cheaper, and you can whisper and text in the theatre without inspiring the hatred of everyone around you.  But I’ve always liked plays; they feel more personal and intimate.  In theatre, more seems to be at stake.  After all, this wasn’t a production pre-processed in a studio under a million dollar budget where edits and cuts could be made at leisure.  In a play, messing up is obvious, sometimes painfully obvious, and I liked that.  The actors get to speak louder than special effects, and staging is functional and clever instead of gaudy and overblown.  The subtlety is refreshing.

          Anyway, the play we saw was called Morisot Reclining, and it told the love story of Impressionist painters Eduard Manet and Berthe Morisot.  It was a mostly factual account with a few details out of order or exaggerated for the sake of great story-telling—which made the play itself Impressionistic, in a way—and the set made great use of a large white canvas in the background by projecting famous paintings by the two on its surface.  Let me make a confession before I share what I thought of the play:  I love the Impressionists.  I really do. They’re my favourite; everything they did was so radical and progressive.  Hell, I want to be an Impressionist. There. Now that it’s obvious I’m biased, let me share what I thought.

           The story was simple but powerful:  Manet and Morisot met as painters in the Louvre at a time when Manet had already exhibited several controversial works and Morisot was still a student.  Impressed by her talent (and probably something else as well), Manet urged Morisot to model for him, which she did.  The two became great friends despite passionate arguments and found solace in their mutual love of art and frustration with 19th century society.  By the end of his life, Eduard Manet painted twelve portraits of Berthe Morisot, yet both artists married other people and never had an open romantic relationship with one another.  The play showed acutely the suffering both felt as they realized they couldn’t be together—although art historians don’t agree on whether the two ever had feelings for one another, it seems obvious that no one paints twelve pictures of someone he doesn’t care about, nor does one pose for countless hours just to help an artist-colleague.  And if one examines the portraits themselves, it’s easy enough to tell how Manet felt for Morisot:  in many, she stares directly at the viewer, bold and daring as women of her time were not supposed to be.  The actors did a brilliant job of portraying these famous artists in a relatable way—I felt like I was there watching normal people interact, not at a museum—and the whole production gave me a greater respect for theatre.

          This production reminded me of what artists can do with both a stage and a canvas:  I felt an increased respect for stage actors even as my admiration for the Impressionists ballooned.  This play showed that untold stories are lurking beneath the surface of almost every painting.  It reminded me of why I love art so much in the first place.