Today I was asked the reason theatre folk are always getting flowers for performances. It does not seem to matter whether they are male or female. Actors are all expecting flowers, and parents are all taking detours to Publix Grocery Store on the way to the show to rifle through their bins of flowers to find the right bouquet.
What’s up with the flowers? Here is my response. I preface this by saying I don’t know the ANSWER to this question. As I have admitted before in these blogs, I really don’t have more then a handful of answers that I feel would have any credence, and those few answers that I do have have – have long ago lost their accompanying question like a drip pan without a pot What I have are “musings.” Lots of musings. I think if teachers were honest they would admit that thier days contains very few real answers. We muse. We are musing. Amusing sometimes, but musing for sure.
Now back from my musing on musing:
I believe flowers are given because they celebrate the ephemeral, temporary beauty of the art of theatre. Theatre is one of the few arts that disappears the moment it is created. The moment has barely escaped the lips or gestures of the actors and it is gone. In my mind this is what makes theatre so beautiful – the temporary nature of the art. I find that in life we find great beauty in those things that will be with us for only a short time. Relationships, people, and high school itself contains very little beauty until you own the expiration sticker that is attached. Beauty for me is not the birth nor the death but the quick, brief wind that connects those two points. You give an actor a flower to say thank you for their creation of temporary beauty – – you honor the actor with the temporary beauty of a cut flower. The fact that the flower will soon be wilting honors the scene that will soon be over; the set that will soon be struck; and the actors that will quickly be seated at the local IHOP drowning their sorrows in a pile of pancakes.
You want to insult an actor? Give them a silk flower!!!
One comment on “Dead Flowers from Publix”
I believe the Barrymores began the tradition of giving each other flowers on opening night — no, wait. It was apples. The Barrymores started a tradition of giving each other apples on opening night. And I have no answer as to why.
My point was going to be that I like your explanation of the purpose of flowers for actors better than the story about the Barrymores.