Translations

You know, at a certain point

I think we were just sort of

Resting on history

I mean, hell, our Artistic Director

Was the son of our Founder

Everything had just sort of become

You know, cyclical

I guess

We were doing Translations

In 2007

And it was this really great production

But everybody had felt like

We’d done it before

So we go to the archives online

And we look through the history

You know, of the theater

We looked at all the plays

And we couldn’t find it there

But everybody

The older actors in the company

The staff who’d been there awhile

Even Tennessee, our fearless leader

Who was born during a show

At the Orpheus Theater

Could have sworn

That we’d done it before

But we hadn’t

It just seemed that way

Because we were all sort of feeling like…

Like, I’ve done this before

Like déjà vu, you know?

I go home that night

That night we went into the archives

And I call my boyfriend

Sorry, fiancé

I forgot he was a fiancé by then

And I said—

I’m sorry, but it’s, uh, we’re done

I said, we’re done

Because now that I knew

That that feeling

Was what I was feeling

That—‘I’ve been doing this for so long

It feels like I’ve done it before’

Feeling

I just—didn’t want to do it anymore

Everything

Had become

Stagnant

My love life

My career

Fuck, I’d owned the same kind of aquatic fish

My entire life

What about any of that

Was me being an artist?

An outlet of creativity, you know?

Nothing!

…Nothing

So I quit

Everything

The company

The relationship

I gave the fish to the little girl

Down the hall from me

And I started over

You have to

As a person

But I don’t know how you do that

As a theater

As an institution

I guess that’s why

I’m so worried

About the Orpheus

I’m not sure it can afford to start over

I’m not sure it isn’t already

Too late