Raoul

All my friends are performing in the evenings so tonight I take myself out to the theatre. The show in the International Festival that I really want to see is Raoul, by James Thiérrée, grandson of Charlie Chaplin, amongst many other things.

I deck myself in a polka dot dress and high heels, tie up my skirts and swing my leg over my bike. Cycle in to town readjusting my cleavage. Lock up my bikes on the Adelaide Festival Centre stair-rails and find my seat between strangers.

Massive white-patched curtains that have been repaired and repaired. They hang criss-crossing the stage like a cubby house, like a ship after a storm, like drunken washing lines. Brown stains settle into them illuminated by the yellow light behind. Mist rises smokily.

There is a sudden sweeping lift as unseen machinery pulls the curtains up, they hoist and billow and settle into place to frame the stage – a drift wood teepee of netting and poles.

The man, like a WWII pilot lost in the desert, swings his coat wide out behind him. He is dirty and beautiful and he knows it, holding his shoulders like a dancer, like a soldier, like a man who is angry and entitled to the thing he wants.

He calls himself out. “Raoul! Raoul!”

But Raoul doesn’t want to be found.

The duality of Raoul. The appearance from no-where, the double behind the curtain, the mirror where his hands meet palm to palm.

It is so bitsy. “French” Christy says; that’s what the French do – create a series of beautiful images. I am almost desolate as an image disappears, never to be returned to – so many resources have been used to create each and I feel like you could build a show around every one.

The pleasure of watching a body that is so highly trained. The unexpected flight that I wish would go on and on. I watch so many circus shows and I am hideously jaded about aerial acts. Things don’t catch my breath anymore and I am usually bored of them before they finish. Not this. Not him. I want him to fly forever.

I shuffle out of the theatre with the crowd, walking carefully in my absurd shoes. I’m not left with a feeling, like sadness or hope, or a particular idea that he was trying to tell me, but with memories of beauty that I want to capture and visit again and again. Like a painting I can hang in my heart.