Life is a Play by Harold Pinter: Why Bush Should Pay Heed

Once upon a time, in my first year of college, I wanted to be a Theatre Arts major. As part of the major, I took two classes in acting, both of which were taught by a very sweet man named Burt. He was one of the first openly gay men I'd ever known. However, Burt had this Pinter fixation. He concluded that my little acting study group of three people would interpret Pinter's the Matchseller.

The Matchseller is, beneath the surface, all about the cares that infest the day ... the solemn banality of everyday life and how it causes us to seek options outside our comfort zone. Burt arbitrarily decided (much as Paul Benedict's character in "The Goodbye Girl" regarding Richard III), that the two leads in this play were more properly gay men. As such, I became the world's first female matchseller. With ten tons of makeup slathered onto my face, I was pushed out on stage.

First, I must explain that in this cast was a truly insufferable jackass (IJ) with an ego the size of Donald Trump's money clip. He zealously took me aside and warned me that he'd have "important people in the audience" on opening night and that I damned well better not "forget my cue." That was the true agony of this role -- not one line. All I could do was stand there and react and listen. Meanwhile, Jackass had two hours of lines -- a problem with which I could sympathize, had he not been an insufferable jackass.