Wist

There are chef who say that if you want to bring out the sweetness in a dish, add not more sugar but a pinch of salt.
Everything beautiful and joyous and funny has a whisper of sadness to it.
Last night the small theater company I'm part of held an event, "Soup &." We served homemade soup and four local theater artists we had commissioned performed short, original pieces.
And it was great. People showed up on a rainy Monday night. The soup was tasty, and the performances were delightfully unexpected. It wasn't a precious, sipping broth and listening to quiet reflection while you sat knitting kind of evening. It had an edge. It had quirk. It had surprise.
The night was the two things I love most about live theater: intimate and idiosyncratic. And therein lies the tragedy. They are the twin "i"'s that doom excellent theater, economically at least. Forty people in a room, nobody more that fifteen feet from a the stage, it's a lovely experience, but can't really pay anybody's rent. And, as far as the other "i" (idiosyncrasy), people say they want new, fresh, innovative work. But most don't really. Truly odd stuff will always be niche.
Last night gave me a tingle, a frission, a charge. But it also reminded me that -- at least for now -- I'm not in a place where I'm free to be Bohemian.