Tonight I saw just the most amazing play...The Secret of Life by Bruce Coughran. The title sounds like the play might contain "10 things to do in your life for happiness"...but nothing could be further from the truth of the reality of this play. It follows the years of the scientists involved in deciphering the structure of DNA. This is a play, basically set in two labs, with the characters of Rosalind Franklin, Watson and Crick.I got turned on to DNA when studying biology in high school. I remember the day I learned about DNA. A new world opened to me. A world with a different way of thinking about what I was, and what we all are. I'd always felt as though I didn't belong where I was, and knowledge about DNA explained everything to me...I didn't belong where I was!...I was a throw back to who knows what....something else...and it was ok!
But I digress...
this play had me on the edge of my seat...beautiful biology and chemistry words, people's passions and jealousies, raw ambition...and love for finding what life, the energy of life, is all about.
The playwright, Bruce Coughran, created [and directed] an extraordinary work of art. The coming and going of the people and conversations...the bringing on of the wrong 3D model of DNA...and then the dismantling of the incorrect solution to DNA, to reveal the correct solution...and this 24" model [I'm embarrassed to say], brought tears to my eyes...it was beautiful. To me, the structure, to see it 3D in front of me, was beautiful. And then when the characters looked at it with reverance...at what they'd discovered, and said "it's beautiful"...well, I felt very at one with the playwright, and everyone that has come before him to lead him to where he is, to create this play, this work of art.
And as I watched Watson and Crick have their moments of insight, it reminded me of what it is, when you're composing music, to have moments of brilliant light...a flash of an outrageous thought goes through your mind...and suddenly the composition knows where it is going.
What a lovely night!!!