Sponsored by
Nick Ahad: Experiencing the 'I, Thou' moment at a David Gray concert
ARTS VIEW: Earlier this year, American playwright Donald Freed staged a series of lectures about the nature of theatre.
During these fascinating lectures the writer and director, who has written for screen and stage, explained how a director strives for what he calls the "I, Thou" moment. That is, a director is aiming towards the moment of revelation where something happens on stage that connects the actors with the audience and the audience with each other. It is, he said, the aim of theatre to create this moment where we are all reminded of each other's humanity.
I experienced the power of this moment this week, not through a piece of theatre, but another piece of art, a song.
It happened at a David Gray concert. The British singer songwriter was in Sheffield, performing at the City Hall (which, by the way, has recently been refurbished and looks and sounds fantastic: the acoustics are phenomenal).
During his set he sang his hit This Year's Love. The song is taken from the poignant and under-rated British film of the same name (well worth a look if you were one of the many who stayed away in their droves when it was at the nation's cinemas). The film and the song speak of the difficulty of love and modern life, the pain of failed relationships and the optimism in the face of experience we all have at the start of a new relationship.
Listening to Gray perform the song so beautifully reminded me of my own loved and losts. It transported me to the time I watched the film, which interweaves the love lives of several couples in contemporary London and the sense I had while watching it that there is a special someone out there for us all. I was spirited to moments of emotion experienced while walking the streets and listening to the song on my iPod.
I realised the power of the moment lay in my deeply personal relationship with the song.
Then I looked around and saw a similar look on the faces of other people in the audience.
Everyone seemed to share a knowing smile while listening to the song. Each was experiencing their own
"I, Thou" moment, living their own personal relationship with This Year's Love and I realised one of the great qualities of a piece of art is that it reminds us of the common threads that connect us to the other beings struggling through life on this planet.
Listening to the song reminded me that my own petty woes might not, as someone once said, mount to a hill of beans in this crazy world; but sometimes a piece of art reminds us that our individuality is the thing that links us. The moment also reminded me of the book John Carey wrote two years ago, What Good Are the Arts?
This sustained polemic by the University of Oxford emeritus professor of English Literature was a witty, intelligent argument on the subject.
In his book he answered the question of the title in a number of ways, saying they lift human beings towards the divine. He could rightly have added that art can help to create moments of shared humanity – the I, Thou, moment.
Email to a friend
Print this page- Three-inch blanket of snow heading our way today
- Alan Shearer in list of favourites for Leeds and England jobs: Latest odds
- Barnsley’s Keith Hill invokes Fawlty Towers over link with Leeds job
- McCormack feels United search can be narrowed down
- Redfearn throws down gauntlet as queue builds at Elland Road
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Yorkshire
Saturday 11 February 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: -2 C to 0 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: South
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 2 C to 5 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: North west
