My online persona has been acted out by strangers.

I recognize how strange that sentance was to write and to read, but I guess I’ll get that out of the way now: Someone played me in a play, in front of my very eyes. I didn’t know what to expect, since this has never happened before. To anyone I know. It was a black box play, so the only thing that was lit up was the stage which was almost surrounded by 50 or 60 seats. Some of you might be wondering why this happened: I don’t know why.

I have no idea why.

The actors were prop-less and used only the lines in our posts and the conviction in their voices. That sheer will alone was truly inspiring. I couldn’t believe they memorized these posts. They’re taking from blogs, so it’s not like they’re brief little snippets. These are long winded, descriptive, sometimes arduous posts that the actors executed cue free in front of all of us. Not only did they not mess up or forget, they made the posts attractive and were very effective in stimulating the crowd’s attention. These people had read through this material for months and they were probably very nervous on Wednesday (opening) night and just did an awesome job.

There’s so much I want to say about this event and I’m going to try and tackle almost all of them in order of importance:

1. The actress that played me was SO COOL.

She: Told me about her own teacup collection and her fascination with snow suits, had good style, went to the Beehive with us as her friends and my friends all had after-show drinks, we exchanged business cards and found out we had people in common through other people and I hope we become friends who hang out. Her blog was listed on her business card so i went on it to see what the deal was and it turns out that she mentions the potential-me in one of her posts (before we met) and her description of potential-us was:

“In an alternate universe where we meet before i played her blogger personality in a show, we would’ve been those cool friends who wear vintage clothes without trying too hard and we make fun of hipsters at bars in places like Harvard Square or Allston where we may or may not also sort of be hipsters but would never admit it.”

Uncanny.

2. My friends came and showed support, which I just love. I already celebrated a birthday party about three weeks ago and the idea of forcing more people into a situation where I, essentially, monopolized attention again seemed too much. But they came out anyway, with very little notice, and that’s why I love my friends. Also, the perplexity of this event isn’t lost on them, since most of them greeted me with raised eyebrows and smug smirks at the introduction of each post they recognized only through the characteristic tone I couldn’t objectively describe. I’m sure they could.

At one point, during the play’s rendition of my Bucket List post (which I found a surprising choice), all of the actors were up reciting the various tasks I’d like to accomplish before I died. Some serious and intimate, some silly, all very readily screamed: “These are Irene’s Goals Duh”. As our eyes darted from each actor, and, then amongst each other, in what ended up resembling a fireworks display of cognative, emotional and volitional brian activity, I just kept thinking about how fantastic this all was.

I wish I had written: “Have my life written into a play of some sort and then go see it” on my bucket list. Who would have thought something like that was possible.

I gotta start making my dreams, hopes and wishes a bit more creative.

I’ll settle for five out of six.