We are responsible for our own dreams and ambitions. We must sew each patch of our lessons, struggles and triumphs together and recall that we are never unable to know the colour, size of significance of the patch until much after it has been embellished the body of our overall work.
On Saturday night, with a good friend in arm, I saw "Intimate Apparel" at the Berkeley Street Theatre. It was breathtaking. The story tells the tale of a 35-year old, black seamstress, Ester, who has lived a life of solitude from the intimacy of another’s touch. Ester lives a content life by handcrafting the most elegant undergarments for various affluent or sexually desirable women, in early 20th century New York. Ester does not think herself as anything special, for she looks quite ordinary and nothing like the fancy ladies that grace the seats at the opera, or dine at the finest restaurants.
One day the seamstress receives a letter from a strange man in Panama. This man seems to have taken a romantic interest in her, but has never met her or seen her. Ester quickly becomes enticed by his charms and begins an intense love affair of letters, over the duration of a few months. One day she recieves a letter in which he propositions marriage to her and coming to live with her in New York. She agrees with pure delight, as she feels that this man can open a place in her heart that she has never dared to enter.
After they are officially married and they begin their life together, she finds out that this man is not at all the man that she "fell in love with". In fact he was not even the man that wrote all those enticing and lovely letters to her. He had commissioned another to write these words; someone else to violate Ester's heart. Ester learns that in her husbands heart lays nothing much more than a desire for sex, alcohol and anger.
Never settle for less than you deserve. Sometimes standing alone can be the most powerful experience that you can embark upon. Never let anyone tell you are worth anything less than the value of a most flawless diamond, even in the rough.
Ester quickly begins to change who she is. She applies bright red lipstick, she wears the beautiful corsets that she crafts for her clients. She hopes of recieving her hubands attention, but he shuts her down and she is humiliated. Ester even finds out that her best friend is sleeping with her husband, when she finds a delicate Japanese silk jacket she made him as a wedding gift, at her best friends house.
The knife can always dig deeper. Apply pressure to the wound and quickly. Though it maybe initially painful, remove without hesitation the blade that impacted your skin in the first place. You MUST remove the blade that caused you such pain in order to begin the slow process of healing.
“Intimate Apparel” was flawlessly casted. Each character was given a relatable story so that the viewer could feel an overall sense of connection to the whole. The intelligent writing was hard to ignore. The overall atmosphere the actors were able to create and maintain was most memorable to all those in the theatre.
Like each one of us, this story tells of people who have dreams and seek connections, the documentation of lovers who can spark your senses with delight and then the strangers they often turn out to really be. But more than anything this play reminds us, that with each of us is the ability to survive and move beyond all pain. Truly alone realize our own inner and outer beauty.
Sometimes when we go through the transition of change we realize that we were better off where we started, then where we moved. The momentum of change does not always promise to move you forward.
Under our clothes there lays our hearts-- such complex and powerful devices. It has been sewed into each of our bodies as a beacon of hope and to allow us to feel such an aching for all masterful desires.
