I dislike matinees.

Immensely.

Always have. Even as a kid I can remember those times we went to the theater or to a film and the only thing that curbed a young boy’s excitement at the prospect of new adventures, was finding out that those adventures would be starting promptly at 2 p.m.

When I was first getting into the business of show, I learned to accept the Sunday matinee as a part of the world I was entering. The mutually agreed upon clause, established by the entertainment body, designed to appease that slice of consumers that cannot or will not venture out into the darkness to be entertained. Clear highways, cheap tickets, and early dinners are their creed.

I dislike matinees.

Theater exists in dark places.

Now don’t go off and take that to be some grandiose metaphor about evils of entertainment. Simply put, most performance spaces are dark.

Such was not always the case.

Theater used to exist in the light. The purest light of all. And it had fresh air. And conversation.

Historically speaking, it was religion that existed in the dark (again with the “not a grandiose metaphor”). Travel the world and you will find that a great many house’s of faith are dark, cold, cellars of introspection. A funny thing happens when the space around you that is illuminated gets smaller and smaller, your thoughts and musings turn inwards. It’s just the way of things. You can physically be in a cavernous space, but as the lights go down, your eyes do less interpretation of the world, and your mind does more.

A man named Wagner darkened the theater. (yes, that Wagner. And yes, a little bit of a metaphor). For the premiere of Parsifal, he commissioned and built a theater to his specifications. Among the changes, equal seating, reverting back to the Greek/early Roman model of concentric rings of seats. No boxes, no balconies. He put the orchestra under the stage for the first time. He wanted to remove the visual distractions of musicians playing.

And he made the theater dark.

No house lights.

Not one.

He wanted performance, well, his performance, to be a more religious experience. He wanted people to be affected by what they heard, and saw. The easiest way to accomplish this? Make it dark.

I dislike Matinees.

When you sit in a matinee, you never really forget that it is light outside. That 20 feet away the sun is shining.

The lighting feels different. The singing sounds different. The emotion is felt differently. The jokes are less funny. The tears fall with more rarity.

I dislike matinees